In every part of our survey of Latin Literature, we have had occasion to remark the imitative spirit of Roman poetry, and the constant analogy and resemblance of all the productions of the Latian muse to some Greek original. None of his poetical predecessors was more versed in Greek literature than Catullus; and his extensive knowledge of its beauties procured for him the appellation of _Doctus_(458). He translated many of the shorter and more delicate pieces of the Greeks; an attempt which hitherto had been thought impossible, though the broad humour of their comedies, the vehement pathos of their tragedies, and the romantic interest of the Odyssey, had stood the transformation. His stay in Bithynia, though little advantageous to his fortune, rendered him better acquainted than he might otherwise have been with the productions of Greece, and he was therefore, in a great degree, indebted to this expedition (on which he always appears to have looked back with mortification and disappointment) for those felicitous turns of expression, that grace, simplicity, and purity, which are the characteristics of his poems, and of which hitherto Greece alone had afforded models. Indeed, in all his verses, whether elegiac or heroic, we perceive his imitation of the Greeks, and it must be admitted that he has drawn from them his choicest stores. His Hellenisms are frequent—his images, similes, metaphors, and addresses to himself, are all Greek; and even in the versification of his odes we see visible traces of their origin. Nevertheless, he was the founder of a new school of _Latin_ poetry; and as he was the first who used such variety of measures, and perhaps himself invented some(459), he was amply entitled to call the poetical volume which he presented to Cornelius Nepos, _Lepidum Novum Libellum_. The beautiful expressions, too, and idioms of the Greek language, which he has so carefully selected, are woven with such art into the texture of his composition, and so aptly figure the impassioned ideas of his amorous muse, that they have all the fresh and untarnished hues of originality. This elegant poet was born of respectable parents, in the territory of Verona, but whether at the town so called, or on the peninsula of Sirmio, which projects into the Lake Benacus, has been a subject of much controversy. The former opinion has been maintained by Maffei and Bayle(460), and the latter by Gyraldus(461), Schoell(462), Fuhrmann(463), and most modern writers.