There is another sort of indecency which is infinitely more dangerous, which corrupts the heart without offending the ear.” Hence the Muse of light poetry thought not of having recourse to the circumlocutions or suggestions of modern times. Nor did Catullus suffer in his reputation, either as an author or man of fashion, from the impurities by which his poems were poisoned. All this would have been less remarkable in the first age of Roman literature, as indelicacy of expression is characteristic of the early poetry of almost every nation. The French epigrams of Regnier, and his contemporaries Motin and Berthelot, are nearly as gross as those of Catullus; but at the close of the Roman republic, literature was far advanced; and if it be true, that as a nation grows corrupted its language becomes pure, the words and expressions of the Romans, in these last days of liberty, should have been sufficiently chaste. The obscenities of Catullus, however, it must be admitted, are oftener the sport of satire, than the ebullitions of a voluptuous imagination. His sarcastic account of the debaucheries of Lesbia, is more impure than the pictures of his enjoyment of her love. No subject connected with the works of Catullus is more curious than the different sentiments, which, as we have seen, he expresses with regard to this woman. His conflict of mind breathes into his poetry every variety of passion. We behold him now transported with love, now reviling and despising her as sunk in the lowest abyss of shame, and yet, with this full knowledge of her abandoned character, her blandishments preserve undiminished sway over his affections. “At one time,” says a late translator of Catullus, “we find him upbraiding Lesbia bitterly with her licentiousness, then bidding her farewell for ever; then beseeching from the gods resolution to cast her off; then weakly confessing utter impotence of mind, and submission to hopeless slavery; then, in the epistle to Manlius, persuading himself, by reason and example, into a contented acquiescence in her falsehoods, and yet at last accepting with eagerness, and relying with hope, on her proffered vow of constancy. Nothing can be more genuine than the rapture with which he depicts his happiness in her hours of affection; nor than the gloomy despair with which he is overwhelmed, when he believes himself resolved to quit her for ever.” And all this, he wrote and circulated concerning a Roman lady, belonging, it is believed, to one of the first and most powerful families of the state!