=Propertius.=—With the name of Tibullus is often linked that of Propertius, who was born about 50 B.C. at Assisium, among the Umbrian mountains. In this lovely spot he was prepared for the study of the law, which he afterward adopted as his profession at Rome. But Propertius found this calling distasteful; relinquishing it, accordingly, for the pursuits of literature, he aspired to be a Roman Callimachus, and grounded himself in the principles of Alexandrian verse. But too much study made him artificial, and his numerous mythological allusions and digressions encumber rather than embellish. He lacks the sweetness, simplicity, and tenderness, of Tibullus. Catullus had his “Lesbia;” Tibullus, his “Delia;” and Propertius, profiting not by the example of his brother bards, lavished his affections on the accomplished but fickle “Cynthia,” who played him false as soon as a rich prætor laid a fortune at her feet. Cynthia was the single theme of our poet’s love-lays, all rapture or gentle reproach. In an elegy to Mæcenas, who had pressed him to attempt an epic, he sings:— “You ask me why love-elegy so frequently I follow, And why my little book of tender trifles only sings: It is not from Calliope, nor is it from Apollo, But from my own sweet lady-love my inspiration springs. If in resplendent purple robe of Cos my darling dresses, I’ll fill a portly volume with the Coan garments’ praise; Or if her truant tresses wreathe her forehead with caresses, The tresses of her queenly brow demand her poet’s lays.” In another elegy he describes his Cynthia’s charms:— “’Twas not her face, though fair, so smote my eye (Less fair the lily than my love: as snows Of Scythia with Iberian vermeil vie; As float in milk the petals of the rose); Nor locks that down her neck of ivory stream, Nor eyes—my stars—twin lamps with love aglow; Nor, if in silk of Araby she gleam (I prize not baubles), does she thrill me so, As when she leaves the mantling cup to thread The mazy dance, and moves before my view, Graceful as blooming Ariadne led The choral revels of the Bacchic crew.” The death of Propertius is supposed to have taken place about 15 B.C. Of his elegies, there is none better than LOVE’S DREAM REALIZED. “Not in his Dardan triumph so rejoiced the great Atrides, When fell the mighty kingdom of Laomedon of yore; Not so Ulysses, when he moored his wave-worn raft beside his Beloved Dulichian island-home—his weary wanderings o’er; As I, when last eve’s rosy joys I ruminated over: To me another eve like that were immortality! Awhile before with downcast head I walked a pining lover— More useless I had grown, ’twas said, than water-tank run dry.