But indeed in every form of lyric poetry attempted by him, his touch is infallible. The lovely poems of travel which he wrote during and after a voyage to Asia are as unequaled in their sunny beauty as the love-lyrics are in fire and passion. Alongside of these there are little funny verses to his friends, and other verses to his enemies which they probably did not think funny in the least; verses of occasion and verses of compliment; and verses of sympathy, with a deep human throb in them that shows how little his own unhappy love had embittered him or shut him up in selfish broodings. Two of these pieces are pre-eminent beyond all the rest. The one is a marriage song written by him for the wedding of two of his friends, Mallius Torquatus and Vinia Aurunculeia. In its straightforward unassuming grace, in its musical clearness, in the picture it draws, with so gentle and yet so refined and distinguished a touch, of common household happiness, it is worthy of its closing place in the golden volume of his lyrics. The other is a brief poem, only ten lines long, written at his brother's grave near Troy. It is one of the best known of Latin poems; and before its sorrow, its simplicity, its piteous tenderness, the astonishing cadence of its rhythms, praise itself seems almost profanation. "Tenderest of Roman poets nineteen hundred years ago--" so Tennyson in one of his own beautiful lyrics addresses Catullus; and it is this unsurpassed tenderness that more than all his other admirable qualities, than his consummate technical skill, than his white heat of passion, than his "clearness as of the terrible crystal," brings him and keeps him near our hearts. That wonderful Ciceronian age has left its mark as few ages have, deep upon human history. The conquests and legislation of Julius Cæsar determined the future of Europe and laid the foundation of the modern world. The prose invented by Cicero became and still remains the common language of civilized mankind. Among the poems of Catullus are verses addressed to both of these men; but his own young ivy-crowned brows shine out of the darkness and the distance, with no less pure a radiance and no less imperishable a fame. [Signature: J.W. Mackail] NOTE.--In Mr. Mackail's closing phrase the lover of Ovid will note an echo from that poet's famous elegy suggested by the premature death of still another Roman singer, Tibullus. Among the kindred spirits--says Ovid--who will welcome the new-comer to the Elysian fields,-- "Thou, O learned Catullus, thy young brows ivy-encircled, Bringing thy Calvus with thee, wilt to receive him appear." ED. DEDICATION FOR A VOLUME OF LYRICS This dainty little book and new, Just polished with the pumice, who Shall now receive?--Cornelius, you!