Chapter XII: Act I (8)

"For her in very truth, with but the least of cause
And with a joyful heart, I'd given up the ghost.--
Look ye, this evil lot that to the father fell
Has in an instant's time my heart of love bereft!"

Immediately after this incident, Cats married Elizabeth van Valkenburg, a rich girl from Antwerpen. Her good sense, faithfulness, and housewifely virtues found a warm expression in the following words:--

"She was a worthy woman,
A foundation for a home, a model of truth."

This period of Cats's life, almost coincident with the twelve-years' armistice ending in 1621, when the war with Spain was resumed, was one of varied activity. Aside from the duties of his practice, he gave much time to the diking of grounds neglected during the war, now in great danger from the sea; and while at his country-place Grijpskerke near Middelburg, where his "flock of children played under the trees," he wrote the poems 'Emblemata of Sinnebeelden' (Emblemata or Emblems); 'Maeghdeplicht' (Maiden Duty), in 1618; 'Selfstryt' (Inward Strife), 1620; 'Toonel der Mannelycke Achtbaerheyd' (Scene of Manly Respectability), and 'Houwelyck' (Marriage).

With the beginning of the war his own peace was at an end. Several of the grounds reclaimed from the sea were once more flooded to prevent the advance of the enemy. In 1621 he accepted the office of pensionary of Middelburg, his first step toward official statesmanship. In 1623 he was elected pensionary of Dordrecht, and although he hesitated in leaving Zeeland, he finally decided to accept the office. In 1625 he added to his duties those of Curator of Leyden University. His literary work was consequently laid aside.

In 1627 Cats accompanied Albert Joachimi as ambassador to London to open negotiations for a navigation treaty. He was only partly successful in his mission, but was met with much consideration by Charles I., who decorated him with the order of St. Jovis. Shortly after his return he lost his wife after a brief illness.

While he was writing 'Trouwring' (Wedding Ring), a collection of epic and lyric poems, he was elected Secretary of State in 1636, and in 1645 Keeper of the Great Seal and Governor. But he had the experience in his public life that a crown may often be a crown of thorns; and in 1651 he begged to be released from his burdensome office. His demand was granted, and on this occasion Cats fell on his knees in the presence of the States-General and thanked God for taking away his heavy burden. He was once more persuaded to join an embassy to England. Cromwell had meanwhile come to power; Cats and his fellow-travelers returned with but little accomplished, and the old statesman and poet saw himself free to spend the last years of his life on his place Zorgvliet, which he had built outside of The Hague on the way to Scheveningen, in the midst of the Dunes. Although he may not have been a great statesman, he had felt the responsibility of his calling. He was never quite equal to it, and often felt himself helpless and small against the encroachment of the Powers. But honesty and patriotism were his to the fullest extent.

The last eight years of his life he spent in Zorgvliet in undisturbed peace. He returned to his literary labors and wrote 'Onderdom en Buitenleven' (Age and Country Life), 'Hofgedachtess' (Court Thoughts), and his rhymed autobiography 'Twee-entaghtig-jarig Leven' (A Life of Eighty-two Years). He seems to have kept his warm interest and joy in life to the very last.

FEAR AFTER THE TROUBLE

Awhile ago I read a tale methinks is curious.
Perhaps to every one the story may be useful;
Therefore in timeliness unto the light I drag it,
In hope that all who read, in it will find a pleasure.
A lord once lived of old, whose joy it was to wander
In field and flowery mead, quite to his heart's contentment.
A horse he had withal, so sage that, slept the rider,
It home would wisely go, without the knight to waken.
And so it came to pass that one day forthward faring,
To dine, the cavalier by a good friend was bidden.

He met with welcome glad; good wine went freely flowing.
At last, for all such cheer, the guest must take his leave.
Himself then he prepared to climb into his saddle,
And turned his beast about, that home were soon attained.
The day was bleak and raw; the sun of light was chary;
Through clouds before its face, a pallid light descended.
The wise steed careful stepped onward along the highway,
Its sober rider borne, as custom was, unwearied.
Anon the usual drowse closed up the rider's eyelids:
His beast walked calmly on, in faithfulness of service;
The man, profoundly sleeping, traveled as he was wonted;
The time at last brought near when he should reach his dwelling.

But lo! a friend is met, who questions him in wonder:--
"How possible it was his steed had brought him thither?"
The knight responded straight--"Why, I the way have ridden
That, during seven years, I constantly have come;
My beast on which I sit hath borne me duly houseward--
The midnight's dark itself makes not his foot unsteady."
"How, friend?" his questioner cried, "even when _the bridge_ is
broken?
The stream to cross at all, no other means I know:
This wondrous horse of thine old Perseus must have owned,
Who fought the dragon once, and cut its head to pieces.
Things sure are as they were! You came not flying hither!
It seems to me, belike, a ghost has been your cheater.
To take it otherwise, the joke to me seems pointless.
Not possible it is, this story that you tell me.
But that o'er such a thing no wrangling be between us,
Come to the bridge with me; I gladly will be escort.

The spot and fact themselves, in proof I straight will disclose,
That you may note how ill goes with your word the matter."
Whereto so long a speech? The Knight was well persuaded;
The flood is reached again, the truth of things lies open!
Bridge is there none indeed--rests but a strip of planking,
Crossing the rushing wave, narrow and all unsteady.
The foot of man must needs with prudence o'er it tiptoe,
The nerve and will be firm to reach that further goal.
The foot that is not true, that left or right shall waver,
Drowns in the flood below the passenger unlucky.
When now the man of naps marks all at once the bridge,
Notes well the narrow path, marks the too slender footway,
His shock in truth is great; loud his poor heart goes beating.
In fear and shudders cold, the scene he stands and pictures;
Sees with a frightened eye just how his path has served him.
And more and more his soul sickens with tardy terror,
More to his heart the blood, driven away, goes rushing;--
That hour of fear to him brought him an endless illness.

Look now, how odd it seems! He well in peace had ridden,
Suffering no mishap, spared from the thing all mischief--
Utterly downcast is, whereas his danger's over!
Fear makes him sick at heart, deep in his being centred.
Questions now any one what be this tale's life-lesson?
Him shall I gladly give what in it lies, methinks;
Speak out as best I can what as a maxim's plainest:--
Friendly is never he sparing of bread and counsel.
The man who rode his way safely and lost in slumber,
He unto whom occurred just this strange bit of fortune,
Like is he (it meseems) unto the lustful mortal,
Evil in earthly course, given to sottish living,
Wandering on, shut-eyed, lost in the way of pleasure,
Taking no slightest notice of the abyss so open:
Never with heed made blessed, not with his conscience warned:
How at his side is Death, prompt to cut off the living!
But with our Lord God's grace, suddenly on him bestowed,
Opening wide his eye--then, not till then, he's awakened.
Terror absorbs his soul, holy the fear that takes it;
Now is the sinner roused, sees for the first his doings.
Wondering see him stand, uttering loud his outcry:--
"Awful has been my blindness, dreadful my soul's delusion.
How could I be so tricked? how could my sleep so grip me?
I who, in touch with death, careless my ease was taking!"
Happy in truth the man fallen in no such peril,
Since with a careful eye watches he every footstep,
Blessed in that God himself insight to him has granted
What was his danger to feel; how he has made escapement.

Translation through the German by E. Irenaeus Stevenson.

"A RICH MAN LOSES HIS CHILD, A POOR MAN LOSES HIS COW"

Come hither, pray, O friends! Let me my sorrow tell you.
Wordless such loss to bear, my heart indeed endures not:
All that the soul downweighs seems to a man less bitter,
If to the friendly ear sorrow can be but uttered.
Dead is my neighbor's child: dead is my only cow.
Comfort has fled from him; fled from me every joying.
So do we sorrow, both, reft of our peace each bosom:
He that his child is dead--I that my cow is taken.
Look you now, friends! how strange ay, and how sad Fate's dealings!
I well had spared a child--one cow he well had wanted.
Turn things about, thou Death! Less evil seem thy doings.
Full is my house--too full: surely is full his cow-house!
Death, take his stalls for prey, or choose from out my seven!
There have you, Death, full room; less to us too the trouble.
Certain the pain's forgot--ay, and forgotten quickly,
When, in the greater herd, one little wolf's a robber!
What do I murmur thus? Ever is Death one earless.
Lost on _him_ good advice, argument on him wasted.
Onward he moves, this Death, pallid and wholly blindly.
Oftenest he a guest just where his call's least needed.
Ah, who can calm my grief; who, pray, shall still my neighbor's?
Just as we would not choose, so unto each it happens!--
He who is rich must lose all that means nearest heirship,
I, the poor man, O God! stripped of my one possession!

Translation through the German by E. Irenaeus Stevenson.

CATULLUS

(84-54 B.C.?)

BY J. W. MACKAIL

The last thirty years of the Roman Republic are, alike in thought and action, one of the high-water marks of the world's history. This is the age of Cicero and of Julius Caesar. This brief period includes the conquest of Gaul, the invasion of Britain, the annexation of the Asiatic monarchies founded by Alexander's marshals; the final collapse of the Roman oligarchy which had subdued the whole known world; the development of the stateliest and most splendid prose that the world has ever seen or is ever likely to see; and lastly, a social life among the Roman upper classes so brilliant, so humane, so intimately known to us from contemporary historians, poets, orators, letter-writers, that we can live in it with as little stretch of imagination as we can live in the England of Queen Anne. Among the foremost figures of this wonderful period is Valerius Catullus, the first of Latin lyric poets, and perhaps the third, alongside of Sappho and Shelley, in the supreme rank of the lyric poets of the world.

He represents in his life and his genius the fine flower of his age and country. He was born at Verona of a wealthy and distinguished family, while Italy was convulsed by the civil wars of Marius and Sulla; he died at the age of thirty, while Caesar was completing the conquest of Gaul, and the Republic, though within a few days of its extinction, still seemed full of the pride of life. The rush and excitement of those thrilling years is mirrored fully in the life and poetry of Catullus. Fashion, travel, politics, criticism, all the thousandfold and ever-changing events and interests of the age, come before us in their most vivid form and at their highest pressure, in this brief volume of lyrics. But all come involved with and overshadowed by a story wholly personal to himself and immortal in its fascination: the story of an immense and ill-fated love that "fed its life's flame with self-substantial fuel," and mounted in the morning glories of sunrise only to go down in thunder and tempest before noon.

There are perhaps no love poems in the world like these. Of Sappho, seemingly the greatest poet of her sex, we can only dally with surmise from mutilated fragments. No one else in the ancient world comes into the account. The Middle Ages involved love inextricably with mysticism. When Europe shook the Middle Ages off, it had begun to think. Exquisite reflections on love, innocent pastorals, adorable imagery,--these it could produce; in the France of the Pleiade for instance, or in the England of Greene and Campion: but thought and passion keep ill company. Once only, a century ago, a genius as fierce and flame-like as that of Catullus rose to the height of this argument. An intractable language, sterilizing surroundings, bad models, imperfect education, left Burns hopelessly distanced; yet the quintessential flame that he shares with Catullus has served to make him the idol of a nation, and a household word among many millions of his race.

Clodia, the "Lady of the Sonnets" in Catullus, whom he calls Lesbia by a transparent fiction, has no ambiguous or veiled personality. She was one of the most famous and most scandalous women of her time. By birth and marriage she belonged to the innermost circle of that more than royal Roman aristocracy which had accumulated the wealth of the world into its hands, and sent out its younger sons carelessly to misgovern and pillage empires. When Catullus made her acquaintance, she was a married woman some six or seven years older than himself. "Through a little arc of heaven" the poems show his love running its sorrowful and splendid course. Rapture of tenderness, infatuation, revolt, relapse, re-entanglement, agonized stupor, the stinging pain of reviving life, fierce love passing into as fierce a hatred, all sweep before us in dazzling language molded out of pure air and fire.

So far, Burns alone, and Burns only at his rarer heights, can give a modern reader some idea of Catullus. But Burns had little education and less taste; and so when he leaves the ground of direct personal emotion,--that is to say, in nineteen-twentieths of his poetry,--he is constantly on the edge, and often over it, of tawdriness, vulgarity, commonplace. Catullus was master of all the technical skill then known to poetry. Without anything approaching the immense learning of Virgil or Milton, he had, like Shelley among English poets, the instincts and training of a scholar. It is this fine scholarship--the eye and hand of the trained artist in language--combined with his lucid and imperious simplicity, like that of some gifted and terrible child, that makes him unique among poets. When he leaves the golden fields of poetry and dashes into political lampoons, or insolent and unquotable attacks on people (men or women) who had the misfortune to displease him, he becomes like Burns again, Burns the satirist; yet even here nimbler witted, lighter of touch, with the keenness of the rapier rather than of the Northern axe-edge.

His scholarliness--like that of most scholars--was not without its drawbacks. His immediate literary masters, the Greeks of the Alexandrian school, were a coterie of pedants; it would be idle to claim that he remained unaffected by their pedantry. In the last years of his life he seems to have lost himself somewhat in technical intricacies and elaborate metrical experiments; in translations from that prince in preciosity, the Alexandrian Callimachus; and idyllic pieces of overloaded ornament studied from the school of Theocritus. The longest and most ambitious poem of these years, the epic idyl on 'The Marriage of Peleus and Thetis,' is full of exquisite beauties of detail, but taken in its whole effect is languid, cloying, and monotonous. He makes a more brilliant success in his other long poem, the famous 'Atys,' the single example in Latin of the large-scale lyric so familiar to Greece and England.

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 Caesar 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!

For these my trifles even then
You counted of some value, when
You only of Italian men

Into three tomes had dared to cast
The story of all ages past,--
Learned, O Jupiter, and vast!

So take it, prize it as you may.
--And, gracious Virgin, this I pray:
That it shall live beyond our day!

Translation of W. C. Lawton.

A MORNING CALL

Varus would take me t'other day
To see a little girl he knew,--
Pretty and witty in her way,
With impudence enough for two.

Scarce are we seated, ere she chatters
(As pretty girls are wont to do)
About all persons, places, matters:--
"And pray, what has been done for _you_?"

"Bithynia, lady!" I replied,
"Is a fine province for a praetor;
For none (I promise you) beside,
And least of all am I her debtor."

"Sorry for that!" said she. "However,
You have brought with you, I dare say,
Some litter-bearers; none so clever
In any other part as they.

"Bithynia is the very place
For all that's steady, tall, and straight;
It is the nature of the race.
Could you not lend me six or eight?"

"Why, six or eight of them or so,"
Said I, determined to be grand;
"My fortune is not quite so low
But these are still at my command."

"You'll send them?"--"Willingly!" I told her,
Although I had not here or there
One who could carry on his shoulder
The leg of an old broken chair.

"Catullus! what a charming hap is
Our meeting in this sort of way!
I would be carried to Serapis
To-morrow!"--"Stay, fair lady, stay!

"You overvalue my intention.
Yes, there _are_ eight ... there may be nine:
I merely had forgot to mention
That they are Cinna's, and not mine."

Paraphrase of W. S. Landor.

HOME TO SIRMIO

Dear Sirmio, that art the very eye
Of islands and peninsulas, that lie
Deeply embosomed in calm inland lake,
Or where the waves of the vast ocean break;
Joy of all joys, to gaze on thee once more!
I scarce believe that I have left the shore
Of Thynia, and Bithynia's parching plain,
And gaze on thee in safety once again!
Oh, what more sweet than when, from care set free,
The spirit lays its burden down, and we,
With distant travel spent, come home and spread
Our limbs to rest along the wished-for bed!
This, this alone, repays such toils as these!
Smile, then, fair Sirmio, and thy master please,--
And you, ye dancing waters of the lake,
Rejoice; and every smile of home awake!

Translation of Sir Theodore Martin.

HEART-BREAK

With your Catullus ill it fares, alas!
O Cornificius, and most wearily;
Still worse with all the days and hours that pass.
And with what greeting do you comfort me?
The least of boons, and easiest to bestow;
Wroth am I, that my love is answered so.
A word of greeting, pray you; what you please;
More sad than tear-drops of Simonides!

Translation of W. C. Lawton.

TO CALVUS IN BEREAVEMENT

If there be aught, my Calvus, that out of our sorrowing proffered
Unto the voiceless dead grateful or welcome may be,
When we revive with insatiate longing our ancient affection,
When for the ties we lament, broken, that once have been ours,
Though Quintilia grieve for her own untimely departure,
Yet in thy faithful love greater, be sure, is her joy.

Translation of W. C. Lawton.

THE PINNACE

This pinnace, friends, which here you see,
Avers erewhile she used to be
Unmatched for speed, and could outstrip
Triumphantly the fastest ship
That ever swam, or breasted gale,
Alike with either oar or sail.
And this, she says, her haughty boast,
The stormy Adriatic coast,
The Cyclad islands, Rhodes the grand,
Rude Thrace, the wild Propontic strand,
Will never venture to gainsay;

Nor yet the Euxine's cruel bay,
Where in her early days she stood,
This bark to be, a shaggy wood;
For from her vocal locks full oft,
Where o'er Cytorus far aloft
The fitful mountain-breezes blow,
She piped and whistled loud or low.

To thee, Amastris, on thy rocks,
To thee, Cytorus, clad with box,
Has long been known, my bark avers,
This little history of hers.

In her first youth, she doth protest,
She stood upon your topmost crest,
First in your waters dipped her oars,
First bore her master from your shores
Anon unscathed o'er many a deep,
In sunshine and in storm to sweep;
Whether the breezes, as she flew,
From larboard or from starboard blew,
Or with a wake of foam behind,
She scudded full before the wind.
Nor to the gods of ocean e'er
For her was offered vow or prayer,
Though from yon farthest ocean drear
She came to this calm crystal mere.

But these are things of days gone past.
Now, anchored here in peace at last,
To grow to hoary age, lies she,
And dedicates herself to thee,
Who hast alway her guardian been,
Twin Castor, and thy brother twin!

Translation of Sir Theodore Martin.

AN INVITATION TO DINNER

If the gods will, Fabullus mine,
With me right heartily you'll dine.
Bring but good cheer--that chance is thine
Some days hereafter;
Mind, a fair girl too, wit, and wine,
And merry laughter.

Bring these--you'll feast on kingly fare;
But bring them--for my purse--I swear
The spiders have been weaving there;
But thee I'll favor
With a pure love, or what's more rare,
More sweet of savor,

An unguent I'll before you lay
The Loves and Graces t'other day
Gave to my girl--smell it--you'll pray
The gods, Fabullus,
To make you turn all nose straightway.
Yours aye, CATULLUS.

Translation of James Cranstoun.

A BROTHER'S GRAVE

Brother! o'er many lands and oceans borne,
I reach thy grave, death's last sad rite to pay;
To call thy silent dust in vain, and mourn,
Since ruthless fate has hurried thee away:
Woe's me! yet now upon thy tomb I lay--
All soaked with tears for thee, thee loved so well--
What gifts our fathers gave the honored clay
Of valued friends; take them, my grief they tell:
And now, forever hail! forever fare thee well!

Translation of James Cranstoun.

FAREWELL TO HIS FELLOW-OFFICERS

The milder breath of Spring is nigh;
The stormy equinoctial sky
To Zephyr's gentle breezes yields.
Behind me soon the Phrygian fields,
Nicaea's sun-beat realm, shall lie.
To Asia's famous towns we'll hie.
My heart, that craves to wander free,
Throbs even now expectantly.
With zeal my joyous feet are strong;
Farewell, dear comrades, loved so long!
Afar together did we roam;
Now ways diverse shall lead us home.

Translation of W. C. Lawton.

VERSES FROM AN EPITHALAMIUM

And now, ye gates, your wings unfold!
The virgin draweth nigh. Behold
The torches, how upon the air
They shake abroad their gleaming hair!
Come, bride, come forth! no more delay!
The day is hurrying fast away!

But lost in shame and maiden fears,
She stirs not,--weeping, as she hears
The friends that to her tears reply,--
Thou must advance, the hour is nigh!
Come, bride, come forth! no more delay!
The day is hurrying fast away!"

Dry up thy tears! For well I trow,
No woman lovelier than thou,
Aurunculeia, shall behold
The day all panoplied in gold,
And rosy light uplift his head
Above the shimmering ocean's bed!

As in some rich man's garden-plot,
With flowers of every hue inwrought,
Stands peerless forth with drooping brow
The hyacinth, so standest thou!
Come, bride, come forth! no more delay!
The day is hurrying fast away!

* * * * *

Soon my eyes shall see, mayhap,
Young Torquatus on the lap
Of his mother, as he stands
Stretching out his tiny hands,
And his little lips the while
Half-open on his father smile.

And oh! may he in all be like
Manlius his sire, and strike
Strangers, when the boy they meet,
As his father's counterfeit,
And his face the index be
Of his mother's chastity!

Him, too, such fair fame adorn,
Son of such a mother born,
That the praise of both entwined
Call Telemachus to mind,
With her who nursed him on her knee,
Unparagoned Penelope!

Now, virgins, let us shut the door!
Enough we've toyed, enough and more!
But fare ye well, ye loving pair,
We leave ye to each other's care;
And blithely let your hours be sped
In joys of youth and lustyhed!

Translation of Sir Theodore Martin.

NOTE.--The remaining poems of our selection are all associated with the famous passion for Lesbia.

LOVE IS ALL

Let us, Lesbia darling, still
Live our life, and love our fill;
Heeding not a jot, howe'er
Churlish dotards chide or stare!
Suns go down, but 'tis to rise
Brighter in the morning skies;
But when sets our little light,
We must sleep in endless night.
A thousand kisses grant me, sweet:
With a hundred these complete;
Lip me a thousand more, and then
Another hundred give again.
A thousand add to these, anon
A hundred more, then hurry one
Kiss after kiss without cessation,
Until we lose all calculation;
So envy shall not mar our blisses
By numbering up our tale of kisses.

Translation of Sir Theodore Martin.

ELEGY ON LESBIA'S SPARROW

Loves and Graces, mourn with me,
Mourn, fair youths, where'er ye be!
Dead my Lesbia's sparrow is,
Sparrow that was all her bliss,
Than her very eyes more dear;
For he made her dainty cheer;
Knew her well, as any maid
Knows her mother; never strayed
From her bosom, but would go
Hopping round her to and fro.
And to her, and her alone,
Chirruped with such pretty tone.
Now he treads that gloomy track
Whence none ever may come back.
Out upon you, and your power,
Which all fairest things devour,
Orcus's gloomy shades, that e'er
Ye took my bird that was so fair!
Ah, the pity of it! Thou
Poor bird, thy doing 'tis, that now
My loved one's eyes are swollen and red,
With weeping for her darling dead.

Translation of Sir Theodore Martin.

"FICKLE AND CHANGEABLE EVER"

Never a soul but myself, though Jove himself were to woo her,
Lesbia says she would choose, might she have me for her mate.
Says--but what woman will say to a lover on fire to possess her,
Write on the bodiless wind, write on the stream as it runs.

Translation of Sir Theodore Martin.

TWO CHORDS

I Hate and love--the why I cannot tell.
But by my tortures know the fact too well.

Translation of Sir Theodore Martin.

LAST WORD TO LESBIA

O Furius and Aurelius! comrades sweet!
Who to Ind's farthest shore with me would roam,
Where the far-sounding Orient billows beat
Their fury into foam;

Or to Hyrcania, balm-breathed Araby,
The Sacian's or the quivered Parthian's land,
Or where seven-mantled Nile's swoll'n waters dye
The sea with yellow sand;

Or cross the lofty Alpine fells, to view
Great Caesar's trophied fields, the Gallic Rhine,
The paint-smeared Briton race, grim-visaged crew,
Placed by earth's limit line:

To all prepared with me to brave the way,
To dare whate'er the eternal gods decree--
These few unwelcome words to her convey
Who once was all to me.

Still let her revel with her godless train,
Still clasp her hundred slaves to passion's thrall,
Still truly love not one, but ever drain
The life-blood of them all.

Nor let her more my once fond passion heed,
For by her faithlessness 'tis blighted now,
Like flow'ret on the verge of grassy mead
Crushed by the passing plow.

Translation of James Cranstoun.

BENVENUTO CELLINI

(1500-1571)

Among the three or four best autobiographies of the world's literature, the 'Memoirs' of Benvenuto Cellini are unique as the self-delineation of the most versatile of craftsmen, a bizarre genius, and a typical exponent of the brilliant period of the later Italian Renaissance. As a record of the ways of living and modes of thinking of that fascinating epoch, they are more lively and interesting than history, more entertaining, if more true to fact, than a romance. As one of his Italian critics, Baretti, put it:--"The life of Benvenuto Cellini, written by himself in the pure and unsophisticated idiom of the Florentine people, surpasses every book in our literature for the delight it affords the reader." This is high praise for the product of a literature that boasts of Boccaccio's 'Decameron,' and gave birth to the _novelle_, the parent of modern fiction. Yet the critics of other nations have echoed this praise. Auguste Comte, the positivist philosopher, included it in his limited list for the reading of reformed humanity, and Goethe, laying aside his own creative work, deemed it worth his time and attention to translate into German.

Benvenuto Cellini was born at Florence in 1500. The father, Giovanni Cellini, a musician and maker of musical instruments, intended that the boy should likewise become a musician; but young Benvenuto very early showed strong leaning toward the plastic art, and detested the flute he was forced to practice. The first chapters of the 'Memoirs' are a most lively description of the struggles between the wishes of the father and those of the son, until the latter finally prevailed, and at fifteen years of age he was apprenticed to a goldsmith of Florence. He made rapid progress, and soon attracted notice as a skilled craftsman. At the same time, to please his father, toward whom he everywhere professes the most filial feeling, he continued "that confounded flute-playing" as a side issue. This accomplishment, however, did him a good turn at the Papal court later on. After various youthful escapades, street broils, and quarrels with his father, he fled in monk's disguise to Rome in 1521. A vase made for the Bishop of Salamanca drew upon him the notice of Pope Clement VII., who appointed him court musician and also employed him in his proper profession of goldsmith. When the Constable de Bourbon attacked Rome, in 1527, Cellini was of great service to the Pope in defending the city. He boasts of having from the ramparts shot the Bourbon; and indeed, if one were to take him strictly at his word, his valor and skill as an engineer saved the castle of San Angelo and the Pope. However his lively imagination may have overrated his own importance, yet it is certain that his military exploit paved the way for his return to Florence, where for a time he devoted himself to the execution of bronze medals and coins. The most famous of the former are Hercules and the Nemean Lion, and Atlas supporting the world.

On the elevation of Paul III. to the Papacy we again find Cellini at Rome, working for the Pope and other eminent people. His extraordinary abilities brought him not only into the notice of the courts, but also drew him into the brilliant literary and artistic society of the Eternal City. With unrivaled vividness he flashes before us in a few bold strokes the artists of the decadent Renaissance, the pupils of Raphael, led by Giulio Romano, with their worship of every form of physical beauty and their lack of elevation of thought. In consequence of the plottings of his implacable enemy, Pier Luigi, natural son of Paul III., he was arrested on the charge of having during the sack of Rome embezzled Pontifical gold and jewels to the amount of eighty thousand ducats. Though the charge was groundless, he was committed to the castle of San Angelo. His escape is narrated in one of the most thrilling chapters of the 'Memoirs.' He went in hiding to the Cardinal Cornaro, but was delivered up again to the Pope by an act of most characteristic sixteenth-century Italian policy, and was cast into a loathsome underground dungeon of the castle. It was damp, swarming with vermin, and for two hours of the day only received light through a little aperture. Here he languished for many months, with only the chronicles of Giovanni Billani and an Italian Bible to solace him. Now at last his recklessness and bravado forsook him. He took on the airs of a saint, gave himself up to mysticism, grew delirious and had his famous visions--angels visiting him, who talked with him about religion.

In 1539 he was finally released at the intercession of the cardinal Ippolito d'Este, who came from France to invite him to enter the King's service. Cellini's account of his residence in France has great historic value as throwing vivid side-lights on that interesting period in the development of French social life, when Francis I. was laying the foundation of the court society which was later on brought to perfection by Louis XIV. Cellini was one among that crowd of Italian artists gathered at the court in Paris and Versailles, whose culture was to refine the manners of the French warrior barons. He worked for five years at Fontainebleau and in Paris. Among his works there, still extant, are a pair of huge silver candelabra, the gates of Fontainebleau, and a nymph in bronze, reposing among trophies of the chase, now in the Louvre. Among other marks of royal favor he was presented with a castle, Le Petit Nesle. His efforts to gain possession of this grant are among the amusing episodes of his narrative.

He had as usual numerous quarrels, and falling into disfavor with Madame d'Estampes, the King's favorite, he suddenly left Paris and returned alone to Florence. The remainder of his life he passed mainly in the service of Duke Cosimo de' Medici. The chapters of his narrative dealing with this portion give a most vivid picture of artist life at an Italian court in the sixteenth century. To this third and last period belongs the work on which his fame as sculptor rests, the bronze Perseus holding the head of Medusa, completed in 1554 and still standing in the Loggia de' Lanzi in Florence. It is a typical monument of the Renaissance, and was received with universal applause by all Italy. Odes and sonnets in Italian, Greek, and Latin were written in its praise. His minute description of its casting, and of his many trials during that process, are among the most interesting passages of the narrative.

In 1558 he began to write his memoirs, dictating them for the greater part to an amanuensis; and he carried them down to the year 1562. The events of the remaining nine years of his life are to be gathered from contemporary documents. In 1558 he received the tonsure and first ecclesiastical orders, but married two years later, and died in 1571. He was buried with great pomp in the Church of the Annunciata in Florence.

Besides his 'Memoirs' he also wrote treatises on the goldsmith's art and on sculpture, with especial reference to bronze-founding. They are of great value as manuals of the craftsmanship of the Renaissance, and excellent specimens of good Italian style as applied to technical exposition. And like all cultivated artists of his time Cellini also tried his hand at poetry; but his lack of technical training as a writer comes out even more in his verse than in his prose. The life of Benvenuto was one of incessant activity, laying hold of the whole domain of the plastic arts: of restless wanderings from place to place; and of rash deeds of violence. He lived to the full the life of his age, in all its glory and all its recklessness. As the most famous goldsmith of his time, he worked for all the great personages of the day, and put himself on a footing of familiar acquaintance with popes and princes. As an artist he came into contact with all the phases of Italian society, since a passion for external beauty was at that time the heritage of the Italian people, and art bodied forth the innermost life of the period. Furniture, plate, and personal adornments were not turned out wholesale by machinery as they are to-day, but engaged the individual attention of the most skilled craftsmen. The memory and the traditions of Raphael Sanzio were still cherished by his pupils when Cellini first came to Rome into the brilliant circle of Giulio Romano and his friends; Michelangelo's frescoes were studied with rapturous admiration by the young Benvenuto, and later on he proudly recorded some words of praise of the mighty genius whom he worshiped; and at this time, too, Titian and Tintoretto set the heart of Venice aglow with the splendor and color of their marvelous canvases. The contemporary though not the peer of those masters of the brush and the chisel, Cellini, endowed with a keen feeling for beauty, a dexterous hand, and a lively imagination, in his versatility reached out toward a wider sphere of activity, and laid hold of life at more points, than they.

He reflected the Renaissance, not merely on its higher artistic aspect, but he touched it also on its lower darker levels of brute passion, coarseness, and vindictiveness. He had more than one murder to his account, and he did not slur over them in his narrative, for in his make-up the bravo was equally prominent with the artist. Yet we must remember that homicides were of common occurrence in those days, defended by casuists and condoned by the Church. Avenging one's honor, or punishing an insult with the dagger, were as much a social custom as the adornment of the body with exquisitely wrought fabrics and jewelry. But just because Cellini was so thoroughly awake to all the influences about him, and so entirely bent on living his life, his 'Memoirs' are perennially fresh and attractive. They are the plain unvarnished annals of a career extraordinary even in that age of uncommon experiences; they were written, as he says, because "all men of whatever quality they be, who have done anything of excellence, or which may properly resemble excellence, ought, if they are persons of truth and honesty, to describe their life with their own hand; but they ought not to attempt so fine an enterprise till they have passed the age of forty."

Cellini was past fifty-eight when he began writing, and going back to his earliest boyhood, he set down the facts of his long career as he remembered them. Of course he is the hero who recounts his own story, and like all heroes of romance he plays the leading part, is always in the right, and comes out handsomely in the end. Carping critics who tax him with lack of truth in dealing with his enemies, and with pleading his own cause too well, are apt to forget that he wrote long after the events were past, and that to an ever-active imagination ruminating over bygone happenings, facts become unconsciously colored to assume the hue the mind wishes them to have. Yet the fidelity and accuracy of his memory are remarkable, and his faculty for seeing, combined with his dramatic way of putting things most vividly, flashes before our eyes the scenes he recounts. He does not describe much; he indicates a characteristic feature, habit, or attitude; as for example, in referring to a man he disliked, as having "long spidery hands and a shrill gnat-like voice"--all that is needed to make us see the man from Cellini's point of view. Again, he adds much to the vivacity of the narrative by reporting conversation as a dialogue, even if he has it himself at second-hand. So in his trenchant, nervous manner this keen observer, while aiming to recount only the facts of his own life and to set himself on a becoming pedestal in the eyes of posterity, gives us at the same time flash-lights of the whole period in which he played a part. Popes Clement VII. and Paul III., Cosimo de' Medici and his Duchess, the King of France and Madame d' Estampes, cardinals, nobles, princes, and courtiers, artists of every description, burghers and the common folk,--all with whom he came in contact,--are brought before us in a living pageant. Looking back over his checkered career, he lives his intense life over again, and because he himself saw so vividly at the time, he makes us see now. We have here invaluable pictures, by an eye-witness and actor, of the sack of Rome, the plague and siege of Florence, the pomp of Charles V. at Rome. He withdraws the curtains from the Papal policies and court intrigues, not with a view to writing history, but because he happened to have some relations with those princes and wished to tell us about them. Again, he was no critic of the manners of his time, yet he presents most faithful pictures of artist life in Rome, Paris, and Florence. He was not given to introspection and self-criticism, but he describes himself as well as others, not by analysis but by deeds and words. He had no literary training; he wrote as he talked, and gained his effect by simplicity.

He was recognized as the first goldsmith of his time; yet as a man also his contemporaries speak well of him, for he embodied the virtues of his age, while his morals did not fall below the average code of the Renaissance. Vasari says:--"He always showed himself a man of great spirit and veracity; bold, active, enterprising, and formidable to his enemies; a man, in short, who knew as well how to speak with princes as to exert himself in his art."

J. A. Symonds, that inspiring student of the Italian Renaissance, sums up his impressions of the book and the man as follows:--

"I am confident that every one who may have curiously studied
Italian history and letters will pronounce this book to be at
one and the same time the most perfect extant monument of
vernacular Tuscan prose, and also the most complete and lively
source of information we possess regarding manners, customs,
ways of feeling, and modes of acting, in the Court. Those who
have made themselves thoroughly familiar with Cellini's
Memoirs possess the substance of that many-sided epoch in the
form of an epitome. It is the first book which a student of
the Italian Renaissance should handle in order to obtain the
right direction for his more minute researches. It is the last
book to which he should return at the close of his exploratory
voyages. At the commencement he will find it invaluable for
placing him at the exactly proper point of view. At the end he
will find it no less invaluable for testing and verifying the
conclusion he has drawn from various sources and a wide
circumference of learning. From the pages of this book the
genius of the Renaissance, incarnate in a single personality,
leans forth and speaks to us. Nowhere else, to my mind, do we
find the full character of the epoch so authentically stamped.
That is because this is no work of art or of reflection, but
the plain utterance of a man who lived the whole life of his
age, who felt its thirst for glory, who shared its adoration
of the beautiful, who blent its paganism and its superstition,
who represented its two main aspects of exquisite sensibility
to form and almost brutal ruffianism. We must not expect from
Cellini the finest, highest, purest accents of the
Renaissance.... For students of that age he is at once more
and less than his contemporaries: less, inasmuch as he
distinguished himself by no stupendous intellectual qualities;
more, inasmuch as he occupied a larger sphere than each of
them singly. He was the first goldsmith of his time, an
adequate sculptor, a restless traveler, an indefatigable
workman, a Bohemian of the purest water, a turbulent bravo, a
courtier and companion of princes; finally, a Florentine who
used his native idiom with incomparable vivacity of style."

THE ESCAPE FROM PRISON

From the 'Memoirs': Symonds's Translation

The castellan was subject to a certain sickness, which came upon him every year and deprived him of his wits. The sign of its approach was that he kept continually talking, or rather jabbering, to no purpose. These humors took a different shape each year; one time he thought he was an oil-jar; another time he thought he was a frog, and hopped about as frogs do; another time he thought he was dead, and then they had to bury him; not a year passed but he got some such hypochondriac notions into his head. At this season he imagined that he was a bat, and when he went abroad to take the air he used to scream like bats in a high thin tone; and then he would flap his hands and body as though he were about to fly. The doctors, when they saw the fit was coming on him, and his old servants, gave him all the distractions they could think of; and since they had noticed that he derived much pleasure from my conversation, they were always fetching me to keep him company. At times the poor man detained me for four or five stricken hours without ever letting me cease talking. He used to keep me at his table, eating opposite to him, and never stopped chatting and making me chat; but during those discourses I contrived to make a good meal. He, poor man, could neither eat nor sleep; so that at last he wore me out. I was at the end of my strength; and sometimes when I looked at him, I noticed that his eyeballs were rolling in a frightful manner, one looking one way and the other in another.

He took it into his head to ask me whether I had ever had a fancy to fly. I answered that it had always been my ambition to do those things which offer the greatest difficulties to men, and that I had done them; as to flying, the God of Nature had gifted me with a body well suited for running and leaping far beyond the common average, and that with the talents I possessed for manual art I felt sure I had the courage to try flying. He then inquired what methods I should use; to which I answered that, taking into consideration all flying creatures, and wishing to imitate by art what they derived from nature, none was so apt a model as the bat.

No sooner had the poor man heard the name bat, which recalled the humor he was suffering under, than he cried out at the top of his voice:--"He says true--he says true; the bat's the thing--the bat's the thing!" Then he turned to me and said, "Benvenuto, if one gave you the opportunity, should you have the heart to fly?" I said that if he would set me at liberty, I felt quite up to flying down to Prato, after making myself a pair of wings out of waxed linen. Thereupon he replied:--"I too should be prepared to take flight; but since the Pope has bidden me guard you as though you were his own eyes, and I know you a clever devil who would certainly escape, I shall now have you locked up with a hundred keys in order to prevent you slipping through my fingers." I then began to implore him, and remind him that I might have fled, but that on account of the word which I had given him I would never have betrayed his trust; therefore I begged him for the love of God, and by the kindness he had always shown me, not to add greater evils to the misery of my present situation. While I was pouring out these entreaties, he gave strict orders to have me bound and taken and locked up in prison. On seeing that it could not be helped, I told him before all his servants: "Lock me well up, and keep good watch on me; for I shall certainly contrive to escape." So they took me and confined me with the utmost care. I then began to deliberate upon the best way of making my escape. No sooner had I been locked in, than I went about exploring my prison; and when I thought I had discovered how to get out of it, I pondered the means of descending from the lofty keep, for so the great round central tower is called. I took those new sheets of mine, which, as I have said already, I had cut in strips and sewn together; then I reckoned up the quantity which would be sufficient for my purpose. Having made this estimate and put all things in order, I took out a pair of pincers which I had abstracted from a Savoyard belonging to the guard of the castle. This man superintended the casks and cisterns; he also amused himself with carpentering. Now he possessed several pairs of pincers, among which was one both big and heavy. I then, thinking it would suit my purpose, took it and hid it in my straw mattress. The time had now come for me to use it; so I began to try the nails which kept the hinges of my door in place. The door was double, and the clinching of the nails could not be seen; so that when I attempted to draw one out, I met with the greatest trouble; in the end however I succeeded. When I had drawn the first nail, I bethought me how to prevent its being noticed. For this purpose I mixed some rust, which I had scraped from old iron, with a little wax, obtaining exactly the same color as the heads of the long nails which I had extracted. Then I set myself to counterfeit these heads and place them on the holdfasts; for each nail I extracted I made a counterfeit in wax. I left the hinges attached to their door-posts at top and bottom by means of some of the same nails that I had drawn; but I took care to cut these and replace them lightly, so that they only just supported the irons of the hinges.

All this I performed with the greatest difficulty, because the castellan kept dreaming every night that I had escaped, which made him send from time to time to inspect my prison. The man who came had the title and behavior of a catchpoll. He was called Bozza, a serving-man. Giovanni never entered my prison without saying something offensive to me. He came from the district of Prato, and had been an apothecary in the town there. Every evening he minutely examined the holdfasts of the hinges and the whole chamber, and I used to say:--"Keep a good watch over me, for I am resolved by all means to escape."