Lugete, o Veneres, Cupidinesque.
You have acted the undertaker to the sorrow, dressed it out, and
protracted it, and set it afloat upon a river of wo, with Queens of Love
as chief-mourners, hanging out their weepers.
AQUILIUS.--Yes, for the Zephyrs to blow. They are light, airy, graceful.
They did not come from the first room of the mourning institution, where
the soft-slippered man in black gently, and bowing low as he shows his
grief-items, whispers, "Much in vogue for deep affliction." The Queens
of Love pass on to "the mitigated wo department," and I hope you will
confess they have _put on_ their sorrow with grace and taste.
GRATIAN.--That's good--"the mitigated wo department." But there's a
department in these establishments farther on still. There is a little
glass door, generally left half open, where there is a most delicate
show of "orange blossoms." But my good worthy Curate, I don't blame our
friend for this little enlargement, because, if it is not in the _words_
of the original, it is every bit of it in the tune and melody of the
verses. See how it swells out in full flow in "venustiorum,"--stays but
a moment, and is off again without stop to "puellae,"--and that again is
repeated ere grief can be said to take any rest. I shall acquit the
translator as I would the landscape painter, who, seeing how flowing a
line of easy and graceful beauty pervades all nature, and is indeed her
great characteristic, rather aims to realise that, than laboriously to
dot in every leaf and flower. Characteristic expression is every thing.
I am not quite satisfied that either of you have hit the
Flendo turgiduli rubent ocelli.
CURATE.--If we have not, you remember that Juvenal has, and hit those
eyes rather hard, considering whose they are. He, however, only meant
the hit for Catullus:
nec tibi, cujus
Turbavit nitidos extinctus passer ocellos.
GRATIAN.--_Turbavit_ is "mitigated wo" again:
Unlike the Lesbias of our modern years,
Who for a sparrow's death dissolve in tears.
AQUILIUS.--Satire is like a flail, an ugly weapon in a crowd, and hits
more than it aims at. I won't allow the blow to be a true hit on
Catullus. But let us pass on; there is a vessel waiting for us, though
we should be loth to trust to her sheathing, no longer sea-worthy. Our
poet now addresses his yacht. Are there many of the "Club" who would
write better verses on theirs?