A scholar lively, remembered to me, that _Catullus_ translated word for
word, is an anachronism, and that a literal English rendering in the
nineteenth century could be true to the poet's letter, but false to his
spirit. I was compelled to admit that something of this is true; but it is
not the whole truth. "Consulting modern taste" means really a mere
imitation, a re-cast of the ancient past in modern material. It is
presenting the toga'd citizen, rough, haughty, and careless of any
approbation not his own, in the costume of to-day,--boiled shirt,
dove-tailed coat, black-cloth clothes, white pocket-handkerchief, and
diamond ring. Moreover, of these transmogrifications we have already enough
and to spare. But we have not, as far as I know, any version of Catullus
which can transport the English reader from the teachings of our century to
that preceding the Christian Era. As discovery is mostly my mania, I have
hit upon a bastard-urging to indulge it, by a presenting to the public of
certain classics in the nude Roman poetry, like the Arab, and of the same
date....