on the
death of Quinctilius.

By many a good man wept Quinctilius dies,
By none than you, my Virgil, trulier wept;

(I, xxiv.)

or to his devoted young friend Septimius (p. 39) (II, vi), who would
travel with him to the ends of the world, to Moorish or Cantabrian
wilds. Not so far afield need they go; but when age steals on they will
journey to Tarentum, sweetest spot on earth:

That spot, those happy heights, desire
Our sojourn; there, when life shall end,
Your tear shall dew my yet warm pyre,
Your bard and friend.

To the great general Agrippa (I, vi), rival of Maecenas in the good
graces of Augustus, he sends a tribute complimentary, yet somewhat
stiffly and officially conceived; lines much more cordial to the
high-born Aelius Lamia (III, 17), whose statue stands to-day amid the
pale immortalities of the Capitoline Museum. We have a note of tonic
banter to Tibullus, "jilted by a fickle Glycera," and "droning piteous
elegies" (I, xxxiii); a merry riotous impersonation of an imaginary
symposium in honour of the newly-made augur Murena (III, 19), with
toasts and tipsiness and noisy Bacchanalian songs and rose-wreaths flung
about the board; a delicious mockery of reassurance to one Xanthias (II,
iv), who has married a maidservant and is ashamed of it. He may yet find
out that though fallen into obscurity she is in truth high-born and
noble, and will present him with a patrician mother-in-law.

For aught that you know now, fair Phyllis may be
The shoot of some highly respectable stem;
Nay, she counts, I'll be sworn, a few kings in her tree,
And laments the lost acres once lorded by them.

Never think that a creature so exquisite grew
In the haunts where but vice and dishonour are known,
Nor deem that a girl so unselfish, so true,
Had a mother 'twould shame thee to take for thine own.

Several of his correspondents we can only name; the poet Valgius,
the tragedians Pollio and Fuscus; Sallust, grandson of the historian;
Pompeius, his old comrade in the Brutus wars; Lollius, defeated in
battle and returning home in disgrace. Nor need we labour to identify a
host of others; Iccius, Grosphus, Dellius; who figure as mere dedicatory
names; nor persons mentioned casually, such as Telephus of the rosy neck
and clustering hair (I, xiii; III, xix), whom Bulwer Lytton, with fine
memories of his own ambrosial petted youth, calls a "typical beautyman
and lady-killer." The Hor