._, Act i. sc. 1.

XXXVII. 10.

_With scorpion I, with emblem all your haunt will scrawl._

A member of the Saraceni family at Vicenza, finding that a beautiful
widow did not favour him, scribbled filthy pictures over the door. The
affair was brought before the Council of Ten at Venice.

TROLLOPE'S _Paul the Pope_, p. 158.

XLIII. 3.

_Mouth scarce tenible,_

easily running over.

XLV. 7.

_A sulky lion._

Properly "green-eyed." The epithet would seem to be not merely
picturesque; the glaring of the eyes would be more marked in proportion
as the beast was in a fiercer and more excitable state.

LI. 5-12.

I watch thy grace; and in its place
My heart a charmed slumber keeps,
While I muse upon thy face;
And a languid fire creeps
Thro' my veins to all my frame,
Dissolvingly and slowly: soon
From thy rose-red lips my name
Floweth; and then, as in a swoon,
With dinning sound my ears are rife,
My tremulous tongue faltereth,
I lose my colour, I lose my breath,
I drink the cup of a costly death,
Brimmed with delicious draughts of warmest life.

TENNYSON, _Eleaenore_.

LIV. 6.

_Yet thou flee'st not above my keen iambics_.

This line is quoted as Catullus's by Porphyrion on Hor. c. 1. 16, 24.
His words, _Catullus cum maledicta minaretur_, compared with the last
lines of this poem, _Irascere iterum meis iambis Inmerentibus, unice
imperator_, seem to justify my view that they belong here. See my large
edition, p. 217, fragm. I. The following line, _So may destiny, &c._, is
a supplement of my own: it forms a natural introduction to the _Si non
uellem_ of v. 10.

LV.

This is the only instance where Catullus has introduced a spondee into
the second foot of the phalaecian, which then becomes decasyllabic. The
alternation of this decasyllabic rhythm with the ordinary
hendecasyllable is studiously artistic; I have retained it throughout.
In the series of dactylic lines 17-22, Catullus no doubt intended to
convey the idea of rapidity, as, in the spondaic line immediately
following, of labour.

4 _You on Circus, in all the bills but you, Sir._

There seems to be no authority for the meaning ordinarily assigned to
_libellis_, "book-shops." I prefer to explain the word placards, either
announcing the sale of Camerius's effects, which would imply that he was
in debt, or describing him as a l