pal merit of Catullus's Iambics consists in a
simplicity of thought and expression. The thoughts, however, are often
frivolous, and, what is yet more reprehensible, the author gives way to
gross obscenity: in vindication of which, he produces the following
couplet, declaring that a good poet ought to be chaste in his own person,
but that his verses need not be so.

Nam castum esse decet pium poetam
Ipsum: versiculos nihil necesse est.

This sentiment has been frequently cited by those who were inclined to
follow the example of Catullus; but if such a practice be in any case
admissible, it is only where the poet personates (68) a profligate
character; and the instances in which it is adopted by Catullus are not
of that description. It had perhaps been a better apology, to have
pleaded the manners of the times; for even Horace, who wrote only a few
years after, has suffered his compositions to be occasionally debased by
the same kind of blemish.

Much has been said of this poet's invective against Caesar, which
produced no other effect than an invitation to sup at the dictator's
house. It was indeed scarcely entitled to the honour of the smallest
resentment. If any could be shewn, it must have been for the freedom
used by the author, and not for any novelty in his lampoon. There are
two poems on this subject, viz. the twenty-ninth and fifty-seventh, in
each of which Caesar is joined with Mamurra, a Roman knight, who had
acquired great riches in the Gallic war. For the honour of Catullus's
gratitude, we should suppose that the latter is the one to which
historians allude: but, as poetical compositions, they are equally
unworthy of regard. The fifty seventh is nothing more than a broad
repetition of the raillery, whether well or ill founded, with which
Caesar was attacked on various occasions, and even in the senate, after
his return from Bithynia. Caesar had been taunted with this subject for
upwards of thirty years; and after so long a familiarity with reproach,
his sensibility to the scandalous imputation must now have been much
diminished, if not entirely extinguished. The other poem is partly in
the same strain, but extended to greater length, by a mixture of common
jocular ribaldry of the Roman soldiers, expressed nearly in the same
terms which Caesar's legions, though strongly attached to his person,
scrupled not to sport publicly in the streets of Rome, against their
general, during the celebrati