lamations common in the mouths of the English vulgar.

v. 5. Ovid has a distich to the same effect:

Crede mihi, distant mores a carmine nostri;
Vita verecunda est, musa jocosa mihi.

"Believe me there is a vast difference between my morals and my song; my
life is decorous, my muse is wanton." And Martial says:

Lasciva est nobis pagina, vita proba est.

Which is thus translated by Maynard:

Si ma plume est une putain,
Ma vie est une sainte.

Pliny quotes this poem of Catullus to excuse the wantonness of his own
verses, which he is sending to his friend Paternus; and Apuleius cites the
passage in his Apology for the same purpose. "Whoever," says Lambe, "would
see the subject fully discussed, should turn to the Essay on the Literary
Character by Mr. Disraeli." He enumerates as instances of free writers who
have led pure lives, La Motte le Vayer, Bayle, la Fontaine, Smollet, and
Cowley. "The imagination," he adds, "may be a volcano, while the heart is
an Alp of ice." It would, however, be difficult to enlarge this list, while
on the other hand, the catalogue of those who really practised the
licentiousness they celebrated, would be very numerous. One period alone,
the reign of Charles the Second, would furnish more than enough to
outnumber the above small phalanx of purity. Muretus, whose poems clearly
gave him every right to knowledge on the subject, but whose known
debauchery would certainly have forbidden any credit to accrue to himself
from establishing the general purity of lascivious poets, at once rejects
the probability of such a contrast, saying:

Quisquis versibus exprimit Catullum
Raro moribus exprimit Catonem.

"One who is a Catullus in verse, is rarely a Cato in morals."

C. xviii. This and the two following poems are found in the Catalecta of
Vergilius, but they are assigned to Catullus by many of the best critics,
chiefly on the authority of Terentianus Maurus.

v. 2. Cf. _Auct. Priapeiorum_, Eps. lv. v. 6, and lxxvii. v. 15.

v. 3. _Ostreosior_. This Epithet, peculiarly Catullian, is appropriate to
the coasts most favoured by Priapus; oysters being an incentive to lust.

C. xx. v. 19. The traveller mocks at Priapus' threat of sodomy, regarding
it as a pleasure instead of as a punishment. The god, in anger, retorts
that if that punishment has no fears for him, a fustigation by the farmer
with the self-same mentule used as a cudgel may have a more deterrent
effect. Cf. _Auct. P