every man must be his own translator.

It may be that Ovid now and then comes near to writing _vers de societe_,
only he never troubles himself for a moment about the "decorum of the
_boudoir_." Do you remember the lines on the ring which he gave his
lady? They are the origin and pattern of all the verses written by
lovers on that pretty metempsychosis which shall make them slippers, or
fans, or girdles, like Waller's, and like that which bound "the dainty,
dainty waist" of the Miller's Daughter.

"Ring that shalt bind the finger fair
Of my sweet maid, thou art not rare;
Thou hast not any price above
The token of her poet's love;
Her finger may'st thou mate as she
Is mated every wise with me!"

And the poet goes on, as poets will, to wish he were this favoured, this
fortunate jewel:

"In vain I wish! So, ring, depart,
And say 'with me thou hast his heart'!"

Once more Ovid's verses on his catholic affection for all ladies, the
brown and the blonde, the short and the tall, may have suggested Cowley's
humorous confession, "The Chronicle":

"Margarita first possessed,
If I remember well, my breast,
Margarita, first of all;"

and then follows a list as long as Leporello's.

What disqualifies Ovid as a writer of _vers de societe_ is not so much
his lack of "decorum" as the monotonous singsong of his eternal elegiacs.
The lightest of light things, the poet of society, should possess more
varied strains; like Horace, Martial, Thackeray, not like Ovid and (here
is a heresy) Praed. Inimitably well as Praed does his trick of
antithesis, I still feel that it _is_ a trick, and that most rhymers
could follow him in a mere mechanic art. But here the judgment of Mr.
Locker would be opposed to this modest opinion, and there would be
opposition again where Mr. Locker calls Dr. O. W. Holmes "perhaps the
best living writer of this species of verse." But here we are straying
among the moderns before exhausting the ancients, of whom I fancy that
Martial, at his best, approaches most near the ideal.

Of course it is true that many of Martial's lyrics would be thought
disgusting in any well-regulated convict establishment. His gallantry is
rarely "honourable." Scaliger used to burn a copy of Martial, once a
year, on the altar of Catullus, who himself was far from prudish. But
Martial, somehow, kept his heart undepraved, and his taste in books was
excellent. How often he writes v