No More Learning

' That is not Greek nor Roman. It is the
unelaborate magic of the Celtic temperament. Keats, I have often
thought, would have 'owed his eyes' to be able to write those three
lines. He hits sometimes a like matchless felicity:

She dwells with Beauty, Beauty that must die,
And Joy, whose hand is ever at his lips
Bidding adieu.

But into the effects which Catullus just happens upon by a luck of
temperament Keats puts more of his life-blood than a man can well spare.

Take, again, this from the _Letter to Hortalus_. Think not, says
Catullus, that your words have passed from my heart,

ut missum sponsi furtiuo munere malum
procurrit casto uirginis e gremio,
quod miserae oblitae molli sub ueste locatum,
dum aduentu matris prosilit, excutitur;
atque illud prono praeceps agitur decursu,
huic manat tristi conscius ore rubor,

--'as an apple, sent by some lover, a secret gift, falls from a maid's
chaste bosom. She placed it, poor lass, in the soft folds of her robe
and forgot it. And when her mother came towards her out it fell; fell
and rolled in headlong course. And vexed and red and wet with tears are
her guilty cheeks! '

That owes something, no doubt, to Alexandria. But in its exquisite
sensibility, its supreme delicacy and tenderness, it belongs rather to
the romantic than to the classical literatures.

_Molle atque facetum_: the deep and keen fire of mind, the quick glow of
sensibility--that is what redeems literature and life alike from
dullness. The Roman, the typical Roman, was what we call a 'dull man'.
But the Italian has this fire.
And it is this that so often redeems
Roman literature from itself. We are accustomed to associate the word
_facetus_ with the idea of 'wit'. It is to be connected, it would seem,
etymologically with _fax_, 'a torch'. Its primitive meaning is
'brightness', 'brilliance': and if we wish to understand what Horace
means when he speaks of the element of '_facetum_' in Vergil, perhaps
'glow' or 'fire' will serve us better than 'wit'. _Facetus_, _facetiae_,
_infacetus_, _infacetiae_ are favourite words with Catullus. With
_lepidus_, _illepidus_, _uenustus_, _inuenustus_ they are his usual
terms of literary praise and dispraise. These words hit, of course,
often very superficial effects. Yet with Catullus and his friends they
stand for a literary ideal deeper than the contexts in which they occur:
and an ideal which, while it no doubt derives from the enthusiasm of
Alexandrian study, yet assumes a distinctively Italian character. Poetry
must be _facetus_: it must glow and dance. It must have _lepor_: it must
be clean and bright. There must be nothing slipshod, no tarnish. 'Bright
is the ring of words when the right man rings them. ' It must have
_uenustas_, 'charm', a certain melting quality. This ideal Roman poetry
never realizes perhaps in its fullness save in Catullus himself. In the
lighter poets it passes too easily into an ideal of mere cleverness:
until with Ovid (and in a less degree Martial) _lepor_ is the whole man.
In the deeper poets it is oppressed by more Roman ideals.