34° 
satire was keen, well-pointed, and vigo- 
rous. A vein of sharp and provoking 
Grony, sometimes smooth, and at others 
eaustic in the highest degree, runs through 
most of his smaller pieces; and we can- 
not but admire the perfect indifference 
with which he fearlessly applies it, with- 
out distinction of persons. Even Cesar 
himself felt the severity of his song, but 
was too magnanimous to resentit. When 
upon a visit at the-house of Cicero, who 
records the circumstance in a letter to 
his friend Atticus, that poem,* an eternal 
stain upon his reputation, wherein the 
poet censures his ill-applied liberality 
towards the dissolute favourite Mamurra, 
was shewn to him while he was at the 
bath, as the topic of public conversation. 
Cesar affected to disregard it,+ and either 
to display an ostentatious moderation, 
er to conceal his indignation, he accepted 
the submission of Catullus, and soon 
after invited him to supper; he also con- 
tinued to make a home of his father’s 
house as usual.{ Next to Cesar, and 
to Mamurra, whose sumptuous posses- 
sions proclaimed his ravages in Trans- 
alpine Gaul better than all the verse of 
Catullus, the principal objects of his 
satire were Gellius, Gallus, Vectius, Ra- 
vidus, Cominius, Nonius Struma, and 
Vatinius; all of them men whom he ap- 
pears to have cordially hated. Mem- 
mius, the avaricious pretor whom he at- 
tended into Bithynia, of course, does not 
escape it. He ridicules the incontinent 
foul-breathed§ Emilius. He plays upon 
Volusius, a wretched writer of annals ;|} 
Egnatius, his execrable poetic rival; Suf- 
fenus, a conceited scribbler, with whom 
be includes Cassius and Aquinius, two 
literary pests; and lastly the weak orator 
Sextius, at the recital of whose cold 
compositions, he ludicrously says that he 
took cold himself. Catullus also makes 
satirical mention of other characters, less 
important and less conspicuous in his 
verses: such as Sulla, a grammarian; the 
pompous poet Antimachus; Arrius, a 
violent aspirator of words,** whose uncle 
Liber had the same defect; Fuffitius, an 
old secretary of Cesar’s, together with 
Otho and Libo, whose dirty feet are no- 
ticed;++ Porcius and Socration, tools of 
* Carm. 26. 
+ Cic. epist. ad Attic. b. 52. 
{ Sueton. in Julio, cap. 73. 
§ See Carm. $2, ; 
jj. Carm. 33. 
@ Carm. 41. 
** Carm. 8f. 
++-Carm. 51. 
Tournal of a recent Voyage to Cadiz. 
[Aug. i, 
the despoiling pretor Cn. Calpurnius, 
Piso ; the fetid Virro, if such be the real 
name of the person intended;* Rufus, 
who had a similar infirmity, and was 
most probably M. Czlius Rufus the ora- 
tor; Silo, a pander; Vibennius and his 
son, the one a thief, and the other unna- 
turally infamous; the lascivious Aufile- 
nus, brother of Aufilena, the mistress of 
Catullus; Rufa, of Bononia, wife of Me- 
nertus, and the mistress of Rufulus; Post- 
humia, a lady of bacchanalian fame ; 
Balbus, Posthumius, and other obscure 
characters mentioned in the poem to a 
harlot’s door.t All these were exposed 
to the lash of an injured, and sometimes 
exasperated, poet; particularly those who 
presumed to rival him in the affection ef 
his mistresses. He pursues them with 
keen and unremitting severity; he de- 
rides their pretensions, and expuses their 
personal infirmities, with a freedom of 
pencil and a broadness. of expression, 
which compel us to consider him as one 
of the wittiest, and, at the same time, one 
of the most indecent, poets of antiquity. 
ee 
To the Editor of the Monthly Magazine. 
SIR, : 
Cadiz, Nov. 1809. 
BF ARRIVED here after a passage of 
eighteen days fromFalmouth, which, 
at this season of the year, is not a long 
one; while at sea we experienced fair 
and foul winds, calms and storms, “ tem- 
pest o’er tempest roll’d.” 
I was comfortable on board the packet 
so far as related to sociability, there 
being above twenty passengers, some of 
whom are proceeding to different parts 
of the Mediterranean; but the crowded 
state of ‘“‘each in his narrow cell,” was 
occasionally uncomfertable.- 
We were prevented from making Cape 
Finisterre by a strong easterly wind, 
that blew just as we came into that lati- 
tude; but in a day or two the wind 
changed, and light airs carried us gently 
along the coast of Portugal to the rock 
of Lisbon, as we call it, but the Portu- 
guese call it Serra de Cintra; for it is 
not an insulated rock, but a vast promon- 
tory, “whose haughty brow” marks the 
. near 
= 
* Carm. 68. _ 
_ > Carm. 64. This singular piece is a diae 
logue between a passenger and the door of a 
certain brothel; but as the name of the ine 
famous woman who kept it is not mentioned, 
and the various personages alluded ta are 
unknown to us, the sting of the satire is quite 
lostto us. — / 
