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 verses for the bibliophile, delighting in
the details of purple and gold, the illustrations and ornaments for his
new volume! These pieces are for the few--for amateurs, but we may all
be touched by his grief for the little lass, Erotion. He commends her in
Hades to his own father and mother gone before him, that the child may
not be frightened in the dark, friendless among the shades

"_Parvula ne nigras horrescat Erotion umbras_
_Oraque Tartarei prodigiosa canis_."

There is a kind of playfulness in the sorrow, and the pity of a man for a
child; pity that shows itself in a smile. I try to render that other
inscription for the tomb of little Erotion:

Here lies the body of the little maid