"O misero frater adempte mihi!
Omnia tecum una perierunt gaudia nostra,
Quae tuus in vita dulcis alebat amor.
Tu mea, tu moriens fregisti commoda, frater;
Tecum una tota est nostra sepulta anima
Cujus ego interitu tota de menthe fugavi
Haec studia, atque omnes delicias animi.
Alloquar? audiero nunquam tua verba loquentem?
Nunquam ego te, vita frater amabilior
Aspiciam posthac; at certe semper amabo;"

["O brother, taken from me miserable! with thee, all our joys have
vanished, those joys which, in thy life, thy dear love nourished.
Dying, thou, my brother, hast destroyed all my happiness. My whole
soul is buried with thee. Through whose death I have banished from
my mind these studies, and all the delights of the mind. Shall I
address thee? I shall never hear thy voice. Never shall I behold
thee hereafter. O brother, dearer to me than life. Nought remains,
but assuredly I shall ever love thee."--Catullus, lxviii. 20; lxv.]

But let us hear a boy of sixteen speak:

--[In Cotton's translation the work referred to is "those Memoirs
upon the famous edict of January," of which mention has already been
made in the present edition. The edition of 1580, however, and the
Variorum edition of 1872-1900, indicate no particular work; but the
edition of 1580 has it "this boy of eighteen years"(which was the
age at which La Boetie wrote his "Servitude Volontaire"), speaks of
"a boy of sixteen" as occurring only in the common editions, and it