represented almost wholly by the brilliant but technically immature poems
of Catullus; after him it ceases to exist."

As regards Pope, the critics of the end of the eighteenth century
considered his style eminently artificial and forced. But to-day,
according to Father Gasquet, we cannot but recognize his services to
English poetry as invaluable. "He was virtually the inventor and artificer
who added a new instrument of music to its majestic orchestra, a new
weapon of expression to its noble armoury.... But one must admit that to
the taste of the present age there occurs a certain coldness and
artificiality in his portrayals alike of the face of nature and of the
passions of man. He appeals rather to the brain than to the heart. Ideas
and not emotions are his province.... To the metric presentment of ideas
he imparts a charm of musical utterance unachieved before his time."


"_30th Nov._, 1857.

"My dear Nicholson,

* * * * *

"I have of late been urged by a particular circumstance to make various
trials of translation into Latin (lyrical, etc.) verse--an exercise I
always used to dislike, and have never much practised. I now find my
dislike was largely caused by the unsuitable and over-stiff metres which
used to be imposed on me when I was under orders.... In English and Greek
versification I have long been aware of the essential importance of this;
but I have looked on Latin as too inflexible a tongue to be worth the
labour, since nearly all the translations I have seen, pall on me as mere