obligations towards one's country. He did not always rise to
circumstances; he was well content, on the contrary, that they should
serve him.

SALLUST.--Sallust, who as an individual seems to have been contemptible,
was a highly sagacious and excellent historian. He has left a history of
Catiline and another of Jugurtha. They are masterpieces of lucidity and
of dramatic vivacity. Admirable especially are his maxims, which seem as
well thought out as those of La Rochefoucauld: "Friendship is to desire
the same things and to hate the same things"; "the spirit of faction is
the friendship of scoundrels."

POETRY: CATULLUS.--Poetry was not less brilliant than prose in the time
of Caesar. It was the era of Lucretius and of Catullus. Catullus, a
delightful man of the world, a charming voluptuary, passionate and
eloquent lover, formidable epigrammatist, a little coloured by
Alexandrianism (but barely, for this trait has been much exaggerated),
comes very close to being a great poet. In many respects he closely
recalls Andre Chenier, who, it may be added, was thoroughly conversant
with his writing.

LUCRETIUS.--Lucretius is a very noble poet. If we knew Epicurus otherwise
than by fragments, it is highly probable we should be tempted to assert
that Lucretius was only a translator; but on that we cannot pronounce,
and of the didactic part of the poem of Lucretius (_On Nature_),
even if it were a simple translation, all the oratorical and the
descriptive portions would remain, and they are the most beautiful of the
work. In his invocations to Epicurus, in his prosopopoeia of nature to
man inviting resignation to death, in his descriptions of the immolation
of Iphigenia and of the cow wandering in the fields in search of her lost