long-drawn sweetness of the last words of all--

_Nec meum respectet ut ante amorem
Qui illius culpa cecidit, velut prati
Ultimi flos, praetereunte postquam
Tactus aratro est._

Foremost among the other lyrics of Catullus which have a personal
reference are those concerned with his journey to Asia, and the death in
the Troad of the deeply loved brother whose tomb he visited on that
journey. The excitement of travel and the delight of return have never
been more gracefully touched than in these little lyrics, of which every
other line has become a household word, the _Iam ver egelidos refert
tepores_, and the lovely _Paene insularum Sirmio insularumque_, whose
cadences have gathered a fresh sweetness in the hands of Tennyson. But a
higher note is reached in one or two of the short pieces on his brother's
death, which are lyrics in all but technical name. The finest of these
has all the delicate simplicity of an epitaph by the best Greek artists,
Leonidas or Antipater or Simonides himself; and with this it combines the
specific Latin dignity, and a range of tones, from the ocean-roll of its
opening hexameter, _Multas per gentes et multa per aequora vectus_, to
the sobbing wail of the _Atque in perpehtum frater ave atque vale_ in
which it dies away, that is hardly equalled except in some of
Shakespeare's sonnets.

It is in these short lyrics of personal passion or emotion that the
genius of Catullus is most eminent; but the same high qualities appear in
the few specimens he has left of more elaborate lyrical architecture, the
_Ode to Diana_, the marriage-song for Mallius and Vinia, and the _Atys_.
The first of these, brief as it is, has a breadth and grandeur of manner