CHAPTER IV. THE ART AND GENIUS OF PROPERTIUS. PROPERTIUS, in the opening poem of the third book, claims to be a high priest from a pure source of poetry, who first bore the sacred symbols of Italy through the movements of the Greek dance.' In language less strained, he claims to be the first interpreter of the passions of Italy in the forms of Greek art. In making this boast he seems to forget the claims of Calvus and Catullus, of Varro and Gallus, which he had just conceded in the last poem of the second book. He is here consciously or unconsciously repeating the claim expressed by Horace in simpler language carmina non prius Audita Musarum sacerdos as in the following poem he recalls more than one thought of the 'Exegi monumentum.' But the claim made by Horace is better warranted than that of Propertius. Not only had those four poets celebrated their loves in Greek forms and metres, but the contemporary poet Tibullus had at least an equal claim with Propertius to have brought the elegy to perfection. The words of Propertius, taken along with his claim to be the Roman Callimachus, and with the two opening lines of this poem- Callimachi Manes et Coi sacra Philetae, In vestrum, quaeso, me sinite ire nemus are to be interpreted as meaning that he was the first Roman poet who reproduced the art of Alexandria in Latin literature. The claim is justifiable to this extent, that he was probably a much closer imitator of the manner and matter of his originals than any of the other elegiac poets. But as these originals are lost we can only form vague inferences as to their art. All evidence points to the supreme importance which they attached not only to diction and metrical effect, but to the composition of their separate pieces, and also to the arrangement of the several pieces in each book so as to produce the impression of an artistic whole, 'simplex et unum '.' How far has their professed imitator followed their example in the arrangement of the several books, so as to produce in each a distinct unity of impression? The answer to this question is that this object seems to have been prominently before his mind; that he has completely realised it in the first book; partially, if not completely, in the third; that for some reason or other the second book fails to produce the impression of completeness or arrangement on any principle; and that in the fourth book, there are two independent currents of interest, which were probably never intended to form one continuous stream. The first book, which was known and prized in later times as a separate work under the name of 'Cynthia Monobiblos,' brings before us, with no more intrusion of alien themes than is sufficient at once to vary and deepen the impression of the whole, the two earliest phases of his passion, the one of the brightest sunshine, the other of the deepest gloom. The opening poem, written in the darkest night of his trouble, but just before a new and more stormy day broke on him, indicates the dominant spirit in which his passion is treated by Propertius. The elegy is with him, even more than with Tibullus, a 'querimonia. Flere' is used by him as equivalent to 'canere,' and 1 The importance attached to the arrangement of the different pieces so as to produce the impression at once of unity and variety, is a marked feature in the Eclogues of Virgil, the Odes of Horace (who to this extent was an Alexandrian), the Elegies of Tibullus, the Amores of Ovid, and also, though the traces are more difficult to follow, in the collected poems of Catullus. ' lacrimae' to 'carmina.' This introductory poem is immediately followed by the brightest in the whole series, full of the new life' which this 'new love' brought into his existence. In this poem alone his happiness appears almost unmixed with any feeling of regret or self-reproach, of gratified vanity or querulous complaint. From the second to the tenth, the poems are so arranged as to bring out the pride which, under the plea of justifying his love, moves him to boast of it, and the joy which enables him to sympathise with a similar joy of one of his friends. The little rift which declares itself first in the eighth poem, ends before the poem is completed in a more tumultuous 'amoris integratio.' From the eleventh to the fifteenth, supposed to be written during Cynthia's absence in Baiae, the feeling is more troubled and anxious, and his sympathy with his friend's amour is changed to a complaint of his heartless indifference. The fourteenth poem, addressed to Tullus, which introduces a pause into the development of the story, is, in the main, bright and cheerful. The fifteenth is written with forebodings of the approaching estrangement. The sixteenth, which in its subject recalls the 'Ianua' of Catullus—a common theme of elegiac satire-adds nothing to the development of the situation, but serves as a pause before the feelings of desolation expressed in the two most powerful poems of the book, the seventeenth and eighteenth, and the more melancholy resignation in the nineteenth-states of mind apparently leading to that year of reckless irregularity of which the first poem bears evidence. The twentieth is a poem of more disinterested art than any other in the book, and, though the tone of it is plaintive, serves to relieve the gloom by presenting outward nature and a story of the Greek mythology in their most picturesque combination. The dominant note of melancholy in the two short poems which form the epilogue of the whole book, especially that vivid reproduction in the twenty-first of a tragic scene stamped on his childish imagination, seems an augury of the gloom and trouble of the passion which consumed his life. It may be said therefore that the first book, finished before he was much past twenty years of age, shews artistic composition and arrangement, unity of subject, variety of treatment, and deepening impressiveness. Had this been the only record of the passion of Propertius, the artistic excellence of his work would have been more generally acknowledged, and he would have left a happier impression of himself as a man and a lover. Editors from the time of Lachmann have been about equally divided in opinion as to whether that which in the MSS. is numbered Book ii originally formed one or two books, and should be printed as ii, or as ii and iii. The arguments urged in favour of the subdivision into two books are based on the unusual length of the book; the appearance of a new beginning in the tenth poem Sed tempus lustrare aliis Helicona choreis and the lines (13. 25-26) written, like so many others, in anticipation of death— Sat mea sat magna est si tres sint pompa libelli, There is no reason to suppose that Book iii, which belongs to a later stage in his liaison, was either composed or in his thoughts when that line was written. Still, in a book bearing the marks of so much incompleteness and irregularity, both as a collected whole and in its several elegies, it would be unsafe, on the strength of a single passage, to accept this conclusion against the evidence of the MSS. If it were not for the existence of the more orderly third book, it would be difficult to resist Munro's conclusion, to which M. Plessis indicates his adherence, that the first book alone was published in a finished shape by Propertius. It is difficult to believe that so careful an artist as the author of the 'Cynthia Monobiblos' could have regarded the arrangement of the poems in Book ii as final. They are not arranged according to chronological order. Thus the thirty-first poem refers to an event of the year 28 B. C., which took place either immediately after or possibly a year before the publication of Book i. The poem or series of poems (28 a, b, c) referring to the dangerous illness of Cynthia must have been written before the ninth, in which Propertius recalls his vows for her recovery. And if there is nothing like chronological order observed, it is difficult to detect any other principle of artistic arrangement. Attempts to re-arrange the book, like most of the attempts to re-arrange single poems, succeed only in satisfying the artistic sense of the restorer, and leave on other editors or critics the sense of deepened confusion. Another possible explanation of the condition in which the book is left suggests itself—that there may have been originally two books referring to this phase of the liaison, but that Propertius contemplated recasting them and reducing them to one, as Ovid recast and reduced his five books of Amores to three, and that death overtook him while his task was still incomplete. It is certainly desirable, for purposes of reference, that editors should come to an agreement on the subject. The thirty-four poems of this book, with scarcely any exception, represent the alternations of experience and feeling during the years which followed the renewal of his passion. A fit motto for the book, and for the life of the poet at the time when the elegies composing it were written, might be taken from the twelfth poem, in which, guided by the teaching of his own experience, he analyses the meaning of the painter who represented the god of love as a winged boy: Scilicet alterna quoniam iactamur in unda, Nostraque non ullis permanet aura locis. The fluctuations of passion, between joy, despair, and anger, follow one another without an indication of any change of circumstances to account for them. The disorder of the book is a symbol of the agitation under which it was composed. He seems to have written under the impulse of the moment, and never afterwards to have been able to shape the record of his varying moods into a coherent whole. A certain change in the development of his humour may indeed be traced towards the end of the book. Two of the least moody poems in the book are the nineteenth-‘Etsi me invito discedis, Cynthia, Roma' |