might meetly be headed "Retaliation;" for in it our poet bitterly upbraids Calvus for inflicting upon him a morning's work that, but for their ancient love, might provoke more lasting hatred than his speech drew from Vatinius. He had sent him, it seems, a "horrible and deadly volume" of sorry poetry, a "rascally rabble of malignants"—the latest novelty from the school of Sulla the grammarian; for no other object than to kill him at the convenient season of the Saturnalia with a grim playfulness, which the poet vows shall not go unrequited:—
To stall and book-shop, and the trash I buy,
With sums on Cæsius and Suffenus spent,
Mischievous wag, shall work thy punishment."
—D.
At other times the intercourse between the friends was not so disappointing. Seemingly at Calvus's house the two friends met one evening to enjoy the feast of reason and the flow of soul, and the effects of such unmixt enjoyment overset the poet's fine-wrought brain-tissues:—
The hours which yesterday we spent,
Engaged as men like us befits
In keen encounter of our wits!
My tablets still the records bear
Of all the good things jotted there:
The wit, the repartee that flew
From you to me, from me to you:
The gay bright verse that seemed to shine
More sparkling than the sparkling wine."
