The end of it was, however, that Catullus could not "sleep for thinking on't" when he reached home, and was all agog to be up at dawn, and to challenge a renewal of the pleasant word-fence; but misused nature resented the liberties our poet thought to take with it. His limbs were so tired with a sleepless night, that he was fain, at dawn of day, to stick to his couch; and from thence to fire off a lively poem of remembrance to his comrade of the night before, the burden of which is to warn him against offering any impediment to a speedy and equally pleasant reunion, lest haply Nemesis should exact the like penalties from him who has hitherto come off scot-free. One other notice of Calvus is demanded by a sense of our poet's higher and tenderer vein of poesy. It seems that at the age of twenty-eight Calvus lost his beloved mistress Quinctilia—a theme for tearful elegies, of the beauty of which neither Propertius nor Ovid were insensible, whilst it secured a tender echo in Catullus, whose heart was prepared for reciprocity by a community of suffering:—
And shades are touched by sense of mortal tears,
Mourning in fresh regrets love's vanished bloom,
Weeping the dear delights of vanished years;
Thy lost Quinctilia's gentle spirit fill,
To cherish, where she bides, the assured belief
That she is nearest, dearest to thee still."
— (C. xcvi.) D.
