XIV.

Calvus, save that as eyes thou art beloved, I could verily loathe thee for the morning's Gift, Vatinius hardly more devoutly.

Slain with poetry! done to death with abjects! O what syllable earn'd it, act allow'd it? 5 Gods, your malison on the sorry client Sent that rascally rabble of malignants.

Yet, if, freely to guess, the gift recherché Some grammarian, haply Sulla, sent thee; I repine not; a dear delight, a triumph 10 This, thy drudgery thus to see rewarded.

Gods! an horrible and a deadly volume!

Sent so faithfully, friend, to thy Catullus, Just to kill him upon a day, the festive, Saturnalia, best of all the season. 15 Sure, a drollery not without requital.

For, come dawn, to the cases and the bookshops I; there gather a Caesius and Aquinus, With Suffenus, in every wretch a poison: Such plague-prodigy thy remuneration! 20

Now good-morrow! away with evil omen Whence ill destiny lamely bore ye, clumsy Poet-rabble, an age's execration!

XIVB.

Readers, any that in the future ever Scan my fantasies, haply lay upon me Hands adventurous of solicitation--