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84 The Translator’s Invisibilitysimplicity of his manner, and his graceful turns of thought andhappinesses of expression. Some of his pieces, which breathe thehigher enthusiasm of the art, and are coloured with a singularpicturesqueness of imagery, increase our regret at the manifestmutilation of his works.(ibid.:ll:31)In 1818, Blackwood’s published an essay that remarked on the fluency ofCatullus’s verse, finding it a mirror of the poet: “This language isuniformly unlaboured. […] His versification is careless, but graceful.His feeling is weak, but always true. The poet has no inclination toappear any thing but what he is” (Blackwood’s 1818:487). The essayistthen ventured to connect Catullus to a canonical English figure,suggesting that the “obscenity is seldom introduced altogether for itsown sake. Like that of Swift, it is only the weapon of satire” (ibid.:488).The final verdict, however, wasthat it is quite impossible to read his verses without regretting thathe happened to be an idler, a man of fashion, and a debauchee. […]he might have bequeathed to posterity works fitted to inspiresentiments of virtue and morality, instead of a book, the greater partof which must for ever remain sealed to all those who have anyprinciple of human delicacy in their composition.(ibid.:489)The translators of the first book-length versions of Catullus, Nott andLamb, shared the prevailing assessment of the Latin poet, but it shapedtheir work very differently. Nott too thought that “strength andsimplicity, elegance and perspicuity mark the stile of Catullus” (Nott1795:I, xxiii), while Lamb wrote of “the poet’s natural felicity ofexpression,” “the same natural tone which Catullus rarely or rathernever lost” (Lamb 1821:I, xl, xlii). The most remarkable differencebetween the translators occurred on the question of morality: Nottsought to reproduce the pagan sexuality and physically coarselanguage of the Latin text, whereas Lamb minimized or just omittedthem.Nott was aware that “Those indecencies occurring so frequently inour poet, which I have constantly preserved in the original, andventured in some way to translate, may be thought to require apology”(Nott 1795:I, x). His initial reason—to satisfy “the inquisitive scholar[who] might wish to be acquainted with the ribaldry, and gross