thou shouldst be such treasure
As the golden apple thrown,
Was to Atalanta, spying
Which in flying,
Cost the loosening of her zone.

CURATE.--That may be a possible translation of the difficulty, if the
text be somewhat amended; but who ever heard of a hurt from the peck of
a sparrow?

GRATIAN.--I'll take you into our aviary to-morrow, and you shall try on
your own rough-work finger the peck of a bullfinch; and I think you may
grant that Lesbia's finger was a little softer. Who would trust the
tenderness of a Curate's forefinger, case-hardened as it is with his
weekly steel-pen work, and deadened by the nature of it, against all
Lesbias and their sparrows. Lesbia's forefinger was the very pattern of
a forefinger, soft to touch as to feel--that did no work. I dare to say
Shakspeare was thinking of such a one, when he said,

"The hand of little employment hath the daintier sense."

There's something playfully pretty, and lightly tender in this little
piece; but I don't see by what link of thought poor Atalanta is brought
in, and thus stripped to the skin, as she was out-stripped in the race.
Admitting the text emendable, may not there be supposed such a connexion
as this,--that he wishes the bird would be his plaything, that he might
lay it as an offering at her feet,--that she might take it, as did
Atalanta the golden apple, and become herself the winner's reward? Why
should not I come in with an ad libitum movement? We, limping
rheumaticists, have ever a spiteful desire to trip up the swift-footed.
Now, then, for an old man's limp against Atalanta's speed.

Birdie, be my plaything, go--
At her flying feet be thrown;--
Like the golden apple, woo her,
Atalanta's wise pursuer
Cast and won her for his own;--
Pretty birdie aid me so.

Galatea won her lover by the apple. "Malo me Galatea petit."

CURATE.--A well thrown apple that golden pippin, grown doubtless from a
pip dropt on Mount Ida, and hence the name. We shall not run against
you, I perceive.

GRATIAN.--Don't talk of golden pippins, or I shall mount my hobby, and
go through the genealogy of my whole orchard, and good-bye to Catullus.

CURATE.--If you give way to your imagination, you may invent a thousand
meanings to the passage; but taking it as I find it, I would attach only
this meaning to it,--that Catullus would say, "Lesbia's favourite
sparrow" would be as attractive to me as was the golden apple which was
thrown in