This is composed of two fragments: the seventieth and eighty first in Barnes. They are both found in Eustathius. ODE LXXVI.4 SPIRIT of Love! whose tresses shine Along the breeze, in golden twine, The nursling fawn, that in some shade Its antler'd mother leaves behind, etc.] In the original: *Ος εν ύλη κερόεσσας Horned here, undoubtedly, seems a strange epithet; Madame Three fragments form this little ode, all of which are preserved Dacier, however, observes, that Sophocles, Callimachus, etc. have all in Athenæus. They are the eighty-second, seventy-fifth, and eighty-applied it in the very same manner, and she seems to agree in the third, in Barnes. And every guest, to shade his head, Three little breathing chaplets spread.] Longepierre, to give an idea of the luxurious estimation in which garlands were held by the ancients, relates an anecdote of a courtezan, who, in order to gratify three lovers, without leaving cause for jealousy with any of them, gave a kiss to one, let the other drink after her, and put a garland on the brow of the third; so that each was satisfied with his favour, and flattered himself with the preference. conjecture of the scholiast upon Pindar, that perhaps horns are not always peculiar to the males. I think we may with more ease conclude it to be a license of the poet, jussit habere puellam cornua.. is This fragment is preserved by the scholiast upon Aristophanes, and the eighty-seventh in Barnes. This is to be found in Hephæstion, and is the eighty-ninth of Barnes's edition. I must here apologize for omitting a very considerable fragment imputed to our poet, Eav9n d'Eupuruan μsλs, etc. which is This circumstance is extremely like the subject of one of the ten-preserved in the twelfth book of Athenæus, and is the ninety-first in sons of Savari de Mauléon, a troubadour. See l'Histoire Littéraire des Barnes. If it was really Anacreon who wrote it, nil fuit unquam sie Troubadours. The recital is a curious picture of the puerile gallan-impar sibi. It is in a style of gross satire, and is full of expressions tries of chivalry. which never could be gracefully translated. This poem is compiled by Barnes, from Athenæus, Hephæstion, and Arsenius. See Barnes, 8oth. This I have formed from the eighty-fourth and eighty-fifth of Barnes's edition. The two fragments are found in Athenæus. This fragment is preserved by Dion. Chrysostom, Orgt. ii. de Regno. See Barnes, 93. 4 This fragment, which is extant in Athenæus (Barnes, 101), is supposed, on the authority of Chamaleon, to bare been addressed to Come, within a fragrant cloud, But she, the nymph for whom I glow, ODE LXXVII.' HITHER, gentle Muse of mine, Come and teach thy votary old Many a golden hymn divine, For the nymph with vest of gold. Pretty nymph, of tender age, Fair thy silky locks unfold; Listen to a hoary sage, Sweetest maid with vest of gold! ODE LXXVIII.? WOULD that I were a tuneful lyre, Some blooming boy should bear! Would that I were a golden vase, And then some nymph should hold My spotless frame with blushing grace, Herself as pure as gold! . Mais par Sappho. We have also a stanza attributed to her, which some ro- Κείνον, ο χρυσοθρόνε Μουσ', ενισπες Oh Muse! who sitt'st on golden throne, The Teian sage is taught by thee; He lately learn'd and sang for me. 1 See Barnes, 173d. This fragment, to which I have taken the liberty of adding a turn not to be found in the original, is cited by Lucian in his little essay on the Gallic Hercules. 2 Barnes, 175th. This, if I remember right, is in Scaliger's Poetics. Gail has omitted it in his collection of fragments. 3 This fragment is extant in Arsenius and Hepbæstion. See Barnes (69th), who has arranged the metre of it very elegantly. 4 Barnes, 73d. This fragment, which is quoted by Athenæus, is au excellent lesson for the votaries of Jupiter Hospitalis. * This fragment is in Hephaestion. See Barnes, 95th. Catullus expresses something of this contrariety of feelings: Odi et amo; quare id faciam fortasse requiris; Nescio: sed fieri sentio, et excrucior. Carm. 53. I love thee and hate thee, but if I can tell The cause of my love and my hate, may I die! I can feel it, alas! I can feel it too well, That I love thee and hate thee, but cannot tell why. This also is in Hephestion, and perhaps is a fragment of some poem, in which Anacreon bad commemorated the fate of Sappho It is the 13d of Barnes. This fragment is collected by Barnes from Demetrius Pbalarens, and Eustathius, and is subjoined in his edition to the epigrams attributed to our poet. And here is the last of those little scattered flowers which I thought I might venture with any grace to transplant I wish it could be said of the garland which they form, To d'œs" Ανακρέοντος. Weave the frontlet, richly flushing, AMONG the Epigrams of the Anthologia, there are some panegyrics on Anacreon, which I had translated, and originally intended as a kind of Coronis to the work; but I found, upon consideration, that they wanted variety: a frequent recurrence of the same thought, within the limits of an epitaph, to which they are confined, would render a collection of them rather uninteresting. I shall take the liberty, however, of subjoining a few, that I may not appear to have totally neglected those elegant tributes to the reputation of Anacreon. The four epigrams which I give are imputed to Antipater Sidonius. They are rendered, perhaps, with too much freedom; but, designing a translation of all that are on the subject, I imagined it was necessary to enliven their uniformity by sometimes indulging in the liberties of paraphrase. Αντιπάτρου Σιδωνίου, εις Ανακρέοντα. ΘΑΛΛΟΙ τετρακορύμβος, Ανακρεον, αμφι σε κισσός άβρα σε λειμώνων πορφυρέων πεταλα Пиза αργινόεντος αναθλίβοντο γάλακτος, ευώδες δ' από γης ήδυ χέοιτο μεθυ, οφρα και τοι σποδίη τε και οξεα τερψιν άρηται, ει δε τις φθιμένεις χρίμπτεται ευφρόσυνα, ω το φίλον σέρξας, φίλε, βαρβιτον, ω συν αοιδα παντα διάπλωσας και συν ερωτι βιον. AROUND the tomb, oh bard divine! Where soft thy hallow'd brow reposes, Long may the deathless ivy twine, And Summer pour her waste of roses! 1 Antipater Sidonius, the author of this epigram, lived, according to Vossius, de Poetis Græcis, in the second year of the 169th Olympiad. He appears, from what Cicero and Quintilian have said of him, to have been a kind of improvvisatore. See Institut. Orat. lib. x. cap. 7. There is nothing more known respecting this poet, except some particulars about his illness and death, which are mentioned as curious by Pliny and others; and there remain of his works but a few epigrams in the Anthologia, among which are these I have selected, upon Anacreon. Those remains have been sometimes imputed to another poet (a) of the same name, of whom Vossius gives us the following account: Antipater Thessalonicensis visit tempore Augusti Cæsaris, ut qui saltantem viderit Pyladem, sicut constat ex quodam ejus epiGrammate Ανθολογίας, lib. iv. είε. εις Ορχηστρίδας. Αt eum ae Bathyllum primos fuisse pantomimos, ac sub Augusto claruisse, satis notum ex Dione, etc. etc. The reader, who thinks it worth observing, may find a strange oversight in Hoffman's quotation of this article from Vossius, Lexic. Univers. By the omission of a sentence he has made Vossias assert that the poet Antipater was one of the first pantomime dancers in Rome. Barnes, upon the epigram before us, mentions a version of it by Brodeus, which is not to be found in that commentator; but he more than once confounds Brodeus with another annotator on the Antho And many a fount shall there distil, And many a rill refresh the flowers; But wine shall gush in every rill, And every fount be milky showers. Thus, shade of him whom Nature taught To tune his lyre and soul to pleasure, Who gave to love his warmest thought, Who gave to love his fondest measure! Thus, after death, if spirits feel, Thou may'st, from odours round thee streaming, A pulse of past enjoyment steal, And live again in blissful dreaming! Του αυτού, εις τον αυτόν. ΤΥΜΒΟΣ Ανακρείοντος. ὁ Τηΐος ενθάδε κυκνος HERE sleeps Anacreon, in this ivied shade; --the Telan swan is laid.] Thus Horace of Pindar: Multa Dirceum levat aura cycnum. A swan was the hieroglyphical emblem of a poet. Anacreon has been called the swan of Teos by another of his eulogists. Εν τοις μελιχροις Ιμέροισι συντροφον Ευγένους, Ανθολογ. God of the grape! thou hast betray'd, In wine's bewildering dream, The fairest swan than ever play'd The Teian, nursed with all those honied boys, The young Desires, light Loves, and rose-lipp'd Joys! Still, still we catch thy lyre's delicious breath.] Thus Simonides, speaking of our poet: Μολπης δ' ου λήθη μελιτερπεος, αλλ' ετι κείνο Nor yet are all his numbers mute, With sleepless animation sighs! This is the famous Simonides, whom Plato styled divine, though Le Fevre, in his Poètes Grecs, supposes that the epigrams under his name are all falsely imputed. The most considerable of his remains is a satirical poem upon women, preserved by Stobæus, Logos guv αικών. We may judge from the lines I have just quoted, and the import of the epigram before us, that the works of Anacreon were perfect in logia, Vincentius Obsopous, who has given a translation of the epi- the times of Simonides and Antipater. Obsopous, the commentator, gram. (a) Pleraque tamen Thessalonicensi tribuenda videntur. Brunck, Lectiones et Emendat. here appears to exult in their destruction, and telling us they were burned by the bishops and patriarchs, he adds, nec sane id necquicquam fecerunt, attributing to this outrage an effect which it could never produce. And still thy songs of soft Bathylla bloom, Του αυτού, εις τον αυτόν. ΞΕΙΝΕ, ταρον παρά λιτον Ανακρείοντος αμείβων Ως ὁ Διονύσου μεμελημένος ουατε κώμος Μηδε καταρθέμενος Βακχου δίχα τουτον ύποισω On stranger! if Anacreon's shell Has ever taught thy heart to swell With passion's throb or pleasure's sigh, In pity turn, as wandering nigh, And drop thy goblet's richest tear, In exquisite libation here! 1 The spirit of Anacreon utters these verses from the tomb, somewhat mutatus ab illo, at least ia simplicity of expression. if Anacreon's shell Has ever taught thy heart to swell, etc.] We may guess from the ποτάς εκ βίβλων εμών, that Anacreon was not merely a writer of billets-doux, as some French critics have called him. Amongst these, M. Lo Ferre, with all bus professed admiration, has given our poet a character by no means of an elevad cast: Aussi c'est pour cela que la postérité L'a toujours justement d'âge en age chanté Ami de billets-doux et de badinerie. See the verses prefixed to his Poètes Grecs. This is unlike the language of Theocritus, to whom Anacreon is indebted for the following simple eulogium: Εις Ανακρέοντος ανδριάντα. των προσθ' ει τι περισσον ῳδοποιων. Upon the Statue of Anacreon. Best of the bards who deck the Muse's page.. The simplicity of this inscription has always delighted me; I have given it, I believe, as literally as a verse translation will allow. And drop they goblet's richest tear, etc.] Thus Simonides, in another of his epitaphs on our poet : Teos gare to Greece her treasure, For the maids who blush'd approving! Vincentius Obsopous, upon this passage, contrives to indulge us Little's Poems. LUSISSE PUDET.-HOR. Ταδ' ες ονειρων νεοτέρων φαντάσματα, οἷον λήρος. Metroc. ap. DIOG. LAERT. Lib. vi. cap. 6. PREFACE BY THE EDITOR. THE Poems which I take the liberty of publishing were never intended by the Author to pass beyond the circle of his friends. He thought, with some justice, that what are called Occasional Poems must be always insipid and uninteresting to the greater part of their readers. The particular situations in which they were written; the character of the author and of his associates; all these peculiarities must be known and felt before we can enter into the spirit of such compositions. This consideration would have always, I believe, prevented Mr LITTLE from submitting these tritles of the moment to the eye of dispassionate criticism: and, if their posthumous introduction to the world be injustice to his memory, or intrusion on the public, the error must be imputed to the injudicious partiality of friendship. Mr LITTLE died in his one-and-twentieth year; and most of these Poems were written at so early a period, that their errors may claim some indulgence from the critic: their author, as unambitious as indolent, scarce ever looked beyond the moment of composition; he wrote as he pleased, careless whether he pleased as he wrote. It may likewise be remembered, that they were all the productions of an age when the passions very often give a colouring too warm to the imagination; and this may palliate, if it cannot excuse, that air of levity which pervades so many of them. The «aurea legge, s' ei piace ei lice,» he too much pursued, and too much inculcates. Few can regret this more sincerely than myself; and if my friend had lived, the judgment of riper years would have chastened his mind, and tempered the luxuriance of his fancy. Mr LITTLE gave much of his time to the study of the amatory writers. If ever he expected to find in the ancients that delicacy of sentiment and variety of fancy which are so necessary to refine and animate the poetry of love, he was much disappointed. I know not any one of them who can be regarded as a model in that style; Ovid made love like a rake, and Propertius like a schoolmaster. The mythological allusions of the latter are called erudition by his commentators; but such ostentatious display, upon a subject so simple as love, would be now esteemed vague and puerile, and was, even in his own times, pedantic. It is astonishing that so many critics have preferred him to the pathetic Tibullus; but I believe the defects which a common reader condemns have been looked upon rather as beauties by those erudite men, the commentators, who find a field for their ingenuity and research in his Grecian learning and quaint obscurities. Tibullus abounds with touches of fine and natural feeling. The idea of his unexpected return to Delia, << Tunc veniam subito,» etc. is imagined with all the delicate ardour of a lover; and the sentiment of « nec te posse carere velim,» however colloquial the expression may have been, is natural and from the heart. But, in my opinion, the poet of Verona possessed more genuine feeling than any of them. His life was, I believe, un Lib. i. eleg. 3. |