were compelled, in consequence of their inelegant fashion of compressing the waist into a very narrow compass, which necessarily caused an excessive tumidity in the bosom. See Dioscorides, lib. v. (65) The sophist Philostratus, in one of his love-letters, has borrowed this thought: "Oh lovely feet! oh excellent beauty! oh! thrice happy and blessed should I be, if you would but tread on me!" In Shakspeare, Romeo desires to be a glove:"Oh! that I were a glove upon that hand, That I might kiss that cheek!" And, in his Passionate Pilgrim, we meet with an idea somewhat like that of the thirteenth line: "He, spying her, bounced in, where as he stood, 'O Jove quoth she, why was not I a flood?'" In Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy, that whimsical farrago of "all such reading as was never read," we find a translation of this ode made before 1632.- Englished by Mr. B. Holiday, in his Technog. act i. scene 7." (66) Henry Stephen has imitated the idea of this ode in the following lines of one of his poems: Provida dat cunctis Natura animantibus arma, Et sua fœmineum possidet arma genus, Ungulaque ut defendit equum, atque ut cornua taurum, And the same thought occurs in those lines, spoken by Corisca in Pastor Fido: Cosi noi la bellezza Oh' è vertu nostra cosi propria, come La forza del leone, E l'ingegno de l'huomo. The lion boasts his savage powers, And lordly man his strength of mind; But beauty's charm is solely ours, Peculiar boon, by Heav'n assign'd. (87) Longepierre's remark here is ingenious: "The Romans," says he, "were so convinced of the power of beauty, that they used a word implying strength in the place of the epithet beautiful. Thus Plautus, act 2, scene 2. Bacchid. (68) Thus Love is represented as a bird, in an epigram cited by Longepierre from the Anthologia : 'Tis Love that murmurs in my breast, A wound within my heart I find, And oh! 'tis plain where Love has been; Oh, bird of Love! with song so drear, Make not my soul the nest of pain; But, let the wing which brought thee here, In pity waft thee hence again! (69) Longepierre has quoted part of an epigram from the seventh book of the Anthologia, which has a fancy something like this: Archer Love! though slyly creeping, I saw thee through the curtain peeping, The poets abound with conceits on the archery of the eyes, but few have turned the thought so naturally as Anacreon. Ronsard gives to the eyes of his mistress "un petit camp d'amours." (70) "We cannot see into the heart," says Madame Dacier. But the lover answers Il cor ne gli occhi et ne la fronte ho scritto. M. La Fosse has given the following lines, as enlarging on the thought of Anacreon: Lorsque je vois un amant, Il cache en vain son tourment, Sa langueur, son embarras, In vain the lover tries to veil The flame that in his bosom lics; His cheeks' confusion tells the tale, We read it in his languid eyes: And while his words the heart betray, His silence speaks e'en more than they. (71) Thus Claudian :-- In Cyprus' isle two rippling fountains fall, The one with honey flows, and one with gall; In these, if we may take the tale from fame, The son of Venus dips his darts of flame. Secundus has borrowed this, but has somewhat softened the image by the omission of the epithet "cruenta." Fallor an ardentes acuebat cote sagittas? Eleg. 1. (72) The following Anacreontic, addressed by Menage to Daniel Huet, enforces, with much grace, the "necessity of loving:" Thou of tuneful bards the first, (73) Barnes imagines from this allegory, that our poet married very late in life. But I see nothing in the ode which alludes to matrimony, except it be the lead upon the feet of Cupid; and I agree in the opinion of Madame Dacier, in her life of the poet, that he was always too fond of pleasure to marry. (74) The design of this little fiction is to intimate, that much greater pain attends insensibility than can ever result from the tenderest impressions of love. Longepierre has quoted an ancient epigram which bears some similitude to this ode:- Upon my couch I lay, at night profound, My languid eyes in magic slumber bound, And forced me many a weary way to tread. "What! (said the god,) shall you, whose vows are known, "Who love so many nymphs, thus sleep alone ?” I rise and follow; all the night I stray, I, I alone, a fugitive from rest, Passion my guide, and madness in my breast, (75) In the original, he says, his heart flew to his nose; but our manner more naturally transfers it to the lips. Such is the effect that Plato tells us he felt from a kiss, in a distich quoted by Aulus Gellius: Whene'er thy nectar'd kiss I sip, And drink thy breath, in trance divine. Aulus Gellius subjoins a paraphrase of this epigram, in which we find a number of those mignardises of expression. which mark the effemination of the Latin language.. (76) "The facility with which Cupid recovers him, signifies that the sweets of love make us easily forget any solicitudes which he may occasion."-La Fosse. (77) We here have the poet, in his true attributes, reclining upon myrtles, with Cupid for his cupbearer. Some interpreters have ruined the picture by making Epos the name of his slave. None but Love should fill the goblet of Anacreon. Sappho, in one of her fragments, has assigned this office to Venus: Hither, Venus, queen of kisses, Fill the golden brimmer high, (78) See the beautiful description of Cupid, by Moschus, in his first idyl. (79) In a Latin ode addressed to the grasshopper, Rapin has preserved some of the thoughts of our author: O quæ virenti graminis in toro, Seu forte adultis floribus incubas, Oh thou, that on the grassy bed See what Licetus says about grasshoppers, cap. 93, and 185. (80) "Some authors have affirmed, (says Madame Dacier,) that it is only male grasshoppers which sing, and that the females are silent; and on this circumstance is founded a bonmot of Xenarchus, the comic poet, who says, are not the grasshoppers happy in having dumb wives?" This note is originally Henry Stephen's; but I chose rather to make a lady my authority for it. (81) Longepierre has quoted the two first lines of an epigram of Antipater, from the first book of the Anthologia, where he prefers the grasshopper to the swan : In dew, that drops from morning's wings, And, drunk with dew, his matin sings (82) Theocritus has imitated this beautiful ode in his nineteenth idyl; but is very inferior, I think, to his original, in delicacy of point and naïveté of expression. Spenser, in one of his smaller compositions, has sported more diffusely on the same subject. The poem to which I allude, begins thus:"Upon a day, as Love lay sweetly slumbering All in his mother's lap; A gentle bee, with his loud trumpet murmuring, In Almeloveen's collection of epigrams, there is one by Luxorius, correspondent somewhat with the turn of Anacreon, where Love complains to his mother of being wounded by a rose. The ode before us is the very flower of simplicity. The infantize complainings of the little god, and the natural and impressive reflections which they draw from Venus, are beauties of inimitable grace. I may be pardoned, perhaps, for introducing here another of Menage's Anacreontics, not for its similitude to the su:ject of this ode, but for some faint traces of the same natural simplicity, which it appears to me to have preserved: As dancing o'er the enamell'd plain, My soul's Corinna lightly play'd, Young Cupid saw the graceful maid; And round her neck his arms he threw; The modest virgin blush'd with shame! It made ev'n Cupid blush with shame. "Corinna and thy lovely mother, "Believe me, are so like each other "That clearest eyes are oft betray'd, "And take thy Venus for the maid." (83) This communion of friendship, which sweetened the bowl of Anacreon, has not been forgotten by the author of the following scholium, where the blessings of life are enumerated with proverbial simplicity: Of mortal blessings here the first is health, And next those charms by which the eye we move; The third is wealth, unwounding guiltless wealth, And then, sweet intercourse with those we love! (84) "Compare with this ode the beautiful poem 'der Traum' of Uz."-Degen. Le Fevre, in a note upon this ode, enters into an elaborate and learned justification of drunkenness; and this is probably the cause of the severe reprehension which he appears to have suffered for his Anacreon. "Fuit olim fateor, (says he in a note upon Longinus,) cum Sapphonem amabam. Sed ex quo illa me perditissima fœmina pene miserum perdidit cum sceleratissimo suo congerrone, (Anacreontem dico, si nescis, Lector,) noli sperare," &c., &c. He adduces on this ode the authority of Plato, who allowed ebriety, at the Dionysian festivals, to men arrived at their fortieth year. He likewise quotes the following line from Alexis, which he says no one, who is not totally ignorant of the world, can hesitate to confess the truth of: "No lover of drinking was ever a vicious man." (85) Nonnus says of Bacchus, almost in the same words that Anacreon uses: Waking, he lost the phantom's charms, The nymph had faded from his arms; Again to slumber he essay'd, Again to clasp the shadowy maid. (86) Doctor Johnson, in his preface to Shakspeare, animadverting upon the commentators of that poet, who pretended, in every little coincidence of thought, to detect an imitation of some ancient poet, alludes in the following words to the line of Anacreon before us:-"I have been told that when Caliban, after a pleasing dream, says, 'I cried to sleep again,' the author imitates Anacreon, who had, like any other man, the same wish on the same occasion." (87) The brevity of life allows arguments for the voluptuary as well as the moralist. Among many parallel passages which Longepierre has adduced, I shall content myself with this epigram from the Anthologia, of which the following is a paraphrase: Let's fly, my love, from noonday's beam, (88) Saint Pavin makes the same distinction in a sonnet to a young girl: Je sais bien que les destinées Fair and young thou bloomest now, My love's a child; and thou canst say How much his little age may be, For he was born the very day When first I set my eyes on thee! (89) Longepierre quotes here an epigram from the Anthologia, on account of the similarity of a particular phrase. Though by no means anacreontic, it is marked by an interesting simplicity which has induced me to paraphrase it, and may atone for its intrusion: At length to Fortune, and to you, The charm that once beguiled is o'er, May now betray some simpler hearts, And you will smile at their believing, And they shall weep at your deceiving! (90) The same commentator has quoted an epitaph, written upon our poet by Julian, in which he makes him promulgate the precepts of good fellowship even from the tomb: This lesson oft in life I sung, And from my grave I still shall cry, "Drink, mortal, drink, while time is young, "Ere death has made thee cold as I." (91) The character of Anacreon is here very strikingly depicted. His love of social, harmonized pleasures, is expressed with a warmth, amiable and endearing. Among the epigrams imputed to Anacreon is the following; it is the only one worth translation, and it breathes the same sentiments with this ode: When to the lip the brimming cup is press'd, But bring the man, who o'er his goblet wreathes (92) Respecting the barbiton, a host of authorities may be collected, which, after all, leave us ignorant of the nature of the instrument. There is scarcely any point upon which we are so totally uninformed as the music of the ancients. The authors extant upon the subject are, I imagine, little understood; and certainly if one of their moods was a progression by quarter-tones, which we are told was the nature of the enharmonic scale, simplicity was by no means the characteristic of their melody; for this is a nicety of progression of which modern music is not susceptible. The invention of the barbiton is, by Athenæus, attributed to Anacreon. Neanthes of Cyzicus, as quoted by Gyraldus, asserts the same. Vide Chabot, in Horat. on the words "Lesboum barbiton," in the first ode. (93) Longepierre has quoted here an epigram from the Anthologia, of which the following paraphrase may give some idea: The kiss that she left on my lip, Like a dewdrop shall lingering lie; From the moment she printed that kiss, Nor reason, nor rest has been mine; (94) Comus, the deity or genius of mirth. Philostratus, in the third of his pictures, gives a very lively description of this god. (95) This spirited poem is a eulogy on the rose; and again, in the fifty-fifth ode, we shall find our author rich in the praises of that flower. In a fragment of Sappho, in the romance of Achilles Tatius, to which Barnes refers us, the rose is fancifully styled "the eye of flowers;" and the same poetess, in another fragment. calls the favors of the Muse "the roses of Pieria." See the notes on the fifty-fifth ode. "Compare with this ode (says the German annotator) the beautiful ode of Uz, die Rose."" (96) Barnes conjectures, in his life of our poet, that this ode was written after he had returned from Athens, to settle in his paternal seat at Teos; where, in a little villa at some distance from the city, commanding a view of the Ægean Sea and the islands, he contemplated the beauties of nature and enjoyed the felicities of retirement. Vide Barnes, in Anac. Vita, § XXXV. This supposition, however unauthenticated, forms a pleasing association, which renders the poem more interesting. (97) Ackos was a kind of leathern vessel for wine, very much in use, as should seem by the proverb ασκος και θυλακος, which was applied to those who were intemperate in eating and drinking. This proverb is mentioned in some verses quoted by Athenæus, from the Hesione of Alexis. (98) "The ivy was consecrated to Bacchus, (says Montfaucon,) because he formerly lay hid under that tree, or, as others will have it, because its leaves resemble those of the vine." Other reasons for its consecration, and the use of it in garlands at banquets, may be found in Longepierre, Barnes, &c., &c. (99) I have adopted the interpretation of Regnier and others: Altri segua Marte fero; Che sol Bacco è 'l mio conforto. (100) This, the preceding ode, and a few more of the same character, are merely chansons à boire; the effusions probably of the moment of conviviality, and afterwards sung, we may imagine, with rapture throughout Greece. But that interesting association, by which they always recalled the convivial emotions that produced them, can now be little felt even by the most enthusiastic reader; and much less by a phlegmatic grammarian, who sees nothing in them but dialects and particles. (101) Anacreon is not the only one (says Longepierre) whom wine has inspired with poetry." We find an epigram in the first book of the Anthologia, which begins thus: If with water you fill up your glasses, (102) If some of the translators had observed Doctor Trapp's caution, with regard to "Cave ne cœlum intelligas," they would not have spoiled the simplicity of Anacreon's fancy, by such extravagant conceptions as the following: Quand je bois, mon œil s'imagine Que, dans un tourbillon plein de parfums divers, Bacchus m'emporte dans les airs, Rempli de sa liqueur divine. Or this: Indi mi mena Mentre lieto ebro, deliro, Baccho in giro Per la vaga aura serena (103) Alberti has imitated this ode; and Capilupus, in the following epigram, has given a version of it: Oh! why repel my soul's impassion'd vow, And fly, beloved maid, these longing arms? Is it, that wintry time has strew'd my brow, While thine are all the summer's roseate charms? See the rich garland cull'd in vernal weather, Where the young rosebud with the lily grows; So, in Love's wreath we both may twine together, And I the lily be, and thou the rose. (104) "In the same manner that Anacreon pleads for the whiteness of his locks, from the beauty of the color in garlands, a shepherd, in Theocritus, endeavors to recommend his black hair."-Longepierre, Barnes, &c. (105) "This is doubtless the work of a more modern poet than Anacreon; for at the period when he lived rhetoricians were not known."-Degen. Though this ode is found in the Vatican manuscript, I am much inclined to agree in this argument against its authenticity; for though the dawnings of the art of rhetoric might already have appeared, the first who gave it any celebrity was Corax of Syracuse, and he flourished in the century after Anacreon. Our poet anticipated the ideas of Epicurus, in his aversion to the labors of learning, as well as his devotion to voluptuous ness. (106) Thus Mainard: La Mort nous guette; et quand ses lois Nous ont enfermés une fois Au sein d'une fosse profonde, Ma science ne trouve pas Des cabarets en l'autre monde. From Mainard, Gombauld, and De Cailly, old French poels, some of the best epigrams of the English language have been borrowed. (107) The following is a fragment of the Lesbian poetess. It is cited in the romance of Achilles Tatius, who appears to have resolved the numbers into prose: If Jove would give the leafy bowers 1 And, to young Zephyr's warm caresses, (108) He here alludes to the use of the rose in embalming; and, perhaps, (as Barnes thinks,) to the rosy unguent with which Venus anointed the corpse of Hector.-Homer's Iliad. It may likewise regard the ancient practice of putting garlands of roses on the dead, as in Statius, Theb. lib. x. 782. -hi sertis, hi veris honore soluto Accumulant artus, patriâque in sede reponunt Where "veris honor," though it mean every kind of flowers, may seem more particularly to refer to the rose. We read, in the Hieroglyphics of Pierius, lib. Iv., that some of the ancients used to order in their wills, that roses should be annually scattered on their tombs, and Pierius has adduced some sepulchral inscriptions to this purpose. (109) Thus Casper Barlæus, in his Ritus Nuptiarum :- (10) The author of the "Pervigilium Veneris," (a poem attributed to Catullus, the style of which appears to me to have all the labored luxuriance of a much later period) ascribes the tincture of the rose to the blood from the wound of Adonis rosæ Fusæ aprino de cruore according to the emendation of Lipsius. In the following epigram this bue is differently accounted for:-- While the enamor'd queen of joy Flies to protect her lovely boy, On whom the jealous war-god rushes; She treads upon a thorned rose, And while the wound with crimson flows. The snowy flow'ret feels her blood, and blushes. (111) Madame Dacier thinks that the poet here had the nepenthe of Homer in his mind. Odyssey, lib. iv. This nepenthé was a something of exquisite charm, infused by Helen into the wine of her guests, which had the power of dispelling every anxiety. A French writer, De Meré, conjectures that this spell, which made the bowl so beguiling, was the charm of Helen's conversation. See Bale. art. Helène. (112) This ode is a very animated description of a picture of Venus on a discus, which represented the goddess in her first emergence from the waves. About two centuries after our poet wrote, the pencil of the artist Apelles embellished this subject, in his famous painting of the Venus Anadyomené, the model of which, as Pliny informs us, was the beautiful Campaspe, given to him by Alexander: though, according to Natalis Comes, lib. vii, cap. 16, it was Phryne who sat to Apelles for the face and breast of this Venus. (113) The abruptness of apa TIS TUрEUGE TOνTOV is finely expressive of sudden admiration, and is one of those beauties which we cannot but admire in their source, though, by frequent imitation, they are now become familiar and unimpressive. (114) The picture here has all the delicate character of the semi-reducta Venus, and affords a happy specimen of what the poetry of passion ought to be-glowing but through a veil, and stealing upon the heart from concealment. Few of the ancients have attained this modesty of description, which, like the golden cloud that hung over Jupiter and Juno, is impervious to every beam but that of fancy. (115) In the original 'luepos, who was the same deity with Jocus among the Romans. Aurelius Augurellus has a poem, which Parnell has closely imitated : "Gay Bacchus, liking Estcourt's wine, And for the guests that were to dine, (116) I have followed Barnes's arrangement of this ode, which, though deviating somewhat from the Vatican MS, appears to me the more natural order. (117) This grace of iteration has already been taken notice of. Though sometimes merely a playful beauty, it is peculiar ly expressive of impassioned sentiment, and we may easily believe that it was one of the many sources of that energetic sensibility which breathed through the style of Sappho. See Gyrald. Vet. Poet. Dial. 9. It will not be said that this is a mechanical ornament by any one who can feel its charm in those lines of Catullus, where he complains of the infidelity of his mistress, Lesbia: Cæli, Lesbia nostra, Lesbia illa, Illa Lesbia, quam Catullus unam, Plus quam se atque suos amavit omnes, Si sic omnia dixisset-but the rest does not bear citation. (118) Horace has "Desiderique temperare poculum," not figuratively, however, like Anacreon, but importing the lovephiltres of the witches. By "cups of kisses" our poet may allude to a favorite gallantry among the ancients, of drinking where the lips of their mistresses had touched the brim:-"Or leave a kiss within the cup, And I'll not ask for wine." As in Ben Jonson's translation from Philostratus; and Lucian has a conceit upon the same idea, "that you may at once both drink and kiss." (119) This hymn to Apollo is supposed not to have been written by Anacreon; and it is undoubtedly rather a sublimer flight than the Teian wing is accustomed to soar. But, in a poet of whose works so small a proportion has reached us, diversity of style is by no means a safe criterion. If we knew Horace but as a satirist, should we easily believe there could dwell such animation in his lyre? Suidas says that our poet wrote hymns, and this perhaps is one of them. We can perceive in what an altered and imperfect state his works are at present, when we find a scholiast upon Horace citing an ode from the third book of Anacreon. (120) Here ends the last of the odes in the Vatican MS., whose authority helps to confirm the genuine antiquity of them all, though a few have stolen among the number, which we may hesitate in attributing to Anacreon. (121) The intrusion of this melancholy ode, among the careless levities of our poet, reminds us of the skeletons which the Egyptians used to hang up in their banquet-rooms, to inculcate a thought of mortality even amidst the dissipations of mirth. If it were not for the beauty of its numbers, the Teian Muse should disown this ode. Quid habet illius, illius quæ spirabat amores ?" To Stobæus we are indebted for it. |