Here as I lay, and swell'd with tears the flood, 185 Before my sight a wat'ry Virgin stood: 190 She stood and cry'd, "O you that love in vain! 194 200 NOTES. Ver. 188. Leucadian main;] Addison, with his usual exquisite humour, has given in the 233d Spectator an account of the persons, male and female, who leaped from the promontory of Leucate into the Ionian sea, in order to cure themselves of the passion of love. Their various characters, and effects of this leap, are described with infinite pleasantry. One hundred and twenty-four males, and one hundred and twenty-six females, took the leap in the 250th Olympiad; out of them one hundred and twenty were perfectly cured. Sappho, arrayed like a Spartan virgin, and her harp in her hand, threw herself from the rock with such intrepidity, as was never before observed in any who had attempted that very dangerous leap; from whence she never rose again, but was said to be changed into a swan as she fell, and was seen hovering in the air in that shape. Alcæus arrived at the promontory of Leucate that very evening, in order to take the leap on her account; but hearing that her body could not be found, he very generously lamented her fall, and is said to have written his 125th ode on that occasion. Ibimus, o Nymphæ, monstrataque saxa petemus. Cur tamen Actiacas miseram me mittis ad oras, 225 I go, ye Nymphs! those rocks and seas to prove; 205 And thou, kind Love, my sinking limbs sustain, Spread thy soft wings, and waft me o'er the main, Nor let a Lover's death the guiltless flood profane! 212 215 But why, alas, relentless youth, ah why To distant Seas must tender Sappho fly? 221 Thy charms than those may far more pow'rful be, NOTES. Ver. 207. Ye gentle gales] These two lines have been quoted as the most smooth and mellifluous in our language; and they are supposed to derive their sweetness and harmony from the mixture of so many Iambics. Pope himself preferred the following line to all he had written, with respect to harmony: Lo, where Mæotis sleeps, and hardly flows- Hæc sunt illa, Phaon, quæ tu laudare solebas; Visaque sunt toties ingeniosa tibi. Nunc vellem facunda forent: dolor artibus obstat; Ingeniumque meis substitit omne malis. Non mihi respondent veteres in carmina vires. 230 Plectra dolore tacent: muta dolore lyra est. Lesbides æquoreæ, nupturaque nuptaque proles; Lesbides, Æolia nomina dicta lyra; Lesbides, infamem quæ me fecistis amatæ ; Desinite ad citharas turba venire meas. Abstulit omne Phaon, quod vobis ante placebat. (Me miseram! dixi quam modo pæne, meus !) Efficite ut redeat: vates quoque vestra redibit. Ingenio vires ille dat, ille rapit. 234 240 Ecquid ago precibus? pectusne agreste movetur? NOTES. Ver. 227.] Little can be added to the character that Addison has so elegantly drawn in the 223d and 229th numbers of the Spectator; in which are inserted the translations which Philips, under Addison's eye, gave of the two only remaining of her exquisite odes; one preserved by Dionysius Halicarnassus, and the other by Longinus. To the remarks that Pearce has made on the latter, I cannot forbear subjoining a remark of Tanaquil Faber on a secret and almost unobserved beauty of this ode: that in the eight last lines, the article dè, in the original, is repeated seven times, to represent the short breathings of a person in the act of fainting away, and pronouncing every syllable with difficulty. Two beautiful fragments are preserved; the first consisting only of four lines in Fulvius Ursinus, which Horace has imitated in the twelfth ode of the third book, Tibi qualum, &c. and the other the beginning of an ode addressed to Even This breast which once, in vain! you lik'd so well; Where the Loves play'd, and where the Muses dwell. Alas! the Muses now no more inspire, 230 236 Untun'd my lute, and silent is my lyre. 240 245 NOTES. ing, by Demetrius Phalareus, in the Oxford edition, by Gale, p. 104. In one of Akenside's odes to lyric poetry, which have been too much depreciated, are two fine stanzas ; one in the character of Alcæus, and the other on the character of Sappho: -Spirat adhuc Amor, Vivuntque commissi calores Æoliæ fidibus puellæ ! Ver. 236. My Phaon] Fenton translated this epistle, but with a manifest inferiority to Pope. He added an original poem of his own, an epistle of Phaon to Sappho; which appears to be one of the feeblest in the collection of his poems, among which some are truly excellent. |