Some airy nymph, with fluent limbs, A youth, the while, with loosened hair Sings, to the wild harp's tender tone, Rose! thou art the fondest child Even the gods, who walk the sky, Great Bacchus ! in thy hallowed shade, ODE XLIV.4 BUDS of roses, virgin flowers, Drink and smile, and learn to think authors extant upon the subject are, I imagine, little understood; but certainly, if one of their moods was a progression by quarter-tones, which we are told was the nature of the enharmonie 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 Cyzicu, as quoted by Gyraldus, asserts the same. Vide Chabot, in Horat. on the words 'Lesboum barbiton,' in the first ode. Longepierre has quoted here an epigram from the Anthologia, of which the following may give some idea: The kiss that she left on my lip Like a dew-drop shall lingering lie; ODE XLV. WITHIN this goblet, rich and deep, Or pour the unavailing tear? Ever since it is drunk with the bliss, And feels the delirium divine! 2 The introduction of these deities to the festival is merely allegorical. Madame Dacier thinks that the poet describes a masquerade, where these deities were personated by the company in masks. The translation will conform with either idea. 3 Kwuos, the deity or genius of mirth. Philostratus, in the third of his pictures (as all the annotators have observed), gives a very beautiful description of this god. and again, in the fifty-fifth ode, we shall find our This spirited poem is a eulogy on the rose; 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 very elegantly styled the eye of flowers;' and the same poetess, in another fragment, calls the favours of the Muse the roses of Pieria.' See the notes on the fifty-fifth ode. SEE, the young, the rosy Spring, ODE XLVII. 'Tis true, my fading years decline, Yet I can quaff the brimming wine As deep as any stripling fair wear; And if, amidst the wanton crew, 1The fastidious affectation of some commenta- 2 Aσkos was a kind of leathern vessel for wine, tors has denounced this ode as spurious. Degen very much in use, as should seem by the proverb pronounces the four last lines to be the patch-aokos Kaι Ovλakos, which was applied to those work of some miserable versificator, and Brunck condemns the whole ode. It appears to me to be elegantly graphical; full of delicate expressions and luxuriant imagery. 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: there, in a little villa at some distance from the city, which commanded a view of the Egean Sea and the islands, he contemplated the beauties of nature, and enjoyed the felicities of retirement. Vide Barnes, in Anac. vita, sec. XXXV. This supposition, however unauthenticated, forms a pleasant association, which makes the poem more interesting. who were intemperate in eating and drinking. This proverb is mentioned in some verses quoted by Athenæus from the Hesione of Alexis. 3 Phornutus assigns as a reason for the consecration of the thyrsus to Bacchus, that inebriety often renders the support of a stick very necessary. 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, etc. etc. 2 Warm with the goblet's freshening dews, My heart invokes the heavenly Muse. Whose every gale is rich with flowers, When I drink, I deftly twine The smiling garland round my head, That none but social spirits know, bowl, Dilating, mingle soul with soul !5 When I drink, the bliss is mine,— There's bliss in every drop of wine! I have adopted the interpretation of Regnier markable. It is a kind of song of seven quatrain and others: Altri segua Marte fero; Che sol Bacco è 'l mio conforto. This, the preceding ode, and a few more of the same character, are merely chansons à boire. Most likely they were the effusions of the moment of conviviality, and were sung, we imagine, with rapture in Greece; but that interesting association, by which they always recalled the convivial emotions that produced them, can be very little felt by the most enthusiastic reader; and much less by a phlegmatic grammarian, who sees nothing in them but dialects and particles. Faber thinks this spurious; but I believe he is singular in his opinion. It has all the spirit of our author. Like the wreath which he presented in the dream, 'it smells of Anacreon.' The form of this ode in the original is re stanzas, each beginning with the line: Οτ' εγω πιω τον οινον. The first stanza alone is incomplete, consisting but of three lines. pierre) whom wine has inspired with poetry. Anacreon is not the only one (says LongeThere is an epigram in the first book of the Anthologia, which begins thus: Οινος τοι χαριεντι μέγας πελει ίππος αοιδών, * Ύδωρ δε πίνων, καλον ου τεκοις επος. If with water you fill up your glasses, You'll never write anything wise; For wine is the horse of Parnassus, Which hurries a bard to the skies! Subjoined to Gail's edition of Anacreon, there are some curious letters upon the aσo of the All other joys that 1 have known, ODE LI.1 FLY not thus, my brow of snow, ODE LII.3 AWAY, away, you men of rules, They'd make me learn, they'd make me think, But would they make me love and Teach me this, and let me swim ODE LIII. WHEN I behold the festive train ancients, which appeared in the French journals. of the colour in garlands, a shepherd, in Theo- has inserted in his edition, and they have elicited from him some learned research on the subject. Alberti has imitated this ode; and Capilupus, in the following epigram, has given a version of it: Cur, Lalage, mea vita, meos contemnis amores? Oh! why repel my soul's impassioned vow, 'In the same manner that Anacreon pleads for the whiteness of his locks, from the beauty 8 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 the antiquity of this ode is confirmed by the Vatican manuscript, I am very much inclined to agree in this argument against its authenticity; for, though the dawnings of who gave it any celebrity was Corax of Syracuse, rhetoric might already have appeared, the first and he flourished in the century after Anacreon. Our poet anticipated the ideas of Epicurus, in his aversion to the labours of learning as well as his devotion to voluptuousness. Πασαν παιδειαν μακάριοι φευγετε, said the philosopher of the garden in a letter to Pythocles. • By χρυσης Αφροδιτης here, I understand some La Mort nous guette; et quand ses lois Come, Cybeba, smiling maid! ODE LIV.3 METHINKS the pictured bull we see 'It appears that wreaths of flowers were adapted for poets and revellers at banquets, but by no means became those who had pretensions to wisdom and philosophy.' On this principle, in his 152d chapter, Licetus discovers a retinement in Virgil, describing the garland of the poet Silenus as fallen off; which distinguishes, he thinks, the divine intoxication of Silenus from that of common drunkards, who always wear their crowns while they drink. This, indeed, is the labor ineptiarum of commentators. 2 Wine is prescribed by Galen as an excellent medicine for old men, Quod frigidos et humoribus expletos calefaciat,' etc.; but nature was Anacreon's physician. There is a proverb in Eriphus, as quoted by Athenæus, which says, 'that wine makes an old man dance whether he will or not.' Λογος εστ' αρχαιος, ου κακως έχων, 3 This ode is written upon a picture which represented the rape of Europa.'- Madame Dacier. It may perhaps be considered as a description of one of those coins which the Sidonians struck off in honour of Europa, representing a woman ODE LV.5 WHILE we invoke the wreathed spring, Whose virgin blush, of chastened dye, carried across the sea by a bull, Thus Natalis Κρυψε θεόν και τρεψε δέμας και γίνετο ταύρος. This ode is a 'brilliant panegyric on the rose. All antiquity (says Barnes) has produced nothing more beautiful.' From the idea of peculiar excellence which the ancients attached to this flower, arose a pretty proverbial expression, used by Aristophanes, according to Suidas, ροδα μ' ειρηκας, You have spoken roses,' a phrase somewhat similar to the dire des fleurettes' of the French. In the same idea of excellence originated, I doubt not, a very curious application of the word podov, for which the inquisitive reader may consult Gaulminus upon the epithalamium of our Doet, where it is |