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finely imagined; she supposes that the Muse has dictated the verses of Anacreon

Κείνον, ω χρυσοθρωνε Μουσ' ενισπες
Ύμνον, εκ της καλλιγυναικός εσθλας
Τηϊος χώρας όν αείδε τερπνως
Πρεσβύς αγανος.

Oh Muse! who sitt'st on golden throne,
Full many a hymn of witching tone

The Teian sage is taught by thee!
But, Goddess, from thy throne of gold,
The sweetest hymn thou'st ever told,

He lately learn'd and sung for me.

1 Formed of the 124th and 119th fragments in Barnes, both of which are to be found in Scaliger's Poetics.

De Pauw thinks that those detached lines and couplets, which Scaliger has adduced as examples in his Poetics, are by no means authentic, but of his own fabrication.

* This is generally inserted among the remains of Alcaus Some, however, have attributed it to Anacreon. See our poet's twenty-second ode, and the notes.

* 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 short essay on the Gallic Hercules.

Barnes, 125th. This is in Scaliger's Poetics. Gail has omitted it in his collection of fragments.

This fragment is extant in Arsenius and Hephæstion. See Barnes, (69th,) who has arranged the metre of it very skilfully.

• Barnes, 72d. This fragment, which is found in Athenæus, contains an excellent lesson for the votaries of Jupiter Hospitalis.

7 Found in Hephæstion, (see Barnes, 95th,) and reminds one somewhat of the following:

FROM dread Leucadia's frowning steep, I'll plunge into the "whitening deep: And there lie cold, to death resign'd, Since Love intoxicates my mind!'

subject, I endeavored to enliven their uniformity by sometimes indulging in the liberties of paraphrase.

Mix me, child, a cup divine,
Crystal water, ruby wine:
Weave the frontlet, richly flushing,
O'er my wintry temples blushing.
Mix the brimmer-Love and I
Shall no more the contest try.
Here-upon this holy bowl,
I surrender all my soul !2

AMONG the Epigrams of the Anthologia, are found some panegyrics on Anacreon, which I had translated, and originally intended as a sort of Coronis to this work. But I found, upon consideration, that they wanted variety; and that a frequent recurrence, in them, of the same thought, would render a collection of such poems uninteresting. I shall take the liberty, however, of subjoining a few, selected from the number, that I may not appear to have totally neglected those ancient tributes to the fame of Anacreon. The four epigrams which I give are imputed to Antipater Sidonius. They are rendered, perhaps, with too much freedom; but designing originally a translation of all that are extant on the

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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.

1 This is also in Hephaestion, and perhaps is a fragment of some poem in which Anacreon had commemorated the fate of Sappho. It is the 123d of Barnes.

a Collected by Barnes, from Demetrius Phalarcus and Eustathius, and 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;-happy if it could be said of the garland which they form, Το δ' ως' Ανακρέοντος.

3 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

ΑΝΤΙΠΑΤΡΟΥ ΣΙΔΩΝΙΟΥ, ΕΙΣ ΑΝΑΚΡΕΟΝΤΑ. ΘΑΛΛΟΙ τετρακορύμβος, Ανακρέον, αμφι σε κισσος ἁβρα τε λειμώνων πορφυρέων πεταλα πηγαι

αργινόεντος αναθλίβοιντο γαλακτος, ενώδες δ' από γης ήδυ χέοιτο μεθη, οφρα κε τοι σποδίη τε και οστεα τερψιν αρηται, ει δε τις φθιμένοις χρίμπτεται ευφρόσυνα ω το φίλον στέρξας, φιλε, 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 spread her waste of roses!

And there shall many a fount distil,

And many a rill refresh the flowers; But wine shall be each purple 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 tenderest thought, Who gave to love his fondest measure,―

Thus, after death, if shades can feel,

Thou may'st, from odors round thee streaming, A pulse of past enjoyment steal,

And live again in blissful dreaming!"

about his illness and death, which are mentioned as enricas by Pliny and others;-and there reinain of his works but a few epigrams in the Anthologia, among which are found these inscriptions upon Anacreon. These remains have been sometimes imputed to another poet of the same name, of whom Vossius gives us the following account:-" Antipater Thessalonicensis vixit tempore Augusti Cæsaris, ut qui saltantem viderit Pyladem, sicut constat ex quodam ejus epigrammate Ανθολογίας, lib. iv. tit. εις ορχεστρίδας. Ateam ae Bathyllum primos fuisse pantomimos ac sub Angusto elaruisse, satis notum ex Dione, &c. &c."

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 Vossius 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 Brodæus, which is not to be found in that commentator; but he more than once confounds Brodæus with another annotator on the Anthologia, Vincentius Obsopous, who has given a translation of the epigram.

a Pleraque tamen Thessalonicensi tribuenda videntur.-Brunck, Lectiones et Emendat.

ΤΟΥ ΑΥΤΟΥ, ΕΙΣ ΤΟΝ ΑΥΤΟΝ.

ΤΥΜΒΟΣ Ανακρείοντος. ὁ Τηϊος ενθαδε κυκνος
Εύδει, χή παιδων ζωρότατη μανίη.
Ακμης λειριοεντι μελίζεται αμφι Βαθυλλω
Ίμερα και κισσου λευκος οδωδε λίθος.
Ουδ' Αΐδης σοι ερωτας απέσβεσεν, εν δ' Αχεροντος
Ων, όλος ωδίνεις Κυπριδι θερμότερη.

HERE sleeps Anacreon, in this ivied shade;
Here mute in death the Teian swan is laid.1

Cold, cold that heart, which while on earth it dwelt
All the sweet phrensy of love's passion felt.
And yet, oh Bard! thou art not mute in death,
Still do we catch thy lyre's luxurious breath;2
And still thy songs of soft Bathylla bloom,
Green as the ivy round thy mould'ring tomb.
Nor yet has death obscured thy fire of love,
For still it lights thee through the Elysian grove;
Where dreams are thine, that bless th' elect alone,
And Venus calls thee even in death her own!

1 — the Trian swan is laid.] Thus Horace of Pindar: Multa Dircæum 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 Ίμεροισι συντροφον
Λυαίος Ανακρέοντα, Τηϊον κύκνον,
Έσφηλας ύγρη νεκταρος μεληδόνη.

Ευγενους, Ανθολογ.

God of the grape! thou hast betray'd
In wine's bewildering dream,
The fairest swan that ever play'd

Along the Muse's stream!—

The Teian, nursed with all those honey'd boys,
The young Desires, light Loves, and rose-lipp'd Joys !

Still d we catch thy lyre's luxurious breath;] Thus

Simonides, speaking of our poet:

Μολπης δ' ου λήθη μελιτερπεος αλλ' επε κείνο
Βαρβιτον ουδε θανων εύνασεν ειν αϊδη.

Σιμονίδου, Ανθολογ.

Nor yet are all his numbers mute,

Though dark within the tomb he lies;
But living still, his amorous lute

With sleepless animation sighs!

This is the famous Simonides, whom Plato styled “ divine," though Le Fevre, in his Poëtes 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 Stobaeus, ψυγος γυναικών.

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 the times of Simonides and Antipater. Obsopens, the commentator 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 not possibly have produced.

The spirit of Anacreon is supposed to utter these verses from the tomb,--somewhat "mutatus ab illo," at least in simplicity of expression.

4

ΤΟΥ ΑΥΤΟΥ, ΕΙΣ ΤΟΝ ΑΥΤΟΝ. ΞΕΙΝΕ, τάφον παρα λιτον Ανακρείοντος αμείβων, Ει τι τοι εκ βιβλων ηλθεν εμων οφελος, Σπεισον Εμπ σποδίη, σπεισον γανος, οφρα κεν οινω Οστεα γήθησε ταμα νοτιζόμενα,

Ως ὁ Διονύσου μεμελημένος ουασι κωμος,

Ως ὁ φιλάκρητου συντροφος ἁρμονίης,
Μηδε καταφθιμενος Βακχου διχα τοῦτον ὑποισω
Τον γενεη μερόπων χωρον οφειλομενον.

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 wand'ring nigh,
And drop thy goblet's richest tear
In tenderest libation here!

So shall my sleeping ashes thrill
With visions of enjoyment still.
Not even in death can I resign

The festal joys that once were mine,

if Anacreon's shell

Has ever taught thy heart to swell, &c.] We may guess from the words εκ βιβλων εμων, that Anacreon was not merely a writer of billets-doux, as some French critics have called him. Among these Mr. Le Fevre, with all his professed admiration, has given our poet a character by no means of an elevated cast:

Anssi c'est pour cela que la postérité

L'a toujours justement d'age en age chanté
Comme un franc goguenard, ami de goinfrerie,
Ami de billets-doux et de badinerie.

This is unlike

See the verses prefixed to his Poëtes Grecs.
the language of Theocritus, to whom Anacreon is indebted
for the following simple eulogium:-

ΕΙΣ ΑΝΑΚΡΕΟΝΤΟΣ ΑΝΔΡΙΑΝΤΑ.
Θασαι τον ανδριαντα τουτον, ω ξενε,
σπουδα, και λεγ', επαν ες οικον ενθης.
Ανακρέοντος εικον' είδον εν Τέω,

των προσθ' ει τι περισσον ωδοποίων.
προσθεις δε χώτι τοις νέοισιν ἁδετο,
ερεις ατρεκεως ολον τον ανδρα.

UPON THE STATUE OF ANACREON.
Stranger! who near this statue chance to roam,
Let it awhile your studious eyes engage;
That you may say, returning to your home,
"I've seen the image of the Teian sage,
Best of the bards who deck the Muse's page."
Then, if you add, “That striplings loved him well,"
You tell them all he was, and aptly tell.

I have endeavored to do justice to the simplicity of this inscription by rendering it as literally, I believe, as a verse translation will allow.

5 And drop they goblet's richest tear, &c.] Thus Simonides, in another of his epitaphs on our poet:

Και μιν αει τεγγοι νοτερη δροσος, ἧς ὁ γεραιος
Λαρότερον μαλακών έπνεεν εκ στομάτων.
Let vines, in clust'ring beauty wreath'd,
Drop all their treasures on his head,
Whose lips a dew of sweetness breathed,
Richer than vine hath ever shed!

When Harmony pursued my ways,
And Bacchus wanton'd to my lays.'
Oh! if delight could charm no more,
If all the goblet's bliss were o'er,
When fate had once our doom decreed,
Then dying would be death indeed;
Nor could I think, unbless'd by wine
Divinity itself divine!

ΤΟΥ ΑΥΤΟΥ, ΕΙΣ ΤΟΝ ΑΥΤΟΝ. ΕΥΔΕΙΣ εν φθιμενοισιν, Ανακρέον, εσθλα πονήσας είδει δ' ἡ γλυκερη νυκτίλαλος κιθαρα, εύδει και Σμέρδις, το Ποθών εαρ, ώ συ μελισδων, βαρβιτ', ανεκρονου νεκταρ εναρμόνιον ηΐθεων γαρ Έρωτος έφυς σκοπος ες δε σε μουνον τοξα τε και σκολιας είχεν έκηβολίας.

1 And Bacchus wanton'd to my lays, &c.] The original here is corrupted, the line is ó Atovvcov, &c., is unintelligible. Brunck's emendation improves the sense, but I doubt if it can be commended for elegance. He reads the line thus:ὡς ὁ Διωνύσοιο λελασμένος ουποτε κωμων.

See Brunck, Analecta Veter. Poet. Græc., vol. ii.

2 Thy harp, that whisper'd through each lingering night, &c.] In another of these poems, the "nightly-speaking lyre" of the bard is represented as not yet silent even after his death.

ὡς ὁ φιλάκρητος τε και οινοβαρης φιλοκωμος
παννύχιος κρούσια την φιλοπαίδα χελυν.

Σιμωνίδου, εις Ανακρέοντα.
To beauty's smile and wine's delight,
To joys he loved on earth so well,
Still shall his spirit, all the night,
Attune the wild, aërial shell!

3 The purest nectar of its numbers, &c.] Thus, says Brunck, in the prologue to the satires of Persius:

Cantare credas Pegaseium nectar.

"Melos" is the usual reading in this line, and Casaubon has defended it; but "nectar" is, I think, much more spirited.

She, the young spring of thy desires, &c.] The original, To Пotov cap, is beautiful. We regret that such praise should be lavished so preposterously, and feel that the poet's mistress Eurypyle would have deserved it better. Her name has been told us by Meleager, as already quoted, and in another epigram by Antipater.

Αγρα δε δερκομένοισιν εν ομμασιν ουλον αείδοις,
αιθυσσων λιπάρης ανθος ύπερθε κόμης,

με προς Ευρυπυλην τετραμμένος

....

Long may the nymph around thee play,

Eurypyle, thy soul's desire,

Basking her beauties in the ray

That lights thine eye's dissolving fire!

■ Brunck has xpovwv; but kρovor, the common reading, better suits a de ached quotation.

Ar length thy golden hours have wing'd their flight, And drowsy death that eyelid steepeth;

Thy harp, that whisper'd through each lingering night,2

Now mutely in oblivion sleepeth!

She too, for whom that harp profusely shed
The purest nectar of its numbers,
She, the young spring of thy desires, hath fled,
And with her blest Anacreon slumbers!

Farewell! thou hadst a pulse for every dart

That mighty Love could scatter from his quiver; And each new beauty found in thee a heart, Which thou, with all thy heart and soul, didst give her!"

Sing of her smile's bewitching power,

Her every grace that warms and blesses;
Sing of her brow's tariant flower,

The beaming glory of her tresses.

The expression here, avoos xoμns, “the flower of the hair," is borrowed from Anacreon himself, as appears by a fragment of the poet preserved in Stobæus: Απέκειρας δ' άπαλης apopov avtos.

5 Farewell! thou hadst a pulse for every dart, &c.] vs σкопоS, "Scopus eras naturâ," not "speculator," as Barnes very falsely interprets it.

Vincentius Obsopeus, upon this passage, contrives to indulge us with a little astrological wisdom, and talks in a style of learned scandal about Venus, "male posita eum Marte in domo Saturni."

• And each new beauty found in thee a heart, &e.] This couplet is not otherwise warranted by the original, than as it dilates the thought which Antipater has figuratively expressed.

Critias, of Athens, pays a tribute to the legitimate gallantry of Anacreon, calling him, with elegant conciseness, γυναικών ήπεροπευμα,

Τον δε γυνακείων μελέων πλέξαντα παρ' ωδας,
Ήδυν Ανακρείοντα, Τέως εις Ελλαδ' ανηγεν.
Συμποσιων ερεθισμα, γυναικών ήπεροπευμα.

Teos gave to Greece her treasure,

Sage Anacreon, sage in loving;
Fondly weaving lays of pleasure
For the maids who blush'd approving.

When in nightly banquets sporting,
Where's the guest could ever fly him?
When with love's seduction courting,
Where's the nymph could e'er deny him?

Thus Scaliger, in his dedicatory verses to Ronsard Blandus, suaviloquus, dulcis Anacreon

JUVENILE POEMS.

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 the author himself from submitting these trifles 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.

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 should have preferred him to the go. tle and touching Tibullus; but those defects, I believe, which a common reader condemns, have been regarded 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,"* &c., is imagined with all the delicate ardor 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 the poet of Verona, in my opinion, pos

life was, I believe, unfortunate; his associates were wild and abandoned; and the warmth of his nature took too much advantage of the latitude which the morals of those times so criminally allowed to the passions. All this depraved his imagination, and made it the slave of his senses. But still a native sensibility is often very warmly perceptible; and when he touches the chord of pathos, he reaches immediately the heart. They who have felt the sweets of return to a home from which they have long been absent, will confess the beauty of those simple, unaffected lines:

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 lay claim to some indul-sessed more genuine feeling than any of them. His gence from the critic. Their author, as unambitious as indolent, scarce ever looked beyond the moment of composition; but, in general, 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 coloring 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.

A portion of these Poems were published originally as the works of "the late Thomas Little," with the Preface here given prefixed to them.

O quid solutis est beatius curis !
Cum mens onus reponit, ac peregrino
Labore fessi venimus Larem ad nostrum
Desideratoque acquiescimus lecto.

Carm. xxix.

His sorrows on the death of his brother are the very tears of poesy; and when he complains of the ingratitude of mankind, even the inexperienced cannot but sympathize with him. I wish I were

* Lib. i. Eleg. 3.

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