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RIGHT HONOURABLE

COMPLETE INDEX.

PRINTED FOR VERNOR AND HOOD; JOHN WALKER; CUTHELL
AND MARTIN; W. J. AND J. RICHARDSON; LONGMAN

AND REES; R. LEA; AND J. AND A. ARCH.

T. Maiden, Printer, Sherbourn-Lane.

1804.

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THE

SPECTATOR.

No. 223, THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 15.

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WHEN I reflect upon the various fate of those

multitudes of ancient writers' who flourished in Greece and Italy, I consider time as an immense ocean, in which many noble authors are entirely swallowed up, many very much shattered and damaged, some quite disjointed and broken into pieces, while some have wholly escaped the common wreck; but the number of the last is very small.

Apparent rari nantes in gurgite casto.

Among the mutilated poets of antiquity, there is none whose fragments are so beautiful as those of Sappho. They give us a taste of her way of writing, which is perfectly conformable with that extraor dinary character we find of her, in the remarks of those great critics who were conversant with her works when they were entire. One may see by what is left of them, that she followed nature in all her thoughts, without descending to those little points, conceits, and turns of wit, with which many of our modern lyrics are so miserably infected. Her soul seems to have been made up of love and poetry: she felt the passion in all its warmth, and described VOL. II. A

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