The singular beauty of our poet's style, and perhaps the careless facility with which he appears to have trifled, have induced, as I remarked, a number of imitations. Some have succeeded with wonderful felicity, as may be discerned in the few odes which are attributed to writers of a later period, But none of his emulators have been so dangerous to his fame as those Greek ecclesiastics of the early ages, who, conscious of inferiority to their prototypes, determined on removing the possibility of comparison, and, under a semblance of moral zeal, destroyed the most exquisite treasures of antiquity. Sappho and Alcæus were among the victims of this violation; and the sweetest flowers of Grecian literature fell beneath the rude hand of ecclesiastical presumption. It is true they pretended that this sacrifice of genius was canonized by the interests of religion, but I have already assigned the most probable motive;1 and if Gregorius Nazianzenus had not written Anacreontics, we might now perhaps have the works of the Teian unmutilated, and be empowered to say exultingly with Horace,

Nec si quid olim lusit Anacreon
Delevit ætas."

The zeal by which these bishops professed to be actuated gave birth more innocently, indeed, to an absurd species of parody, as repugnant to piety as it is to taste, where the poet of voluptuousness was made a preacher of the gospel, and his muse, like the Venus in armour at Lacedæmon, was arrayed in all the severities of priestly instruction. Such was the Anacreon Recanatus, by Carolus de Aquino, a Jesuit, published 1701, which consisted of a series of palinodes to the several songs of our poet. Such, too, was the Christian Anacreon of Patrignanus, another Jesuit, who preposterously transferred to a most sacred subject all that Anacreon had sung to festivity.

His metre has been very frequently adopted by the modern Latin poets. Scaliger, Taubman, Barthius, and others, have evinced that it is by no means uncongenial with that language. The Anacreontics of Scaliger, however, scarcely deserve the name: they are glittering with conceits, and, though often elegant, are always laboured. The beautiful fictions of Angerianus have preserved more happily than any the delicate turn of those allegorical fables which, frequently passing through the mediums of version and imitation, have generally lost their finest rays in the transmission. Many of the Italian poets have sported on the subjects and in the manner of Anacreon. Bernardo Tasso first introduced the metre which was afterwards polished and enriched by Chabriera and others. If we may judge by the references of Degen, the German language abounds in Anacreontic imitations; and Hagedorn is one

rhetorician Julianus, as he says, but by the minstrels of both sexes, who were introduced at the entertainment.

We may perceive by the beginning of the first hymn of Bishop Synesius, that he made Anacreon and Sappho his models of composition:

Αγε μοι, λίγεια φόρμιγξ,
Μετα Τηϊαν αοιδαν,

Μετα Λεσβιαν τε μολπαν.

Margunius and Damascenus were likewise authors of pious Anacreontics.

2 I have seen somewhere an account of the MSS. of Barthius, written just after his death, which mentions many more Anacreontics of his than I believe have ever been published.

Thus, too, Albertus, a Danish poet :

Fidii tui minister
Gaudebo semper esse
Gaudebo semper illi
Litare thure mulso;
Gaudebo semper illum
Laudare pumilillis
Anacreonticillis.

See the Danish Poets collected by Rostgaard..

These pretty littlenesses defy translation There is a very beautiful Anacreontic by Hugo Grotius. See lib. i. Farraginis.

From Angerianus Prior has taken his most elegant mythological subjects,

among many who have assumed him as a model. La Farre, Chaulieu, and the other light poets of France, have professed, too, to cultivate the muse of Téos; but they have attained all her negligence, with little of the grace that embellishes it. In the delicate bard of Schiras1 we find the kindred spirit of Anacreon some of his gazelles, or songs, possess all the character of our poet. We come now to a retrospect of the editions of Anacreon. To Henry Stephen we are indebted for having first recovered his remains from the obscurity in which they had reposed for so many ages. He found the seventh ode, as we are told, on the cover of an old book, and communicated it to Victorius, who mentions the circumstance in his Various Readings. Stephen was then very young, and this discovery was considered by some critics of that day as a literary imposition. In 1554, however, he gave Anacreon to the world,3 accompanied with Annotations and a Latin version of the greater part of the odes. The learned still hesitated to receive them as the relics of the Teian bard, and suspected them to be the fabrication of some monks of the sixteenth century. This was an idea from which the classic muse recoiled: and the Vatican manuscript, consulted by Scaliger and Salmasius, confirmed the antiquity of most of the poems. A very inaccurate copy of this MS. was taken by Isaac Vossius, and this is the authority which Barnes has followed in his collation; accordingly, he misrepresents almost as often as he quotes; and the subsequent editors, relying upon him, have spoken of the manuscript with not less confidence than ignorance. The literary world has at length been gratified with this curious memorial of the poet, by the industry of the Abbé Spaletti, who in 1781 published at Rome a fac-simile of the pages of the Vatican manuscript, which contained the odes of Anacreon.

Monsieur Gail has given a catalogue of all the editions and translations of Anacreon. I find their number to be much greater than I could possibly have had an opportunity of consulting. I shall therefore content myself with enumerating those editions only which I have been able to collect; they are very few, but I believe they are the most important :

The edition by Henry Stephen, 1554, at Paris; the Latin version is, by Colomesius, attributed to John Dorat.

The old French translations, by Ronsard and Belleau-the former published in 1555, the latter in 1556. It appears that Henry Stephen communicated his manuscript of Anacreon to Ronsard before he published it, by a note of Muretus upon one of the sonnets of that poet.

The edition by Le Fevre, 1660.

The edition by Madame Dacier, 1681, with a prose translation.5

The edition by Longepierre, 1684, with a translation in verse.

The edition by Baxter; London, 1695.

A French translation by La Fosse, 1704.

1 See Toderini on the learning of the Turks, as translated by De Cournard. Prince Cantemir has made the Russians acquainted with Anacreon. See his Life, prefixed to a translation of his Satires, by the Abbé de Guasco.

2 Robertellus, in his work De Ratione corrigendi, pronounces these verses to be triflings of some insipid Græcist.

3 Ronsard commemorates this event: Je vay boire à Henri Etienne

Qui des enfers nous a rendu,

Du vieil Anacreon perdu,

La douce lyre Teienne.-Ode xv. book 5.

I fill the bowl to Stephen's name,
Who rescued from the gloom of night
The Teian bard of festive fame,

And brought his living lyre to light.

This manuscript, which Spaletti thinks as old as the tenth century, was brought from the Palatine into the Vatican Library; it is a kind of anthology of Greek epigrams.

The author of Nouvelles de la Repub. des Lett, praises this translation very liberally. I have always thought it vague and spiritless.

L'Histoire des Odes d'Anacréon, by Monsieur Gacon; Rotterdam, 1712.

A translation in English verse, by several hands, 1713, in which the odes by Cowley are inserted.

The edition by Barnes; London, 1721.

The edition by Dr. Trapp, 1733, with a Latin version in elegiac metre.

A translation in English verse, by John Addison, 1735.

A collection of Italian translations of Anacreon, published at Venice, 1736 consisting of those by Corsini, Regnier, Salvini, Marchetti, and one by several anonymous authors.

A translation in English verse, by Fawkes and Dr. Broome, 1760.1

Another, anonymous, 1768.

The edition, by Spaletti, at Rome, 1781; with the fac-simile of the Vatican MS.

The edition by Degen, 1786, who published also a German translation of Anacreon, esteemed the best.

A translation in English verse, by Urquhart, 1787.

The edition by Citoyen Gail, at Paris, seventh year, 1799, with a prose translation.

1 This is the most complete of the English translations.

ODES OF ANACREON.