But surely 't is the worst of pain, From beauty's cheek one favouring smile. ODE XXX.' 'T WAS in an airy dream of night, While little Love, whose feet were twined That you, my girl, have stolen my rest; And ne'er was caught by Love till now! ODE XXXI.' ARM'D with hyacinthine rod (Arms enough for such a god), When the mind is dull and dark, (Could J, could I wish them worse?) Barnes imagines from this allegory, that our poet married very late in life. I do not perceive any thing in the ode which seems to allude to matrimony, except it be the lead upon the feet of Cupid; and I must confess that I agree in the opinion of Madame Dacier, in her life of the poet, that he was always too fond of pleasure to marry. The design of this little fiction is to intimate, that much greater pain attends insensibility than can ever result from the tenderest impressions of love. Longepierre has quoted an ancient epigram (I do not know where he found it), which has some similitude to this ode: Cupid bade me wing my pace, My brow was chill with drops of dew. And now I thought the spark had fled, When Cupid hover'd o'er my head, And, fanning light his breezy plume, Recall'd me from my languid gloom; Then said, in accents half-reproving, " Why hast thou been a foe to loving? ODE XXXII.' STREW me a breathing bed of leaves Lecto compositus, vix prima silentia noctis Tu famulus meus, inquit, ames cum mille puellas, Exilio et pedibes nudis, tunicaque soluta, Omne iter impedio, nullum iter expedio. Ecce tacent voces hominum, strepitusque ferarum, - What! (said the god) shall you, whose vows are known, Passion my guide, and madness in my breast, My brow was chill with drops of dew.] I have followed those who rend τειρεν ίδρους for πειρεν ύδρος; the former is partly authorized by the MS. which reads πειρεν ίδρως. And now my soul, exhausted, dying, To my lip was faintly flying, etc.] In the original, he says his heart flew to his nose; but our manner more naturally transfers it to the lips. Such is the effect that Plato tells us he felt from a kiss, In a distich, quoted by Aulus Gellius: Την ψυχήν, Αγαθωνα φίλων, επι χείλεσιν έσχον, Ήλθε γαρ ή τλημων ὡς διαβησομένη Whene'er thy nectar'd kiss I sip. And drink thy breath, in melting twine, My soul then flutters to my lip, Ready to fly and mix with thine. Aulus Gellias subjoins a paraphrase of this epigram, in which we find many of those mignardises of expression, which mark the effemination of the Latin language. And, fanning light his breezy plume, Recall'd me from my languid gloom.] The facility with which Cupid recovers him, signities that the sweets of love make us easily forget any solicitudes which he may occasion.-La Fosse. We here have the poet, in his true attributes, reclining upon myrtles, with Cupid for his cup-bearer. Some interpreters have And, while in luxury's dream I sink, With cinctures, round his snowy breast, Swift as the wheels that kindling roll, Oh! she will teach me how to die! With wine, and love, and blisses dear, That bid'st my blissful visions fly? I hear the bitter night-winds blow; I take him in, and fondly raise The dying embers' cheering blaze; The crystals of the freezing air, Upon the wild wood's leafy tops, To drink the dew that morning drops, "T was he who gave that voice to thee, ODE XXXV.' CUPID once upon a bed Of roses laid his weary head; And chirp thy song with such a glee, etc.] Some authors have affirmed (says Madame Dacier), that it is only male grasshoppers which sing, and that the females are silent; and on this circumstance is founded a bon-mot of Xenarchas, the comic poet, who says, είτ' εισιν οἱ τεττιγες ουκ ευδαιμονες, εν ταις γυναιξιν ουδ' ότι ουν φωνης ενι; 'are not the grasshoppers happy in baving dumb wives?' This note is originally Henry Stephen's; but I chose rather to make Madame Dacier my authority for it. The Muses love thy shrilly tone, etc.] Phile. de Animal. Proprietat., calls this insect Mousats pthos, the darling of the Muses; and Mousov opvey, the bird of the Muses; and we find Plato compared for his eloquence to the grasshopper, in the following punning lines of Timon, preserved by Diogenes Laertius: Των παντων δ' ἡγει το πλατυςατος, αλλ' αγορητής Ηδυεπης τεττιξιν ισογράφος, οἱ π' εκαδήμου Δενδρεα εφεζομενοι οπα λειριοεσσαν ιείσι. This last line is borrowed from Homer's Iliad, A. where there occurs the very same simile. Melodious insect! child of earth!] Longepierre has quoted the two first lines of an epigram of Antipater, from the first book of the Anthologia, where be prefers the grasshopper to the swan : Αρκει τέττιγας μεθυσαι δρόσος, αλλά πίοντες Λείδειν κυκνων εισί γεγωνότεροι. In dew, that drops from morning's wings, The gay Cicada sipping floats; And, drunk with dew, his matin sings Sweeter than auy cygnet's notes. 'Theocritus has imitated this beautiful ode in bis nineteenth idyl, bat is very inferior, I think, to his original, in delicacy of point and naïveté of expression. Spenser, in one of his smaller compositions, Luckless urchin not to see I die with pain-in sooth I do! has sported more diffusely on the same subject. The poem to which I allude begins thus: Upon a day, as Love lay sweetly slumbering All in his mother's lap; A gentle bee, with his loud trumpet murmuring, In Almeloveen's collection of epigrams, there is one by Luxorius correspondent somewhat with the turn of Anacreon, where Love complains to his mother of being wounded by a rose. The ode before us is the very flower of simplicity. The infantine complainings of the little god, and the natural and impressive reflec tions which they draw from Venus, are beauties of inimitable grace. I hope I shall be pardoned for introducing another Greek Anacreontic of Monsieur Menage, not for its similitude to the subject of this ode, but for some faint traces of this natural simplicity, which it appears to me to have preserved": Ερως ποτ' εν χορείαις As dancing o'er the enamell'd plain, Oh kiss me, mother, kiss thy boy! Corinna and thy lovely mother, Zitto, in his Cappriciosi Pensieri, bas translated this ode of Aua creon. Thus he spoke, and she the while ODE XXXVI.' Ip hoarded gold possess'd a power That when the Fates would send their minion, To waft me off on shadowy pinion, I might some hours of life obtain, And why should I then pant for treasures? ODE XXXVII.' 'T was night, and many a circling bowl Had deeply warm'd my swimming soul; 'Monsieur Fontenelle has translated this ode, in his dialogue between Anacreon and Aristotle in the shades, where he bestows the prize of wisdom upon the poet. The German imitators of it are, Lessing, in his poem Gestern Brüder, etc. Gleim, in the ode An den Tod, and Schmidt, in der Poet. Blumenl. Gotting. 1783, p. 7.-Degen. That when the Fates would send their minion, To waft me off on shadowy pinion, etc.] The commentators, who ¦ are so fond of disputing de lana caprioa,» have been very busy on the authority of the phrase tyvstveneλ0. The rending of iv'av Ozvaros e, which De Medenbach' proposes in his Amoenitates Litteraria, was already hinted by Le Fevre, who seldom suggests any thing worth notice. The goblet rich, the board of friends, Whose flowing souls the goblet blends! This communion of friendship, which sweetened the bowl of Anacreon, has not been forgotten by the author of the following scholium, where the blessings of life are enumerated with proverbial simplicity. Tytuves pets of τον ανδρι θνητῳ. Δεύτερον δε, καλον φυήν γενεσθαι. Το τρίτον δε, πλουτείν αδόλως. Και το τέταρτον, συνήθαν μετα των φίλων. Of mortal blessings here, the first is health, And next, those charms by which the eye we move; Degen. Monsieur Le Fevre in a note upon this ode, enters into an elaborate and learned justification of drunkenness; and this is probably As Jull'd in slumber I was laid, All were gone! Alas! I said, Sleep! again my joys restore, Oh! let me dream them o'er and o'er's ODE XXXVIII. ' LET us drain the nectar'd bowl, the cause of the severe reprehension which I believe be suffered for his Anacreon. Fuit olim fateor (says he, in a note upon Longinus). cam Sapphonem amabam. Sed ex quo illa me perditissima formina pene miserum perdidit cum sceleratissimo suo congerrone (Anacreontem dico, si nescis Lector), noli sperare, etc. etc. He adduces on this ode the authority of Plato, who allowed ebriety, at the Dionysian festivals, to men arrived at their fortieth year. He likewise quotes the following line from Alexis, which he says no one, who is not totally ignorant of the world, can hesitate to confess the truth of: Ουδείς φιλοπότης εςιν άνθρωπος κακού. No lover of drinking was ever a vicious man. -when all my dream of joys, Dimpled girls and ruddy boys, All were gone! Nounas says of Bacchus, almost in the same words thai Anacreon uses, Εγρομένος δε Παρθένον ουκ' εκίχησε, και ήθελεν αυθις κανειν. Waking, he lost the phantom's charms, He found no beauty in his arms, Again to slumber be essayed, Again to clasp the shadowy maid! ■ Sleep! again my joys restore, LONGEPIFREE. Oh! let me dream them o'er and o'er!] Dr Johnson, in his preface who pretende), in every little coincidence of thought to detect an to Shakspeare, animadverting upon the commentators of that poet, imitation of some ancient poet, alludes in the following words to the line of Anacreon before us: el have been told that when Caliban, after a pleasing dream, says, I tried to sleep again, the author imitates Apaereon, who had, like any other man, the same wish on the same occasion. Compare with this beautiful ode the verses of Hagedorn, lib. v, das Gesellschaftliche; and of Barger, p. 51, etc. etc. Degea. Him, that the snowy Queen of Charme Has fondled in her twining arms.] Robertellas, upon the epithaJamium of Catullus, mentions an ingenious derivation of Cytherwa, The name of Venus, παρά το κεύθειν τους ερωτας, which seems to hint that Love's fairy favours are lost, when not concealed, » From him that dream of transport flows, And through the dance meandering glide; ODE XXX+X. How I love the festive boy, No, no, the walk of life is dark, 'Tis wine alone can strike a spark! The brevity of life allows argaments for the voluptuary as well as the moralist. Among many parallel passages which Longepierre has adduced, I shall content myself with this epigram from the Anthologia: Λουσάμενοι, Προδίκη, πυκασώμεθα, και τον ακρατου Of which the following is a loose paraphrase: And dip it in our goblet's flood. Come, while you may, of rapture sip." And chill the pulse, which trembles warm! Age it on his temples hang, But his heart-his heart is yong Saint Pavin makes the same distinction in a sonnet to a young girl. Je sais bien que les destinées Ont mal compassé nos années; ODE XL. I KNOW that Heaven ordains me here I neither know nor ask to know. ODE XLI. WHEN Spring begems the dewy scene, How sweet to walk the velvet green, And hear the Zephyr's languid sighs, As o'er the scented mead he flies! How sweet to mark the pouting vine, Ready to fall in tears of wine; Ne regardez que mon amour. Fair and young, thou bloomest now, And I full many a year have told; But read the heart and not the brow, Thou shalt not find my love is old. My love's a child; and thou canst say How much his little age may be, For be was born the very day That first I set my eyes on thee! No, no, the heart that feels with me, Can never be a slave to thee!] Longepierre quotes an epigram here from the Anthologia, on account of the similarity of a particular phrase; it is by no means Anacreontic, but has an interesting simplicity which induced me to paraphrase it, and may atone for its intrusion. Ελπις, και συ, τυχη, μεγα χαιρετεί τον λιμεν' εύρον. At length to Fortune, and to you, Away, away, your flattering arts May now betray some simpler hearts, And they shall weep at your deceiving! Bacchus shall bid my winter bloom, And Venus dance me to the tomb!] The same commentator has quoted an epitaph, written upon our poet by Julian, where he makes him give the precepts of good-fellowship even from the tomb. Πολλάκι μεν του αείσα, και εκ τυμβου δε βοήσω Πίνετε, πριν ταυτην αμφιβάλησθε κόνιν. This lesson oft in life I sung, And from my grave I still shall cry, .Drink, mortal: drink, while time is young, Ere death has made thee cold as I.. |