not the corruptions of the court; and, while Pythagoras fled from the tyrant, Anacreon was celebrating his praises on the lyre. We are told too by Maximus Tyrius, that, by the influence of his amatory songs, he softened the mind of Polycrates into a spirit of benevolence towards his subjects. The amours of the poet, and the rivalship of the tyrant, I shall pass over in silence; and there are few, I presume, who will regret the omission of most of those anecdotes, which the industry of some editors has not only promulged, but discussed. Whatever is repugnant to modesty and virtue is considered in ethical science, by a supposition very favorable to humanity, as impossible; and this amiable persuasion should be much more strongly entertained, where the transgression wars with nature as well as virtue. But why are we not allowed to indulge in the presumption? Why are we officiously reminded that there have been really such instances of depravity? Hipparchus, who now maintained at Athens the power which his father Pisistratus had usurped, was one of those princes who may be said to have polished the fetters of their subjects. He was the first, according to Plato, who edited the poems of Homer, and commanded them to be sung by the rhapsodists at the celebration of the Panathenæa. From his court, which was a sort of galaxy of genius, Anacreon could not long be absent. Hipparchus sent a barge for him; the poet readily embraced the invitation, and the Muses and the Loves were wafted with him to Athens." The manner of Anacreon's death was singular. We are told that in the eighty-fifth year of his age he was choked by a grape-stone; and, however we may smile at their enthusiastic partiality, who see in this easy and characteristic death a peculiar indulgence of Heaven, we cannot help admiring that his fate should have been so emblematic of his disposition. Cælius Calcagninus alludes to this catastrophe in the following epitaph on our poet: "Those lips, then, hallow'd sage, which pour'd along Here let the rose he loved with laurels bloom, "But far be thou, oh! far, unholy vine, Thy God himself now blushes to confess, It has been supposed by some writers that Anacreon and Sappho were contemporaries; and the very thought of an intercourse between persons so congenial, both in warmth of passion and delicacy of genius, gives such play to the imagination, that the mind loves to indulge in it. But. the vision dissolves before historical truth; and Chamæleon and Hermesianax, who are the source of the supposition, are considered as having merely indulged in a poetical anachronism.” To infer the moral dispositions of a poet from the tone of sentiment which pervades his works, is sometimes a very fallacious analogy; but the soul of Anacreon speaks so unequivocally through his odes, that we may safely consult them as the faithful mirrors of his heart.10 We find him there the elegant voluptuary, diffusing the seductive charm of sentiment over passions and propensities at which rigid morality must frown. His heart, devoted to indolence, seems to have thought that there is wealth enough in happiness, but seldom happiness in mere wealth. The cheerfulness, indeed, with which he brightens his old age is interesting and endearing: like his own rose, he is fragrant even in decay. But the most peculiar feature of his mind is that love of simplicity, which he attributes to himself so feelingly, and which breathes characteristically throughout all that he has sung. In truth, if we omit those few vices in our estimate, which religion, at that time, not only connived at, but consecrated, we shall be inclined to say that the disposition of our poet was amiable; that his morality was relaxed, but not abandoned; and that Virtue, with her zone loosened, may be an apt emblem of the character of Anacreon." Of his person and physiognomy time has preserved such uncertain memorials, that it were better, perhaps, to leave the pencil to fancy; and few can read the Odes of Anacreon without imagining to themselves the form of the animated old bard, crowned with roses, and singing cheerfully to his lyre. But the head of Anacreon, prefixed to this work, has been considered so authentic, that we scarcely could be justified in the omission of it; and some have even thought that it is by no means deficient in that benevolent suavity of expression which should characterize the countenance of such a poet. 12 him, that we sympathize even in his excesses. In his amatory odes there is a delicacy of compliment not to be found in any other ancient poet. Love at that period was rather an unrefined emotion: and the intercourse of the sexes was animated more by passion than by sentiment. They knew not those little tendernesses which form the spiritual part of affection; their expression of feeling was therefore rude and unvaried, and the poetry of love deprived it of its most captivating graces. Anacreon, however, attained some ideas of this purer gallantry; and the same delicacy of mind which led him to this refinement, prevented him also from yielding to the freedom of language which has sullied the pages of all the other poets. His descriptions are warm; but the warmth is in the ideas, not the words. He is sportive without being wanton, and ardent without being licentious. His poetic invention is always most brilliantly displayed in those allegorical fictions which so many have endeavored to imitate, though all have confessed them to be inimitable. Simplicity is the distinguishing feature of these odes, and they interest by their innocence, as much as they fascinate by their beauty. They may be said, indeed, to be the very infants of the Muses, and to lisp in numbers. I shall not be accused of enthusiastic partiality by those who have read and felt the original; but, to others, I am conscious, this should not be the language of a translator, whose faint reflection of such beauties can but ill justify his admiration of them. In the age of Anacreon music and poetry were inseparable. These kindred talents were for a long time associated, and the poet always sung his own compositions to the lyre. It is probable that they were not set to any regular air, but rather a kind of musical recitation, which was varied according to the fancy and feelings of the moment. The poems of Anacreon were sung at banquets as late as the time of Aulus Gellius, who tells us that he heard one of the odes performed at a birthday entertainment. deprived the world of some of the most exquisite treasures of ancient times. The works of Sappho and Alcæus were among those flowers of Grecian literature which thus fell beneath the rude hand of ecclesiastical presumption. It is true they pretended that this sacrifice of genius was hallowed by the interests of religion; but I have already assigned the most probable motive; 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 armor at Lacedæmon, was arrayed in all the severities of priestly instruction. Such was the "Anacreon Recantatus,” by Carolus de Aquino, Jesuit, published 1701, which consisted of a series of palinodes to the several songs of our poet. Such, too, was the Christian Anacreon of Patriganus, another Jesuit, who preposterously transferred to a most sacred subject all that the Grecian poet had dedicated to festivity and love. His metre has frequently been adopted by the modern Latin poets; and Scaliger, Taubman, Barthius, and others, have shown that it is by no means uncongenial with that language. The Anacreontics of Scaliger, however, scarcely deserve the name; as they glitter all over with conceits, and, though often elegant, are always labored. The beautiful fictions of Angerianus preserve more happily than any others the delicate turn of those allegorical fables, which, passing so frequently through the mediums of version and imitation, have generally lost their finest rays in the transmission. Many of the Italian poets have indulged their fancies upon the subjects, and in the manner of Anacreon. Bernardo Tasso first introduced the metre, which was afterwards polished and enriched by Chabriera and others. The singular beauty of our poet's style, and the apparent facility, perhaps, of his metre, have attracted, as I have already remarked, a crowd of imitators. Some of these 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 half so dangerous to his fame as those Greek ecclesiastics of the early ages, who, being conscious of their own inferiority to their great prototypes, determined on removing all possibility of comparison, and, under a semblance of moral zeal, | tained all her negligence with little of the simple To judge by the references of Degen, the German language abounds in Anacreontic imitations; and Hagedorn is one among many who have assumed him as a model. La Farre, Chaulieu, and the other light poets of France, have also professed to cultivate the muse of Téos; but they have at grace that embellishes it. In the delicate bard of Schiras we find the kindred spirit of Anacreon: some of his gazelles, or songs, possess all the character of our poet. The edition by Henry Stephen, 1554, at Paris the Latin version is attributed by Colomesius to John Dorat. The old French translations, by Ronsard and Belleau-the former published in 1555, the latter in 1556. It appears from a note of Muretus upon one of the sonnets of Ronsard, that Henry Stephen communicated to this poet his manuscript of Anacreon, before he promulgated it to the world.10 The edition by Le Fevre, 1660. The edition by Madame Dacier, 1681, with a prose translation." The edition by Longepierre, 1684, with a translation in verse. The edition by Baxter; London, 1695. 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, so singularly, they had for many ages reposed. 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," 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 al-dison, 1735. most as often as he quotes; and the subsequent editors, relying upon his authority, have spoken of the manuscript with not less confidence than ignorance. The literary world, however, has at length been gratified with this curious memorial of the poet, by the industry of the Abbé Spaletti, who published at Rome, in 1781, a fac-simile of those pages of the Vatican manuscript which contained the odes of Anacreon. A catalogue has been given by Gail of all the different editions and translations of Anacreon. Finding their number to be much greater than I could possibly have had an opportunity of consulting, I shall here content myself with enumerating only those editions and versions which it has been in my power to collect; and which, though very few, are, I believe, the most important. 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 Lath version in elegiac metre. A translation in English verse, by John Ad 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 Doctor Broome, 1760. 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 Gail, at Paris, 1799, with a prose translation. ODE I. ODES OF ANACREON. I SAW the smiling bard of pleasure, I took the wreath, whose inmost twine Then, give the harp of epic song, Which Homer's finger thrill'd along; But tear away the sanguine string, For war is not the theme I sing. ODE III. LISTEN to the Muse's lyre, ODE IL GIVE me the harp of epic song, ODE IV. VULCAN! hear your glorious task; I do not from your labors ask In gorgeous panoply to shine, I care not for the glitt'ring wain, And flights of Loves, in wanton play, Sits, worthy of so bright a bride. ODE V. SCULPTOR, wouldst thou glad my soul, When spring-time brings the reveller's hour. Fit for a simple board like mine. 19 Themes of heav'n and themes of love. ODE VI."1 As late I sought the spangled bowers, ODE VII. THE Women tell me every day That all my bloom has pass'd away. "Behold," the pretty wantons cry, "Behold this mirror with a sigh; "The locks upon thy brow are few, "And, like the rest, they're withering toc." Whether decline has thinn'd my hair, I'm sure I neither know nor care; But this I know, and this I feel, ODE VIII. I CARE not for the idle state ODE IX. I PRAY thee, by the gods above,25 Give me the mighty bowl I love, And let me sing, in wild delight, "I will-I will be mad to-night!" |