Our poet was born in the city of Téos, in the delicious region of Ionia, where everything respired voluptuousness. The time of his birth appears to have been in the sixth century before Christ, and he flourished at that remarkable period when, under the polished tyrants Hipparchus and Polycrates, Athens and Samos were the rival asylums of genius. The name of his father is doubtful, and therefore cannot be very interesting. His family was perhaps illustrious; but those who discover in Plato that he was a descendant of the monarch Codrus, exhibit, as usual, more zeal than accuracy.3 The disposition and talents of Anacreon recommended him to the monarch of Samos, and he was formed to be the friend of such a prince as Polycrates. Susceptible only to the pleasures, he felt 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 favourable 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 such instances of depravity? Hipparchus, who now maintained at Athens the power which his father Pisistratus had usurped, was one of those elegant princes who 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. As his court was the galaxy of genius, Anacreon should not be absent. Hipparchus sent a barge for him; the poet embraced the invitation, and the muses and the loves were wafted with him to Athens.5 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 pretend that it was a peculiar indulgence of Heaven, which stole him from the world by this easy and characteristic death, we cannot help admiring that his fate should be so emblematic of his disposition. Cælius Calcagninus alludes to this catastrophe in the following epitaph on our poet : The Asiatics were as remarkable for genius as for luxury. 'Ingenia Asiatica inclyta per gentes fecere poeta, Anacreon, inde Mimnermus et Antimachus,' etc.-Solinus. 2 I have not attempted to define the particular Olympiad, but have adopted the idea of Bayle, who says, 'Je n'ai point marqué d'Olympiade; car, pour un homme qui a vécu 85 ans, il me semble que l'on ne doit point s'enfermer dans des bornes si étroites.' 3 This mistake is founded on a false interpretation of a very obvious passage in Plato's Dialogue on Temperance; it originated with Madame Dacier, and has been received implicitly by many. Gail, a late editor of Anacreon, seems to claim to himself the merit of detecting this error; but Bayle had observed it before him. In the romance of Clelia, the anecdote to which I allude is told of a young girl, with whom Anacreon fell in love while she personated the god Apollo in a mask. But here Mademoiselle Scuderi consulted nature more than truth. 5 There is a very interesting French poem founded upon this anecdote, imputed to Desyvetaux, and called Anacreon Citoyen. 6 Fabricius appears not to trust very implicitly in this story. It must be confessed that Lucian, who tells us that Sophocles was choked by a grape-stone, in the very same treatise mentions the longevity of Anacreon, and yet is silent on the manner of his death. Could he have been ignorant of such a remarkable coincidence, or, knowing, could he have neglected to remark it? See Regnier's Introduction to his Anacreon. 'Then, hallowed sage, those lips which poured along A grape has closed for ever! Here let the ivy kiss the poet's tomb, Here let the rose he loved with laurels bloom, But far be thou, oh! far, unholy vine, Thy God himself now blushes to confess, According to some authorities, Anacreon and Sappho were contemporaries; and any thought of an interchange between hearts so congenial 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.2 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 consult them as the faithful mirrors of his heart. 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 think that there is wealth enough in happiness, but seldom happiness enough in wealth; and the cheerfulness 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 very feelingly, and which breathes characteristically through all that he has sung. In truth, if we omit those vices in our estimate which ethnic religion not only connived at, but consecrated, we shall say that the disposition of our poet was amiable; his morality was relaxed, but not abandoned; and Virtue with her zone loosened may be an emblem of the character of Anacreon.4 1 At te, sancte senex, acinus sub tartara misit; Cygneæ clausit qui tibi vocis iter. Vos, hederæ, tumulum, tumulum vos, cingite Hoc rosa perpetuo vernet odora loco, 2 Barnes is convinced of the synchronism of Anacreon and Sappho, but very gratuitously. In citing his authorities, it is strange that he neglected the line which Fulvius Ursinus has quoted, as from Anacreon, among the testimonies to Sappho : Ειμι λαβων εισαρας Σαπφω παρθενον αδυφωνον. Lyæum, Venerem, Cupidinemque To Love and Bacchus, ever young, Nor filled his bowl to Bacchus higher. But never, never reached his heart. 4 Anacreon's character has been variously coloured. Barnes lingers on it with enthusiastic admiration; but he is always extravagant, if not sometimes even profane. Baillet, who is in the opposite extreme, exaggerates too much the testimonies which he has consulted; and we cannot surely agree with him when he cites such a compiler as Athenæus, as 'un des plus savans Of his person and physiognomy time has preserved such uncertain memorials, that perhaps it were better to leave the pencil to fancy; and few can read the Odes of Anacreon without imagining the form of the animated old bard, crowned with roses, and singing to the lyre. In After the very enthusiastic eulogiums bestowed by the ancients and moderns upon the poems of Anacreon, we need not be diffident in expressing our raptures at their beauty, nor hesitate to pronounce them the most polished remains of antiquity. They are all beauty, all enchantment.2 He steals us so insensibly along with him, that we sympathize even in his excesses. 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 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 of its most captivating graces. Anacreon, however, attained some ideas of this gallantry; and the same delicacy of mind which led him to this refinement prevented him 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 most brilliantly displayed in those allegorical fictions which so many have endeavoured to imitate, because all have confessed them to be inimitable. Simplicity is the distinguishing feature of these odes, and they interest by their innocence while they fascinate by their beauty: they are, indeed, the infants of the Muses, and may be said 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 that this should not be the language of a translator, whose faint reflection of these beauties can but little 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.3 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.* critiques de l'antiquité.'-Jugement des Savans, M.C.V. Barnes could not have read the passage to which he refers, when he accuses Le Fevre of having censured our poet's character in a note on Longinus: the note in question is manifest irony, in allusion to some reprehension which Le Fevre had suffered for his Anacreon; and it is evident that praise rather than censure is intimated. 1 Besides those which are extant, he wrote hymns, elegies, epigrams, etc. Some of the epigrams still exist. Horace alludes to a poem of his upon the rivalry of Circe and Penelope in the affections of Ulysses, lib. i. od. 17. The scholiast upon Nicander cites a fragment from a poem upon sleep by Anacreon, and attributes to him likewise a medicinal treatise. Fulgentius mentions a work of his upon the war between Jupiter and the Titans, and the origin of the consecration of the eagle. 2 'We may perceive,' says Vossius, 'that the iteration of his words conduces very much to the sweetness of his style.' Henry Stephen remarks the same beauty in a note on the fortyfourth ode. This figure of iteration is his most appropriate grace. The modern writers of Juvenilia and Basia have adopted it to an excess which destroys the effect. 3 In the Paris edition there are four of the original odes set to music, by citizens Le Sueur, Gossec, Mehul, and Cherubini. 'On chante du Latin et de l'Italien,' says Gail, quelquefois même sans les entendre; qui empêche que nous ne chantions des odes Grecques?' The chromatic learning of these composers is very unlike what we are told of the simple melody of the ancients; and they have all mistaken the accentuation of the words. 4 The Parma commentator is rather careless in referring to this passage of Aulus Gellius (lib. xix, cap. 9).-The ode was not sung by the 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 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 Recantatus, 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,2 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 Angerianus1 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 3 Thus, too, Albertus, a Danish poet : 1 We may perecive by the beginning of the first hymn of Bishop Synesius, that he made Anacreon and Sappho his models of composition: Fidii tui minister 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. 4 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.1 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 Teïenne.-Ode xv. book 5. I fill the bowl to Stephen's name, 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. 5 The author of Nouvelles de la Repub. des Lett, praises this translation very liberally. I have always thought it vague and spiritless. |