Dormir est un temps perdu; Faut-il qu'on s'y livre ? Sommeil, prends ce qui t'est dû,- Whether the Regent Duke of Orleans ever read the supposed remains of Anacreon, we know not: but certainly their manner and spirit were never, upon the whole, so well expressed as in these pretty verses. There is nothing in English so near-not even in the best of Cowley. The first appearance of the Anacreontic odes-sixty-one or two in number-was in the fourth Anthology, compiled by Constantine Cephalas, some time-it is very uncertain-in the tenth century. That collection was made up of poems of all ages and characters-inscriptions for Christian churches and for Delphic tripods, epigrams by St. Gregory, and heathen scolia, riddles and epitaphs, and a score other heterogeneous compositions, from the classic times of Greece down to the editor's own day. In this goodly company, between Christophorus and Gregory, we find our Anacreon. The section is entitled :-Ανακρέοντος Ταΐου συμποσιακὰ ἡμιάμβια, καὶ ̓Ανακρεόντικὰ καὶ τρίμετρα—which words seem to imply that Cephalas did not suppose that all of these little poems were Anacreon's own. But however that may be, we may, without much difficulty, range the Anacreontics in three classes of respectability, as to birth and parentage. First, those amongst them that are quoted as Anacreon's by any of the older writers. This, of course, is the only class, the genuineness of which we can have any historical grounds for believing, and it is, unhappily, a very small portion of the whole collection. It comprises the 17th ode, preserved by Gellius,* the sixth and seventh verses of the 38th in Hephæstion, and the scholiast to Aristophanes; the 54th, 55th, 57th, and 58th, to be found respectively in Stobæus,§ Athenæus,|| Eustathius, ¶ and Hephaestion, ** and Heraclides Ponticus. †† Many of our readers, we fear, will be shocked to find some of their *Noct. Att. xix. 9. Enchirid. 16. || x. 427. Plat. v. 302. + Alleg. Hom. 16. greatest greatest favourites not comprehended in this class; and yet we cannot help thinking we perceive something of a stricter antiquity in the poems so authenticated than in most of the others. for instance, to the 17th: τὸν ἄργυρον τορεύων, Ηφαιστέ, μοι ποίησον, πανοπλίαν μὲν ούχια. Το λο 'Take the silver-not for me, Or yon Pleiads in the sky?) But upon my goblet's face Vines and clust'ring bunches trace, Picking the ripe grapes from the trees.' &c. Or to the fifty-fourth πολιοὶ μὲν ἡμῖν ἤδη κ. τ. λ. 'Time now hath laid my temples bare, And chang'd to white my once-dark hair; Of life and love and poesy. This makes me shed the frequent tear In dread of Tartarus so near.' &c. The genuineness of the 58th Πῶλε Θρηϊκίη, τί δή με λοξὸν ὄμμασι βλέπουσα-κ. τ. λ. Look, seems highly probable from the apparent imitations* of Horace. In the second class, we would comprise those of the remaining odes, which, although unauthenticated by any citation or reference in the old writers, bear, nevertheless, upon their face no evident marks that they are the production of a later age, or a mere imitator's hand. Concerning the absolute genuineness of these, different views of the old Greek style and mode of thought will lead to very different opinions. For our part, we confess that if we could bring ourselves fully and fairly to believe the odes quoted by Gellius and Athenæus to be really the composition of Anacreon, we should have great difficulty in refusing the same credit to many of those which we have placed in this second class. Of the spuriousness of those which we condemn to the third class, there can be no doubt at all. The eighteenth is totally repugnant to all metre, and there are evidently some versus politici in it, in which *Car. i. 23, and iii. 11, v. 9. accent accent is substituted for quantity; besides, the word torópnua is of the very latest Greek. The same may be said of the twentyfourth. The twenty-fifth, twenty-sixth, and twenty-seventh are manifest imitations of the twenty-second, and of each other. The twenty-ninth—γράφε μοὶ Βάθυλλον—is an open and coarse attempt at the beautiful "Aye (wypάpwv pore which precedes it. The inτóρwv áváynas at once damns the thirty-sixth. The thirty-ninth and forty-first are comparatively modern scolia or drinking songs; they preserve no metre. The fifty-third talks of the Parthians. And besides these, there are at least ten more which may very clearly be shown to be of an age much later than Anacreon's, by usages of particular words, by anomalies of dialect, and by allusions involving an inexplicable anachronism of tone and feeling. How well Anacreon might be imitated may be seen by referring to the three pretty odes of Basilius ;-the well-known σtέpos mλéxwv Tob' supov, of Julian the Egyptian; and the Dead Adonis attributed to Theocritus. If Julian's name had been lost, and Cephalas had inserted his ode amongst the Anacreontics, should we not have been called German boors for doubting its genuineness? Of Simonides the younger we have in a late Number spoken, and but little that can be called lyric verse remains of him. The epigrams of this great poet are numerous, and full of historical interest; they are the best record of pure Greek taste in epitaph and inscription. One of them, on his friend Anacreon, beginning with the lines Οὗτος ̓Ανακρείοντα τὸν ἄφθιτον εἵνεκα Μουσῶν ὑμνοπόλον, πάτρης τύμβος ἴδεκτο Τίωκ. τ. λ. would seem to decide that Anacreon died at Teos after his return. There is another couplet preserved, the loss of which might, under all the circumstances, have been more favourable to the reputation of Simonides for feeling and gratitude. One, whom Hipparchus had loved and honoured to the last, should have declined the office of celebrating his assassination. Η μέγ' Αθηναίοισι φόως γένεθ, ηνίκ' Αριστο γείτων Ιππαρχον κτεῖνε, καὶ ̔Αρμόδιος. Perhaps the poet had no power to resist. Amongst what little remains of a lyric kind, the celebrated fragment of Danaë and her child is pre-eminently conspicuous. This is the tenderest passage in Greek poetry; there is nothing that we remember so unmixedly pathetic, and if we pronounce the Sapphic ode the acme of poetic expression of Passion, we may, upon the same principle of judgment, set up the Danaë of Simonides as the ne plus ultra of that of Affection. The exceeding simplicity of these beautiful verses is almost as formidable in the way of translation as the condensation of Φαίνεται μοὶ κήνος—. ὅτι λάρνακι ἐν δαιδαλίᾳ ἄνεμος—κ. τ. λο The • The wind blew hard, the rough wave smote Her cheeks all wet with tears and spray, And, "Oh! what woes, my babe," she said, &c.* There is another passage of Simonides, which we notice chiefly for the very pretty version of it by Mr. Merivale. Cleobulus, a native of Lindus, and one of the seven wise men of Greece, composed some lines, purporting to be spoken by a monumental figure sculptured on the tomb of Midas. Mr. Merivale gives them thus: 'Sculptur'd in brass, a virgin bright, On Midas' tomb I stand. While water cools-while flow'rs delight— While Ocean girds the earth around While with returning day Phoebus returns, and Night is crown'd By Luna's glimmering ray So long as these shall last, will I, A monument of woe, Declare to every passer-by That Midas sleeps below.'-Merivale, p. 53. We cannot refrain from adding Robert Smith's version-so famous in the me mory of his contemporaries at Eton:- Supra cæsariem tuam profundam Το To which Simonides made an answer, thus exquisitely rendered by the same hand : With returning current glide. Go, go! who said it was—an ass.'-Merivale, p. 60. We close our hasty remarks on the lyric poets of Greece with the name of Bacchylides. He was nephew of Simonides, and native of the same island and town. He closes the lyric Ennead of the Alexandrian critics, and comes down recommended to our interest, or at least to our curiosity, by the reported fact that Hiero and his court preferred him to Pindar. That Bacchylides composed odes in honour of the winners at the Pythian games is undoubted, and we see no conclusive reason for discrediting the story that his poems were admired beyond those of his great contemporary. For although we were to assume, as we do assume, that the preference was grievously misplaced, we may well believe it was not the first, as we certainly know it has not been the last instance of poets, of comparatively small merit, carrying off the full prize of present popularity from their mightier but severer rivals. All ages and all countries have exhibited, and continue to exhibit, conspicuous examples of the fashionable postponement of the beautiful to the pretty, of the majestic to the showy; and we cannot but think, that Pindar must have put the finishing stroke to many of his subtle and deeply-wrought odes, with a feeling akin to that contained in Dante's solemn declaration to the Frivolous: |