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SAPPHO, AND THE FEMALE POETS OF GREECE.

Πολλὰ μὲν ἐμπλέξας 'Ανύτης κρίνα, πολλὰ δὲ Μοιρους

λειρια, και Σαπφοῦς βαιὰ μέν, ἀλλὰ ῥόδα.

Μελέαγ. Στεφαν.

Entwining many Lilies of ANYTE, and of MERO many

Lilies, and of SAPPHO few indeed, but Roses.-Translation.

THE Old Greeks differed from us widely in that they were idolaters, but they differed perhaps more widely in that they were Greeks, and chiefly because, as such, they wanted the institutions of chivalry; for these, although in part derived from, and mainly cherished by christianity, were not wholly evolved from it, still less necessarily, since many Eastern nations are christian, among whom, nevertheless, "the spirit of a gentleman" is an unheard-of thing, and in particular the chivalric reverence for women is wanting. The hereditary character of the Gothic race is doubtless the root of that noble and beautiful tree, the shadow of which protected the weak in an age of violence; but that root was watered by the church; the stem was supported, the branches trained by her care, and the leaves budded and breathed in an atmosphere purified by the doctrine of the Apostles.

During the heroic ages of Greece, a respect for women appears to have obtained, which, however it differed from the fanaticism of modern gallantry, was sufficient to constitute the ground of high female excellence. The affecting acknowledgment of Helen, that never, during her twenty years' residence in Troy, had the brave Hector insulted her by word or look, nay, had protected her from the reproaches of others, is a remarkable proof that the hero, like the knight, deemed courtesy the right of the sex, even in the persons of the frail.

Hector! of all my brothers dearest far,

Since I espoused the Godlike Paris, who

Led me to Troy when first I should have died.

For now already 'tis my twentieth year

Since I came hither-from my country came

But ne'er have heard from thee harsh word unkind.

For even if any in the court would chide

Brother-in-law, or sister, brother's bride

Splendidly robed, or if thy mother even,
(Thy father, father-like, was ever kind,)

Thou would'st, with words persuading, them restrain,

By thine own gentleness and gentle words.

No

Women of honor, too, knew what was the worth of their sex. wife, not respected and self-respected, could have said with Andromache,

But Hector! thou art father-mother dear

And brother:-thoa, my young spouse, all in one.

Or more, after the rapid and impassioned gallop of the Hexameter:
But thou, O my Hector! art father and mother beloved,

Nor

And brother; and thou art, moreover, my youth-blooming spouse! But, after the heroic age, the social estimation of women sunk. any where in Greece was the sex cultivated or even considered, save that in the isles they were not restrained by opinion from self culture, and that in the Doric state of Sparta they possessed a consideration tending, scarcely less than contempt, to brutalize. That Greek women became eminent for genius under such circumstances, shows how vivacious and irrepressible was the genius of the race, in the social analysis of which they expressed the desire,-the instinctive appetences: and the fact that Rome, during the whole of her existence, produced not one rememberable poetess, is a sufficient proof that creative art was not a natural tendency of that people.

Among modern nations, the Italians, Germans, and French, have produced women of high talent and even of profound learning; but it was reserved for England to produce a genuine female poet-to produce one only-Joanna Baillie; for truly the Hemans and the Landon are none such. Exquisite minds were these, but their poetry (so called) may be most fitly compared to the imitative soul-like murmurs that are emitted by some fine-toned instrument, replying though untouched, when a mighty master sweeps near it the strings of his lyre. But Baillie was an artist-philosophic, creative-the christian Sappho-our English Muse of the meditated passions-the mistress, not the slave, of feelings by reflection converted into knowledge.

It is curious to see the contrast between our modern poetesses and the ancient, in respect of (literary) fecundity. Think of reading all that the lamented L. E. L. has so charmingly written, (Mrs. Hemans was an even more voluminous writer of verse,) and then remember that what would fill, without crowding, a page of her works in closely printed quarto, is all that has handed down the name of Sappho to the admiration of more than twenty centuries. An ode-a fragment or two(preserved as by accident,) and some slender epigrams, have sufficed to make the earthly immortality of the only woman that ever became immortal by the power of poetical genius. Well might she say, "I shall be remembered!"-for that thrice-famous Lesbian was not a solitary instance of genius among the Greek females. The tender simplicity of the virgin Anyte, the energetic conciseness of the "few-worded" but impassioned Erinna, the elegant felicities of Mon and Nossis, are yet known to us from the specimens preserved in the Anthology. "Entwining,' says Meleager, in those verses of his graceful Garland, which we have prefixed to this essay

Entwining many Lilies of Anyte, and of Moro many

Lilies, and of Sappho, few indeed, but Roses!

We propose to consider in this paper some relics of these gifted women, and shall adopt, as the simplest and most interesting method of

setting forth their merits, that of comparing them together; taking a hint from our motto, and aiming as it were to ascertain its correctness, to know whether indeed Sappho was among poetesses as the Rose among flowers-not an important question, perhaps, but the principles by which it must be settled are not unimportant. We will begin with that celebrated "Ode to a beloved Woman," which Longinus, supposed to be high authority, pronounced sublime:

Φαίνεταί μοι κήνος ἴσος Θεοισιν
Εμμεν ἀνήρ, κ, τη λ.

And first occurs a nice question as to the idea of this compositionIn what character does Sappho speak therein? Does she, in her own proper person, utter her own proper and actual feelings, or does she speak in the character of a man? Each hypothesis has its advocates. Those who support the latter argue from the genius and womanly delicacy of the poet. Sappho, they say, knew instinctively, that to place so ardent expressions of love in the mouth of a girl addressing her lover, would violate probability. Whatever might be her own wild and burning experiences, she was too profound an artist not to be aware that in poetry she must speak, not as an individual, but as a woman and a mortal, from and to the common heart of her sex and her race. This ode, or fragment rather, sets forth, they continue, the feelings of a man, who sees another sitting in the sweet neighborhood, and absorbing as it were the low-whispered musical talk, and ravishing laughter of the woman whom to distraction he loves and desires; being not jealous in the sense of suspicion, but absolutely distraught with passion. There are indeed certain forms of words in the text (an adjective and a participle with feminine terminations) which are inconsistent with this idea; but it is supposed that these may be changed for the corresponding masculine forms without detriment to the metre, and with advantage to the sentiment,*

Now we should be glad to admit this reasoning if we could, and we are the more inclined to it, inasmuch as the supposed errors are such as are altogether likely to have crept into the text through the ignorance or prejudice of transcribers, who might have been unable to understand how Sappho could speak in her poems as if she were a man, or who perhaps were influenced by the scandals so long current in Greece. Besides these considerations, the single line of the final (incomplete) stanza rather favours, certainly does not discountenance, our hypothesis. In the copy before us this line reads as follows:

Αλλὰ παν τολμαλόν, ἐπὲι πένητα

Yet every thing a daring man, since poor

Those, however, who adopt the other and received opinion as to this ode, are not unsupported by the serious lesson which it (so considered) is capable of evolving, viz: that of the certain corruption of an imagina

* Παντα μ' for Πασαν, in the second, and 'πιδευων for 'πίδευσα, in the third, line of the fourth strophe are the changes proposed.

tive mind by a sensual religion-of the wretched self contradiction of an aspiring soul which knows not God; which recoiling in disappointment from the merely animal, and not finding the spiritual, (or the world of affections that are above n iture,) rushes blindly into that dreadful and violent delusion of the senses which is contrary to nature, of which we care not further to speak. Let us, through the medium of a translation, consider the fragment simply as a work of art. There are many fine and scholarly versions of it, but none are accessible to us at this moment but that familiar one by Ambrose Phillips, which appeared first in the Spectator, and approaches (so Addison says) "as near to the original as the genius of our language will possibly allow." We are far from thinking this of our own, though we have tried hard to make it pan' like Sappho's sweetly agitated Æolic.

THE ODE TO A GIRL.*

Equal unto the gods doth seem to me,
He that opposite to thee

Sitteth, and sounding sweetly near
Thy voice doth hear.

And thou dost smile desiringly! 'Tis then
Sinks my heart my breast within;

For as I see, of voice no more

I have the power.

But quite my tongue is broken, and a thin

Fire runs quick beneath my skin;

And nothing see mine eyes, and hear-
eth sounds mine ear.

And the cold sweat pours down, and all of me
Tremblings seize. I paler be

Than grass, and, scarce removed from death,
Seem without breath.

Is it sublime, then? Scarcely, and Longinus used the word not very accurately, but it is intense, natural, (rapid as the lightning the succession of feelings, as vivid their expression,) and shows that fine balance of the impetuous emotion by the tranquil subordinating of the same to the creative spirit of the poet, which appears to constitute the true lyrical rapture. This grace of repose, however, depends a good deal on what cannot be translated-the versification; on that Sapphic rhythm, than which it seems impossible to conceive one more suited to express passion, impetuous yet languishing-eagerness, sickened even to death with re

To have discovered so fine a harmony is a capital argument of genius. It has been often but vainly imitated in our language. The ripple in the flow of an iambic melody, produced by the interposition of

The reader should bear in mind that this translation, like the original, is supposed to be sung to the music of the Lyre; and unless so chanted and accompanied, ideally at least, must fail of its intended effect.

an occasional trochaic line, gives, we think, a better notion of it than English Sapphics, for the measure, as we have said, has never been naturalized in our tongue; and the following strophes, therefore, must not be considered by the reader as a fair specimen of what it can in the native and flexible Greek:

At its outbreak, Sappho's elected measure
Softly flows on, then for a moment pauses;
Then the soul-breathed melody quickly rushes,
Flutters and fainteth.

So a stream that over a smoothed channel

Moveth scarce heard, if but a pebble break it,
Rippling, voice-like murmurs aloud; soon after
Noiselessly gliding.

"To have shrouded," says Henry Nelson Coleridge, "the keenest appetite in the tenderest passion-to have articulated the pulses of animal desire in syllables that burn, and in a measure that breathes, and flutters, and swoons away-this it is to have written immortal verses." This is fine and true, but not all, nor what is most worth saying of "The Fragment;" for it is not to be forgotten that this is not a strain aptly framed to enervate and defile. True poetry is never immoral,—

"And not unhallowed was the page

By winged Love inscribed, to assuage
The pangs of vain pursuit;

Love, listening while the Lesbian maid,
With finest touch of passion, swayed
Her own Eolian lute."

Originating (so we render Wordsworth's stanza into prose) in the instinct that impels the poet to extricate from the wildest agitations the element of calmness-to find in the imaginative reproduction of even the fiercest torments of jealousy, a delight that springs from and balances pain-it necessarily contains, for the man miserable enough to understand it, an antidote to his misery; henceforth linked to a soothing melody, and elevated by the sympathy of genius.

A particular merit of this ode is the fidelity to nature in describing the effects of passion when carried to the utmost height of which it is capable in any particular paroxysm. It is a familiar anecdote, which is told by Plutarch, that when Antiochus, the son of Lelerecus, king of Syria, was sick, and even dying of hopeless, concealed love for Stratonice, his father's bride; Ecaristratus, the physician of the court, discovered the nature of the disorder with which the prince was afflicted, by observing in him the concurrence of all the symptoms enumerated by Sappho, at such times as Stratonice entered the apartment: an anecdote easily credible by those who are aware that an eminent English surgeon of the present day is governed in the diagnosis of insanity by keeping in view Shakspeare's delineations of the disease in the cases of Lear and Ophelia.

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