I find the shades that veil'd our joys before; 170 175 Clear as a glass, the shining sands below : 180 Watch'd by the fylvan Genius of the place : Before my fight a wat'ry Virgin stood: She stood and cry'd, "O you that love in vain! ८८ Fly hence, and feek the fair Leucadian main; NOTES. " There VER. 188. Leucadian main ;] Addison, with his usual exquifite humour, has given, in the 233d Spectator, an account of the per fons, male and female, who leaped from the promontory of Leucate into the Ionian fea, in order to cure themselves of the paffion of love. Their various characters, and effects of this leap, are de. scribed with infinite pleasantry. One hundred and twenty-four males, and one hundred and twenty-fix females, took the leap in the 250th Olympiad; out of them one hundred and twenty were perfectly C2 " Phœbus ab excelfo, quantum patet, afpicit æquor: "Actiacum populi Leucadiumque vocant. "Hinc fe Deucalion Pyrrhæ fuccenfus amore " Mifit, et illæso corpore pressit aquas. 195 " Nec mora: verfus Amor tetigit lentissima Pyrrhæ Ut monuit, cum voce abiit. Ego frigida furgo: 200 Inde NOTES. perfectly cured. Sappho, arrayed like a Spartan virgin, and her harp in her hand, threw herself from the rock with such intrepidity, as was never before observed in any who had attempted that very dangerous leap; from whence she never rose again, but was said to be changed into a swan as she fell, and was seen hovering in the air in that shape. Alcæus arrived at the promontory of Leucate that very evening, in order to take the leap on her account; but hearing that her body could not be found, he very generoufly lamented her fall, and is faid to have written his 125th ode on that occafion. WARTON. "There stands a rock, from whose impending steep " Apollo's fane surveys the rolling deep; " There injur'd lovers, leaping from above, "Their flames extinguish, and forget to love. 190 " In vain he lov'd, relentless Pyrrha scorn'd: 194 But when from hence he plung'd into the main, "Deucalion scorn'd, and Pyrrha lov'd in vain. 200 Haste, Sappho, haste, from high Leucadia throw Thy wretched weight, nor dread the deeps below!" She spoke, and vanish'd with the voice-I rife, And filent tears fall trickling from my eyes. I go, ye Nymphs! those rocks and feas to prove ; How much I fear, but ah, how much I love! I go, ye Nymphs, where furious love inspires; Let female fears submit to female fires. To rocks and feas I fly from Phaon's hate, And hope from feas and rocks a milder fate. Ye gentle gales, beneath my body blow, And foftly lay me on the waves below! And thou, kind Love, my finking limbs sustain, Spread thy foft wings, and waft me o'er the main, Nor let a Lover's death the guiltless flood profane! NOTES. 205 On VER. 207. Ye gentle gales,] These two lines have been quoted as the most smooth and mellifluous in our language; and they are supposed to derive their sweetness and harmony from the mixture of so many Iambics. Pope himself preferred the following line to all he had written, with respect to harmony: Lo, where Mæotis sleeps, and hardly flows- WARTON. Inde chelyn Phœbo communia munera ponam: " Grata lyram posui tibi, Phœbe, poëtria Sappho : "Convenit illa mihi, convenit illa tibi." Cur tamen Actiacas miferam me mittis ad oras, 220 225 Nunc vellem facunda forent: dolor artibus obstat; - Ingeniumque meis substitit omne malis. NOTES. Non VER. 223.] The translation by Philips of Sappho's beautiful relic does not, though eloquent, breathe the spirit of the original. VER. 227.] Little can be added to the character that Addison has so elegantly drawn of Sappho in the 223d and 229th numbers of the Spectator; in which are inserted the translations which Philips, under Addison's eye, gave of the two only remaining of her exquifite odes; one preserved by Dionyfius Halicarnaffus, and the other by Longinus. To the remarks that Pearce has made on the latter, I cannot forbear fubjoining a remark of Tanaquil Faber on a fecret and almost unobserved beauty of this ode: that in the eight last lines, the article dὲ, in the original, is repeated seven times, to represent the short breathings of a perfon in the act of fainting away, and pronouncing every fyllable with diffi culty. Two beautiful fragments are preferved; the first confifting only of four lines in Fulvius Urfinus, which Horace has imitated 1 On Phœbus' shrine my harp I'll then bestow, 212 215 221 NOTES. tated in the twelfth ode of the third book, Tibi qualum, &c.; and the other the beginning of an ode addressed to Evening, by Demetrius Phalareus, in the Oxford edition, by Gale, p. 104. In one of Akenfide's odes to lyric poetry, which have been too much depreciated, are two fine stanzas: one in the character of Alcæus, and the other on the character of Sappho : Spirat adhuc Amor Vivuntque commissi calores WARTON. VER. 226. This breaft, &c.] " Lik'd" seems a very unfuitable expreffion in the present day; it was a word, however, among our early writers, of greater force and fignificance : "What! I that lov'd, and you that lik'd, Shall we begin to wrangle? No, no, no; my heart is fix'd, And cannot difentangle." Old Ballad. |