Weave the frontlet, richly flushing, AMONG the Epigrams of the Anthologia, there are some panegyrics on Anacreon, which I had translated, and originally intended as a kind of Coronis to the work: but I found, upon consideration, that they wanted variety; a frequent recurrence of the same thought, within the limits of an epitaph, to which they are confined, would render a collection of them rather uninteresting. I shall take the liberty, however, of subjoining a few, that I may not appear to have totally neglected those elegant tributes to the reputation of Anacreon. The four epigrams which I give are imputed to Antipater Sidonius. They are rendered, perhaps, with too much freedom; but, designing a translation of all that are on the subject, I imagined it was necessary to enliven their uniformity by sometimes indulging in the liberties of paraphrase. Αντιπατρου Σιδωνίου, εις Ανακρέοντα. ΘΑΛΛΟΙ τετρακορύμβος, Ανακρεον, αμφι σε κισσός άβρα τε λειμώνων πορφυρέων πεταλα πηγαι αργινόεντος αναθλίβοιντο γαλακτος, ευωδες δ' απο γης που χεοιτο μεθυ, οφρα κε το αποδίη τε και ο εκ τέρψιν αρηται, AROUND the tomb, oh bard divine! Long may the deathless ivy twine, And Summer pour her waste of roses! 'Antipater Sidonius, the author of this epigram, lived, according to Vossius, de Poetis Græcis, in the second year of the 169th Olympiad. He appears, from what Cicero and Quintilian have said of him, to have been a kind of improvvisatore. See Institut. Orat. lib. x, cap. 7.-There is nothing more known respecting this poet, except some particulars about his illness and death, which are mentioned as curious by Pliny and others; and there remain of his works but a few epigrams in the Anthologia, among which are these I have selected, upon Anacreon. Those remains have been sometimes imputed to another poet (a) of the same name, of whom Vossius gives us the following account: «Antipater Thessalonicensis vixit tempore Augusti Cæsaris, ut qui saltantem viderit Pyladem, sicut constat ex quodam ejus epigrammate Ανθολογίας, lib. ir, tit. εἰς Ορχη Spids. At eum ac Bathyllum primos fuisse pantomimos, ac sub Augusto claruisse, satis notum ex Dione, etc. etc. The reader, who thinks it worth observing, may find a strange oversight in Hoffman's quotation of this article from Vossius, Lexic. Univers. By the omission of a sentence he has made Vossius assert that the poet Antipater was one of the first pantomime dancers in Rome. Barnes, upon the epigram before us, mentions a version of it by Brodeus, which is not to be found in that commentator; but he more than once confounds Brodeus with another annotator on the Anthologia, Vincentius Obsopeus, who has given a translation of the epigram. (a) Pleraque tamen Thessalonicensi tribuenda videntur. Του αυτού, εις τον αυτον. ΤΥΜΒΟΣ Ανακρείοντος· ὁ Τηΐος ενθάδε κυκνος HERE sleeps Anacreon, in this ivied shade; This is the famous Simonides, whom Plato styled «divine, though Le Fevre, in his Poètes Grecs, supposes that the epigrams under his name are all falsely imputed. The most considerable of his remains is a satirical poem upon women, preserved by Stobæus, poyos yuvaizmy. We may judge from the lines I have just quoted, and the import of the epigram before us, that the works of Anacreon were perfect in the times of Simonides and Antipater. Obsopeus, the commentator, here appears to exult in their destruction, and telling us they were burned by the bishops and patriarchs, he adds, nec sane id necquicquam fecerunt, attributing to this outrage an effect which it could never produce. See the verses prefixed to his Poètes Grecs. This is unlike the language of Theocritus, to whom Anacreon is indebted for the following simple eulogium: Εις Ανακρέοντος ανδριαντα. Θασαι τον ανδριαντα τουτον, ω ξενε, των προσθ' ει τι περισσον ῳδοποιων. Upon the Statue of Anacreon. Stranger! who near this statue chance to roam, And you may say, returning to your home, Then, if you add, « That striplings loved him well, " The simplicity of this inscription has always delighted me; I have given it, I believe, as literally as a verse translation will allow. And drop thy goblet's richest tear, etc.] Thus Simonides, in another of his epitaphs on our poet: So shall my sleeping ashes thrill Του αυτού, εις τον αυτον. ΕΥΔΕΙΣ εν φθιμενοισιν, Ανακρεον, εσθλα πονήσας, είδει δ ̓ ἡ γλυκερη νυκτίλαλος κιθαρα, εύδει και Σμέρδις, το Ποθων εαρ, ᾧ συ μελισίων βαρβιτ', ανεκρούου νεκταρ εναρμόνιον. ηίθεου γαρ Έρωτος έφυς σκοπος· ες δε σε μουνον τοξα τε και σκολιας είχεν έκηβολίας. Ar length thy golden hours have wing'd their flight, She, too, for whom that heart profusely shed And with her blest Anacreon slumbers! And Bacchus wanton'd to my lays, etc.] The original here is corrupted, the line ὡς ὁ Διονύσου, is unintelligible. Brunck's emendation improves the sense, but I doubt if it can be commended for elegance. He reads the line thas: ὡς ὁ Διωνύσοιο λελασμένος ουποτε κώμων. See BRUNCE, Analecta Veter. Poet. Græc. vol. ii. Thy harp, that whisper'd through each lingering night, etc.] In another of these poems, the nightly-speaking lyre » of the bard is not allowed to be silent even after his death. ὡς ὁ φιλάκρητος τε και οινοβαρες φιλοχωμος παννύχιος κρούοι (α) την φιλοπαιδα χελυν. Σιμωνίδου, εις Ανακρέοντα. To beauty's smile and wine's delight, To joys he loved on earth so well, She, the young spring of thy desires, etc.] The original, το Ποθων εαρ, is beautiful. We regret that such praise should be lavished so preposterously, and feel that the poet's mistress, Eurypyle, would have deserved it better. Her name has been told us by Meleager, as already quoted, and in another epigram by Antipater. ύγρα δε δερκομένοισιν εν ομμασιν ουλον αείδοις, αιθύσσων λιπαρές ανθος ύπερθε κομης, με προς Ευρυπύλην τετραμμένος Long may the nymph around thee play, Basking her beauties in the ray That lights thine eyes' dissolving fire! (α) Brunck bas χρονων, και χρονοι, the common reading, better suits a detached quotation. Vincentius Obsopus, upon this passage, contrives to indulge us with a little astrological wisdom, and talks in a style of learned scan- (4) Thus Scaliger, in his dedicatory verses to Ronsard : dal about Venus, male posita cum Marte in domo Saturni," Blandus, suaviloquus, dulcis Anacreon. Little's Poems. LUSISSE PUDET.-HOR. Τα ες' ονειρων νεοτέρων φαντασματα, οἷον ληρος. PREFACE. BY THE EDITOR. Metroc. THE Poems which I take the liberty of publishing were never intended by the Author to pass beyond the circle of his friends. He thought, with some justice, that what are called Occasional Poems must be always insipid and uninteresting to the greater part of their readers. The particular situations in which they were written; the character of the author and of his associates; all these peculiarities must be known and felt before we can enter into the spirit of such compositions. This consideration would have always, I believe, prevented Mr LITTLE from submitting these trifles of the moment to the eye of dispassionate criticism: and, if their posthumous introduction to the world be injustice to his memory, or intrusion on the public, the error must be imputed to the injudicious partiality of friendship. Mr LITTLE died in his one-and-twentieth year; and most of these Poems were written at so early a period, that their errors may claim some indulgence from the critic: their author, as unambitious as indolent, scarce ever looked beyond the moment of composition; he wrote as he pleased, careless whether he pleased as he wrote. It may likewise be remembered that they were all the productions of an age when the passions very often give a colouring too warm to the imagination; and this may palliate, if it cannot excuse, that air of levity which pervades so many of them. The « aurea legge, s' ei piace ei lice, he too much pursued, and too much ap. DIOG. LAERT. Lib. vi, cap. 6. inculcates. Few can regret this more sincerely than myself; and if my friend had lived, the judgment of riper years would have chastened his mind, and tempered the luxuriance of his fancy. Mr LITTLE gave much of his time to the study of the amatory writers. If ever he expected to find in the ancients that delicacy of sentiment and variety of fancy which are so necessary to refine and animate the poetry of love, he was much disappointed. I know not any one of them who can be regarded as a model in that style; Ovid made love like a rake, and Propertius like a schoolmaster. The mythological allusions of the latter are called erudition by his commentators; but such ostentatious display, upon a subject so simple as love, would be now esteemed vague and puerile, and was, even in his own times, pedantic. It is astonishing that so many critics have preferred him to the pathetic Tibullus; but I believe the defects which a common reader condemns have been looked upon rather as beauties by those erudite men, the commentators, who find a field for their ingenuity and research in his Grecian learning and quaint obscurities. fortunate; his associates were wild and abandoned; and the warmth of his nature took too much advantage of the latitude which the morals of those times so criminally allowed to the passions. All this depraved his imagination, and made it the slave of his senses: but still a native sensibility is often very warmly perceptible; and when he touches on pathos, he reaches the heart immediately. They who have felt the sweets of return to a home from which they have long been absent, will confess the beauty of those simple unaffected lines: O quid solutis est beatius curis? CARM. xxxii. His sorrows on the death of his brother are the very tears of poesy; and when he complains of the ingratitude of mankind, even the inexperienced cannot but sympathize with him. I wish I were a poet; I should endeavour to catch, by translation, the spirit of those beauties which I admire so warmly. has It seems to have been peculiarly the fate of Catullus, that the better and more valuable part of his poetry not reached us; for there is confessedly nothing in his extant works to authorize the epithet doctus » so universally bestowed upon him by the ancients. If time had suffered the rest to escape, we perhaps should have found among them some more purely amatory; but of those we possess, can there be a sweeter specimen of warm, yet chastened description, than his loves of Acme and Septimius? and the few little songs of dalliance to Lesbia are distinguished by such an exquisite playfulness, that they have always been assumed as models by the most elegant modern Latinists. Still, I must confess, in the midst of these beauties, -Medio de fonte leporum Surgit amari aliquid, quod in ipsis floribus angat.' It has often been remarked, that the ancients knew nothing of gallantry; and we are told there was too much sincerity in their love to allow them to trifle with the semblance of passion. But I cannot perceive that they were any thing more constant than the moderns: they felt all the same dissipation of the heart, though they knew not those seductive graces by which gallantry almost teaches it to be amiable. Wotton, the learned advocate for the moderns, deserts them in considering this point of comparison, and praises the ancients for their ignorance of such a refinement; but he seems to have collected his notions of gallantry from the insipid fadeurs of the French romances, which are very unlike the sentimental levity, the grata protervitas,» of a Rochester or a Sedley. From what I have had an opportunity of observing, the early poets of our own language were the models which Mr LITTLE selected for imitation. To attain their simplicity (ævo rarissima nostro simplicitas) was his fondest ambition. He could not have aimed at a grace more difficult of attainment;3 and his life was of too In the following Poems, there is a translation of one of his finest Carmina; but I fancy it is only a school-boy's essay, and deserves to be praised for little more than the attempt. * Lucretius. It is a curious illustration of the labour which simplicity requires, that the Ramblers of Johnson, elaborate as they appear, were written with Anency, and seldom required revision; while the simple language of Rousseau, which seems to come flowing from the heart, was the slow production of painful labour, pausing on every word, and balancing every sentence. short a date to allow him to perfect such a taste; but how far he was likely to have succeeded, the critic may judge from his productions. I have found among his papers a novel, in rather an imperfect state, which, as soon as I have arranged and collected it, shall be submitted to the public eye. Where Mr LITTLE was born, or what is the genealogy of his parents, are points in which very few readers can be interested. His life was one of those humble streams which have scarcely a name in the map of life, and the traveller may pass it by without inquiring its source or direction. His character was well known to all who were acquainted with him; for he had too much vanity to hide its virtues, and not enough of art to conceal its defects. The lighter traits of his mind may be traced perhaps in his writings; but the few for which he was valued live only in the remembrance of his friends. TO J. ATK-NS-N, ESQ. MY DEAR SIR, T. M. I FEEL a very sincere pleasure in dedicating to you the Second Edition of our friend LITTLE'S Poems. I am not unconscious' that there are many in the collection which perhaps it would be prudent to have altered or omitted: and, to say the truth, I more than once revised them for that purpose; but, I know not why, I distrusted either my heart or my judgment; and the consequence is, you have them in their original form: Non possunt nostros multa, Faustine, lituræ I am convinced, however, that though not quite a casuiste relâché, you have charity enough to forgive such inoffensive follies: you know the pious Beza was not the less revered for those sportive juvenilia which he published under a fictitious name; nor did the levity of Bembo's poems prevent him from making a very good cardinal. Believe me, my dear friend, April 19, 1802. POEMS, ETC. TO JULIA. T. M. IN ALLUSION TO SOME ILLIBERAL CRITICISMS. WHY, let the stingless critic chide Shall say, while o'er my simple theme She languishes in Passion's dream, He was, indeed, a tender soul— No critic law, no chill control, Should ever freeze, by timid art, The flowings of so fond a heart!. Yes! soul of Nature! soul of Love! That, hovering like a snow-wing'd dove, Breathed o'er my cradle warblings wild, And hail'd me Passion's warmest child! Grant me the tear from Beauty's eye, From Feeling's breast the votive sigh; Oh! let my song, my memory, find A shrine within the tender mind; And I will scorn the critic's chide, And I will scorn the fume of pride Which mantles o'er the pedant fool, Like vapour on a stagnant pool! TO MRS IF, in the dream that hovers If joys from sleep I borrow, Oh! if thou art, in seeming, All that I've c'er required: Oh! if I feel, in dreaming, All that I've c'er desired; Wilt thou forgive my taking A kiss, or something more? What thou deny'st me waking, Ob! let me slumber o'er! |