be borne tamely by those who smarted beneath a sense of her superior attainments and graces. Sappho, although not handsome, was attractive, as well as gifted,-a perilous combination for a woman, whose consciousness of grace and genius, together with ardour of nature, will not suffer her to remain in obscurity. It is a moral necessity with such beings as Sappho to exercise the qualities with which Heaven has endowed them. They instinctively feel the force of Shakespeare's grand axiom:— "If our virtues Did not go forth of us, 'twere all alike As if we had them not. Spirits are not finely touch'd, But to fine issues: nor nature never lends The smallest scruple of her excellence, But, like a thrifty goddess, she determines Both thanks and use." Sappho gratefully used Nature's gifts in the noblest way, when she dedicated them to the endeavour of advancing the mental culture of her native Lesbians; and those among them who were most capable of profiting by her efforts, estimated her duly, honouring her as an inspired teacher, an alluring guide, whose feminine charm aided her admirable faculties in leading them to higher elevation and accomplishment. But by the gross-minded, the little-minded, and the grudging-minded, Sappho's attempts to ameliorate the condition of those around her, and to introduce greater refinement in their social pursuits, were construed into vilest meaning, and made the ground of the most odious imputations. Her luxurious enjoyment of Art, her exquisite appreciation of the passion of Love in its matchless beatitude, her intense perception of the loveliness and bliss existing in Poesy and Music as recreations to the spirit, drew upon her the charge of sensuality; and she who strove to exalt her associates, was accused of seeking to debase them. Either wounded by these injurious calumnies, or, as some accounts say, owing to political causes, (being accused by her enemies of complicity with Alcaus in a conspiracy against Pittacus, the governor of Mitylene,) she retired for a time into Sicily. Here the friendship between herself and Anacreon, alluded to by Hermesianax, was supposed to have been formed; but Athenæus maintains that the elegiast was mistaken in believing that Sappho entertained any preference for Anacreon, since, as he asserts, Sappho lived during the time when Alyattes, father to Croesus, reigned; and Anacreon during that of Cyrus and Polycrates. The well-known rivalry in poetical composition which subsisted between Alcæus and Sappho, each being held by their respective partisans to excel the other in merit, seems to preclude the idea of her being engaged with him in any confederacy or plot. Indeed, so much malice mingles with most that is recorded of Sappho, and so much confusion has arisen from her bearing the same name with a woman of entirely opposite character, that it is difficult to arrive at a correct account of her life. Unfortunately, too, her poems, which obtained her so wide a renown, are little better known to us. Few of them have reached our time; though the majority of her compositions were extant in the age of Horace. They are said to have consisted of nine books, containing a variety of odes, hymns, epithalamia, elegies, epigrams, and other poems. A hymn to Venus, an ode to a friend, and sundry brief fragments, are all that now remain to prove how truly Sappho deserved the admiration bestowed upon her by her contemporaries, and by the writers of antiquity. But these few productions afford sufficient proof of excellence to justify the award of judges who were acquainted with the rest of her works. Feeling, warmth of expression, elegance of diction, felicity of measure, are to be traced in such excellence as to warrant her being ranked high among lyric poets; and the specimens that exist of her composition, awaken keen regret that the whole should not have been preserved,-not only for their own sake, but because of the insight they would have afforded into particulars of Greek sentiment, as exemplified in the heart-effusions of such a woman as Sappho. A poetess, who wrote at the opening of the fifteenth century, left a translated fragment from one of Sappho's compositions,-and in the Sapphic Strophe. The antiquated French, gives it a remote air, in accordance with the original antique; and the warmth of Clotilde de Surville's style in expression, assimilates completely with that of the Greek poetess. "Qu'a mon grè ceste-là va primant sur les dieux ! Je t'ai vu dans mon seyn, Vénus, qu'ay toute en l'ame, Court en fleuves de flame- S'ennuaigent mes yeulx; n'oy plus qu'enmy rumeurs; Me manque; je me meurs.— ["How she, above the rest of Gods, shines beauteous! How charm, in flowing from thy mouth of roses, The sounds melodious! I've felt thee, Venus, in my heart,-to soul it came,— Stifling my accents on my lips that burn'd, Venus, with subtle fire, to my very bones return'd Swift in waves of flame. Cloud my moist eyes; I hear but murmur'd sigh; I melt, I languish; hot thrillings in my veins Fleet through; I pale, I throb, my breathing pains Clotilde de Surville may justly be called the French Sappho, for that intense glow and passionate earnestness which pervade her beautiful verses. The poem to her husband, Bérenger,—a young knight who fought under Charles VII. in the wars against England and Burgundy,-breathes the very soul of conjugal fervour; and the stanzas to her first-born, are instinct with the rapturous delight of a young and proudly happy mother. A little roundel, graced by the most playful and womanly spirit,— half coy, half tender, and wholly charming,-may well be cited here, in an account of Sappho, the love-poetess. The roundel is addressed to Clotilde's favourite friend, Rocca, and tells of a certain stolen kiss. It is headed : Sur ce que RONDEL A MA DOULCE MYE ROCCA, vinct ung soir le bel amy bayzer me desrober à la fontaine. 1422. Qu'au cler de lune ay déduict, se me voy Me courrouciay: n'avoit encor ma foy, (Si bien mon cœur, car l'eust de prime aubaine;) Qu'au cler de lune. Donc me faschay; puys, comme il se tint coy, Qu'au cler de lune. [ROUNDEL, TO MY SWEET FRIEND, ROCCA; On the handsome lover coming one evening and stealing a kiss from me at the fountain. How gladly, by moonlight, I find me alone By the brink of a fountain's bright crystalline glass! I pretended to pout:-he wasn't then mine; (Yet my heart was fast his, from the very first dawn ;) So, I pouted! then as he kept still I forgave him he said: "O my queen! "I might have ta'en twenty-and twenty I will, "Had I known!"-Take them sweetheart; thou'st seen Me by night time;-the fault's not my ill, But the light of the moon.] A short poem, attributed to Sappho, has been rendered into English verse by one who is worthy to be called a sister poetess. She who (if it were only for those exquisite forty-three sonnets of Shakesperian style;-for the tender pathos of her "Caterina and Camoens;" and for the condensed passion of that grand little poem, “A year's spinning," a world of emotion in seven stanzas—) richly deserves the title of our modern Sappho,-Elizabeth Barrett Browning, has given us the opportunity of reading this graceful lyric, believed to have been written by the famed Lesbian. There is a Grecian zest, and flush of beauty in the lines, which makes us feel it properly ascribed to Sappho. |