But wine shall gush in every rill, To tune his lyre and soul to pleasure, sure ! Thus, after death, if spirits feel, Thou mayst, from odours round thee streaming, A pulse of past enjoyment steal, And yet, oh bard! thou art not mute in death, Still, still we catch thy lyre's delicious breath ;2 And still thy songs of soft Bathylla Green as the ivy round the mouldering bloom, tomb! Nor yet has death obscured thy fire of Still, still it lights thee through the And dreams are thine that bless the And live again in blissful dreaming! And Venus calls thee, even in death, Εύδει, χη παιδων ζωρότατη μανιη. Ακμην λειριοεντι μελίζεται αμφι Βαθυλλῳ. Ιμερα και κισσου λευκος όδωδε λιθος. Ουδ' Αΐδης σοι ερωτας απεσβεσεν εν δ' Αχέροντος Ων, όλος ωδινεις Κυπριδι θερμότερη HERE sleeps Anacreon, in this ivied shade; Here, mute in death, the Teian swan is laid.l Cold, cold the heart, which lived but to respire A All the voluptuous frenzy of desire! 1 Tius Horace of Pindar: Multa Dircæum levat aura cycnum. A swan was the hieroglyphical emblem of a poet. Anacreon has been called the swan of Teos by another of his eulogists: Εν τοις μελιχροις Ίμεροισι συντροφον The Teian, nursed with all those honeyed boys, 2 Thus Simonides, speaking of our poet : her own ! Σπεισον εμη σποδιῃ, σπεισον λανος, οφρα Ετ τι τοι εκ βιβλων ηλθεν εμων οφελος, κεν οινῳ Οστεα γήθησε ταμα νοτιζομενα, Ὡς ὁ Διονυσου μεμελημένος ουασε κώμος Ως ὁ φιλακρητου συντροφος ἁρμονίης, Μηδε καταφθιμενος Βακχου διχα τούτον ὑποισω Τον γενεη μεροπων χωρον οφειλομενον On stranger ! if Anacreon's shell Has ever taught thy heart to swell1 With passion's throb or pleasure's sigh, In pity turn, as wandering nigh, Nor yet are all his numbers mute, Though dark within the tomb he lies; With sleepless animation sighs! This is the famous Simonides, whom Plato styled 'divine,' though Le Fevre, in his Poetes 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 Stobaeus, ψογος γυναικών. 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. Obsopœus the commentator here appears to exult in their the bishops and patriarchs, he adds, nec sane id destruction; and telling us they were burned by necquicquam fecerunt,' attributing to this outrage an effect which it could never produce. 3 The spirit of Anacreon utters these verses from the tomb, somewhat mutatus ab illo,' at least in simplicity of expression. 4 We may guess from the words εκ βιβλων And drop thy goblet's richest tear,1 Του αυτου, εις τον αυτον. Εύδεις εν φθιμενοισιν, Ανακρεον, εσθλα | πονήσας, Εύδει δ ̓ ἡ γλυκερη νυκτίλαλος κιθαρα, Euov, that Anacreon was not merely a writer of billets-doux, as some French critics have called him. Amongst these, Le Fevre, with all his professed admiration, has given our poet a character by no means of an elevated cast: Aussi c'est pour cela que la postérité See the verses prefixed to his Poètes Grecs. This is unlike the language of Theocritus, to whom Anacreon is indebted for the following simple culogium: Εις Ανακρέοντος ανδριάντα. Των προσθ' ει τι περισσον ῳδοποιων. UPON THE STATUE OF ANACREON. Stranger! who near this statue chance to roam, The simplicity of this inscription has always delighted me; I have given it, I believe, as literally as a verse translation will allow. 1 Thus Simonides, in another of his epitaphs on our poet : Και μιν αει τεγγοι νοτερη δροσος, ὡς ὁ γεραιος Λαρότερον μαλακών έπνεεν εκ στομάτων. Let vines, in clustering beauty wreathed, 2 The original here is corrupted, the line is ó Διονυσου is unintelligible. Brunck's emendation improves the sense, but I doubt if it can be commended for elegance. He reads the line thus: ὡς ὁ Διωνύσοιο λελασμένος ούποτε κωμων. See Brunck, Analecta Veter. Poet. Græc. vol. ii. 3 In another of these poems, the nightlyspeaking lyre' of the bard is not allowed to be silent even after his death. Ως ὁ φιλάκρητος τε και οινοβαρες φιλοκωμος To beauty's smile and wine's delight, 4 Thus, says Brunck, in the prologue to the Satires of Persius: Cantare credas Pegaseium nectar. 'Melos' is the usual reading in this line, and Casaubon has defended it; but 'nectar,' I think, is much more spirited. 5 The original, To Io0wv cap, 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: * Brunck has кρov; but κρονοι, the common reading, better suits a detached quotation. Farewell! thou hadst a pulse for every | And every woman found in thee a dart That Love could scatter from his Υγρα δε δερκομένοισιν εν ομμασιν ουλον αείδοις, Long may the nymph around thee play, That lights thine eyes' dissolving fire! Her every grace that warms and blesses; The beaming glory of her tresses. The expression here, aveos xouns, 'the flower of the hair,' is borrowed from Anacreon himself, as appears by a fragment of the poet preserved in Stobæus: Απεκειρας δ' άπαλης αμωμον ανθος. This couplet is not otherwise warranted by the original, than as it dilates the thought which Antipater has figuratively expressed: heart, i Which thou, with all thy soul, didst give her! Τον δε γυνακειων μελέων πλέξαντα ποτ' ῳδας, Ηδυν Ανακρείοντα,* Τεως εις Ελλαδ' ανήγεν, Συμποσιων ερεθισμα, γυναικων ηπεροπευμα. Critias, of Athens, pays a tribute to the legiti mate gallantry of Anacreon, calling him, with elegant concisenes, γυναικών ηπεροπευμα. Teos gave to Greece her treasure, For the maids who blushed approving! Where's the guest could ever fly him? Wheres the nymph could e'er deny him? * Thus Scaliger, in his dedicatory verses to Ronsard: Blandus, suaviloquus, dulcis Anacreon. JUVENILE POEMS. 1801. PREFACE BY THE EDITOR. 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 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. Tibullus abounds with touches of fine and natural feeling. The idea of bis unexpected return to Delia, Tunc veniam subito,' &c., is imagined with all the delicate ardour of a lover; and the sentiment of 'nec te posse carere velim,' however colloquial the expression may have been, is natural and from the heart. But, in my opinion, the poet of Verona possessed more genuine feeling than any of them. His life was, I believe, unfortunate; 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 ? Cum mens onus reponit, ac peregrino Desideratoque acquiescimus lecto.'-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 admirel so warmly. It seems to have been peculiarly the fate of Catullus, that the better and more valuable part of his poetry has 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.' 2 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 anything 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. Watton, 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 (avo rarissima nostro simplicitas) was his fondest In the following Poems there is a translation of one of his finest Carmina; but I fancy it is only a schoolboy's essay, and de serves to be praised for little more than the attempt. 2 Lucretius. |