Page:Cox - Sappho and the Sapphic Metre in English, 1916.djvu/10

 This is very vigorous, and also very rough, and a bad imitation of poetry noted particularly for its sweetness and melody.

In “Wits Theatre of the Little World,” 1599, on leaf 72 of this curious collection of extracts from classical and mediaeval writers on all sorts of subjects occurs the statement that “poets fain that in Leucadia there is a very high steepe rocke which is a notable remedy to asswage love,” and on leaf 152 it is said that “Lucilius was the first that wrote Satyres and Sappho the first poems of love,” the reference being to Pausanias. No other particulars of Sappho’s life or works are given. In 1601, Thomas Campion and Philip Roseter published a book called “Lyrics, Elegies,” etc., and in the “Address to the Reader” Sapphic verse is mentioned, and in the book itself an example is given. It is a sort of English hymn in Sapphic metre, but there is no reference to the actual poetry of Sappho. The imitation is rather clumsy and has a somewhat sanctimonious ring to it. Again, in 1614 there was published a tract of sixteen leaves entitled, “The Martyrdom of Saint George of Cappadocia,” etc. It contains two dedications, the second of which is signed “Tristram White.” There is at the end a page devoted to what the author calls “Sapphicks” which resemble the real poetry of Sappho only in having the same number of syllables to the line. There is nothing of the true Sappho in the production, and obviously no appreciation of the greatness of her poetic genius. Ben Jonson in “The Sad Shepherd,” Act II, Scene VI, used the expression, “the dear good Angel of the spring, the nightingale,” which is decidedly reminiscent of Sappho’s, with which it is likely that such a good classical scholar as Jonson was familiar. Although a little later in the century, the cultivated and learned Thomas Stanley translated the works of Anacreon and other Greek writers, Sappho either escaped his notice or he did not consider the fragments of sufficient importance to put into English,