Page:Cox - Sappho and the Sapphic Metre in English, 1916.djvu/11

 for no reference to them or their author appears in his volume privately printed in sections in 1650 and 1651, and re-issued by a bookseller in 1652 as a book for public circulation.

In Burton’s immortal “Anatomy of Melancholy,” first published in 1621, again in 1624 and in 1628 for the first time with the engraved title-page, in Part 3, Section 2, there is a reference to “Leucata Petra,” and it is stated that “here leaped down that Lesbian Sappho for Phaon on whom she miserably doted, hoping thus to ease herself and to be freed of her love pangs.” This legend with its Ovidian handling seems to have been of perennial interest in the earlier days of classical studies in England, but as far as Burton is concerned Sappho as a writer of poetry might never have existed, and his remarks are only of incidental interest.

Apparently the first actual rendering into English of either of the two important Sapphic fragments occurs in an uncommon little book, a translation of Longinus on the Sublime, done by John Hall of Durham, the poet, in 1652. This volume, and another to be described later, seem to have escaped the notice of writers on Sappho, and they were certainly unknown to Joseph Addison, who definitely states in the “Spectator” that the translations done by Ambrose Philips in 1711 were the first in English. This book is a very small octavo, and the title, printed in red and black, reads as follows—“ or DinoysiusDionysius [sic] Longinus of the Height of Eloquence rendered out of the Original by J. H. Esq. London Printed by Roger Daniel for Francis Eaglesfield at the Marygold in Pauls Churchyard 1652.” The collation is A—H$2$ in eights. The portion of interest to us at present is § 8 which contains a translation of the ode beginning “” for the preservation of which our thanks are due to Longinus. As this is the first effort of its kind it is perhaps worth quoting:

He that sits next to thee now and hears

Thy charming voyce, to me appears