Page:Cox - Sappho and the Sapphic Metre in English, 1916.djvu/13

 given and there is no description of the surviving fragments. The account is very perfunctory, and the unnecessarily manufactured tradition that there was a second and contemporaneous Sappho to serve as a pack-horse for obloquy is mentioned, and as usual the Leucadian rock is brought in with the customary categorical definiteness. The greatness of the poetess seems to be in no way appreciated, and the influence of Ovid is obvious. Longinus soon had another translator. In 1680 there was published a book described on its title page as follows: “A treatise of the Loftiness or Elegancy of Speech, Written Originally in Greek by Longin and now translated out of French by Mr. J. Pulteney,” then a quotation from Cicero and the imprint,—“London Printed by N. T. for John Holford Bookseller in the Pall Mall over against St. Alban’s Street, 1680.” This volume is duodecimo size and the translation is rather colloquial. For our present purpose Chap. VIII is the most interesting. It is headed: “Of Loftiness drawn from Circumstances” and the text reads as follows: “when Sapho [sic] would express the disorders of love, she calls to mind all the accidents which are either inherent or consequential to this Passion, but singles out such chiefly, as declare the excessive violence thereof.

Bless’d is the man, thrice bless’d who sits by thee,

Enjoys thy tongue’s soft melting harmony

Sees silent joys sit smiling on thy brow;

The Gods themselves do not such pleasure know:

When thou appears’t, streight at my heaving heart

My bloud boils up, and runs through every part,

Into such Extasies of Joy, I’m thrown,

My voice forsakes me and I’m speechless grown;

A heavy darkness hovers o’er my eyes

From my pale cheeks, the coward colour flies;

Intranc’d I lie, panting for want of breath

And shake as in an Agony of death.

Yet since I’m wretched, I must dare, etc.

Don’t you wonder how she brings together all these