Page:Cox - Sappho and the Sapphic Metre in English, 1916.djvu/15

 and the ardent but somewhat detached passion expressed by Sappho. This sprightly lady’s translation would no doubt have been interesting, but probably not too convenable, and we perhaps need not deplore our loss. We see again in the comment of this writer that the reputation of Sappho has suffered owing to the ignorance and lack of a just critical faculty on the part of those too ready to accept the scurrility of a few degenerate Greeks who lived centuries after her time and who were writing down to audiences, themselves degenerate.

Sir Thomas Pope Blount published in 1694 his book, “De Re Poetica or Remarks upon Poetry.”

After a somewhat cursory and diffuse essay upon poetry and versification with copious quotations from Dryden, Rapin and others, a considerable portion of this quarto volume is then given up to what are called “Characters and Censures.” In this portion there is a two-page biography of Sappho, who is described as “an excellent poetess, called the ninth Lyrick and the Tenth Muse and is said to have written Epigrams, Elegies, Iambicks, Monodies and nine books of Lyrick Verses; and was the Inventress of that kind of verse which from her is called Sapphick.” There are a few biographical and critical details similar to those in the “Theatrum Poetarum,” but no fragments are quoted and no translations are offered or even mentioned. However, the general tone of Blount’s remarks is highly laudatory and appreciative. The Leucadian rock legend is not mentioned and the name of Phaon does not occur.

The first reasoned criticism of Sappho and her works in English did not appear until 1711, when in Nos. 223, 229 and 233 of the “Spectator,” Joseph Addison gave us a more or less comprehensive view of the subject. He says that “among the mutilated poets of antiquity there is none whose fragments are so beautiful as those of Sappho,” and he describes her as “not descending to those little points, conceits and turn of wit with which many of our modern lyrics are so miserably infected.”