Page:Cox - Sappho and the Sapphic Metre in English, 1916.djvu/24

 graphy of the subject in all languages, and an appreciation of the poetess and her writings which at once strongly appealed to the book-lover, the classical scholar and the ordinary reader of good books. This edition, a small octavo, is unexceptionable in appearance and construction, and the Greek type used for the original text is dignified, and agreeable to read. The frontispiece, however, is distinctly the product of Mid-Victorian imagination in conception and execution, and while it has a certain interest as an ornament it has no value from the historical point of view. There is a bust of the Greco-Roman period in the Galleria Geographica in the Vatican which appeals much more strongly to the imagination and is the most pleasing of all the reputed likenesses of the poetess. A photographic reproduction of this bust is used as a frontispiece in “Sappho and the Island of Lesbos” by Mary M. Patrick (1912). Wharton’s book contains the first appearance of J. A. Symonds’ splendid rendering of the Hymn which shares with Arnold’s the merit of being the best reproduction in our language of the cadence and rhythm of the original. It contains twenty-eight lines as in the original, and the Sapphic metre is successfully reproduced. This edition is a very complete compilation of text and translations, combined with biography and criticism. It was reprinted in 1887, 1895 and 1898, each time with some additions. Such is a highly satisfactory record for a book of this sort appealing as it does to a limited circle of readers. Before the appearance of Wharton’s book, Swinburne had put on record what he thought about Sappho. In “Notes on Poems and Reviews,” referring to his “Anactoria” he says, “the keynote which I have here touched was struck long since by Sappho” and he expresses regret at his feeling of inability to render into English what he describes as “the supreme success, the final achievement of poetic art.” We could wish that he had not been so sensitive to the difficulties of turning into English the melodious cadences and the passionate rhythm of the