Page:Cox - Sappho and the Sapphic Metre in English, 1916.djvu/9

 in Elizabethan and Jacobean times, this knowledge appears to have been superficial with a large proportion of it infected with the Ovidian version of the alleged episode in connection with Phaon, for references to this and to the Leucadian rock legend, with a few doubtful biographical details from late classical sources comprise all that we have in English up to, as we shall see later, the appearance of John Hall’s translation of Longinus in 1652. There was apparently no attempt to translate the magnificent Hymn to Aphrodite, although nearly every classical writer of anything like equal importance had some attention during this period. Much that was Greek we must, however, remember came to England in French or Latin versions frequently tinctured with the personal views of the translators into those languages. It is a fact worth noting that the Sapphic metre attracted certain poets and compilers soon after it was known in England, but the first attempts to use it in our language were not in the nature of translations, but of original compositions. For example, in Barnabe Barnes’ “Parthenophil and Parthenophe,” 1593, there are two attempts at lyrics in imitation of the Greek, one in Sapphics and one in Anacreontics. The first verse of the Sapphic poem goes as follows:

and the other four verses are of the same somewhat jerky and undistinguished quality. In Davison’s “Poetical Rhapsody,” 1602, there is also an attempt at Sapphics in a set of verses supposed to be by the mysterious “A. W.,” who contributed other poems to this rare anthology. A specimen verse is as follows: