Page:The Poems of Sappho (1924).djvu/41

Rh attempt to reproduce the metre of the original, with four syllables instead of five in the last line of each stanza is a failure. This volume contains a long dedication to “My Lord Commissioner Whitelock,” and a short address “To the Reader.” The dedication is signed “J. Hall.” He was also the author of a volume of poems in 1646, and of several other translations, some of which were unpublished at the time of his death at the early age of thirty-one.

When Edward Phillips in 1675 compiled his collection of biographical notes which he called “Theatrum Poetarum,” he thought it desirable to add a chapter on ancient poetesses, and among these is Sappho of whom he gives a short notice occupying about one page of his duodecimo volume. She is described as “not inferior in fame to the best lyric poets,” but no quotations are 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