Page:The Poems of Sappho (1924).djvu/44

38 have writ their own thoughts on that subject,—for which we cou’d wish that Mrs. Behn herself had translated ’em before she went to Elysium to meet her.” The italics are in the original and the writer thus shows, as he apparently means the italics to indicate emphasis, that he had a real appreciation for the melodious qualities of the Hymn to Aphrodite, obviously the poem in his mind, although his seventeenth-century imagination did not permit him sufficiently to differentiate between the studied salaciousness of Mrs. Behn 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 perhaps the loss need not be deplored. 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 decadent.

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