Page:The Poems of Sappho (1924).djvu/56

50 in the ordinary sense than do Hamlet’s introspective musings or the malign meditations of Iago.

In 1885 H. T. Wharton published his “Sappho,” a choice example of bookmaking, a careful general bibliography 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 ideas in conception and execution, and while it has a little interest as an ornament it has no value from the historical point of view. There is a bust of the Graeco-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’ rendering of the Hymn which shares with Arnold’s the merit of being perhaps 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