Page:The Poems of Sappho (1924).djvu/57

Rh with biography and criticism. It was reprinted in 1887, 1895, and 1898, each time with some additions. 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 Hymn to Aphrodite and the Ode, when he was composing his vibrant panegyric of the immortal poetess so that we might now have, in addition to a few fine translations, one from the pen of him in whom shone more brilliantly than in almost any other modern the incandescence of Greek poetic genius. It cannot be doubted that that effort would have been crowned with a great measure of success, though in one or two references to Sappho, Swinburne is inclined to extravagance, and Arnold’s criticism of him, already mentioned, is justified.

In March 1894 the “Atlantic Monthly” was again the vehicle for an interesting and able article of seven pages, entitled “The Sapphic Secret,” written by Maurice Thompson. This writer incidentally translates many of the shorter fragments usually literally, but does not attempt the two