Invenio sylvam, quae faepe cubilia nobis 166 170 175 180 185 Quem fupra ramos expandit aquatica lotos, « Phoebus t 166 170 That charm'd me more, with native moss o'ergrown, Clear as a glass, the shining fands below : 180 Eternal greens the mossy margin grace, Before my fight a wat'ry Virgin stood: She stood and cry'd, "O you that love in vain! 190 " There NOTES. VER. 188. Leucadian main] Addison, with his usual exquifite humour, has given in the 233d Spectator an account of the perfons, male and female, who leaped from the promontory of Leucate into "Phoebus ab excelso, quantum patet, afpicit aequor "Actiacum populi Leucadiumque vocant. " Hinc se Deucalion Pyrrhae fuccenfus amore ८८ Mifit, et illaefo corpore preffit aquas. 195 "Nec mora: versus Amor tetigit lentissima Pyrrhae Ut monuit, cum voce abiit. Ego frigida furgo: 200 NOTES. into the Ionian sea, in order to cure themselves of the passion of love. Their various characters, and effects of this leap, are described with infinite pleasantry. One hundred and twenty-four males, and one hundred and twenty-fix females, took the leap in the 250th Olympiad; out of them one hundred and twenty were perfectly cured. Sappho, arrayed like a Spartan virgin, and her harp in her hand, threw herself from the rock with such intrepidity, as was never before observed in any who had attempted that very dangerous leap; from whence the never rose again, but was faid to be changed into a swan as she fell, and was seen hovering in the air in that shape. Alcæus arrived at the promontory of Leucate that very evening, in order to take the leap on her account; but hearing that her body could not be found, he very generoufly lamented her fall, and is faid to have written his 125th ode on that occafion. Inde 194 "There injur'd lovers, leaping from above, "Their flames extinguish, and forget to love. "Deucalion once with hopeless fury burn'd, " In vain he lov'd, relentless Pyrrha scorn'd: " But when from hence he plung'd into the main, "Deucalion scorn'd, and Pyrrha lov'd in vain. "Hafte, Sappho, haste, from high Leucadia throw "Thy wretched weight, nor dread the deeps below!" She spoke, and vanish'd with the voice-I rife, And filent tears fall trickling from my eyes. I go, ye Nymphs! those rocks and feas to prove; How much I fear, but ah, how much I love! I go, ye Nymphs, where furious love inspires; Let female fears submit to female fires. 200 205 To rocks and feas I fly from Phaon's hate, 212 NOTES. VER. 207. Te gentle gales] These two lines have been quoted as the most smooth and mellifluous in our language; and they are supposed to derive their sweetness and harmony from the mixture of fo many Iambics. Pope himself preferred the following line to all he had written, with respect to harmony: Lo, where Mæotis sleeps, and hardly flows Inde chelyn Phoebo communia munera ponam : "Grata lyram pofui tibi, Phoebe, poëtria Sappho : "Convenit illa mihi, convenit illa tibi." Cur tamen Actiacas miferam me mittis ad oras, Si moriar, titulum mortis habere meae? 220 225 Nunc vellem facunda forent: dolor artibus obstat; Ingeniumque meis substitit omne malis. Non mihi refpondent veteres in carmina vires. 230 Plectra dolore tacent: muta dolore lyra eft. NOTES. Lesbides VER. 227.] Little can be added to the character that Addison has so elegantly drawn in the 223d and 229th numbers of the Spectator; in which are inserted the translations which Philips, under Addison's eye, gave of the two only remaining of her exquifite odes; one preserved by Dionyfius Halicarnaffus, and the other by Longinus. To the remarks that Pearce has made on the latter, I cannot forbear fubjoining a remark of Tanaquil Faber on a fecret and almost unobferved beauty of this ode: that in the eight last lines, the article di, in the original, is repeated seven times, to represent the short breathings of a person in the act of fainting away, and pronouncing every fyllable with difficulty. Two beautiful fragments are preferved; the first confifting orly of four lines in Fulvius Urfinus, which Horace has imitated in the twelfth ode of the third book, Tibi qualum, &c.; and |