Page images
PDF
EPUB

conspiracy of Harmodius, Anacreon returned to Teos; whence he was again driven by the revolt of Histiæus, and removed once more to Abdera, where he died. He is said by Pliny to have been choked by a grape-stone, which he swallowed in a draught of new wine: a close of poetical justice to a life passed, according to the traditional accounts of him, in one protracted fever of intemperance. His statue in the citadel of Athens represented him in the character of a drunken old man. As a confirmed voluptuary, it was not to be expected that he should escape vices of a deeper dye: his amorous depravities were, indeed, the vices of his age; but Anacreon has not, like Horace, his redeeming excellencies; nor do I know that he has left on record one solitary sentiment that might subserve the interests of virtue.

The drinking-songs of Anacreon have all the gaiety of their subject, without any of its grossness. His assumed philosophy, however irrational in itself, gives a dignity to his manner; and there is a pathos in the thought of fleeting life, which, perhaps, constitutes the secret charm of many of

these effusions of voluptuousness. On this Anacreontic philosophy a practical comment is supplied by a modern sage and poet:

O'er the dread feast malignant Chemia scowls,
And mingles poison in the nectar'd bowls:
Fell Gout peeps grinning through the flimsy scene,
And bloated Dropsy pants behind unseen:
Wrapt in his robe white Lepra hides his stains,
And silent Frenzy, writhing, bites his chains.

DARWIN.

His amatory pieces are airy, graceful, and delicately fanciful. His style is a model of classic simplicity elegant, not florid: without studied ornaments, or ambitious figures; natural in sentiment, and pure from witty conceit.

The genuineness of Anacreon's Odes has been singularly called in question, by two men of learned celebrity: by Petrus Alcyonius, and by Father Hardouin. The former pretended that these odes had not the Attic propriety. The latter does not to have intended any

seem

particular slight to the genius of Anacreon:

as his slashing system of critical paradox equally

1

proscribed Homer, Plato, and Aristotle, the odes of Horace and the Eneid of Virgil, as fabrications of the monks of the thirteenth cen

tury. Never had the cowled head been so overshadowed with laurels !

ANACREON.

LOVE.

"TWAS WAS midnight's hour: the bear turn'd slow

Urg'd by Boötes' hand below:

What time the race of men supine

In heavy slumber's lap recline ;

When Love stood knocking at my gate:"
"Who beats my door thus loud and late,
And scares my dreams?"""Tis I am here;
Open; a child; you need not fear ;

I drop with wet; and, gone astray
Through moonless dark, have lost my way."
I melted, as he begg'd so hard:
Rose, sprang a light, my door unbarr'd:
A boy my threshold cross'd; but lo!
With wings, and quiver, and a bow.
Near the warm hearth I bade him stand,

And chafed in mine each tiny hand;

And wrung the ringlets of his hair Dank-dropping from the rainy air. When, by degrees, his chill had fled, "Come-let us try my bow," he said; "If flagging wet have damp'd the cord:" He spoke, and twang'd it at the word. The arrow, fitted from his quiver,

Thrill'd, like a gad-fly, through my liver. Laughing the urchin leap'd aside:

[ocr errors]

My kind host, give me joy," he cried: "My bowstring yet is trim and sound;

Your heart, I wot, shall feel the wound."

« PreviousContinue »