Tanaquil Faber, it may be added, pronounces this ode a forgery, unworthy of Anacreon, and the work of some modern block head.' Whereupon Barnes politely retorts on the Frenchman: Faber was certainly mad when he wrote this-Cerebrosum in hac parte Fabrum pronuncio.' I hope their shades have settled the dispute before now. An old French poet glosses over his inconstancy by a very fair argument. How Anacreon justified his fickleness to the fair, he has not stated.

A AGLAE.

Tu me promets d'être constante,
Et tu veux qu' aux pieds des autels
Nous formions des nœuds solemnels!
Aglaë ta flamme est prudente.
Eh bien! d'un éternel amour
Je fais le serment redoubtable,
Si tu veux jurer à bon tour

D'être à mes yeux toujours aimable.

ODE XXXIV.

Though my star is declining-
My locks thin and grey,

And thy beauty is shining
Like sun-flashing MAY,-

TO AGLAE.

You swear, you little rogue, you'll be
The very pink of constancy,

And ask me at the holy fane

To bind our hearts in Hymen's chain.
Certes, your passion's cool and sage,
But ere, my dear, I'll thus engage
To yoke myself in chains that ne'er
Can sever'd be, I'd have you swear
You'll always be as young, as pretty,
As gay, as arch, as fond, as witty,
As now you are, and, if you do,
This very day I'll marry you.

TO A YOUNG GIRL.

Yet, fly me not, fairest,
But twine round my waist,
Like the rose-wreath thou wearest
With lilies inlaced.

A conceit worthy of a French wit. given several worthy imitations of it. translate is one of the very best.

Il est vrai que la vieillesse

A fait blanchir mes cheveux:
Mais de la vive jeunesse

J'ai sçu conserver les feux.
Ah! malgre tout l'avantage
Que vous donne le bel âge,
Venez, unissons nos cœurs:
Dans ces couronnes de fleurs,
Voyez avec quelle grace,
Belle Eucharis,
Une rose s'entrelace
Avec les lis.

Our Gallic neighbours have
This which I transcribe and

Old am I in sooth,

Silv'ry are my tresses,
But the fire of youth

Still my heart possesses.
Though your cheeks present
Smiles more sweet than Venus,
Why should that prevent
Kisses, dear, between us?
See this garland bright..
Roses blent with lilies!
Shall we so unite ?

Eh, my pretty Phillis?

A certain continental epigrammatist, whom Menage praises highly, accounts for the whiteness of his hair in the following curious quatrain :

Ante diem fudere meo se vertice cani

Dum procul à vultu cogor abesse tuo;
Sole absente quidem nigrescunt omnia, novi.
At canesco, et abes sol, Galatea, meus.

My brow is bare, my locks are grey,
Yet thou, sweet love, art far away;
When Phoebus veils his golden light
We know that earth grows dark as
night:

A wretched conceit !

And so methinks it ought to be
When thou, my sun, art far from me:
But vain the thought,—my hairs do
grow

Not dark, but white as winter snow.

ODE XXXV. EUROPA.

This proud bull is thundering Jove,
Bearing off the nymph of love;
Seated on his noble back,
While he cleaves the ocean track.
Though the billows round him rise,

He their threatening crests defies.
Which of all the steers that reign
O'er the herd, e'er braved the main,
Or would quit the lowing kine,
But the thunder-king divine?

The commentators tell us, that this was suggested to our poet by a picture representing Jupiter bearing off Europa. It is utterly unworthy of Anacreon. Some dull monk might have composed it.

When SPRING appears the GRACES scatter roses,
As happy maidens shed their purple looks,
The OCEAN like a cradled babe reposes,

Or murmurs softly like sweet village brooks.
The water-fowl frequent the wave-girt bowers,
And the crane back to home and sunshine flies,
APOLLO Comes, and daylight flings like showers
Of perfume from his glad and golden eyes.
No more are seen dark clouds through æther rushing,
But all seems smiling o'er the genial earth,
Fruits, flowers, and trees in gay confusion blushing,
And loving faces and red cups of mirth.

Anacreon, an admirer of the country, welcomes in the spring. This ode has always appeared to me like a picturesque landscape. Not a single adjunct of the fairest period of the year is omitted from the catalogue. We may suppose our poet celebrated its advent like old Ben Jonson,

Digestive cheese and fruit there sure will bee,

But that which most doth take my muse and mee
Is a pure cup of rich Canary wine,

Which is the Mermaid's now, but shall be mine,
Of which had Horace or Anacreon tasted,

Their lives, as doe their lines, till now had lasted.

Philostratus makes the arrival of spring the pretext for exhorting his mistress to live pleasantly.

TO A YOUNG GIRL.

It is spring, and the rose has unveiled her beauty. He who enjoys not the golden Present acts foolishly. He is slow when he should be as if on wings; he tarries when he should join those who are already on their way. Time is the great envier. He snatches loveliness from the flowers, and vigour from the body. Hasten, then, sweet girl!hasten unto me, O thou who art the rose of my heart! and while thou hast life and charms share them with thy Philostratus !

Whosoe'er he be

That will venture with me

In the war of flowing cups to engage,
Shall find me a foe

Not unworthy, I trow

So bring me my armour, my trusty foot-page;

No corslet or casque,

Silly page, I ask,

But a flagon of wine shall my weapon be;

And while this I hold,

Like SILENUS old,

Let me dance and sport o'er the velvet lea.

Anacreon, like a true and honest man, did not desert his cups in old age, but clung to them with a desperate fidelity. Age seems to have taken no effect on him; his foot did not totter even when oppressed with wine. Never-like another noble old toper, Daniel Heinsius, staggering home drunk-did our Teian find it necessary to speak in metre to his right leg,—

Sta pes-sta bene pes-sta pes-ne labora, mî pes;
Sta pes, aut lapides hi mihi lectus erunt.

Had he sat down to a drinking-bout to contend for that 'Whistle of Worth' of which Burns sings, he would have borne away the palm from the sturdiest Scotchman among them all; and had he been exhorted in his declining years by some honest father confessor to live cleanly and declare all his sinnings, he might have epitomized his whole life in the very distich which D'Herbélot tells us (Dictionnaire, p. 102) Amin Ben Haroun sent to his father: On dit qu' était encore jeune, et le Khaliffe Haroune son père le forçant d' étudier, il écrivit sur son cahier ces deux vers,—

Je suis occupé de mes amours:
Cherchez quelque autre qui étudie.'

Father Prout the immortal-has written a very pretty French song inculcating these excellent maxims.

Porte dans un réquit champêtre,
Avec des perfums et du vin,
Ces fleurs que produit le matin
Et que le soir voit disparoître.

How gladly I sin in the corner,

While the whisky sends round its
perfume,

As happy as famous Jack Horner,
As mellow as noble Hal Brougham!

ODE XL. CUPID.

Like a pretty bird untrammell'd,
Little LovE one day went skipping
Through a garden flower-enamell'd,
All the ripest roses clipping.
But a bee which chanced to linger
There unseen among the flowers,
Stung dear CUPID in the finger

Till the tears ran down in showers.

Off he flew to VENUS' presence,

'Oh! I'm kill'd! I'm kill'd!'
exclaiming,

'By a winged snake, which peasants
Call a bee, my finger maiming.'
'If a bee,' quoth she, in answer,

With such pain thy finger harrows,
How feel they, say, if you can, sir,
Whom thou 'st wounded with thy
arrows?'

Theocritus has imitated this ode; Stephens has elegantly translated him:

Improba apis quondam furem confixit Amorem,
Dum rapit ille favos alvearibus, articulosque,
Undique perstrinxit summos. Dolet ille manumque
Exsufflans, pede pulsat humum læsumque parenti
Ostendit digitum, et queritur quod tantula visu
Bestia quam sit apis tantum det acumine vulnus.
Cui tum subridens mater. Quid? Non apis et tu
Es similis qui tantillus das vulnera tanta?"

I have written a paraphrase of it.

Air,―The daylight was yet sleeping under the billow.
As CUPID one morning was culling a posy

Of ripest young flow'rs in the gardens of Joy,
Little PHILLIS, the wood-nymph, with features as rosy
As summer, tripped by, and attracted the boy.
The LOVE-GOD, who often the maiden had courted,
And ask'd with his happiest smile to be his,
Observed her, as o'er the green meadows she sported,
And vow'd to be cheated no longer of bliss.

The garland of flowers then carelessly flinging
Away to the ZEPHYRS, he fled from the glade,
And light as a star thro' the firmament springing
This archest of striplings ran after the maid.
But just as he seized her, a bee from the flowers
Stung his finger, and fill'd him with pain and affright;
'Even thus,' sigh'd the god, 'on love's happiest hours
Will Sorrow intrude, and put Pleasure to flight.'

He ran to his MOTHER, his eyes with tears streaming,-
'Alone as I wander'd but now through the grove,
I was stung by a serpent,' cried he, little dreaming
That VENUS rejoiced at the wounds of young LOVE.
He ceased, and look'd upward, his hands wildly wringing,
VENUS said, while her countenance mantled with glee,
'How can you, who our hearts are eternally stinging,
Complain of the sting of an innocent bee?"

Pignorius mentions a picture in which a plot like that of this little song was portrayed:

Dum puer alveolo furatur mella Cupido,
Furenti digitum cuspide fixit apis;
Sic etiam nobis brevis est peritura voluptas
Quam petimus tristi mixta dolore nocet.

As childish Cupid tried to rob a hive,

A bee incensed stung the little thief;
So all the short-lived joys for which we strive
None taste without the sharp alloy of grief.

ODE XLI. A DREAM.

In a dream, on glittering wing
Through the air methought I sped;
After me Love seem'd to spring,

But his feet were bound with lead.
He o'ertook me: what means this?

Though his chains I often wore;
Yet I freely must confess

I was ne'er so bound before!
Once I roved at liberty-
Shall I ne'er again be free?

From this ode Barnes concludes that our poet married in his old age. Madame Dacier assures us, that he was too fond of pleasure to take a wife. I do not see what other interpretation can be given of the Cupid with the leaden feet, and the captivity of the poet, if the supposition of Master Joshua be not adopted.

ODE XLV. CUPID'S ARROWS.

VULCAN, beauteous CYPRIA's lord,
Once as olden tales record-
Bars of sparkling steel ybeat
Into arrows sharp and fleet,
Destined for th' EROTES, who,
Pretty maidens' hearts undo.
CUPID dipt the darts in gall,
But his mother threw o'er all
Honey, such as from her lips
Or HYMETTIAN flowers drips.
From the heat and dust of wars,
Brandishing his spear, came MARS,
And at CUPID's armoury

Look'd with fierce and scornful eye:
Little Love, with rage inflamed,
Seized a barb, and thus exclaim'd:-
'Prithee, MARS, this shaft receive,
'Tis not light, as you believe.'
ARES took the polish'd shaft:
CYTHEREA loudly laugh'd:

When the WAR GOD, pierced with
pain,

Cries, Pray take it back again;
Heavy 'tis.' Quoth CUPID,Nay,
Keep it, MARS, do keep it, pray.'.

It was on this ode that Tanaquil Faber wrote his absurd apostrophe beginning

Every one-even the irritable tribe of poets-is satisfied of the annoyance of loving without being loved again. Few have expressed their concern more elegantly than Anacreon. Spenser has told us