Chapter III: Preface: To First Edition

SAPPHO, the Greek poetess whom more than eighty generations have been obliged to hold without a peer, has never, in the entirety of her works, been brought within the reach of English readers. The key to her wondrous reputation--which would, perhaps, be still greater if it had ever been challenged--has hitherto lain hidden in other languages than ours. As a name, as a figure pre-eminent in literary history, she has indeed never been overlooked. But the English-reading world has come to think, and to be content with thinking, that no verse of hers survives save those two hymns which Addison, in the _Spectator_, has made famous--by his panegyric, not by Ambrose Philips' translation.

My aim in the present work is to familiarise English readers, whether they understand Greek or not, with every word of Sappho, by translating all the one hundred and seventy fragments that her latest German editor thinks may be ascribed to her:

Love's priestess, mad with pain and joy of song,
Song's priestess, mad with joy and pain of love.
SWINBURNE.

I have contented myself with a literal English prose translation, for Sappho is, perhaps above all other poets, untranslatable. The very difficulties in the way of translating her may be the reason why no Englishman has hitherto undertaken the task. Many of the fragments have been more or less successfully rendered into English verse, and such versions I have quoted whenever they rose above mediocrity, so far as I have been able to discover them.

After an account of Sappho's life as complete as my materials have allowed, I have taken her fragments in order as they stand in Bergk, whose text I have almost invariably followed. I have given (1) the original fragment in Greek, (2) a literal version in English prose, distinguished by italic type, (3) every English metrical translation that seems worthy of such apposition, and (4) a note of the writer by whom, and the circumstances under which, each fragment has been preserved. Too often a fragment is only a single word, but I have omitted nothing.

It is curious to note how early in the history of printing the literature of Sappho began. The British Museum contains a sort of commentary on Sappho which is dated 1475 in the Catalogue; this is but twenty years later than the famous 'Mazarin' Bible, and only one year after the first book was printed in England. It is written in Latin by Georgius Alexandrinus Merula, and is of much interest, apart from its strange type and contractions of words.

The first edition of any part of Sappho was that of the Hymn to Aphrodite, by H. Stephanus, in his edition of Anacreon, 8vo, 1554. Subsequent editions of Anacreon contained other fragments attributed to her, including some that are now known to be by a later hand. Fulvius Ursinus wrote some comments on those then known in the _Carmina Novem Illustrium Feminarum_ published at Antwerp, 8vo, 1568. Is. Vossius gave an amended text of the two principal odes in his edition of Catullus, London, 4to, 1684.

But the first separate edition of Sappho's works was that of Johann Christian Wolf, which was published in 4to at Hamburg in 1733, and reprinted under an altered title two years later. Wolf's work is as exhaustive as was possible at his date. He gives a frontispiece figuring all the then known coins bearing reference to the poetess; a life of her--written, like the rest of the treatise, in Latin--occupies 32 pages; a Latin translation of all the quotations from or references to her in the Greek classics, and all the Latin accounts of her, together with the annotations of most previous writers, and copious notes by himself, in 253 pages; and the work is completed with elaborate indices.

The next important critical edition of Sappho was that of Heinrich Friedrich Magnus Volger, pp. lxviii., 195, 8vo, Leipzig, 1810. It was written on the old lines, and did not do much to advance the knowledge of her fragments. Volger added a 'musical scheme' which seems more curious than useful, and of which it is hard to understand either the origin or the intention.

But nothing written before 1816 really grasped the Sapphic question. In that year Welcker published his celebrated refutation of the long-current calumnies against Sappho, _Sappho vindicated from a prevailing Prejudice_. In his zeal to establish her character he may have been here and there led into extravagance, but it is certain that his searching criticism first made it possible to appreciate her true position. Nothing that has been written since has succeeded in invalidating his main conclusions, despite all the onslaughts of Colonel Mure and those few who sympathised with him.

Consequently the next self-standing edition of Sappho, by Christian Friedrich Neue, pp. 106, 4to, Berlin, 1827, embodying the results of the 'new departure,' was far in advance of its predecessors--not in cumbrous elaboration, but in critical excellence. Neue's life of the poetess was written in the light of Welcker's researches; his purification of the text was due to more accurate study of the ancient manuscripts, assisted by the textual criticisms published by Bishop Blomfield the previous year in the Cambridge _Museum Criticum._

Since Neue's time much has been written about Sappho, for the most part in Latin or German. The final revision of the text, and collection of all that can now be possibly ascribed to her, was made by Theodor Bergk, in his _Poetae Lyrici Graeci_, pp. 82-140 of the third volume of the fourth edition, 8vo, Leipzig, 1882, which I have here, with rare exceptions, followed.

There is a noteworthy dissertation on her life by Theodor Kock, _Alkäos und Sappho_, 8vo, Berlin, 1862, in which the arguments and conclusions of Welcker are mainly endorsed, and elaborated with much mythological detail.

Perhaps the fullest account of Sappho which has recently appeared is that by A. Fernandez Merino, a third edition of which was published at Madrid early last year. Written in Spanish, it discusses in an impartial spirit every question concerning Sappho, and is especially valuable for its copious references.

Professor Domenico Comparetti, the celebrated Florentine scholar, to whom I shall have occasion to refer hereafter, has recently done much to familiarise Italian readers with the chief points of Sapphic criticism. His enthusiasm for her character and genius is all that can be desired, but his acceptance of Welcker's arguments is not so complete as mine. Where truth must lie between two extremes, and evidence on either side is so hard to collect and estimate, it is possible for differently constituted minds to reach very different conclusions. The motto at the back of my title-page is the guide I am most willing to follow. But, after all, to use the words of a friend whom I consulted on the subject, 'whether the pure think her emotion pure or impure; whether the impure appreciate it rightly, or misinterpret it; whether, finally, it was platonic or not; seems to me to matter nothing.' Sappho's poetic eminence is independent of such considerations. To her,

All thoughts, all passions, all delights,
Whatever stirs this mortal frame,
All are but ministers of Love,
And feed his sacred flame.

Those who wish to learn more about Sappho than is here recorded will find a guide in the Bibliography which I have added at the end of the volume. My sole desire in these pages is to present 'the great poetess' to English readers in a form from which they can judge of her excellence for themselves, so far as that is possible for those to whom Aeolic Greek is unfamiliar. Her more important fragments have been translated into German, French, Italian, and Spanish, as well as English; but all previous complete editions of her works have been written solely by scholars for scholars. Now that, through the appreciation of Sappho by modern poets and painters, her name is becoming day by day more familiar, it seems time to show her as we know her to have been, to those who have neither leisure nor power to read her in the tongue in which she wrote.

I have not concerned myself much with textual criticism, for I do not arrogate any power of discernment greater than that possessed by a scholar like Bergk. Only those who realise what he has done to determine the text of Sappho can quite appreciate the value of his work. Where he is satisfied, I am content. He wrote for the learned few, and I only strive to popularise the result of such researches as his: to show, indeed, so far as I can, that which centuries of scholarship have succeeded in accomplishing.

The translations by Mr. John Addington Symonds, dated 1883, were all made especially for this work in the early part of that year, and have not been elsewhere published. My thanks are also due to Mr. Symonds for much valuable criticism.

The medallion which forms the frontispiece has been engraved by my friend Mr. John Cother Webb, after the head of Sappho in the picture by Mr. L. Alma Tadema, R.A., exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1881, as 'op. ccxxiii.,' and now in America. I trust that my readers will sympathise with me in cordial gratitude to both artist and engraver, to the one for his permission, to the other for his fidelity.

HENRY T. WHARTON.

39 ST. GEORGE'S ROAD,
KILBURN. LONDON, N.W.,
_May 1885_.

IN MEMORIAM

MR. H. T. WHARTON--known to book-lovers as 'Sappho Wharton'--died on August 22, 1895, after a lingering illness due to influenza, at his residence in West Hampstead; and he lies buried in the neighbouring cemetery of Fortune Green.

Henry Thornton Wharton was born in 1846 at Mitcham, in Surrey, of which parish his father was then vicar. His mother, who survives him, was a Courtenay, a cousin of the Earl of Devon. His elder brother, the author of _Etyma Graeca_ and _Etyma Latina_, is a Fellow of Jesus College, Oxford; a younger brother shares his taste for ornithology. He was educated as a day-boy at the Charterhouse, in its old Smithfield days; and after spending a short time in the classical department of King's College, he went up to Oxford in 1867, as a commoner of Wadham. That college had no more enthusiastic _alumnus_, and he will be greatly missed, both at the Gaudy and at the annual dinner in London. He graduated in 1871 with honours in natural science, and then joined the medical school at University College. On qualifying as M.R.C.S. in 1875, he settled down to general practice in West Hampstead. He never earned a large income; but his devotion to all his patients, and in particular his generosity to the poor, will cause his memory to be long held in honour.

The general public first heard of him in 1885, when he brought out his _Sappho_--memoir, text, selected renderings, and a literal translation (David Stott). The book met with an immediate success, partly because it supplied a want, and partly from the attractive form in which it was produced. A second edition was called for within two years; and this very summer a third, with additions, has been published by Mr. John Lane. The author spared no pains to make the volume worthy of its subject. Merely as a specimen of book-making, it has few rivals. The Royal Press of Berlin lent a fount of Greek type, which had never before been used in this country. Prof. Blass, of Kiel, gave his assistance in determining the obscure text of the fragments. Mr. John Addington Symonds contributed special metrical versions of all the longer pieces. Mr. John Cother Webb engraved for frontispiece the head of Sappho in Mr. Alma Tadema's famous picture, the original of which has since gone to America. Of Mr. Wharton's own work we must be content to praise the memoir, marked by good sense as well as erudition; and the bibliography, which includes the latest programs of Russian universities. The result is one of the rare books that give fresh life to an ancient author, and beget other good books, such, in this case, as Michael Field's _Long Ago_. It appeals alike to the scholar, the bibliophile, and the general public; and by it the author's name will be preserved, along with that of the immortal poetess, when far more notorious writers of the day are forgotten.

But Mr. Wharton was by no means a man of one book. Though he had got together a choice collection of English literature, his real interest lay in natural history. It would be difficult, indeed, to say to which of its branches he was most devoted. His knowledge of ornithology was based upon observation as much as upon books. His eye and ear were both highly trained, and he always made his learning subservient to nature. So, again, with regard to botany. While he did not despise the most technical details, it was his delight to accompany gatherings of autumn fungus-hunters, and to point out what was wholesome and what poisonous. He was one of the joint compilers of the official List of British Birds published by the B. O. U. (1883), his special task being to supervise and elucidate the Latin nomenclature; and he contributed a chapter on the local flora to a work entitled _Hampstead Hill_ (1889).

So much, however, summarises only what Harry Wharton did, not what he was. His was one of the bounteous natures that radiate happiness wherever they go. Men, women, and children alike brightened in his genial presence. He led a blameless and a beneficent life. He never made an enemy and he never lost a friend. He ought to have been a contemporary of Charles Lamb. It is hard to realise--especially for one who has known and loved him for nearly thirty years--that we shall never see again that _os honestum_, never hear again that ringing laugh.

'God be with his soul! A' was a merry man.'

J. S. COTTON.

1895.

CONTENTS

_Page_

PREFACE TO THIRD EDITION v

PREFACE TO SECOND EDITION ix