In 1883 J. A. Symonds published his translations, and some of them were made for and included in that charming little book of Wharton’s, which appeared in its first edition in 1885. Even before Wharton, Swinburne had given his high estimate of Sappho and had melted together many of the fragments into his Anactoria. In 1894, Maurice Thompson published in The Atlantic Monthly, “The Sapphic Secret,” and gave a fine appreciation of Sappho with translations of the shorter fragments. During the last thirty years the discovery of new papyri has stimulated interest in Sappho and many books and articles, scientific and popular, have been printed. For a discussion of the recovery of Greek literature from papyri and the difficulties involved in deciphering and restoring Sappho’s new fragments, I refer the reader to my introduction on the subject in Miller-Robinson, The Songs of Sappho. I refer the reader to the [bibliography] for some of the books and to a note[178] for references to some popular articles, and call special attention to the volumes of Easby-Smith, Miss Patrick, Petersen, Edmonds, Cox, Tucker, and Edward Storer, most of whom give their own verse renderings of some, if not all, of Sappho’s fragments. Many modern poets, both British and American, have adapted or expanded Sappho’s fragments in English verse, Lucy Milburn, Bliss Carman, Percy Osborn, that pure Pelasgian, John Myers O’Hara. Recently Dr. Marion Mills Miller, formerly of Princeton University, has published metrical adaptations of all the old and new fragments, which are graceful and witty. He has also given the romance of Sappho’s life in verse and has made a new poetical translation of Ovid’s Sappho to Phaon. In the same volume ([cf. Bibliography]), I have published the Greek text of all Sappho with a literal translation and two introductions. One deals with the recovery and restoration of Sappho’s relics and shows the romance as well as the difficulties involved in deciphering and restoring her poems. The other discusses Sappho’s life and works.
The influence of Sappho on English and American literature has been large. We have already shown this in our citations, as it seemed better to quote some of the great English writers when we were speaking of Sappho herself. Addison was devoted to her, but his contemporary, Pope, by translating Ovid’s Sappho to Phaon, aggravated the ill-fame which Ovid had given her. Pope often mentions her, but without knowledge of the true Sappho. In Moral Essays (Epistle III, 121) we have the line: “Why she (Phryne) and Sappho raise that monstrous sum?”, referring to Lady Montague and to Miss Skerrett, the latter of whom was the mistress and later the second wife of Sir Robert Walpole. Lady Mary (Montague) is alluded to also in Epistle II, 24:
As Sappho’s diamonds with her dirty smock;
Or Sappho at her toilet’s greasy task,
With Sappho fragrant at an evening mask.
Also in the Prologue to the Satires, in the Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot, 369, we read: “Sappho can tell you how this man was bit.” Sappho is mentioned again in Imitations of Horace (Satire I, l. 83) and in Satires of Dr. John Donne (II, 6), in these words: “As who knows Sappho, smiles at other whores.” In his letters to Cromwell, Pope often mentions two Sapphos, one his own and the other Cromwell’s: “My service, pray, to the other Sappho, who it is to be hoped, has not yet cast herself headlong from any of the Leucades about London, although her Phaon lately fled from her into Lincolnshire.” Even in the letter to Steele, when he makes acknowledgment to the “fine fragment of Sappho,” Pope is disingenuous and affected, as he suppresses the name of Flatman, to whom he was really indebted.
Wordsworth, influenced probably by Welcker’s defense, had a good opinion of Sappho ([cf. the quotation, p. 247]). But his dear friend, Sir Walter Scott, seems to be ignorant of her, though the lines on the Evening Star, which we have quoted ([p. 64]), sound strikingly Sapphic. Coleridge seems to echo the famous fragment about the pippin on the topmost bough in his One Red Leaf on the Topmost Twig; but as he shows no other influence of Sappho this is probably an accidental resemblance. Thomas Moore, as a translator of Anacreon with whom Sappho was generally linked, knew Sappho well and translated some of her fragments into Latin as well as English. His rendering of the Weaving Song is especially charming ([cf. p. 79]). Another contemporary Irish poet, the Reverend George Croly, tells how:
Passion gave the living breath
That shook the chords of Sappho’s lyre.