Invite to soft repose.”
Judging from her fragments, we must admit that in her peculiar department Sappho stands without a peer. Indeed, her own graceful lines may well be applied to herself:—
“The stars that round the beauteous moon
Attendant wait, cast into shade
Their ineffectual lustres, soon
As she, in full-orbed majesty arrayed,
Her silver radiance showers
Upon this world of ours,”—
for the lesser lights of lyric poesy pale in the lustre of her genius.
Addison, in his Spectator, makes the following remarks on Sappho, which are fully justified by the praises of ancient critics:—“Among the mutilated poets of antiquity, there are none whose fragments are so beautiful as those of Sappho. One may see, by what is left, that she followed nature in all her thoughts, without descending to those little points, conceits, and turns of wit, with which many of our modern lyrics are so miserably infected. Her soul seems to have been made up of love and poetry. She felt the passion in all its warmth and described it in all its symptoms. I do not know, by the character that is given of her works, whether it is not for the benefit of mankind that they are lost. They were filled with such bewitching tenderness and rapture, that it might have been dangerous to have given them a reading.”