It is told that a physician, by studying the symptoms of love as described by Sappho, detected in the mysterious sickness of the young Anti’ochus, son of the king of Syria, a hidden passion for his step-mother. The treatment was in accordance with the diagnosis, the disease disappearing when the anxious father relinquished to the youth the beautiful object of his affections.
Sappho’s description of the raptures of love, commended by all critics from Longinus down, is certainly a nonpareil. It has been thus translated by Ambrose Philips, a friend of Addison’s:—
A LOVE SONG.
“Blest as th’ immortal gods is he,
The youth who fondly sits by thee,
And hears, and sees thee all the while
Softly speak and sweetly smile.
’Twas this deprived my soul of rest,
And raised such tumults in my breast;
For while I gazed in transport tost,