t is safe to say that there is not a lyrical poem in Greek literature, nor in any other, which has, by its artistic structure, inspired more enthusiasm than this. Is it autobiographical? The German critics, true to their national instincts, hint that she may have written some of her verses in her character of pedagogue, as exercises in different forms of verse. It is as if Shakespeare had written his sonnet, "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?" only to show young Southampton where the rhymes came in. Still more difficult is it to determine the same question -- autobiographical or dramatic ? -- in case of the fragment next in length to this poem. It has been well engrafted into English literature through the translation of Ambrose Phillips, as follows: --

      "TO A BELOVED WOMAN.

 "Blest as the immortal gods is he,
 The youth who fondly sits by thee,
 And hears and sees thee, all the while,
 Softly speak and sweetly smile.

 "'T was that deprived my soul of rest,
 And raised such tumult in my breast;
 For while I gazed, in transport tost,
 My breath was gone, my voice was lost.

 "My bosom glowed; the subtile flame
 Ran quick through all my vital frame;
 On my dim eyes a darkness hung;
 My ears with hollow murmurs rung.

 "With dewy damps my limbs were chilled;
 My blood with gentle horrors thrilled;
 My feeble pulse forgot to play;
 I fainted, sunk, and died sway."

The translation would give the impression that this is a complete poem; but it is not. A fragment of the next verse brings some revival from this desperate condition, but what exit is finally provided does not appear. The existing lines are preserved by Longinus in the eighth chapter of his famous book, "On the Sublime"; and his commentary is almost as impassioned as the poem. "Is it not wonderful how she calls at once on soul, body, ears, tongue, eyes, color, -- as on so many separate deaths, -- and how in self-contradiction and simultaneously she freezes, she glows, she raves, she returns to reason, she is terrified, she is at the brink of death? It is not a single passion that she exhibits, but a whole congress of passions." The poem thus described, while its grammatical formations show it to have been addressed by a woman to a woman, is quite as likely to have been dramatic as autobiographical in its motive. It became so famous, at any rate, as a diagnosis of passion, that a Greek physician is said to have "copied it bodily into his book, and to have regulated his prescriptions accordingly."

All that remains to us of Sappho, besides, is a chaos of short fragments, which have been assiduously collected and edited by Wolf, Blomfield, Neue, and others. Among the spirited translations by our own poet Percival, there are several of these fragments; one of which I quote for its exceeding grace, though it consists only of two lines; --

 "Sweet mother, I can weave the web no more;
 So much I love the youth, so much I lingering love."

But this last adjective, so effective to the ear, is, after all, an interpolation. It should be:

"So much I love the youth, by Aphrodite's charm."

Percival also translates one striking fragment whose few short lines seem to toll like a bell, mourning the dreariness of a forgotten tryst, on which the moon and stars look down. I should render it thus : --

 The moon is down;
 And I've watched the dying
 Of the Pleiades;
 'T is the middle night,
 The hour glides by,
 And alone I'm sighing. Percival puts it in blank verse, more smoothly: --
 "The moon is set; the Pleiades are gone;
 'T is the midnoon of night; the hour is by
 And yet I watch alone."

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