INTRODUCTORY NOTICE.
Among the obligations I owe to "The Brides of Florence," and to the information contained in its interesting notes, I must refer particularly for the origin of the present poem. In one of those notes is the first, indeed the only account I ever met with of Erinna. The following short quotation is sufficient for my present purpose:—"Erinna was a poetess from her cradle, and she only lived to the completion of her eighteenth year.—Of Erinna very little is known; there is in the Grecian Anthology a sepulchral epigram by Antipater on this young poetess." A poem of the present kind had long floated on my imagination; and this gave it a local habitation and a name. There seemed to me just enough known of Erinna to interest; and I have not attempted to write a classical fiction; feelings are what I wish to narrate, not incidents: my aim has been to draw the portrait and trace the changes of a highly poetical mind, too sensitive perhaps of the chill and bitterness belonging even to success. The feelings which constitute poetry are the same in all ages, they are acted upon by similar causes. Erinna is an ideal not a historical picture, and as such I submit it less to the judgment than to the kindness of my friends.
