Page:The Poems of Sappho (1924).djvu/48

Two years after their appearance in the “Spectator,” the versions by Ambrose Philips were included in a volume of collected translations, described on the title-page as follows: “The works of Anacreon and Sappho done from the Greek by Several Hands, with their Lives prefixed. To which is added the Prize of Wisdom,” etc. “Also Bion’s Idyllium upon the Death of Adonis, by the Earl of Winchelsea. Printed for E. Curll at the Dial and Bible in Fleet Street and A. Bettesworth at the Red Lion on London Bridge 1713. Price 2s. Where may be had Mr. Creech’s Translation of Theocritus. Price 2s. 6d.” The book is a small octavo with an emblematic frontispiece. The preface is signed G.S., the initials of Sewell, and it states, erroneously of course, that Cowley was the first translator of Anacreon. Why Thomas Stanley was thus overlooked it is impossible to say. The portion of this volume devoted to Sappho has a sub-title thus: “Odes of Sappho done from Greek by Mr. A. Philips,” and there is a so-called life of Sappho occupying four pages, chiefly devoted to a somewhat fantastic exposition of the Leucadian legend. The translations themselves have already been noticed. It was some years after this before another translation of the poetess appeared in English. In 1735 John Addison published an edition of Anacreon and Sappho, in which at the end there is a section devoted to the works of the poetess. At the beginning of this portion of the volume there is an engraving by Van der Gucht, of a “busto” at