In critics of that day as a literary imposition. 1554, however, he gave Anacreon to the world, † accompanied with annotations and a Latin version of the greater part of the odes. The learned still hesitated to receive them as the relics of the Teian bard, and suspected them to be the fabrication of some monks of the sixteenth century. This was an idea from which the classic muse recoiled ; and the Vatican manuscript, consulted by Scaliger and Salmasius, confirmed the antiquity of most of the poems. A of this MS. was inaccurate copy very taken by Isaac Vossius, and this is the authority which Barnes has followed in his collation; accordingly he misrepresents almost as often as he quotes; and the subsequent editors, relying upon * Robertellus, in his work "De Ratione corrigendi," pronounces these verses to be the triflings of some insipid Græcist. +Ronsard commemorates this event : Je vay boire à Henri Etienne Qui des enfers nous a rendu, Du vieil Anacreon perdu, La douce lyre Teïenne. I fill the bowl to Stephen's name, Ode xv. book 5. Who rescued from the gloom of night And brought his living lyre to light. him, have spoken of the manuscript with not less confidence than ignorance. The literary world has, at length, been gratified with this curious memorial of the poet, by the industry of the Abbé Spaletti, who, in 1781, published at Rome a fac-simile of the pages of the Vatican manuscript, which contained the odes of Anacreon.* Monsieur Gail has given a catalogue of all the editions and translations of Anacreon. I find their number to be much greater than I could possibly have had an opportunity of consulting. I shall therefore content myself with enumerating those editions only which I have been able to collect t; they are very few, but I believe they are the most important: The edition by Henry Stephen, 1554, at Paristhe Latin version is, by Colomesius, attributed to John Dorat. † * This manuscript, which Spaletti thinks as old as the tenth century, was brought from the Palatine into the Vatican library; it is a kind of anthology of Greek epigrams; and in the 676th page of it are found the auia ovμeñoσrana of Anacreon. "Le même (M. Vossius) m'a dit qu'il avait possédé un Anacréon, où Scaliger avait marqué de sa main, qu'Henri The old French translations, by Ronsard and Belleau-the former published in 1555, the latter in 1556. It appears that Henry Stephen communicated his manuscript of Anacreon to Ronsard before he published it, by a note of Muretus upon one of the sonnets of that poet. * The edition by Le Fevre, 1660. The edition by Madame Dacier, 1681, with a prose translation. † The edition by Longepierre, 1684, with a translation in verse. The edition by Baxter; London, 1695. A French translation by La Fosse, 1704. "L'Histoire des Odes d'Anacréon," by Monsieur Gacon; Rotterdam, 1712. Etienne n'était pas l'auteur de la version Latine des odes de ce poëte, mais Jean Dorat." Paulus Colomesius, Particularités. Colomesius, however, seems to have relied too implicitly on Vossius: almost all these Particularités begin with "M. Vossius m'a dit." * "La fiction de ce sonnet, comme l'auteur même m'a dit, est prise d'une ode d'Anacréon, encore non imprimée, qu'il a depuis traduite, συ μεν φιλη χελίδων.” †The author of Nouvelles de la Repub. des Lett. praises this translation very liberally. I have always thought it vague and spiritless. A translation in English verse, by several hands, 1713, in which the odes by Cowley are inserted. The edition by Barnes; London, 1721. The edition by Dr. Trapp, 1733, with a Latin version in elegiac metre. A translation in English verse, by John Addison, 1735. A collection of Italian translations of Anacreon, published at Venice, 1736, consisting of those by Corsini, Regnier, Salvini, Marchetti, and one by several anonymous authors. † * A translation in English verse, by Fawkes and Doctor Broome, 1760. § Another, anonymous, 1768. The edition by Spaletti, at Rome, 1781; with the fac-simile of the Vatican MS. *The notes of Regnier are not inserted in this edition: they must be interesting, as they were for the most part communicated by the ingenious Menage, who, we may perceive, bestowed some research on the subject, by a passage in the Menagiana-"C'est aussi lui (M. Bigot) qui s'est donné la peine de conférer des manuscrits en Italie dans le temps que je travaillais sur Anacréon."-Menagiana, seconde partie. + I find in Haym's Notizia de' Libri rari, an Italian translation mentioned, by Cappone in Venice, 1670. § This is the most complete of the English translations. |