Let Bacchus, Jove's ambrosial boy, Let Love be there, without his arms, In timid nakedness of charms; And all the Graces, link'd with Love, Stray, laughing, through the shadowy grove; In circlets trip the velvet ground. Let Love be there, without his arms, &c.] Thus Sannazaro in the eclogue of Gallicio nell' Arcadia: Vegnan li vaghi Amori Scherzando insieme pargoletti e nudi. Fluttering on the busy wing, A train of naked Cupids came, And thus in the Pervigilium Veneris : : Ite nymphæ, posuit arma, feriatus est amor. ye nymphs, in safety stray, Love is disarm'd But ah! if there Apollo toys, But ah! if there Apollo toys, I tremble for the rosy boys.] An allusion to the fable, that Apollo had killed his beloved boy Hyacinth, while playing with him at quoits. "This (says M. La Fosse) is assuredly the sense of the text, and it cannot admit of any other." The Italian translators, to save themselves the trouble of a note, have taken the liberty of making Anacreon himself explain this fable. Thus Salvini, the most literal of any of them: Ma con lor non giuochi Apollo; Col duro disco A Giacinto fiaccò il collo. ODE VI. As late I sought the spangled bowers, This beautiful fiction, which the commentators have attributed to Julian, a royal poet, the Vatican MS. pronounces to be the genuine offspring of Anacreon. It has, indeed, all the features of the parent: et facile insciis Noscitetur ab omnibus. Where many an early rose was weeping, I found the urchin Cupid sleeping.] This idea is prettily imitated in the following epigram by Andreas Naugerius: · Florentes dum forte vagans mea Hyella per hortos Ecce rosas inter latitantem invenit Amorem Et simul annexis floribus implicuit. I caught the boy, a goblet's tide I feel him fluttering in my breast. “I (dixit) mea, quære novum tibi, mater, Amorem, As fair Hyella, through the bloomy grove, 66 66 Go, seek another boy, thou'st lost thine own, Hyella's arms shall now be Cupid's throne!" This epigram of Naugerius is imitated by Lodovico Dolce in a poem, beginning Mentre raccoglie hor uno, hor altro fiore ODE VII. THE Women tell me every day I'm sure I neither know nor care; Alberti has imitated this ode in a poem, beginning Nisa mi dice e Clori Tirsi, tu se' pur veglio. Whether decline has thinn'd my hair, I'm sure I neither know nor care;] Henry Stephen very justly remarks the elegant negligence of expression in the original here: Εγω δε τας κομας μεν, Ειτ εισιν, ειτ' απήλθον, And Longepierre has adduced from Catullus, what he thinks a similar instance of this simplicity of manner : . Ipse quis sit, utrum sit, an non sit, id quoque nescit. Longepierre was a good critic; but perhaps the line which |