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Not a feafoD, not an hour 

 Frees me from the tyrant's pow'r. 

 Like the Thracian winds that fly. 

 Like the lightning from the llcy. 

 Swift his arrows pierce the foul, 

 Swift enflame with fierce controul ; 

 From fuch objefls of defire, 

 Madding rage, confuming fire. 

 Mock the fenfes with illufion. 

 Fill the fpirit with confufion, 

 Dreadful offspring of delight. 

 He confounds me in his might. 

 All my thoughts and wiflies filling, 

 Waking pangs, defires inftilling. 

 Cruel tyrant of the breaft, 

 Never does he give me reft. 



Mlmnermus,* the inventor of elegiac cempofition, •whom Horace 

 fcruples not to place above CaUiimchus ; Mimnermus, who thought and 

 wrote with fo much nature, amenity, and tendernefs, and in fuch an 

 eafy and flowing ftyle, was rather younger than Sappho. He was a 

 native of Aftatic Greece, (having been born in Smyrna, or, according 

 to other accounts, in Golophon, a country which, perhaps, furpafled 

 all others, in luxury, foftnefs of manners, and amorous indulgence.) 

 The few fragmentsf which yet remain, of this amiable and admired 

 poet, breath the fpirit of the voluptuary; and fliow that love and 

 the purfuit of pleafure predominated in his foul ; and formed the bu- 

 finefs of his life. " Love and fport," fays he, " form all the charm 

 of exillence ; let us love and fport. 



" Si Mimnermus uti cenfet fine amore jocifque 

 " Nil eft jucundum, vivas in amore jocifque." 



Horace. 



With more ferioufnefs, refleftion, and pathos, than Anacreon, he 

 was equally the poet of love and diffipation. As a writer, he appears 



to 



* See Saxlus. t See Brwnk's Analeaa, Vol. ift. 



