OF LITERATURE. 



XI 



poetry, as well as in its concomitant music and 

 dancing. In accordance with the simple but 

 flowing rhythm of the lonians, their compositions 

 were commonly either of a soft, or of a buoyant 

 and brilliant character; while the JEolic and 

 Dorian harp resounded in unison with more deep 

 and thrilling strains, as it was swept by the move- 

 ments of more impetuous passion. And thus, 

 too, the gradations were fine and gentle by which 

 the heroic verse and diction passed into the chief 

 varieties of Ionian metre, and the peculiarities 

 of the Ionian dialect, finally subsiding into the 

 kindred Attic: but the changes made by the 

 Doric and jEolian lyrists on the old metrical 

 canon were abrupt and violent, and their dialects, 

 retaining all the roughest collocations and in- 

 flections of the antique language, sought to revive 

 or create a diction of the utmost strength and 

 sternness. The opposite attributes of the two 

 principal races, are strikingly displayed in these 

 differences ; the Ionic elegance and airiness, con- 

 trasted with the lofty aspirations and the solemn 

 and earnest disposition of the Dorian tribes. 



Little later in its origin than the Lyric poetry 

 of the Greeks, their Elegiac poetry flowed 

 from the same source, though not by the 

 same channel. Of the metre and language of 

 this style of composition, moulded by an easy 

 process out of the Homeric, Tyrtaeus * gave the 

 first example. The stirring war-songs of this 

 poet are conceived in the true spirit of Homer. 

 They are even marked by a similar prominence 

 of the subject over the person and individual 

 feelings of the author; and thus differ widely 

 from the martial lays of the troubadours, Ber- 

 trand de Born, Rambaud de Vaqueiras, and other 

 heroes of the Provengal literature, who have 

 sometimes been compared with him. Allied in 

 tone and temper to the Tyrtasan elegy were the 

 patriotic strains of Callinus :f but the instinctive 

 taste of the Greeks soon confined the elegiac 

 distich to subjects for which it was better suited ; 

 themes of a plaintive, ethical, or domestic cha- 

 racter. With Mimnermus of Colophon,^ the ele- 

 gy assumed a tone of amatory softness, blended 

 with gentle melancholy ; and by Simonides of 

 Ceos it was established in its funereal functions. 

 Yet in the monumental inscriptions of Simonides 

 and his brethren, there still beat some pulses of 

 the old heroic vein : it is in a different depart. 

 incut of elegiac verse that we catch mingling 

 traces of the Hesiodic poetry. In that poetry may 

 be detected the rudiments of Greek philosophy, 

 ind the poetical dress was preferred, long after 



* B C. 690. 

 .i;.c eoo. 



t B. C. 630. 

 S B. C. 550. 



the time of Hesiod, for those speculations upon 

 nature, morality, and politics, in which his spirit 

 was partly revived by Solon and his sage con- 

 temporaries. From what we know of the seven 

 wise men, that celebrated band which included 

 the Athenian legislator, it is plain that they were 

 the founders of the school of gnomic poets, for 

 whose sententious maxims the elegiac couplet 

 was so well calculated, as to be at once adopted 

 by them. How far the verses of this complexion 

 still extant under the names of Solon, Theognis,* 

 and Phocylides, are authentic, is very question, 

 able ; but there can be no hesitation in admit- 

 ting them as specimens of the kind of composi- 

 tion, in which these writers exercised their poe- 

 tical talents. 



A single glance at the exquisite remains of 

 Sappho and Simonides is enough to awaken the 

 wish, keen in proportion to its hopelessness, that 

 time and barbarism had spared a larger share of 

 the Greek lyric and elegiac literature. Fortu- 

 nate, however, it is, that in the former province 

 we can still point to the strains of at least one 

 immortal poet; The great name of PINDAR 

 stands alone, like some solitary mass of ancient 

 architecture, as if to reveal the beauty and ma- 

 jesty of the whole system to which it appertain- 

 ed. It is true that even of this poet the entire 

 works have not survived: for Pindar, as we 

 might learn from Horace, were there no other 

 authority for the fact, displayed his powers in 

 various styles of lyric poetry ; in the wild dithy- 

 ramb, the devout paean, the gay and graceful glee; 

 and still more pleasingly, perhaps, in odes of an 

 elegiac character, in which he seems to have con- 

 soled the sorrows of the mourner by cheerful 

 views of immortality and gorgeous visions of 

 Elysium ; while, amid the wreck of all these 

 compositions, nothing has been left unmutilated 

 except forty-five triumphal lays in honour of 

 victors in the public games. Yet it may be 

 believed that time in this respect has not been 

 cruel to the fame of Pindar. Considering the 

 importance attached, in the eyes of Greece, to 

 every thing connected with her great celebra- 

 tions, the high rank of the chief Pindaric heroes, 

 and the passion for power and splendour that 

 was manifestly inherent in the poet's mind, it is 

 almost certain that he bestowed his utmost efforts 

 upon that class of his productions to which the 

 extant odes belong. Pindar himself, whose 

 notions of poetical dignity, respect for his own 

 art, and confidence in his own genius, are emi- 

 nently conspicuous, nowhere implies, even by a 

 distant hint, that he would strike the lyre to 



* TheognU, B. C. 530. Phocylides, B. C. 540. 



