How very imperfectly the chronology of the poetical names even of the sixth century B. C.—Sappho, Anakreon, Hippônax—was known even to writers of the beginning of the Ptolemaic age (or shortly after 300 B. C.), we may see by the mistakes noted in Athenæus, xiii, p. 599. Hermesianax of Kolophon, the elegiac poet, represented Anakreon as the lover of Sappho; this might perhaps be not absolutely impossible, if we supposed in Sappho an old age like that of Ninon de l’Enclos; but others (even earlier than Hermesianax, since they are quoted by Chamæleon) represented Anakreon, when in old age, as addressing verses to Sappho, still young. Again, the comic writer Diphilus introduced both Archilochus and Hippônax as the lovers of Sappho. To a certain extent there seems to have been a real connection between the two: new forms were essential for the expression of new wants and feelings,—though the assertion that elegiac metre is especially adapted for one set of feelings,[148] trochaic for a second, and iambic for a third, if true at all, can only be admitted with great latitude of exception, when we find so many of them employed by the poets for very different subjects,—gay or melancholy, bitter or complaining, earnest or sprightly,—seemingly with little discrimination. [148] The Latin poets and the Alexandrine critics seem to have both insisted on the natural mournfulness of the elegiac metre (Ovid, Heroid. xv, 7; Horat. Art. Poet. 75): see also the fanciful explanation given by Didymus in the Etymologicon Magnum, v. Ἔλεγος. We learn from Hephæstion (c. viii, p. 45, Gaisf.) that the anapæstic march-metre of Tyrtæus was employed by the comic writers also, for a totally different vein of feeling. See the Dissertation of Franck, Callinus, pp. 37-48 (Leips. 1816). Of the remarks made by O. Müller respecting the metres of these early poets (History of the Literature of Ancient Greece, ch. xi, s. 8-12, etc.; ch. xii, s. 1-2, etc.), many appear to be uncertified and disputable. For some good remarks on the fallibility of men’s impressions respecting the natural and inherent ἦθος of particular metres, see Adam Smith (Theory of Moral Sentiment, part v, ch. i, p. 329), in the edition of his works by Dugald Stewart.