lyricis jam nona poetis Æolis accedit Sappho, quæ flumina propter Pierias legit ungue rosas, unde implicet audax Serta Cupido sibi, niveam quæ pectine blando Cyrinnem, Megaramque simul, cumque Atthide pulchram Cantat Anactorien, et crinigeram Telesippen; Et te conspicuum recidivo flore juventæ Miratur revocatque, Phaon, seu munera vectæ Puppe tuâ Veneris, seu sic facit herba potentem: Sed tandem Ambracias temeraria saltat in undas.[419] [Footnote 419: 'Ninth among lyric bards, Æolian Sappho joins the crew; she who by flowing water plucks Pieria's rose for venturous Love to twine in wreaths for his own brow; who with her dulcet lyre sings fair Cyrinna's charms, and Megara, and Atthis and sweet Anactoria, and Telesippa of the flowing hair. And thee, too, Phaon, beautiful in youth's rathe flower, on thee she gazes, thee she calls again; such power to thee gave Venus for her freightage in thy skiff, or else the herb of love. Yet at the last, not wisely bold, she leaps into the Ambracian waves.' _Ib._ &c. p. 175.] Having disposed of the lyrists, Poliziano proceeds to the dramatic poets. His brief notice of the three Attic tragedians is worthy of quotation, if only because it proves what we should suspect from other indications, that the best scholars of the earlier Renaissance paid them little attention. The facts mentioned in the following lines seem to be derived from the gossip of Athenæus:-- Æschylus aëriæ casu testudinis ictus, Quemque senem meritæ rapuerunt gaudia palmæ, Quemque tegit rabidis lacerum pia Pella molossis.[420] [Footnote 420: 'Æschylus, smitten by a tortoise falling from the air above his head, and he whose triumph, justly won in old age, killed him with excess of joy, and he whose body, torn by raging hounds, the reverent earth of Pella hides.'--_Carmina_, &c. p. 176.] Nor are his observations on the comic dramatists less meagre.[421] The Roman poets having been passed in the same rapid review, Poliziano salutes the founders of Italian literature in the following fine passage:-- Nec tamen aligerum fraudarim hoc munere Dantem, Per Styga, per stellas, mediique per ardua montis Pulchra Beatricis sub virginis ora volantem: Quique Cupidineum repetit Petrarcha triumphum: Et qui bis quinis centum argumenta diebus Pingit, et obscuri qui semina monstrat amoris: Unde tibi immensæ veniunt præconia laudis, Ingeniis opibusque potens Florentia mater.[422] [Footnote 421: _Ib._ p. 177.]