But there is nothing morbid, nothing of the hot-house, about all this. It is simply the frank, naïve, half-physical, half-mental, enjoyment of the youth of the world, as fresh and healthy as the love of the _trouvères_, or of Chaucer, for the daisy, and of the balladist for the season when the “shaws be sheen and leaves be large and long.” Unhappily of the nine books of Sappho there have survived only one complete poem, one or two considerable fragments, and a number of scraps and lines. So far as we possess even these we have to thank ancient critics, such as Aristotle, Dionysius, and Longinus, writers of miscellanies, such as Plutarch and Athenæus, or grammarians like Hephæstion. We have also to thank those modern scholars, and particular Bergk, who have acutely and patiently gleaned the scattered remnants from the pages of these ancient authorities. Scanty as they are, we can gather from them as profound a conviction of their creator’s genius as we gather from some fragmentary torso of an ancient masterpiece of sculpture. We may grieve that a torso of Praxiteles is so mutilated; nevertheless the art of the master speaks in every recognisable line of it. According to the old proverbs, “Hercules may be known from his foot” and “a lion from his toe-nail.” What remains of Sappho is enough to make us fully comprehend the splendour of her poetic reputation in ancient times. That reputation was unique. To the Greeks “the poet” meant Homer; “the poetess” meant Sappho. The story goes that Solon, the Athenian sage and legislator who was her contemporary, hearing his nephew sing one of Sappho’s odes, demanded to be taught it, “So that I may not die without learning it.” Plato consents to praise her, and that, when Plato speaks of a poet, is praise from Sir Hubert. To Aristotle she ranks with Homer and Archilochus. Strabo, the geographer, calls her “a marvellous being,” whom “no woman could pretend to rival in the very least in the matter of poetry.” Plutarch avers that “her utterances are veritably mingled with fire,” and that “the warmth of her heart comes forth from her in her songs.” He confesses also that their dainty charm shamed him to put by the wine-cup. To one writer of epigrams, said to be Plato himself, she is the “Tenth Muse”; to others she is the “pride of Greece” or the “flower of the Graces.” It is recorded that Mitylene stamped her effigy upon its coins. If imitation is the sincerest flattery, she was flattered abundantly. The most genuine lyric poet of Rome, Catullus, and its most skilful artificer of odes, Horace, both freely copied her. They did more than imitate; they plagiarised, they translated, sometimes almost word for word. There is scarcely an intelligible fragment left of Sappho which has not been borrowed or adapted by some modern poet, in English, French, or German.