It is necessarily so with Sappho. She is an embodiment of the typical Greek genius, which demanded the terse and clear, yet fine and noble, expression of a natural thought, free, as Addison well says, from “those little conceits and turns of wit with which many of our modern lyrics are so miserably infected.” True Greek art detests pointless elaboration, strained effects, or effects which have to be hunted for. The Greek lyric spirit would therefore have loved the best of Burns and would have recognised him for its own. But you cannot translate Burns. Neither can you translate Sappho. Nevertheless one attempt may be nearer, less inadequate, than another. Let us take the hymn to Aphrodite. It is quoted by the critic Dionysius for its “happy language and its easy grace of composition.” The first stanza contains in the Greek sixteen words, big and little. In woeful prose these may be literally rendered “_Radiant-throned immortal Aphrodite, child of Zeus, guile-weaver, I beseech thee, Queen, crush not my heart with griefs or cares._” In turning Greek poetry into English, and so inserting all those little pronouns and articles and prepositions with which a synthetic language can dispense, it may be estimated that the number of words will be greater by about one half,--the little words making the odd half. But Ambrose Philips makes thirty-four words out of those sixteen-- “O Venus, _beauty of the skies, To whom a thousand temples rise, Gaily false in gentle smiles_, Full of love-perplexing wiles; O Goddess, from my heart remove The wasting cares and pains of love.” The italics should suffice for criticism upon the fidelity of this “translation.” Mr. J. H. Merivale, though more faithful to the material contents, finds forty-three words necessary-- “Immortal Venus, throned above In radiant beauty, child of Jove, O skilled in every _art of love And_ artful snare; _Dread power, to whom I bend the knee, Release_ my soul and set it free From _bonds_ of _piercing_ agony And _gloomy_ care.” We may perhaps without presumption ask whether the sense is not given more faithfully, in a more natural English form and rhythm, and in a shape sufficiently reminiscent of the original stanza, in the twenty-three words which follow-- “Guile-weaving child of Zeus, who art Immortal, throned in radiance, spare, O Queen of Love, to break my heart With grief and care.” Keeping to the same principles of strict compression and strict simplicity we may thus continue with the remainder of the poem--