The virtue of Sappho is supreme art without artificiality, utter truth to natural feeling wedded to words of utter truth. Let Pausanias, that ancient Baedeker, declare that “concerning love Sappho sang many things which are inconsistent with one another.” She is only the more truthful therefor. No human heart, frankly enjoying or suffering the “bitter-sweet” moods and experiences of love, ever was consistent. Consistency belongs only to the cool and calculating brain. If love is cool and calculating, it is not love. How much Sappho may have written on other subjects than this, the most engrossing of all, we shall perhaps never know. But we may be sure that one of the most priceless poetical treasures lost to the world has been those other verses which, to quote Shelley on Keats, told of-- “All she had loved, and moulded into thought From shape and hue and odour and sweet sound.” There is, we may add, one quality besides beauty in verse which can never be analysed. It is charm. Sappho is pervaded with charm. And this suggests that we may conclude by quoting the judgment of Matthew Arnold upon one defect at least which must make Heine rank always lower than Sappho:-- “Charm is the glory which makes Song of the poet divine; Love is the fountain of charm. How without charm wilt thou draw, Poet! the world to thy way? Not by thy lightnings of wit-- Not by thy thunder of scorn! These to the world, too, are given; Wit it possesses and scorn-- Charm is the poet’s alone.” THE ST. ABBS PRESS, LONDON Transcriber’s Note Punctuation and spelling were made consistent when a predominant preference was found in the original book; otherwise they were not changed. End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Sappho, by Thomas George Tucker