When we proceed next to speak of the lively enthusiasm of this Lesbian folk for beauty in all its forms, and in especial for the beauty of music and poetry, we must guard against a misconception. Under all the love of art which ruled in Lesbos, amid all its eager cultivation of the Muses and the Graces, this isle of Greece “where burning Sappho loved and sung” carried on its daily work as strenuously as any Greeks were wont. Its farmers and fishermen, its quarriers and vine-dressers, laboured like others in sun or cold. There was no doubt plenty of envy, hatred, and malice, and no little that was coarse and gross. Nevertheless the love of art and beauty and the spontaneous appreciation of them penetrated far deeper into a Greek people than it does with us. It was not an artificial outgrowth, a dainty efflorescence of leisure and luxury. It was no private possession of the _virtuoso_, or sequestered playground of the amateur. Even now the popular songs of the village Greeks are in literary grace and thought of a higher quality than many songs familiar to our drawing-rooms. Life without song and dance upon the sward was unimaginable in old Hellas. The special pride of Lesbos was in its music and poetry. In the language of the legend, when that magic singer Orpheus had been torn to pieces in Thrace, his head--with, as some say, his lyre--was carried “down the swift Hebrus to the Lesbian shore.” On the coins of Mitylene, as on the flag of Ireland, may be seen a harp. The first great name in the musical history of Greece is that of the Lesbian Terpander. It is not indeed a probable story that he was the first to increase the strings of the lyre from four to seven, but it is practically certain that he both improved that instrument and invented new forms of composition to embody a lyrical idea. Another world-known poet and musician who shed glory on Lesbos was Arion. Of him in later days the story grew that, when he was thrown overboard by pirates, a dolphin, which had been charmed by his melodies, bore him upon its back safe to the Tarentine shore.