The story goes that once upon a time Aphrodite, goddess of love, disguised as an aged woman, was gallantly ferried across to Lesbos by a young waterman of the name of Phaon. In reward she bestowed upon him marvellous beauty and irresistible charm. Of him, the fable tells, Sappho became enamoured to the point of frenzy, and, unable to win his heart, she resolved to attempt the last and most desperate cure known for her disease. Away in the Ionian Sea was the jutting rock of Leucas, and it was believed that those who cast themselves down from that cliff into the sea either ended their miseries in death or rose from the waters cured of their malady. What became of Sappho when she took that “lover’s leap” may be found narrated by Hephæstion. It is given in Addison’s 233rd _Spectator_. “Many who were present related that they saw her fall into the sea, from whence she never rose again; there were others who affirmed that she never came to the bottom of her leap, but that she was changed into a swan as she fell, and that they saw her hovering in the air under that shape. But whether or no the whiteness and fluttering of her garments might not deceive those who looked upon her, or whether she might not really be metamorphosed into that musical and melancholy bird, is still a doubt among the Lesbians.” Well, let us share the Lesbian doubt, and a little more. Suffice it to say that, though this story, which has been elaborated by the fancy of Ovid, appears to have been known in some shape to Menander and other comic poets of Athens, there is absolutely no trace of the name of Phaon or of anything connected with him in any fragment of Sappho. Nor was there likely to be, seeing that he is in all probability but another _avatar_ of the mythical youth Adonis. More interesting is it to observe that the rock of desperation is called “Sappho’s Leap” unto this day. Unfortunately we do not know when or by whom it was so baptized. Of Sappho’s personal appearance we have no certain knowledge. More than four centuries later a philosopher named Maximus Tyrius says that she was considered beautiful, “though” short and dark, and hence is prompted Swinburne’s assumption-- “The small dark body’s Lesbian loveliness That held the fire eternal.” If this be true, she was sufficiently unlike the conventional ideal of Lesbian beauty. Her contemporary Alcæus speaks of her “sweet smile,” and Anacreon, in the next generation, of her “sweet voice.” Later writers of epigrams, who can hardly have known much about the matter, call her “bright-eyed,” or “the pride of the lovely-haired Lesbians,” but those are as likely as not mere descriptive guesses of the kind in which poetical fancy may pardonably indulge. If we meet with the untranslatable adjective _kalê_ applied to her by Plato, we have to remember that it is a stock epithet of admiration for a writer of charm and genius, and in such cases contains no reference whatever to beauty of person.