One of the latest French imitations of Sappho is by that great reviver of Aristophanes, Maurice Donnay, whose comedies have attracted such large audiences in Europe. In his _Lysistrata_ (Act I, scene II), Donnay makes the pretty Hirondelle as she walks along the shore of the violet sea recite to the accompaniment of the music of the waves the song which divine Sappho composed for the Egyptian courtesan Rhodopis, although we have no evidence for such a song: Rhodopis, ton amant est comme Un dieu: son bonheur me courrouce. Quand je pense que c’est un homme Pour qui ta voix se fait si douce, Et que c’est Charaxos, mon frère, Qui possède ta chair superbe, Et ta Beauté dont j’étais fière, Je deviens plus verte que l’herbe. Mes yeux se troublent, mes oreilles S’emplissent de murmures vagues Et de grandes rumeurs pareilles Au bruit que fait le choc des vagues. Et voilà qu’une sueur froide Inonde tout mon corps qui tremble, Puis, je reste sans souffle, et froide Ainsi qu’un cadavre, il me semble Que je meurs! que je meurs! This, of course, is an echo of the famous second ode of Sappho which has influenced all ages and countries and continues so to do. Hardly a year passes without some translation or reminiscence of it in Greece or Italy, in France or Germany, in England or America. XI. SAPPHO IN ENGLISH AND AMERICAN LITERATURE Sappho was little read in England and as a writer of poetry probably did not exist, except for a few Englishmen of great learning, before the sixteenth century. Even in the seventeenth century Thomas Stanley, a man of considerable culture, omitted Sappho from his translation of Anacreon (1650). In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the imitations limit themselves to the Sapphic metre,[177] with the exception of the famous line in Ben Jonson’s pastoral drama, _The Sad Shepherd_ (Act II, 2): “But best the dear good angel of the spring, The nightingale,” and of Sir Philip Sidney, who seems to have been entirely forgotten by modern writers on Sappho. But it is interesting to note, in the movement led by Gabriel Harvey in pre-Shakesperian days to write English poetry in classical metres, that sapphics were attempted by Harvey’s friend, Sir Philip Sidney, in _The Countesse of Pembroke’s Arcadia_, which was begun in 1580. One stanza will suffice to show how strained were the strophes thus manufactured: If mine eyes can speak to do hearty errand, Or mine eyes’ language she do hap to judge of, So that eyes’ message be of her received, Hope we do live yet. It is rather strange that Sir Philip did not use this metre in his translation of the second ode of Sappho, but employed anacreontics.