!" U C K E R UCNRLF *B 5TD 33S GIFT OF JANE iCoSATHER ?.'5- -^ SAPPHO A Lecture delivered before the Classical Association of Victoria, 191 3. SAPPHO BY T. G. TUCKER, LITT.D. (CAMB.), HON. LITT.D. (DUBLIN) Professor of Classical Philology in the University of Melbourne MELBOURNE THOMAS C. LOTHIAN 1914 PRINTED IN ENGLAND Copyright. First Edition, May 19 14. K-T^r^ncri SAPPHO TT is hardly possible to realise and judge of Sappho without reaUs- ing her environment. The picture must have its background, and the background is Lesbos about the year 600 B.C. One may well regret never to have seen the island now called MytiUni, but known in ancient times as Lesbos. There are, however, de- scriptions not a few, and with these we must perforce be satisfied. On the map it lies there in the ^Egean 8 SAPPHO Sea, a sort of triangle with rounded edges, pierced deeply on the south by two deep lochs or fiords, while to- ward each of its three angles it rises into mountains of from two to three thousand feet in height. One way it stretches some thirty-five miles, the other some twenty-five. It is twenty-five centuries ago since this island was the home of Sappho, of Alcaeus, and of a whole school of the most finished lyric poetry and music ever heard in Greece. From its northern shore, across only seven miles of laughing sea, the poetess might every day look upon the Troad, the land of Homeric legend; and SAPPHO 9 in the North-East distance, over the broadening strait, rose the storied crest of' many-fountained Ida." The air was clear with that translucency of which Athens also boasted, and in which the Athenian poet rightly or wrongly found one cause of the Athenian intellectual brilliancy. The climate was, and still is, famous for its mildness and salubrity. The Lesbian soil was, and still is, rich in corn and oil and wine, in figs and olives, in building- wood and tinted marble. It was eminently a land of flowers and aromatic plants, of the rose and the iris, the m37rtle and the violet, and the Lesbians would seem to have 10 SAPPHO loved and cultivated flowers much as they are loved and cultivated in Japan. Such was the land. The Greeks who inhabited it belonged apparently to that Achaean-iEolian branch which was the first to cross from Europe to the north-west iEgaean and to oust, or plant colonies among, the older nameless perhaps " Pelasgian '' occupants. This is not the place to discuss the tribal or even racial differ- ences which once existed between iEolian, Ionian, and Dorian Greeks. Their divergence of character was great ; it was of the first significance as exhibited in war, in social life, in SAPPHO II art. The fact that each division spoke the Greek tongue, though with various accents and idioms, is no longer held as proof that their racial origin and capacity were the same. Between the Greek of Lesbos and the Greek of Sparta there were differences in temper, in adaptability, and in taste, as great as those between the English-speaking Irishman, with his nimble sympathies and his ready eloquence and wit, and the slower if surer Saxon of Mid- lothian. If we touch upon this ques- tion here, it is merely because it casts some measure of light upon those social and literary characteristics of the Lesbians in which Sappho fortu- 12 SAPPHO nately shared. Almost beyond a doubt the ^olian Greeks who first made Lesbos their home were the nearest of kin to those fair-haired Achaeans who, in the Iliads followed their feudal lords to the siege of Troy. Socially a distinguishing mark of these people was the liberty and high posi- tion enjoyed by the women in the household, by the Penelopes as well as by the Helens. This fact has hardly been sufficiently considered in dealing with that peculiar position of Sappho and her coterie, concerning which some- thing will be said later on. Artisti- cally their distinguishing mark, as represented first in Homer, was their SAPPHO 13 clear, open-eyed, original observation of essentials, their veracity of de- scription, their dislike of the indefinite and the mystic. This too is clearly reflected in the work of Sappho and her compatriots. We must not, it is true, make too much of this racial derivation and its consequences. The population of Lesbos doubtless became mixed ; the lapse of centuries, the passing away of the feudal relation, increasing ease and wealth in a softening climate, long intercourse with the trade and culture of the neighbouring Asiatic coast all these had their inevitable effects. Nevertheless, among it all, 14 SAPPHO the frank genius of earliest Greece is still discernible in the classic poetry of Lesbos. The island naturally possessed its characteristic speech. The dialect of Lesbos was strongly marked. It is altogether unsafe to specify at this distance of time the particular qualities of softness or sonority which belonged to Greek dialects ; but, if one may ven- ture where doubt must always be so great, it would not be unreasonable to speak of Lesbian Greek as perhaps the most '' singable '' of them all. In several ways it is pecuUarly like ItaUan. The aspirate is gone, the double consonants are brought out SAPPHO 15 with an Italian clarity unique in Greece, the vowels are firm and musical. And here we must remember that a local Greek dialect must never be looked upon as a provincial patois simply because it is not Attic. Neither Attic nor any other one speech pos- sessed a pre-eminence in Greece in the year 600 B.C. The poet of every little independent Grecian state was free to compose in his own idiom, with no more hesitation or self-consciousness than would have occurred to a Proven- gal troubadour, an early trouvere of Normandy, or a Sicilian poet before the age of Dante. The half-doubts of Burns when writing his native Scots l6 SAPPHO would find no sympathy in Sappho or Alcaeus. No poetry that profoundly stirs the heart was ever written with effort in an alien speech. Burns per- haps had some reason to be tempted to write in English. The Lesbian singers had no temptation to write in anything but Lesbian. Sappho may indeed be called the Bums of Greece, but if her dialect, like his, was local, it was at the same time the genuine and recognised language of the most cultured men and women of her people. Having thus spoken of Lesbos, its people, and its language, we may pro- ceed to the social and ethical surround- ings into which Sappho was born. SAPPHO 17 The island contained, after the usual Greek fashion, perhaps half-a-dozen little communities independent of each other. All these had their ''little summer wars '' and their little revolu- tions ; but it is with Mitylene, the chief and largest town, that the life of Sappho is identified. The history of such a town at this period may be compared to that of an Italian city in the later thirteenth century. It was the history of a struggle between a despotism, or an oHgarchy of aristo- crats, and the rights of the citizens. The grandi and popolari of Florence in the time of Dante find their ana- logues in the conflicts of nobles like B i8 SAPPHO Alcaeus and his brother Antimenidas against the champions of the common folk of Mitylene. There were also feuds less immediately explainable, just as there were feuds of Guelfs and Ghibellines, of Blacks and Whites. We need not inquire into the usurpa- tions of Melanchrus and Myrsilus or the dictatorship of Pittacus. Men carried to power by favour of one party might drive their opponents into banishment, just as Dante was exiled to Verona and Ravenna. Among those who thus left their country for a space were the poet Alcaeus and his greater contemporary Sappho. Par- ticularly haughty and turbulent were SAPPHO 19 the nobly bom, and these often elected to roam abroad and serve as con- dottieri in foreign armies rather than condescend to obey the rule of the commons at home. It may be men- tioned in passing that the brother of the poet Alcaeus took service under King Nebuchadnezzar, and in his wars killed a Goliath, who ''lacked but a hand's-breath of five cubits/' Yet these are after all but surface in- cidents, of which history often makes too much. As in modern times, the little wars and little revolutions caused but an inconsiderable suspension of social and industrial life. Commerce and art went on very much as before. 20 SAPPHO The vines of Lesbos were pruned, the ships of Lesbos went trading down the coast, the poets and musicians of Lesbos played and sang. We know that while Guelfs were quarrelling with Ghibellines and Florentines were fight- ing with Pisans or Genoese, the festive processions went with song across the Arno, Giotto's tower rose from the ground, Guido Cavalcanti composed his sonnets, and Dante, for all that he must fight in the front ranks at Campaldino, found time and hearers for his Donne cW avete intelletto d'amore. So it was at Mitylene. We need not therefore picture Sappho and her society of maidens as living perpetually SAPPHO 21 among war's alarms or fluttering in daily expectation of battle, murder, and sudden death. Life in Lesbos must have been passing cheerful, as life goes. 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 mis- conception. 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 burn- ing Sappho loved and sung '' carried on its daily work as strenuously as any Greeks were wont. Its farmers 22 SAPPHO 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 lux- ury. It was no private possession of the virtuoso y 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 SAPPHO 23 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 Ire- land, 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 24 SAPPHO practically certain that he both im- proved 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 melo- dies, bore him upon its back safe to the Tarentine shore. In Lesbos, as in every part of Greece, there were abundant demands upon musician and poet. Every occasion of worship, festivity, and grief required its song. The gods were hymned by groups at their SAPPHO 25 altars and by white-robed maidens in processions; at weddings the hymeneal chorus was chanted along ^ the street, and the epithalamion before the doors of the bridal home ; at every banquet were sung lively catches and jocund songs of Bacchus ; ^ every season ^spring, summer, har- vest had its popular ditty, exul- tant or pathetic ; almost every occu- pation, of herdsman, boatman, gar- dener, was beguiled with melody ; at the coming of the first swallow, as on the old English Mayday, the children sang the " swallow-song '' from sJ house . to house. And let it be remembered that the Greeks had none 26 SAPPHO of our modern tolerance for a song of which the words were nought and the tune everything. To them the thought, the sentiment, was first ; the melody was simply its proper vehicle. Italian opera, when not a word is intelligible, would have seemed to them a strange anomaly. To them mousike was the ''art of the Muses,'' and this meant literature no less than minstrelsy. The poet, unless, like Burns, he wrote his verses to existing tunes, was his own composer. In either case he was poet first and foremost. Novv^ for generations the songs for special purposes had been shaping SAPPHO 27 themselves on special lines. To use a phrase of Aristotle, experience had found out the right species to fit the case. There were sundry recognised stanzas and metres for a processional, a hymeneal, or a dirge. In most cases, therefore, the task of a new poet was to write new words ; the melody would, as in the case of Burns, almost find itself. Nevertheless the complete poet could not dispense with an elaborate training in music. To invent beautiful variations of exist- ing tunes was part of his glory ; he must at least write words which should sing themselves to the melody he selected. " Melodies '' is the word, 28 SAPPHO for the Greeks knew practically nothing of harmonies. Their songs were sung in unison, or simply with an octave interval when men sang with women or with boys. The accom- panying instrument was generally the lyre, or one of many stringed instruments akin thereto ; sometimes it was the so-called flute, which was in truth a clarinet. Whatever their musical deficiencies, it has been maintained by competent authorities that in nicety of ear for pitch and time the training of the Greeks incomparably surpassed the modern. Be that as it may, it must never be left out of sight that, when a Lesbian SAPPHO 29 wrote a song, it was in the first place as perfect a poem as he could create, and in the second it was meant to be sung, not merely to be read. Shelley's Ode to a Skylark is consummate literature. Yet we may doubt if it could ever be sung, and assuredly it was not written to that end. On the other hand, the songs of Moore are often but sickly stuff to read, but they lend themselves perfectly to those touching Irish airs, to which, by the way, the Lesbians seem to have been akin in a peculiar tone of plaintiveness. A Greek lyric aimed at combining the literary mousike of Shelley's Ode with the songful mousike of Moore. It is in the 30 SAPPHO perfection of this combination that Sappho excels all women who have ever written verse. Where song was for generations so abundant, it follows that there was floating about among the people many an old ballad or favourite ditty whose author had been long forgotten. Numbers of these Volkslieder, or snatches of them, lay, sometimes with consciousness and sometimes unrealised, in the memory of every child of Lesbos. The artistic poet did not scorn them ; he feared no charge of plagiarism if he adopted and adapted them ; he often acted as Burns acted with the ballads of Scotland ; he took SAPPHO 31 them, gave them that marvellous and inexplicable touch of finality which only genius can impart, and so made them his for ever. This also did Sappho do, and her verses, when she deals with well-worn themes, are beyond question often fed with the hints of older nameless songsters. There is one department of lyric verse in which Lesbos stood supreme, and Sappho supreme in Lesbos. It is the poetry, not of religion or marriage, of the banquet or the seasons, but of personal emotion ; the verse of the ''lyric cry,'' which tells of .the writer's v own passion, its waves of joy and y 32 SAPPHO sorrow, love and hate. It is the monody, the verse sung, not by a gathered company, but from the one overflowing heart, the song best represented at Rome by Catullus, and in modern times by Burns or Heine. For most of her poems in this kind there is no reason to suppose that Sappho relied upon any promptings but those of her own soul. She took the floating rhythms of the ballads, modified them, and into their mould she poured verse which, as George Sand said of her own writings, came from '' the real blood of her heart and the real flame of her thought.'' And here at length we come to the SAPPHO 33 poetess herself. Into this land, devoted to poetry, to music, to flowers, and so regardful of loveliness that a public '' prize of beauty'' was annually com- peted for in the temple of Hera, was Sappho or Psappha, as she apparently called herself born in the latter part of the seventh century before Christ. Our ancient authorities are sufiiciently in agreement as to her date, and we may lay it down that she was in her prime about the year 600 B.C., or nearly a hundred and fifty years before that great period of Athenian literary culture which is represented by iEschylus, Sophocles and Euripides, u The ascertainable facts of her career c 34 SAPPHO are miserably few, and concerning those matters which are in debate as to her Hfe and character the present exponent must be permitted to express simply his own views, premising that they have been formed with all due and deliberate care. Whether the names of her parents were or were not Scamandronymus and Cleis is an unimportant question. We may simply remark that both those names are of aristocratic colour, and both are more or less authenticated. Whether again she was born at Mitylene itself, or at the smaller town of Eresos, is of little moment, since we know that at any rate Mitylene was SAPPHO 35 the scene of her life's work. That she belonged to the ranks of the well-born, and that good looks were in the family, is proved by the choice of her brother Larichus as cup-bearer of Mitylene, an office which was bestowed only on handsome and noble youth. That at least one member of the family possessed considerable means is known from the rather romantic history of a second brother, Charaxus . This young man sailed away in his ship, laden with the famous Lesbian wine the inno- centis pocula Leshii of Horace as far as Egypt. There he traded in that merchandise at the Pan-Grecian free- town of Naucratis, which had been -v 36 SAPPHO established in the Delta under a permis- sion somewhat similar to that by which settlement was first allowed in the treaty-ports of China. Here, however, he fell in love with the world-famed demi-mondaine whose name, Doricha, is less familiar than her sobriquet Rhodopis " complexion of a rose'' and his gains were spent in chivalrously ransoming that lady from a degrading slavery. It is of interest to know, though the verses are not preserved to us, that his poetess sister reproved him sharply for this conduct. Her " love of love " did not blind her to the claims of family honour and dignity. It is gratifying to learn that at a later time SAPPHO 37 she expresses her reconciUation to her brother in a poem which, hke those of Herondas and Bacchyhdes, has but recently been disgorged, though in a sad- ly mutilated state, by the omnivorous sands of Egypt. Sappho herself is said to have married a wealthy islander of Andros, and to have had at least one daughter, whose name, according to Greek custom, was the name of the grandmother, Cleis. It is apparently this Cleis whom she is addressing in a fragment which we may venture to translate thus " I have a maid, a bonny maid, As dainty as the golden flowers, 38 SAPPHO My darling Cleis. Were I paid All Lydia, and the lovely bowers Of Cyprus, 'twould not buy my maid." An inscription on the Parian marbles informs us that, at some uncertain date, Sappho fled, or was driven, into banish- ment to Sicily. There is nothing unlikely in the circumstance, and it is worth noting that more than 500 years later, in the days of Cicero, Verres, the governor of that island, ap- propriated a bronze statue of Sappho, wrought by a Grecian master and greatly prized at Syracuse. As Aberglaube which has gathered about Sappho's history, there are two SAPPHO 39 strange legends, or rather there is one strange legend in two parts, which must here be told briefly. 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 mar- vellous 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 beUeved that those V 40 SAPPHO who cast themselves down from that cUff 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'' maybe found narrated by Hephaestion. 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 SAPPHO 41 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 pro- bability but another avatar of the 42 SAPPHO mythical youth Adonis. More inter- esting 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 philo- sopher named Maximus Tyrius says that she was considered beautiful, '* though " short and dark, and hence is prompted Swinburne's assump- tion '' The small dark body's Lesbian loveliness That held the fire eternal." SAPPHO 43 If this be true, she was sufficiently unUke the conventional ideal of Lesbian beauty. Her contemporary Alcaeus 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 kale applied to her by Plato, we have to remember that it is a stock epithet of admiration for a writer of 44 SAPPHO charm and genius, and in such cases contains no reference whatever to beauty of person. What we really know best of Sappho's life is that she was acknowledged the choicest spirit of her time in music and poetry, and that, whether as friendly guide or professional teacher or something of both, she gathered about her what may be variously called a coterie, academy, conserva- torium, or club, of young women, not only from Lesbos itself but from other islands, and even from Miletus and the distant Pamphylia. Sometimes they were called her '' com- panions,'' sometimes her '* disciples." SAPPHO 45 One of them, Erinna of Telos, herself ^ became famous, but unhappily sur- vives for us as a lyrist only in an inconsiderable line or two. Sappho appears to have taught these damsels music and also the art v of poetry, so far as that art is teachable. She appears, moreover, to have taught them whatever charms and graces of ^ bearing and behaviour were most desired by women, whether in their social life or in their frequent appear- ances in religious or secular processions and ceremonies. There exists a short fragment in which she derides the ^ rusticity of the woman who has no idea how to hold up her train about 46 SAPPHO her ankles. In another place she bids one of her maidens '* Take sprigs of anise fair With soft hands twined, And round thy bonny hair A chaplet bind ; The Muse with smiles will bless Thy blossoms gay, While from the garlandless She turns away." It has often been observed that the relations of Sappho with the young women Erinna and Atthis and Anac- toria resembled those of Socrates with the young men Alcibiades and Char- mides and Phaedrus. But it has appar- SAPPHO 47 ently not been also pointed out as a par- allel that, three centuries later, there similarly gathered about the maitre Philetas, in the isle of Cos, a school of ^ young poets, among whom were no less persons than Theocritus, Asclepia- des and Aratus. The peculiarity of Sappho's coterie lay to the general mind in the fact that it was a club of women. And here we must handle with brief and gentle touch, but with no false reserve, a topic which no discourse on Sappho can shrink from facing. The reputation of Sappho and her comrades has long been made to suffer from what is probably, and almost certainly, a 48 SAPPHO cruel injustice. Partly through the social depravity of the later Greek and Roman, partly through taking too seriously the scurrilous humours of the comic dramatists of Athens, many ancients and most moderns have formed concerning that Lesbian school a notion which in all likelihood does bitter wrong to Sappho, wrong to art, and wrong to human nature. At Athens, as among all the Ionian Greeks, and later on among Greeks almost everywhere, a woman of char- acter was kept in a seclusion suggestive of the oriental. The woman most to be praised, Pericles declared, was " she of whom least is said among men^ SAPPHO 49 whether for good or evil/* This, as we have seen, was not the way of the older iEolian Lesbos, where woman still enjoyed much of the Homeric freedom and independence to go and come and live her life. What more natural than for Athenians to imagine that the famous coterie of Sappho consisted of women of the same class as the briUiant Aspasia ? Their very talent was proof enough, for the Athenian housekeeper who passed for wife made no pretensions to liter- ature and art . What more natural also than for an Athenian playwright, like him of the Ecclesiazusce, or " Women in Parliament,'' to find scandalous D v** 50 SAPPHO comedy in the Precieuses of Lesbos ? Again, the poems of Sappho are nearly all poems of love, and to the ordinary Greek, especially of a later date, it was unseemly for modest women to acknowledge so positive a passion. An Elizabeth Barrett Browning would have received no countenance from the Athenian Mrs. Grundy. The truth seems to be that Lesbos in the year 600 B.C. was in this respect socially and ethically almost as different from the Athens of two hundred years later as the emancipated young woman of America is different from the dragon-guarded Spanish maiden of Madrid. SAPPHO 51 We may pass by other considerations which might be urged, but it is no surprise that the false notion of Sappho, constructed by decadent Greeks and refined upon by the vice of the Romans, should do her special harm in the days when paganism gave way to Chris- tianity. Among the many works des- troyed by the unco' guid in the early Byzantine days were the poems of Sappho destroyed the more savagely because that particular pagan, who so passionately invoked the Queen of love, was a woman, and woman's ideal place was then the cloister. Unhappily certain moderns, who are anything but unco' guid, have carried 52 SAPPHO on the wrong in a different way, and, for example, the title Sapho of Daudet's sketch of mceurs Parisiennes is a choice which may pardonably stir the ire of any Hellenist. The few fragments of Sappho which have been preserved are not those which have been spared by the saints or which have been culled for special innocence. They simply happen to be quoted here and there by ancient critics, grammarians, and even lexi- cographers, to illustrate some aesthetic doctrine, the use of some word, or even some pecuUarity of grammar. And no understanding man or woman can read them without feeling that what SAPPHO 53 we find is sheer poetry, sound and true, free from dross in either form or thought. Says Sappho herself, " I love daintiness, and for me love possesses the brightness and beauty of the sun/' To Alcaeus, her fellow- countryman and acquaintance, she was the " violet- weaving, pure, sweetly- smiling Sappho/' To Plato, who judged even art by ethical standards, she is " beautiful and wise/ ' Her reply to her fellow-poet, when he was too bashful to say something which was in his mind, was this "Had your desire been right and good, Your tongue perplex'd with no bad thought, 54 SAPPHO With frank eye unabashed you would Have spoken of the thing you ought/* To some lover she says if she is speaking in her own person '* As friends we'll part : Win thee a younger bride ; Too old, I lack the heart To keep thee at my side/' Nay, we may go further and say that, after reading and re-reading and translating and commenting on her poems, so far as we possess them, we find her verse full indeed of warmth and colour, full of poignant feeling, ^ but never riotous, always sane, always SAPPHO 55 controlled by the truest sense of art. Obedience to the central Greek motto juLtjSev ayav " nothing too much '* was never better exemplified. The Greeks would never have set her on such a pedestal if she had been the poetical maenad who seems to exist in the mind of Swinburne, when he writes of her, in that vicious exaggeration of phrase which he too often affects, as ''Love's priestess, mad with pain and joy of song. Song's priestess, mad with joy and pain of love." No writer so lacking in sophrosyne could assert, as Swinburne elsewhere 56 SAPPHO in his finer and truer style makes her assert V "I Sappho shall be one . . . . . . with all high things for ever." There is not a line of Sappho of which you do not feel that, glow as it may with feeling, it is constructed with such art as unconscious though it may possibly be can only be sus- ^ tained in a mind of perfect sanity. There is something else which is too often strangely overlooked in judging a poet from his writings alone. It is particularly liable to be forgotten when the writings which have been preserved are but fragments severed SAPPHO 57 from their context. The poet is not always writing in his own person ; he is not always revealing his own feel- ings. He is often dramatising ; and his verses then utter the sentiments and passions suited to the character concerned. No one will accept a passage culled from Shakespeare as proof of the ethical views of Shake- speare himself. It may express only the whim of Falstaff, or the snarl of Shylock, or the banter of Benedick, or the melancholy humour of Hamlet. Allowing for all the difference between lyric poetry and dramatic, the lyrist also has his passages in which he is speaking for another. He naay be 58 SAPPHO actually writing for another. In Memoriam doubtless represents the heart of Tennyson himself. But suppose posterity to retain but a few fragments of his other works. What shall we say of those who might take the isolated words ''I am aweary, aweary, I would that I were dead'' as a proof of the settled pessimism of our poet ? We know that the speaker was Mariana. We do not always know who is the speaker in the frag- ments of Sappho. But, even if we did know, there still remains not a verse which betrays the too much, or which passes beyond the pathetic into the reckless, the hysterical, still less the dissolute. SAPPHO 59 Behind Sappho, as behind Burns before he wrote " Green grow the rushes O'* or " Auld Lang Syne," lay a mass of popular ballads and a wealth of lyrical ideas to be seized upon and shaped when the perfect mood arrived. When she sings " Sunk is the moon ; The Pleiades are set ; Tis midnight ; soon The hour is past ; and yet I lie alone " it is probable that she is setting one such prehistoric lyrical idea to new words or recasting one such vagrom ditty. It is practically certain that she is 6o SAPPHO doing so in that quatrain which begins "Sweet mother mine, I cannot ply my loom/' That thought is embodied in English folksong also " O mother, put my wheel away ; I cannot spin to-night '' as well as in German and other tongues. Let us then sweep aside from the memory of Sappho the myths of Phaon and the Leucadian leap, and the calumnies of Athenian worldlings in the comic theatre ; let us reject all that Swinburnian hyperbole which makes her " mad" in any sense what- ever ; and let us simply take her upon the strength of the '' few passages, but roses '' which are left to us, and upon SAPPHO 6i the word of Alcseus that she was the *' violet- weaving, pure, sweetly- smiling Sappho." Her life as teacher and aesthetic guide in Lesbos evidently did not pass without a cloud. Her talent, like talent everywhere, found jealous rivals and detractors. A certain Andromeda seems to have caused her special vexation by luring away her favourite pupil Atthis. There were also, then as now, rich but uncultured women who had little love for art and its votaries, particularly if these latter were all too charming. To one such woman Sappho, who, like a true iEolian, looked with horror on a life %/ 62 SAPPHO without poetry and a death unhonoured by song, writes " When thou art dead, thou shah he, with none to remember or mourn, For ever and aye ; for thy head no Pierian roses adorn ; But e'en in the nether abodes thou shalt herd thee, unnoted, forlorn, With the dead whom the great dead scorn." Her work as poetess, though of everlasting value for what it touches in universal humanity, naturally bears many marks of her country and her time. Besides her songs of personal emotion, she wrote in several of the SAPPHO 63 various forms of occasional verse which we found reason to mention as existing in Lesbos. Of her wedding songs and epithalamia we possess a number of short fragments. Among them is one in the accepted amoebaean or antiphonic style, in which a band of girls mock the men with failure to win some dainty maiden, and the men reply with a taunt at the neglected bloom of the unprofitable virgin. Say the maids "On the top of the topmost spray The pippin blushes red, Forgot by the gatherers nay ! Was it "forgot " we said ? 'Twas too far overhead ! " 64 SAPPHO Reply the men *'The hyacinth so sweet On the hills where the herdsmen go Is trampled 'neath their feet, And its purple bloom laid low " and there unhappily the record deserts us. The writing of Sappho was thus in no way dissociated from the sur- rounding life of Lesbos. Similarly the Lesbian love of bright and beautiful things of gold, of roses, of sweet odours and sweet sounds pervades all that is left of her. The Queen of Love sits on a richly-coloured throne ; she dispenses the '' nectar '' of love in SAPPHO 65 " beakers of gold '' ; she wears a '' golden coronal '' ; the Graces have "rosy arms*'; verses are the ''rose- wreath of the Muses '' ; the blessed goddesses shower grace upon those who approach them with garlands on their heads. If maidens dance around the altar, they may dance most pleasantly on the tender grass flecked with flowers. It is sweet to lie in the garden of the Nymphs, where ''Through apple-boughs, with purling sound, Cool waters creep ; From quivering leaves descends around The dew of sleep." Sweet among sounds is that of the 66 SAPPHO '' harbinger of spring, the nightingale, whose voice is all desire/' Sappho does in very truth, as she declares, love daintiness. Above all, she loves love. Love is the ''nectar'' in the lines "Come, Cyprian Queen, and, debonair, In golden cups the nectar bear, Wherein all festal joy must share Or be no joy." But there is nothing morbid, nothing of the hot-house, about all this. It \ is simply the frank, naive, half -physical, half -mental, enjoyment of the youth of the world, as fresh and healthy as the love of the trouveres, or of SAPPHO 67 Chaucer, for the daisy, and of the bal- ladist for the season when the *' shaws be sheen and leaves be large and long." Unhappily of the nine books of Sappho there have survived only one complete poem, one or two consider- able fragments, and a number of scraps and lines. So far as we possess even these we have to thank ancient critics, such as Aristotle, Dionysius, and Longinus, writers of miscellanies, such as Plutarch and Athenaeus, or gram- marians like Hephaestion. We have also to thank those modem scholars, and particular Bergk, who have acutely and patiently gleaned the 68 SAPPHO scattered remnants from the pages of these ancient authorities. Scanty as they are, we can gather from them as profound a conviction of their creator's genius as we gather from some fragmentary torso of an ancient masterpiece of sculpture. We may grieve that a torso of Praxiteles is so mutilated ; nevertheless the art of the master speaks in every recognisable line of it. According to the old pro- verbs, " Hercules may be known from his foot '' and '' a lion from his toe-nail/' What remains of Sappho is enough to make us fully comprehend the splen- dour of her poetic reputation in ancient times. That reputation was unique. SAPPHO 69 To the Greeks '' the poet " meant Homer ; '' the poetess '' meant Sappho, v- The story goes that Solon, the Athenian ^ sage and legislator who was her con- temporary, hearing his nephew sing one of Sappho's odes, demanded to be taught it, '' So that I may not die without learning it." Plato consents to praise her, and that, when Plato speaks of a poet, is praise from Sir Hubert. To Aristotle she ranks with Homer and Archilochus. Strabo, the geographer, calls her "a marvellous being,' ' whom ' ' no woman could pretend to rival in the very least in the matter of poetry.'' Plutarch avers that " her utterances are veritably mingled with 70 SAPPHO fire/' and that " the warmth of her heart comes forth from her in her songs." He confesses also that their dainty charm shamed him to put by the wine-cup. To one writer of epi- grams, said to be Plato himself, she is the " Tenth Muse '' ; to others she is the '* pride of Greece *' or the '' flower of the Graces." It is recorded that Mity- lene stamped her effigy upon its coins. If imitation is the sincerest flattery, she was flattered abundantly. The most genuine lyric poet of Rome, Catullus, and its most skilful artificer of odes, Horace, both freely copied her. They did more than imitate; they plagiarised, they translated, some- SAPPHO 71 times almost word for word. There is scarcely an intelligible fragment left of Sappho which has not been borrowed or adapted by some modern poet, in English, French, or German. There is one mutilated ode of hers which no one can translate. It is quoted by Longinus as showing with v what vivid terseness she can portray v the tumultuous and conflicting sensa- ^ tions of a lover in that bright fierce south. Ambrose Philips makes it wordy ; Boileau makes it formal. It displays all the grand Greek direct- ness, but a directness clothed in the grand Greek charm of perfect rhyth- v mical expression. We can preserve. 72 SAPPHO if we will, the directness, but the charm of its medium will inevitably vanish. In effect, lamentably stripped of its native verbal charm, it may be ren- dered ' ' Blest as the gods, methinks, is he Who sitteth face to face with thee And hears thy sweet voice nigh, Thy winsome laugh, whereat my heart Doth in my bosom throb and start ; One glimpse of thee, and I Am speechless, tongue-tied ; subtle flame Steals in a moment through my frame ; My ears ring ; to mine eye All's dark ; a cold sweat breaks ; all o'er I tremble, pale as death ; nay more, I seem almost to die." SAPPHO 73 When after this we read in the Phedre of Racine these four Hnes Je le vis, je rougis, je palis a sa vue, Un trouble s'eleva dans mon ame eperdue ; Mas yeux ne voyaient plus, je ne pouvais parler, Je sentais tout mon coeur at transir at bruler : we recognise their source. We recog- nise, also, if it were not already con- fessed, the source of this of Tennyson in his Fatima : " Last night, when some one spoke his name, From my swift blood, that went and came, A thousand little shafts of flame Were shivered in my narrow frame/' 74 SAPPHO If this physical perturbation seems strange to the more reticent man of northern blood, it was in no way V strange to Theocritus, to Catullus, or to Lucretius. Once more, according to the German proverb, '' he who would comprehend the poet must travel in the poet's land/' And here we are confronted with a ^ supreme difficulty. While mere fact is readily translatable, and thought is approximately translatable, the literary / quality, which is warm with the pres- sure and pulsation of a writer's mood ^ and rhythmic with his emotional state, is hopelessly untranslatable. It can be suggested, but it cannot be reproduced. SAPPHO 75 The translation is too often like the ; bare, cold photograph of a scene of j which the emotional effect is largely due to colour and atmosphere. The simpler and more direct the words of the original, the more impossible is translation. In the original the words, though simple and direct, are poetical, beautiful in quality and association. They contain in their own nature hints of pathos, sparks of fire, which any so-called synonym would lack. They are musical in themselves and musical in their combinations. They flow easily, sweetly, touchingly through the , ear into the heart . The translator may seek high and low in his own language 76 SAPPHO for words and combinations of the same timbre, the same ethical or emotional influence, the same gracious and touching music. He will generally seek in vain. In his own language there may exist words approxi- mately answering in meaning, but, even if they are fairly simple and direct, they are often commonplace, sullied with '' ignoble use,'' harsh in sound, without distinction or charm. He may require a whole phrase to convey the same tone and effect ; he becomes diffuse, where terseness is a special virtue of his original. Let a foreigner study to render this SAPPHO 77 "Had we never loved sae kindly, Had we never loved sae blindly. Never met, or never parted, We had ne'er been broken-hearted." Or this "Take, O take those lips away, That so sweetly were forsworn, And those eyes, the break of day, Lights that do mislead the morn ! But my kisses bring again. Seals of love, but sealed in vain." Is it to be imagined that he could create precisely the effect of either of these stanzas in French or Itahan ? Is not much of that effect inseparable from the words ? 78 SAPPHO Take a perfectly simple stanza of Heine ''Du bist wie eine Blume So hold und schon und rein : Ich schau' dich an, und Wehmuth Schleicht mir ins Herz hinein/' Near as English is to German, incom- parably more easy as it is to render German into English than Greek into English, it may be declared that no English rendering of this verse conveys, or ever will convey, exactly the impres- sion of the German original. In respect of mere musical sound, what other words could run precisely like those of Coleridge at the opening SAPPHO 79 of Kuhla Khan, or like Shelley's '' I arise from dreams of thee '* ? The case is exactly the same when we turn to a Greek lyric. Alcaeus writes four words which mean simply*' I felt the coming of the flowery spring '' ; but no juxta- position of EngUsh words yet attempted to that effect can recall to the student of Greek the impression of ^povo. 288 pages. Bound in full cloth. Price, 3/6; posted, 3/9. In this volume, Education, Science, Literature, Culture and Cant and other kindred subjects are treated in a manner that is full of vitality and attracts. This is a reprint of a book that has been out of print and quite unprocurable for many years. Contents. Our Earliest Ancestors and their Beliefs. The Nature and Province of Poetry. Litera- ture, Science and Education, Culture and Cant. The Teachings of History. The Teachings of Travel. Literary Judgment. " This book is singularly well named. The last lecture of literary judgment is particularly interesting and valu- able. It is full of suggestion as to young journahsts, and all persons interested in the study of * that literature which maketh a full man,' and which must spring from the real blood of the heart, and the real flame of the thought." Otago Daily Times. " These seven essays are distinctively worth while. We especially commend his essay on the Teachings of History, which is packed with wisdom, to every one who is seriously interested in the science of politics." " In Australia he should be known as a public benefactor. The volume before us being nothing less than a contribution to the Commonwealth." The AthencBum. LATER LITANIES By KATHLEEN WATSON. Author of " Litanies of Life." Bound in full cloth. Artistically blocked in gold. Price, 2/6; posted, 2/8. This new book by Kathleen Watson is sure to receive a friendly welcome from the hundreds of friends which she made with her previous books. This volume is, perhaps, more mature, and will give greater pleasure than any of her former books. All readers should secure a copy of this new book. LITANIES OF LIFE By KATHLEEN WATSON. Author of "The House of Broken Dreams," "The Gaiety OF Fatma." Crown Svo. Bound in full blue cloth, gold blocked. Price, 2/6 ; posted, 2/8. This is the fifth edition of a remarkable volume. 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" The reader will lay down the book as I did, with a feeling of profound sympathy and gratitude to the unknown writer, in whose pages they can hear the tremulous throb of an intense emotion, wluch, however, does not obscure the finer and strongest note of heroic resolve." The late W. T. Stead. THE HOUSE OF BROKEN DREAMS. A MEMORY By KATHLEEN WATSON. Second Edition, Crown Zvo, bound in full cloth. Price, 2/6 ; posted, 2/8. A Review : " She who gave us the well-loved ' Litanies of Life ' clothes beautiful thoughts in beautiful language. ... As a picture of idylUc love and sympathy between mother and son, even unto death and beyond it has rarely been surpassed, and helps us to realize the wondrous truth that ' love is heaven, and heaven is love.' " The Register. THE BEST BOYS' BOOK OF STORIES. TOLP M TKIl By R. G. JENNINGS. In Handsome Cloth Cover, and with Frontispiece in Colour. Price, 3/6; posted, 3/9. Mr. R. G. Jennings is one of the best-known teachers in Melbourne. Hundreds of boys belong- ing to the Church of England Grammar School have listened with breathless interest to these stories, told them by their master after lessons, " In the Dormitory," The boys all voted the stories so good that the best twelve were collected and are now published. The stories are clean, wholesome and exciting, and many an elder brother, as well as the father, of a family, has picked up the volume to give it a rapid glance, and has had to read story after story, only putting the book reluctantly down when the last page was reached. If you want to read a good school-boy book of adventuresome yams, or make some small youth happy, then get a copy of " Told in the Dormi- tory." Just look at what the papers have said about it : " Entertaining yams, well told, without a hint of padding or affectation." The Athenceum. " The sort of yams boys love." The New Age. " They are tersely presented, direct, and pointed. . . . 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This is a book that is always fresh. Open it anywhere and it arrests you at once. " It is a delightful book, written in a most refreshing style. It is so full of sunny and happy thoughts, so suggestive of all that is best in life that one lingers over its pages." Birmingham Daily Post. GINGER TALKS ON BUSINESS By W. C. HOLMAN. Price, 5/-; posted, 5/4. Crown 8vo, extra cloth gilt, 235 pages, with 15 full- page cartoons, illustrating the principles of Salesmanship, which the " Talks " explain. In these days of commercial activity, business is becoming such a profession that it needs preparation and study to cope successfully with the problems of success. " Ginger Talks " is as helpful a text-book as one could possibly get, but it differs from many text-books in that it is fascinating reading. It aboimds infgood humour, hopefulness and brilliant interesting talk ; talk that isjpractical,ihelpful_and^human, 6 BERNARD O'DOWD'S WORKS. This writer is quietly but surely coining to his own place, which is in the forefront of Australian authors. Those competent to judge are unanimous in their opinion regarding the unique and high quality of Mr. O'Dowd's work. DAWNWARD Price, 2/6 ; posted, 2/7. A few copies of the original hmited First Edition, published by the Bulletin Company, are still available. Price on application. " The best book of verses yet produced in AustraUa." T. G. Tucker, Litt.D., Prof, of Classical Literature, University of Melbourne. THE SILENT LAND AND OTHER VERSES Price, 2/6; posted, 2/7. Bound in Half-cloth Boards, Gilt Tops. A few copies of an Edition-de-Luxe {limited to 25), signed by the author, are still available. Price, y/6. " The most arresting work of the younger generation is that of Mr. Bernard O'Dowd." The Times, London. DOMINIONS OF THE BOUNDARY 64 Pages. Art Cover. Price, 1/-; posted, i/i. "Mr. Bernard O'Dowd stands alone among modem [Australian poets." The Spectator (London). POETRY MILITANT An AustraUan plea for the Poetry of Purpose. An exceedingly fine, sincere hterary essay. Paper Cover, 1/-', postage, id. THE SEVEN DEADLY SINS A Sonnet Series. Small /[to. 56pp., Deckle-edged, Antique Paper. Price, 3/6 ; postage, id. " It is full of thought and vision. It embodies such a bold and luminous re-valuation of the universe, as we have every right to expect from the true poet." The Herald. THE BUSH Small Quarto. Art Paper Cover. Price, 2/6; posted, 2/7. " It is the most significant of all the poems, of any considerable length, that AustraUa has yet produced." The Argus. " It takes rank at once as a great national poem. It should be bought and read, and re-read, by every thoughtful AustraUan." A. T. Strong in The Herald. 7 EATING FOR HEALTH By O. L. M. ABRAMOWSKI, M.D., Ch.D. (Berlin). Cloth Bound. Price, 3/6 ; posted, 3/9. Third Edition, greatly increased and edited hy J. T. Huston. This book is written from actual personal knowledge and experience. It is as interesting as a novel. It is the evolution of a common sense idea of disease, and a natural system for its prevention and cure. "It is the most complete work on dietary experiment that we have seen." T.P.'s Weekly. " The value of this book lies in its perfect frankness." Stock and Station Journal, Sydney. " The book contains a mass of information regarding many diseases, and the effect of diet upon them, and emphasizes the importance of doing as much thinking for oneself as one can, instead of trusting implicitly to the medicine men, who are liable even the best of them to go wrong, at all events, in matters of diet." The Adver- tiser, Adelaide. These are some of the subjects with which this most interesting book deals : Eating for Disease. The Influence of Fruit Diet. Influence of Natural Diet. Typhoid. Rheumatism. Cancer. Affections of the Lungs. Eating for Death. Eating for Life. What shall we Eat ? When shall we Eat ? What shall we Drink ? Humanity v. Alcohol. Etc.. etc. A GUIDE TO THE STUDY OF AUSTRALIAN BUTTERFLIES By W. J. RAINBOW, F.L.S., F.E.S. Entomologist to the Australian Museum, Sydney. 200 pages. Full cloth. Crown 8vo. Over 2 $0 illustrations. Price, 3/6', posted, s/g. A thoroughly scientific, yet popular work for all who desire a knowledge of Australian Butterflies, It is quite indispensable to the modem teacher. " Illustrated on a truly liberal scale, it should prove an ideal aid towards the purpose intended." Otago Witness. "Mr W. J. Rainbow's charming little book fills a want long felt by the general natura- list, and will prove invaluable to the Lepidopterist, be he beginner or expert." Herald. " A model of arrangement and sound work." Publishers' Circular. MOSQUITOES: THEIR HABITS AND DISTRIBUTION By W. J. RAINBOW, F.L.S., F.E.S. Entomologist to the Australian Museum, Sydney. A neat booklet of 64 pp., well illustrated, dealing with this interesting pest and its extermination. Price, 1/6; postage, id. " A most interesting and useful little book." Sunday Times. " This little book is worthy of a place with ' The Study of Australian Butterflies, by the same careful writer." Ballarat Courier. " A valuable contribution to Nature Study." The Herald. " It gives within a small compass an astonishing amount of interesting and well- arranged information. The book is very readably written, is well illustrated with numer- ous clear figures, and should appeal to a large body of readers." Australian Naturalist. AUSTRALIANS YET By grant HERVEY. Crown 8vo. 254 pages. Clearly printed on good white paper, and attractively bound. Lettered in gold. Gilt top. Price, 3/6 ; post free, 3/8, " This is a volume of vigorous ballads, chanting the praise of Australia, a creed of hard work, and a love of women, in long, rollicking lines. He sings manfvilly, with a good ear for a chorus." Times. " His verses are good reading." The Bookseller. " This is jolly hearty Colonial stuff, by one who sees that Australia needs an arch interpreter." The Daily Chronicle, London. AUSTRALIAN BOOKLETS Bound in Velvet Calf. Price, 1/3 ; posted, 1/4. SEA SPRAY AND SMOKE DRIFT, by Adam Lindsay Gordon. POEMS OF Henry C. Kendall. BUSHLAND ballads, by E. J. Brady. POEMS, BY Bernard O'Dowd. POEMS, BY William Gay. POEMS, BY Jennings Carmichael. MATESHIP, BY Henry Lawson. THE STRANGER'S FRIEND, by Henry Lawson. POEMS, BY Jessie Mackay. The verses in these volumes are the very best, and wherever possible the authors themselves have specially selected the verses they wish to be printed. Therefore, these booklets contain only their living work the cream of these authors. The set should be purchased straight away by all good Australians, and fmrther copies sent to friends. No other books yet pubUsbed in Australia are at once so suitable for yoiur reading, or make such exquisite little gifts for friends. They make beautiful little books for the pocket, and are able to be carried around and read during leisure moments. 9 SATYRS AND SUNLIGHT By HUGH McCRAE. 2nd Edition, cloth bound, crown 8vo. Price, 3/6 ; posted, 3/8. Readers of Australian verse will remember the sensation caused by the appearance of the limited edition of these poems, illustrated by Norman Lindsay. This second (unillustrated) edition brings, as the Herald says, " one of the best books of recent Australian verse within the reach of the general public." " Mr. McCrae . . . produces remarkable poems, which strike a note new to Australia, and take a high place in our literature." Sydney Morn- ing Herald. POEMS By HUBERT CHURCH. Crown %vo. Antique Paper. Bound in Full Cloth. Price, '^ 16', posted, '^jg. Those acquainted with this poet's " Egmont " will be glad to see this announcement of a fiurther collection of poems. The present volume includes a few of the best poems in " Egmont," and a number of fine additions, some published for the first time, make up a most attractive volume. " In Hubert Church we have a poet who worthily upholds the highest traditions of Australasian poetry. Grandeur, simplicity, tenderness and power are all reflected in this fine collection of poems." Dundee Advertiser. " The ripe work of a genuine poet ... a book that will live." The Triad. " He is a delightful writer, and has been well advised to bring together in one volume the best of his work." Adelaide Register. SEA AND SKY By J. LE GAY BRERETON. Small Quarto. Edition limited to 500 copies. Price, 3/6 ; posted, 3/8. Any lover of Australian verse unacquainted with Mr. J . Le Gay Brere- ton's work has a real pleasure in store. The poems in this collection are unique, and as the Bulletin says, " Such careful work, so delicately done, is a rare portent in our vague Australian sky." The Scotsman writes that " Sea and Sky " " reflects no little credit upon the condition of poetical culture in Melbourne." " In Mr. Le Gay Brereton's ' Sea and Sky,' " says the Bookman, " one has some of the most delicate and essentially poetical work that has yet been written in Australia." POETICAL WORKS OF WILLIAM GAY With Biographical Sketch hy J. Glen Oliphant. Bound in Full Cloth, Gold Blocked, Gilt Top. Crown Svo. Price, 3/6; posted, 3/9. The authentic and only complete edition. This Scotch born poet, driven like so many, before and since, to seek health across the sea, has left a rare memorial in the land of his adoption. We cinnot call him an Australian poet. " His poetry," says his bio- grapher, " was universal, not local, and might have been written any- where," but as his life was linked with Australia, we are glad to count him among her sons, and to remember that he found under her skies greater spiritual peace, and a measure of physical strength sufficient to leave this legacy. " Gay's finished achievement. ... He held by clarity of thought and expression above all things. . . . Gay's poetry . . . will assuredly endure." The Argus, Melbourne. " Many of the sonnets show an unusual command of language, and one at least, * To Triumphe,' leaves us wondering what we may not have lost by the early death of their author." Birmingham Post. 10 THE MOST PRACTICAL AUSTRALIAN COOKERY BOOK EVER PUBLISHED. THE KEEYUGA COOKERY BOOK By HENRIETTA C. McGOWAN. (Of The Age and The Leader,) Price, 1/6; posted, i/8. Strongly Bound in Grease-proof Cloth. This is the long-looked-for Australian Cook- lery Book. Once used, you will find it a practical necessity in your kitchen. Every recipe has been tried, proved and found good, lit is well printed, clearly written, and the [directions can easily be followed. It can be claimed with confidence for the Keeyuga " that it is the cheapest and [most practical cookery book ever sold. What is wanted in these days of scarcity of domes- tic help is a cookery book that will serve in an emergency, one that contains well-tried, re- [ liable recipes that can be depended upon ; these aretobefoundin the" Keeyuga," as well as all the recipes necessary for a full- course dinner. Whatever the difficulty in the culinary department may be, one can turn to the " Keeyuga " with absolute confidence ; whether it is helpful recipes that are needed, or how to vary the children's school lunches, or what to take to the pleasant week-end camping out picnics, or how to make up an Australian fruit luncheon, the " Keeyuga " will help every time. These are some titles taken from' its invaluable contents ,r-HOM A^ C L-OTHIAN. MELBOU " Meals Make the Man " Emergency Meals Cookery for Children School Lunches Camp Life and Week-end Cookery Household Cookery Joints Poultry Fish Spiced Meat, Sausages, etc. Curries Invalid Cookery Vegetables Fruit WO] For Breakfast, Lunch, or Supper Soups Puddings Pastry Cold Puddings and Sweets Cakes Teacakes Sandwiches Jams, Jellies, Marmalades, Fruit Cheeses and Preserves Sauces, Pickles and Chutneys Salads Drinks Sweets Sundries Things Worth Knowing And many other interesting Chapters. A BOOK OF VITAL IMPORTANCE. WHAT TO DO WITH OUR GIRLS. WOMAN'S WORK By HENRIETTA C. McGOWAN. MARGARET C. CUTHBERTSON. Price, i/-; posted, i/i. The Publisher has pleasure in placing upon the market a book of such eminent importance and usefulness as this book on Woman's Work. The aim of the writers has been to set be- fore the prospective worker the ways and means by which she may secure the work best suited to her, and some idea of the remuneration she may expect to receive as a return for her investment of time, study, work and money. The writers are probably the two most able women in Australia for the subject in hand. Miss H. C. McGowen, by her long experience in connection with the Age and Leader, has been brought into close practical touch with the conditions and possibilities of private women workers, while Miss Cuthbertson, in her capacity of Inspectress of Factories, is peculiarly fitted to speak with authority upon thisjparticular class of work. 11 hicivrietta: CM* GO WAN MARGARET CVTHBERT.'jON .1^ TCLOTH.IAJST TV1ELB'!"= PERADVENTURE By ARCHIBALD T. STRONG. 164 pages. Post 4to. Printed on art paper, with attractive paper cover. Price, 3/6 ; posted, 3/9. A book that is a pleasure to handle as it is an education and inspiration to read. Mr. Strong does not belong to the vSchool of Dryasdust, he treats his books as human documents, and his literary friends as beings of flesh and blood. The breadth of his range and the freshness of this point of view are seen by a glance at the titles of his Essays, which range from " The Devil " to " The Faith of Shelley," and from " Rabelais " to " Neitzsche." ' Both in its grave and gay moods the book is one of unusual charm." Literary World. THE DARK TOWER By ALAN D. MICKLE. Author of "The Great Longing." Bound in Art Cloth. Crown 8vo. 152 pages. Price, 3/6 ; posted, 3/8. " The Dark Tower " is a new and original volume of short essays ; stimulating, good, attractive. All thoughtful people who are interested in living thought should obtain a copy of this new book. These essays deal with a variety of things and people, but the value of this book lies in the author's forceful sincerity and his advocacy of fearlessness in thought. SOME OF THE BEST CHAPTERS : The Supreme Vktue ; Tolstoy and Turgeneiff ; Don Quixote, Mr. Pickwick and Hamlet ; Hedda Gabler ; Nietzsche ; William Blake ; Pontius Pilate ; Gallio ; Cleo- patra ; The Venus of Milo ; The Sphinx. "... gives the impression of genuine sincerity." AthencBum. " A book worth buying and worth keeping." The Triad. " Those who have read ' The Great Longing ' will welcome Mr. Mickle's latest work, as, indeed, anything that comes from his pen. He stands in the front rank of philosophical essayists, and is doing more for Australian literature than all the many poetasters and their kind who yearly publish many books, but write little poetry. Regarded only for their literary merit his essays have high place. ... It is good for Australian literature to have the books of Mr. Mickle, which will win him permanence of posi- tion. He is making a very real and valuable addition to the best in our literature." Hobart Daily Post. " Certainly a striking little book." The Australasian. NO BREAKFAST; OR, THE SECRET OF LIFE By " Gossip." Fifth Edition. Crown 8vo. 94 pp. Antique paper. Attractive cover in two colours. Price, i/-; posted, i/i. When a book of this description goes into a Fifth Edition we realize that the gospel it preaches is one that has been accepted and proved to be true by thousands of readers. This is not surprising when one con- siders that this is the actual story of a man's own experience. Gossip writes of what he knows to be true, he has proved it is proving it every day. " This little book," says the Sydney Morning Herald, " has been a continuous success since its first appearance in 1905, and it deserved to be so, for the argument is lively, sound and helpful throughout. It is a vigorous expression of the philosophy of common sense. The plea is for more simplicity, for moderation in all things." How to live and how to get the most out of life : Those are the problems that confront every one of us. This little volume helps to solve them. You will be glad to read it, 12 >7 Iff n JZ ^1 1, ^l n n< s^ '^065-a 0m* IMA LIBRARY