No friend's complaint, no kind domestic tear,
Pleas'd thy pale ghost, or grac'd thy mournful bier.
By foreign hands thy dying eyes were clos'd,
By foreign hands thy decent limbs compos'd,
By foreign hands thy humble grave adorn'd,
By strangers honour'd, and by strangers mourn'd!

ARIPHRON OF SICYON.

Of this poet no particulars are known; and even the date at which he flourished is very uncertain; that it was early is all that can be asserted.

TO HEALTH (Jacobs I. 92, xxiii.).
Translated by Cowper.

Eldest born of powers divine!
Bless'd Hygeia! be it mine
To enjoy what thou canst give,
And henceforth with thee to live:
For in power if pleasure be,
Wealth or numerous progeny,
Or in amorous embrace,
Where no spy infests the place;
Or in aught that Heaven bestows
To alleviate human woes,
When the wearied heart despairs
Of a respite from its cares;
These and every true delight
Flourish only in thy sight;
And the Sister Graces three

Owe themselves their youth to thee;
Without whom we may possess

Much, but never happiness.

Dr. Johnson, in No. 48 of "The Rambler," speaks in high praise of this exquisite ode. His criticism, which is too long for insertion here. cannot fail to please those who peruse it.

An epigram by Simonides probably suggested to Ariphron the idea of his ode. The translation is by Sterling (Jacobs I. 60, xi.).

Good health for mortal man is best,

And next to this a beauteous form;
Then riches not by guile possessed,

And, lastly, youth, with friendships warm.

Pope may possibly have remembered Simonides' epigram when he wrote in the "Essay on Man":

Know all the good that individuals find,

Or God and Nature meant to mere mankind,
Reason's whole pleasure, all the joys of sense,
Lie in three words-health, peace, and competence.

SIMMIAS OF THEBES.

This author is supposed to be the intimate friend of Socrates, who was present at the philosopher's death, B.C. 399.

ON SOPHOCLES (Jacobs I. 100, ii.).
Translated in the "Spectator," No. 551.
Wind, gentle evergreen, to form a shade
Around the tomb where Sophocles is laid;
Sweet ivy, wind thy boughs, and intertwine
With blushing roses and the clustering vine.
Thus will thy lasting leaves, with beauties hung,
Prove grateful emblems of the lays he sung,
Whose soul, exalted like a god of wit,
Among the Muses and the Graces writ.

In the "Spectator" this epigram is ascribed to Simonides. But it cannot be given to the native of Cos without a glaring anachronism; it is possible that it might be the work of a younger Simonides, a nephew of the elder.

In an epigram by an uncertain author (Jacobs IV. 235, dlx.), translated in the same number of the "Spectator," the Muses and the Graces are similarly represented in connection with another poetMenander:

The very bees, O sweet Menander, hung

To taste the Muses spring upon thy tongue;
The very Graces made the scenes you writ
Their happy point of fine expression hit.

Thus still you live, you make your Athens shine,
And raise its glory to the skies in thine.

PLATO.

The celebrated philosopher. He was born in the island of Ægina, and flourished B.C. 395.

A LOVER'S WISH (Jacobs I. 102, i.).
Translated by Moore.

Why dost thou gaze upon the sky?
Oh that I were yon spangled sphere!
Then every star should be an eye,

To wander o'er thy beauties here.

A conceit of a similar kind occurs in Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet," where Romeo says (Act II. sc. 2):

Two of the fairest stars in all the heaven,
Having some business, do entreat her eyes
To twinkle in their spheres till they return.

And again, Juliet passionately cries (Act III. sc. 2):

Give me my Romeo: and when he shall die,
Take him and cut him out in little stars,
And he will make the face of heaven so fine,
That all the world will be in love with night,
And pay no worship to the garish sun.

Steevens notices a similar passage in a play called "The Wisdom of Doctor Dodypoll," which was acted before the year 1596:

The glorious parts of faire Lucilia,

Take them and joine them in the heavenly spheres ;
And fixe them there as an eternal light,

For lovers to adore and wonder at.

"Romeo and Juliet" was written, Malone conjectures, in 1596. Shakespeare may have taken the conceit from "The Wisdom of Doctor Dodypoll," and unless the similarity of sentiment with Plato was acci dental, the unknown author of that play must have been acquainted with the Epigram of the Greek writer.

S. T. Coleridge must have had Plato's epigram in mind when he wrote his "Lines on an Autumnal Evening," in which the following passage occurs:

On seraph wing I'd float a dream by night,
To soothe my love with shadows of delight;
Or soar aloft to be the spangled skies,
And gaze upon her with a thousand eyes.

THE THIEF AND THE SUICIDE (Jacobs I. 106, xviii.).
Jack, finding gold, left a rope on the ground;

Bill, missing his gold, used the rope which he found.

This translation of a Greek distich was made, we are told. by S. T. Coleridge ("Literary Remains,” 1836, I. 337), impromptu, to controvert an assertion that the compression and brevity of the original was unattainable in any other language. As a close translation. elegance being put out of the question, it is admirable. As an excellent paraphrase of the same distich, in which there is no attempt at close translation, Shelley's rendering is much to be admired:

A man was about to hang himself,

Finding a purse, then threw away his rope;
The owner, coming to reclaim his pelf,

The halter found and used it. So is Hope

Changed for Despair-one laid upon the shelf,

We take the other. Under heaven's high cope
Fortune is God-all you endure and do
Depends on circumstance as much as you.

THE LIGHT OF BEAUTY UNQUENCHED IN DEATH (Jacobs I. 106, xxi.).

Translated by Shelley.

Thou wert the morning star among the living
Ere thy fair light had fled;

Now, having died, thou art, as Hesperus, giving
New splendour to the dead.

Ausonius has a very pretty imitation of this epigram (Ep. 144):

As Lucifer once, fair star of the morn,

You gave for the living your light;

Now shrouded in death, you, as Vesper, adorn
The regions of shadow and night.

ON CUPID SLEEPING IN A GROVE (Jacobs I. 108, xxix.).

Translated by C.

Deep in a grove we found th' unconscious boy,
Glowing like redden'd fruit, Cythera's joy.
Above him on a bough his arms were hung,
The quiver empty, and the bow unstrung:

C

Tranquil he lay on clust'ring roses wild,
And gently in his dreams the sleeper smil'd:
Bees dropp'd around the sweet balm of the south,
Adding fresh fragrance to his dewy mouth.

Hughes may have known and remembered this description of the Sleeping Cupid when, in his "Greenwich Park," he wrote:.

The sportful nymph, once in a neighbouring grove,
Surpris'd by chance the sleeping god of love;

His head reclin'd upon a tuft of green,

And by him scatter'd lay his arrows bright and keen.

CRATES OF THEBES.

Flourished about B.C. 330. He was a celebrated philosopher of the
Cynic sect.

THE CURE OF LOVE (Jacobs I. 118, i.).
Translated by Shepherd.

Sharp hunger is the cure of love,
Or time the mischief may remove:
If time and fasting give no hope,
Go!-end thy miseries with a rope.

Tennyson has an exceedingly good epigram on hanging, as the hopeless lover's relief, entitled, "The Skipping-rope:"

Sure never yet was Antelope
Could skip so lightly by.

Stand off, or else my skipping-rope

Will hit you in the eye.

How lightly whirls the skipping-rope !

How fairy-like you fly!

Go, get you gone, you muse and mope;

I hate that silly sigh.

Nay, dearest, teach me how to hope,

Or tell me how to die.

There, take it, take my skipping-rope,

And hang yourself thereby.

We may compare an epigram, translated from the French by Leigh Hunt, on hanging-as a cure for disappointment:

'Tis done; I yield; adieu, thou cruel fair!

Adieu, th' averted face, th' ungracious check!

I go to die, to finish all my care,

To hang. To hang?-Yes,-round another's neck.