however, has never been wanting in the human race: it appears in the earliest poetry, and, so far as recognized, receives poetic treatment. But its literary interest throughout the ancient world ranked at a much lower figure than the interest of war. Although the extraordinary charms of Helen are set down as the motive of the great Trojan war, she seldom appears in person; and there are no love scenes detailed, the art of the poet being expended on the warlike incidents of the siege.

Nevertheless, a beginning is made in the expression of feminine attractions. Both the strong and the weak points of erotic description are shown in the earliest poetry of Greece.

The fascination of Helen turned entirely on her personal beauty, and not on her conduct; for this was objectionable, with only the redeeming qualities of kindliness and self-reproach. Her person is not described; but the imagination of the sculptor and of the painter, in after-times, helped the Greeks to conceive a bodily representation suited to her supposed charms. The Homeric art consists in setting forth the wonderful impression that she made wherever she showed herself. The most notable is the testimony of the elders of Troy (Iliad, Book III.), who, for a moment, excused the quarrel and the war on her account, as they gazed on her person while she passed by.

This mode of delineating beauty by the impression. made on beholders is not equal in effect to a fairly adequate description of the beautiful personality itself. By enormous exaggeration and iteration, it excites at last in our minds a vague estimate of something in the highest degree wonderful, but can never take the same hold of our imagination as an actual picture. The expressions used by Homer are intended to set in motion the erotic fancy of mankind, as when he tells us that she had charms to soothe the soul and drown the memory of the saddest things': that she had 'beauty such as never woman wore'.

Postponing the pathetic domestic scene of the parting of Hector and Andromache, we have to refer for the best examples of Homer's treatment of the love affection to the Odyssey. This poem being occupied with adventures and not with warlike operations, except on a very small scale, finds room for the romance of the affections. Most notable of all the incidents of this kind is the episode of Nausicaa,

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in the Sixth Book. Ulysses, being cast ashore in the country of the Phæacians, is destitute of food and raiment. He encounters the royal princess with her maidens, who are there by divine direction to meet him. His promptitude and power of speech are called into play, as he addresses the princess in terms of the most tasteful and consummate flattery; giving to all time a model of this prime art of lovemaking :

"I supplicate thee, O queen, whether thou art a goddess or a mortal! If indeed thou art a goddess of them that keep the wide heaven; to Artemis, then, the daughter of great Zeus, I mainly liken thee, for beauty and stature and shapeliness. But if thou art one of the daughters of men who dwell on earth, thrice blessed are thy father and thy lady mother, and thrice blessed thy brethren. Surely their souls ever glow with gladness for thy sake, each time they see thee entering the dance, so fair a flower of maidens. But he is of heart the most blessed beyond all other who shall prevail with gifts of wooing, and lead thee to his home. Never have mine eyes beheld such an one among mortals, neither man nor woman; great awe comes upon me as I look on thee."

Nausicaa responds, on her part, with equal art and self-restraint; she gives the hero every encouragement to sue for her hand; yet is reconciled to her fate in not being successful. The approaches to love by mutual compliment could hardly be better conceived or expressed.

The previous adventure of Ulysses in the island of Calypso, who also was love-smitten, and had the power to detain him, until divine interference ordered his release, is redeemed by the fine generosity of the amorous goddess in equipping him for his departure; while he, on his side, maintains a passive resistance to all her charms, in his constancy towards Penelope.

The hero's next love-making is with Circe, the enchantress, whom he first subdues, and then consents to be her lover, for a whole year. The poet's genius does not adorn this connexion, or provide an additional example of erotic treatment.

While Homer supplied a few indications of erotic art, the great Tragedians almost entirely passed it over. Female characters they had--notably Antigone; but these did not appear in the love relationships of the sexes so

much as in the dreadful passions of strife and hatred. The beginning of the erotic development of Greek poetry is seen in the Lyric field; and the first great example is the renowned Sappho. Further on, in the Idyllists, and in the Anthology, the delicate refinements of amatory expression are cultivated to the utmost. Thus Greek poetry, as a whole, supplied a copious fund of erotic diction, which was extended by the Roman poets, and handed down to modern times.

The Lyric poets are wanting in story or plot, and trust to energy of expression, elevation of figure and melodious verse. In them, intensity is the characteristic: they show love in its aspect of passionate fury, and they must be judged by the principles applicable to such compositions.

The style and genius of Sappho have to be gathered from her scanty remains, and from her influence on later poets. The hymn to Venus acquires intensity by the form of supplication, and by the elevation of the language. The epithets applied to Venus, in their first freshness, are grand, and yet not out of keeping with tender passion.

Venus, bright goddess of the skies,
To whom unnumber'd temples rise,
Jove's daughter fair, whose wily arts
Delude fond lovers of their hearts;
O! listen gracious to my prayer,

And free my mind from anxious care.

The iteration of the last stanza serves to enforce the intensity of feeling.

Once more, O Venus! hear my prayer,
And ease my mind of anxious care;
Again vouchsafe to be my guest,

And calm this tempest in my breast!

The only other complete Ode of Sappho known to us is one preserved by Longinus as an example of the very general quality of apt selection and combination of circumstances. It is an accumulation of the miseries of disappointed passion, and is celebrated for its accuracy of delineation.

Our interest in love scenes, as already observed, extends to the pains of thwarted love. One merit of such descriptions is, that they be truthful; for although we may accept the ideal in bliss, we do not desire misery to be exaggerated. In Romance, we are usually requited by a happy conclusion. The thoroughly sustained intensity as well as truthful

ness of Sappho's description satisfies us that she is in earnest, which is itself a great charm.

Blest as the immortal gods is he,
The youth who fondly sits by thee,
And hears, and sees thee all the while
Softly speak and sweetly smile.

'Twas this depriv'd my soul of rest,
And rais'd such tumults in my breast;
For while I gaz'd, in transport tost,
My breath was gone, my voice was lost.
My bosom glow'd; the subtile flame
Ran quick through all my vital frame;
O'er my dim eyes a darkness hung;
My ears with hollow murmurs rung.
In dewy damps my limbs were chill'd;
My blood with gentle horrors thrill'd;
My feeble pulse forgot to play,

I fainted, sunk, and died away.

Sappho's contemporary, Anacreon, was a great erotic genius in a different style. The characteristics of his style are usually given as simplicity, grace, melody, with an originality that made a fresh departure in literature.

The poetized delineation of personal beauty was greatly developed by Anacreon. See the companion pictures in the two odes--one describing his mistress, the other addressed to Bathyllus.

Again, the joys of love, usually coupled with wine, are portrayed with luxurious arts of language; but, in this portraiture, the lower aspects of the subject are chiefly prominent.

He is also a master of the fancied adventures of the love deity Venus and her child Cupid, so largely employed in depicting the incursions of love.

He maintains a perpetual protest against the burden of the Epic poets-War.

The Tragedians, as already noticed, systematically excluded the Love Passion; yet Sophocles, in one short passage in the Antigone, showed his capability of working up a delineation of its power. We need to pass on to the Idyllists of the third century B.C. to obtain the further development of erotic poetry. Partly in Theocritus, the founder of the Bucolic idylls, and still more in Bion, have we the expression of the sexual passion in its full strength. Theocritus supplies the picture of a Syracusan lady deserted

by her lover, and details the fury of her revenge in terms of tragic exaggeration she resorts to magic rites, she seeks the aid of poison, and indulges in all the excesses of an infuriated woman.

Bion composed delicately finished love-songs, and, in one, he rises to the tragic height, in setting forth the lamentation of Venus for the slain Adonis; a couple whose love and misfortunes often reappear in erotic poetry.

Next to the Idyllists, we have to search the Greek Anthology at large for love embodiments. Made up of short poems, called Epigrams, it embraces many themes; the Amatory being but one department. The Anthology ranges through all the history of Greek literature down to its decadence. The greatest of the poets of the Amatory series is Meleager, in the first century B.C. His poem in praise of Heliodora is an early example of the use of flowers to illustrate love. The following is Goldwin Smith's translation, quoted by Symonds :

I'll twine white violets, and the myrtle green;
Narcissus will I twine, and lilies sheen;
I'll twine sweet crocus, and the hyacinth blue;
And last I'll twine the rose, love's token true:
That all may form a wreath of beauty, meet
To deck my Heliodora's tresses sweet.

Another poet constructs a retreat for lovers under the spreading branches of a plane. The translation, by W. Shepherd, runs thus:

Wide spreading plane-tree, whose thick branches meet

To form for lovers an obscure retreat,
Whilst with thy foliage closely intertwine
The curling tendrils of the clustering vine,
Still mayst thou flourish, in perennial green,
To shade the votaries of the Paphian quean.

The later Anthology brings us to the Anacreontic Odes, which have a definite amatory character, only partially derived from the real Anacreon, the contemporary of Sappho. Their date was subsequent to the great age of Roman Literature, which had largely included amatory subjects in its sphere. Wanting in originality, for their time, they are yet illustrative of particular mannerisms in the erotic style.

The opening poetry of the Romans is made up of Tragedy and Comedy; the last represented by Plautus and Terence, imitators of the Greek comedians, such as Menander. Love