Part 11

_Athenæum._--"There is urgent need for a collected edition of Mr. Davidson's poems and plays. The volume and the variety of his poetry ought to win for it wider acceptance. It is indeed curious that poetry so splendid as Mr. Davidson's should fail to get fuller recognition. There are many aspects of his genius which ought to make his work popular in the best sense of the word. He has almost invented the modern ballad.... He handles the metre with masterly skill, filling it with imaginative life and power."

_Literary World._--"We count ourselves among those to whom Mr. Davidson has made himself indispensable."

_Daily Mail._--"Mr. Davidson is our most individual singer. His variety is as surprising as his virility of diction and thought."

_St. James's Gazette._--"This volume may serve as an introduction to a poet of noble and distinctive utterance."

_New Age._--"The book contains much that Mr. Davidson's warmest admirers would best wish to remember him by. There is a subtle charm about these poems which eludes definition, which defies analysis."

_T. P.'s Weekly._--"Mr. Davidson is one of the most individual of living poets; he has a rare lyrical faculty."

_Morning Post._--"Mr. Davidson is as true a poet as we have now among us.... He has included nothing that we do not admire."

_Daily Graphic._--"This delightful volume."

_Dundee Advertiser._--"Its poetry gives out a masterful note.... Mr. Davidson's poem pictures."

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POETRY

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By ETHEL CLIFFORD

SONGS OF DREAMS: Poems. Cr. 8vo, 3s. 6d. net.

LOVE'S JOURNEY, & OTHER POEMS. Crown 8vo, 5s. net.

By ALICE MEYNELL

POEMS. Fcap. 8vo, 3s. 6d. net.

THE RHYTHM OF LIFE, AND OTHER ESSAYS. Fcap. 8vo, 3s. 6d. net.

THE COLOUR OF LIFE, AND OTHER ESSAYS. Fcap. 8vo, 3s. 6d. net.

THE CHILDREN. Fcap. 8vo, 3s. 6d. net.

THE SPIRIT OF PLACE, AND OTHER ESSAYS. Fcap. 8vo, 3s. 6d. net.

LATER POEMS. Fcap. 8vo, 2s. 6d. net.

By THEODORE WATTS-DUNTON

THE COMING OF LOVE: RHODA BOSWELL'S STORY (A Sequel to "Aylwin"). With Photogravure Portrait after Rossetti, and a Preface by the Author. Crown 8vo, 5s. net.

By EDMOND HOLMES

WHAT IS POETRY? An Essay. Pott 4to, 3s. 6d. net.

THE TRIUMPH OF LOVE: a Sonnet Sequence. Small 4to, 3s. 6d. net.

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RECENT POETRY

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By LASCELLES ABERCROMBIE

INTERLUDES AND POEMS. Crown 8vo. 5s. net.

_Times._--"Mr. Abercrombie has power and he has originality. His mind is fearless, rebellious, sinister. He quails at nothing, light-heartedly frolicking among the most tremendous ideas and emotions."

By ARTHUR CHRISTOPHER BENSON

LORD VYET, AND OTHER POEMS. Fcap. 8vo. 3s. 6d. net.

THE PROFESSOR, AND OTHER POEMS. Fcap. 8vo. 3s. 6d. net.

PEACE, AND OTHER POEMS. Crown 8vo. 5s. net.

By RICHARD LE GALLIENNE

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON: AN ELEGY, AND OTHER POEMS, MAINLY PERSONAL. Crown 8vo. 4s. 6d. net.

ENGLISH POEMS. Crown 8vo. 4s. 6d. net.

THE RUBÁIYÁT OF OMAR KHAYYÁM: A PARAPHRASE. Crown 8vo. 5s. net.

By ERNEST DOWSON

POEMS. With Illustrations and a Cover Design by AUBREY BEARDSLEY. Memoir by ARTHUR SYMONS, and Portrait after WILLIAM ROTHENSTEIN. Crown 8vo. 5s. net.

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THE POETRY OF STEPHEN PHILLIPS

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PAOLO AND FRANCESCA: A TRAGEDY IN FOUR ACTS. Crown 8vo. 4s. 6d. net.

Mr. W. L. Courtney (in the _Daily Telegraph_).--"We possess in Mr. Stephen Phillips one who redeems our age from its comparative barrenness in the higher realms of poetry."

Mr. William Archer (in the _Daily Chronicle_).--"A thing of exquisite poetic form, yet tingling from first to last with intense dramatic life. Mr. Phillips has achieved the impossible. Sardou could not have ordered the action more skilfully. Tennyson could not have clothed the passion in words of purer loveliness."

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ULYSSES: A Drama. IN A PROLOGUE AND THREE ACTS. Crown 8vo. 4s. 6d. net.

Mr. James Douglas (in the _Star_).--"'Ulysses' is a splendid shower of dazzling jewels flung against gorgeous tapestries that are shaken by the wind of passion. Mr. Stephen Phillips is the greatest poetic dramatist we have had since Elizabethan times."

_Daily Chronicle._--"Mr. Phillips is, in the fullest sense of the word, a dramatic poet."

_Daily Telegraph._--"It is a grateful task to discover in the new volume many indications of that truly poetic insight, that vigorous expression of idea, that sense of literary power and mastery which have already made Mr. Stephen Phillips famous."

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HEROD: A Tragedy. Crown 8vo. 4s. 6d. net.

_Times._--"Here, then, is a noble work of dramatic imagination dealing greatly with great passions; multicoloured and exquisitely musical. Mr. Stephen Phillips is not only a poet, and a rare poet, but that still rarer thing, a dramatic poet."

Mr. William Archer (in the _World_).--"The elder Dumas speaking with the voice of Milton."

_Athenæum._--"Not unworthy of the author of 'The Duchess of Malfi.'"

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POEMS. Crown 8vo. 4s. 6d. net.

_Times._--"Mr. Phillips is a poet, one of the half-dozen men of the younger generation whose writings contain the indefinable quality which makes for permanence."

_Spectator._--"In his new volume Mr. Stephen Phillips more than fulfils the promise made by his 'Christ in Hades': here is real poetic achievement--the veritable gold of song."

_Literature._--"No such remarkable book of verse as this has appeared for several years."

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NEW POEMS. Crown 8vo. 4s. 6d. net.

_Spectator._--"The poems almost without exception are characteristic of Mr. Phillips' best work."

_Times._--"The old qualities are here, with a finer feeling than before for the point where enough has been said. He has mastered his materials; he can do almost what he pleases with words."

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THE WORKS OF FRANCIS COUTTS

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THE REVELATION OF ST. LOVE THE DIVINE. Square 16mo. Price 3s. 6d. net.

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THE ALHAMBRA AND OTHER POEMS. Crown 8vo. Price 3s. 6d. net.

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THE MYSTERY OF GODLINESS: A Poem. Square 16mo. Price 3s. 6d. net.

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THE POET'S CHARTER; or, THE BOOK OF JOB. Crown 8vo. Price 3s. 6d. net.

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MUSA VERTICORDIA: Poems. Crown 8vo. Price 3s. 6d. net.

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THE ROMANCE OF KING ARTHUR. Crown 8vo. Price 5s. net.

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SOME PRESS OPINIONS.

_The Academy_.--"The reader feels behind this verse always a brave and tender spirit, a soul which has at any rate 'beat its music out'; which will not compromise; which cannot lie; which is in love with the highest that it sees."

_Literature_.--"It is not every writer who is master, as was quite truly said of Mr. Coutts some years ago, of the rare and difficult art of clothing thought in the true poetic language."

_St. James's Gazette_.--"All who know Mr. Coutts' other poems already will have much joy of this volume and look eagerly for more to follow it, and those who do not yet know them may well begin with this and go back to its predecessors."

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HERESY OF JOB: A Study of the Argument. Illustrated with the "Inventions" of WILLIAM BLAKE. Fcap. 4to. 5s. net.

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THE SONG OF SONGS, WHICH IS SOLOMON'S. A Lyrical Folk-Play of the Ancient Hebrews, arranged in Seven Scenes. With Illustrations by HENRY OSPOVAT. 1s. net.

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Notes

[1] Prof. Domenico Comparetti has lately (1876) published an essay on the authenticity of this Epistle and on its value in elucidating the history of Sappho. After minutely examining all the evidence against it, he concludes that it is the genuine work of Ovid. And in 1885 De Vries brought out an elaborate dissertation on the same subject; he proves, almost to a certainty, that Ovid wrote the Epistle in question. But the fact remains that it is absent from all the oldest and best MSS., and was only given its present place in Ovid's _Heroic Epistles_ by Heinsius in 1629. Even if it be genuine, we may safely aver that in Ovid's day it was far more difficult to estimate Sappho's character rightly than it is now. The Romans, we can well believe, were likely to regard her in no other light than that in which she had been portrayed by the facile and unscrupulous comedians of Athens.

[2] The exact site of Naucr[)a]tis was unknown until December 1884, when Mr. W. M. Flinders Petrie, acting as agent for the Egypt Exploration Fund, discovered it at Nebireh, or rather close to El Gaief, a modern Arab village on the Rosetta mouth of the Nile, about forty miles from the present sea-coast. It is near the edge of the Delta, some six miles N.E. of Tel-el-Barûd, a railway station nearly midway between Alexandria and Cairo. Before Mr. Petrie's explorations, Naucr[)a]tis had been sought for several miles nearer the sea than it actually lay, and its identification had been despaired of. For centuries it was the only city in Egypt in which the Greeks were permitted to settle and carry on commerce unmolested. Ionians, Dorians, and Aeolians there united in a sort of Hanseatic league, with special representatives and a common sanctuary, the Panhell[=e]nion--which served as a tie among them. This rich colony remained in faithful connection with the mother-country, contributed to public works in Hellas, received political fugitives from that home as guests, and made life fair for them, as for its own children, after the Greek model. The women and the flower-garlands of Naucr[)a]tis were unsurpassed in beauty.

[3] Psammetichus flourished about 588 B.C. He was the Pharaoh-hophra mentioned by the prophet Jeremiah (xliv. 30), whose house in Tahpanhes has been recently discovered by Mr. Petrie.

[4] Such light as can be thrown upon the legend from Comparative Mythology, and from the possible etymologies of the names of Sappho and Phaon, has been, I fear rather inconclusively, gathered by Leonello Modona in his _La Saffo storica_ (Florence, 1878). Human nature, however, varies so little from age to age, that I think it better to judge the story as it has come down to us, than to resort to the most erudite guessing.

[5] Sappho's riddle is translated in full by Colonel Higginson in his _Atlantic Essays_, p. 321.

[6] A quaint mediæval commentator on Horace, quoted by Professor Comparetti, says this passage (_querentem Sappho puellis de popularibus_) refers to Sappho's complaining, even in Hades, of her Lesbian fellow-maidens for not loving the youth with whom she was herself so much in love.

[7] [Greek: poikilothron'] = richly worked throne, is by some read [Greek: poikilophron] = full of various wiles, subtle-minded.

[8] When _Fatima_ was first published (1832) this motto was prefixed--

[Greek: Phainetai moi kênos isos theoisin] [Greek: emmen anêr],

showing Tennyson's acknowledgments to Sappho.

[9] Line 19, 'quas _non_ sine crimine amavi,' which Pope translates thus, is read in many old texts 'quas _hic_ sine crimine amavi' = whom here I blamelessly loved; and even if the former reading be adopted, it must be remembered that crimen means 'an accusation' more often than it does 'a crime.'

[10] Anne Lefèvre, daughter of Tanneguy Lefèvre [Tanaquillus Faber], born at Saumur about 1654, married André Dacier in 1683 and died at the Louvre, 1720.