and was a native of Teos in Ionia;  but he
fled with his parents from Persian oppression
to Abdera in Thrace. At a later period
he resided at Samos, under the protection
of Polycrates, the king, and afterwards
at Athens, under Hipparchus;  but he
died in his native place in his eightyfifth
year. The collection of odes ascribed
to him, sixty-five in number, contains many
belonging to others—some more recent in
date, and of unequal merit;  not deserving,
in fact, that praise for vivacity, grace, and
beauty to which the genuine Anacreontics
are entitled. The time and manner of his
death are variously stated. The common
tradition that he died by suffocation from
swallowing a grape-stone probably
originated in the bacchanalian character
of his poetry. He is reputed to have written
elegies and iambic poems in the Ionic
dialect, besides scholia and epigrams.

One character belongs to all ancient
lyrical poetry:  it was written for music.
Our modern lyric poetry is freed from this
appropriation, and trusts to the abstract
lyrical form for its effect. Frequently it
seeks for it exclusively in novelty of metre
and cadence, which suggest their own
music independent of the composer's art.
We must bear in mind this distinction
when estimating the comparative merits of
ancient and modern ode-writing. Our own
Collins, Campbell, and Tennyson depend
on the sufficiency of their own art as poets,
and on the highly-wrought and elaborate
finish of their productions, and not at all
on the musician's aid, whose skill is brought
to bear with difficulty on pieces so
complete in themselves.

None of the elegies of Anacreon have
reached us. Of his odes, Cowley has given
us many examples. Others have been lately
translated by various hands. Lively and
graceful are all these, dealing with the
minute in nature and art, giving us pretty
little allegories of Cupid and Venus;
charming descriptions of the seasons,
particularly of spring; eulogies in favour of
the flowers, particularly of the rose; and
immortalising the bee, the grasshopper,
and other interesting objects of the field
and garden. The group in which we find
Anacreon includes names greater than his,
such, for instance, as Homer and Hesiod;
and the succeeding, or Attic group,
comprises the great and marvellous Greek
dramatists. But these are mighty themes,
not admitting of such treatment as the
concluding paragraphs of a chapter such as
the present could afford. They are better
known, moreover, than the bards whose
names we have mentioned, and may await
a convenient time when we shall have
something to say touching them and their
works.

IN THAT STATE OF LIFE.

CHAPTER XII.

THERE was not a more miserable man in
London than Lowndes Cartaret in those
days. It was on the Wednesday night
that he got to town, trying vainly, for
the first time in his life, to shake off a
dead weight that lay at his heart, and to
turn his thoughts from the one object
upon which they were obstinately fixed.
He went to Brookes's;  there had been a
late debate going on, and all the men he
met were eagerly discussing it:  he could
scarcely affect a languid interest in what
they said. Then he turned into Pratt's,
ate a morose sandwich, and smoked a
gloomy cigar;  heard the various merits
of Filibuster and Merry Andrew canvassed,
and their respective chances of winning
the Derby;  tried to play a game of
billiards, and missed nearly every stroke;
listened with a cynical smile to that capital
(though scandalous) story about young A.
and Lady B., which made every other man
in the room roar:  and, finally, got to bed,
but not to sleep, about four in the morning.

The next day he played a set of melancholy
variations upon the same tune. He
sat for an hour with one of the prettiest
women in London, whose conversation,
moreover, possessed the spice and sparkle
of a champagne cup. He came away,
declaring that she was as dull as ditch-water.
He sauntered down to Tattersall's;  he
took a turn in the Row:  and all the apples
at which he bit were dust and ashes!  At
night a friend who had a box at the
Haymarket asked him to come there, and
to join a supper with some actresses
afterwards. Lowndes was so visibly bored
during the play that he infected the man
he was with, and said so many sarcastic
and disagreeable things during supper,
that the ladies were unanimous in wishing
that he had not been of the party. After
another sleepless night, a night during
which he thought over all that Maud had
ever said to him about his unprofitable
existence, and the despicable folly of utter
idleness, he rose with the resolution of
seeking other and better means of occupying
his thoughts, if possible. He walked