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"Well, you see, I had occasion this morning to be in Calatinus's library. Yes, I remember, I was just putting the new copy of Theognis back into the cupboard, when I noticed that the Mimnermus was not neatly rolled, and so I happened to stay in the room, and " "By Zeus, speak faster and to the point!" cried Agias. "Oh, there wasn't very much to it all! Why, how excited you are!
'Lulli being the first modern composer who caught the French ear, was the means, to a great extent, of forming the modern French taste. No. 30. Wednesday, April 4, 1711. Steele. 'Si, Mimnermus uti censet, sine amore Focisque Nil est Jucundum; vivas in amore Jocisque. Hor. One common Calamity makes Men extremely affect each other, tho' they differ in every other Particular.
And again, in poignant notes: You promise heavens free from strife, Pure truth, and perfect change of will; But sweet, sweet is this human life, So sweet, I fain would breathe it still; Your chilly stars I can forego, This warm, kind world is all I know. This last quotation is from the poem called Mimnermus in Church.
In one poem of a few lines nor that, alas! transmitted to us complete she has given a picture of the effect of love upon one who loves, to which volumes of the most eloquent description could scarcely add a single new touch of natural pathos so subtle is it, yet so simple. Mimnermus is a principal model of the Latin elegiac writers and Propertius compares his love verses with those of Homer.
The author of Ionica seems to bring the old Greek fatalist to modern England, and to conduct him to church upon a Sunday morning. But Mimnermus is impenitent. He confesses that the preacher is right when he says that all earthly pleasures are fugitive.
Miletus, he tells us, was then the greatest of the cities, mistress of the sea; and certainly some of the most famous among her citizens, Anaximander, Anaximenes, Hecataeus and Thales, belong approximately to this epoch, as do equally famous names from other Asiatic Greek communities, such as Alcaeus and Sappho of Lesbos, Mimnermus of Smyrna or Colophon, Anacreon of Teos, and many more.
The tenderest of their songs of love close with a sob; and it is an autumn wind that rustles in their bowers of spring. Here, for example, is a poem by Mimnermus characteristic of this mood of the Greeks: "O golden Love, what life, what joy but thine? Come death, when thou art gone, and make an end! When gifts and tokens are no longer mine, Nor the sweet intimacies of a friend.
The early Greek elegies related to a variety of themes, as war, love, preceptive wisdom. The iambic meter was first used in satire. It was employed, however, in fables, and elsewhere when pointed or intense expression was craved. The earliest of the Greek elegists, Callinus and Tyrtaus, composed war-songs. Mimnermus, Solon, Theognis, Simonides of Ceos, are among the most famous elegists.
Take, for instance, this fragment of Mimnermus, on the shortness of life, what subject can seem more tame? what less striking than the feelings he expresses? and yet, throughout every line, there is a melancholy depth and tenderness, which it is impossible to define.
They are rough sketches of songs expressly composed for "Pausanias;" and, since they are not included in the foregoing portion of it, I think they may properly be added here. The unrhymed lyrics introduced by my father into some of the opening chapters of this romance appear to have been suggested by some fragments of Mimnermus, and composed about the same time as "The Lost Tales of Miletus."
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