Phaon and Sappho

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Excerpt from Phaon and Sappho: A Play, With Selection of Poems I am unwilling to let "Phaon and Sappho" pass from my control into the outer world without a word of apology for one or two anachronisms, which if not apparent to the general reader, will readily suggest themselves to the scholar. It will be seen that Melanthus in putting his daughters innocence to the test of arms, adopts the manners of chivalry, in which the fundamental ideas with regard to womanhood were entirely different from those held by the Greeks, during the time in which the events of this Play are supposed to have had place. The nearest approach to the tournament of chivalry in classic writers is the contest between Paris and Menelaus, in the III Book of the Iliad, where the chance of victory as deciding the virtue of a third person is never once dreamed of, to the Greek such a subtilty would be above the proof of a physical issue! Also it may be said that Grecian ideas were insufficient to express the fulness and entirety of Kuman life, according to the usages of the modern Playwright as its exponent: - accordingly here and there some words may suggest ideas which were unknown to the Greek before the institution of Christianity, but which are perfectly at home in a work - 'Withholding time, But flattering the golden prime." At this time so prolific in criticism, it would be rather late to point out anachronisms similar to those which I have alluded to in my own work, in the writings of some of the first rate minds of the past. I leave Phaon and Sappho therefore to those who are able to take the impression of an unsophisticated human nature and age, uncurbed by the critical element which surrounds the conventionalities of modern life. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully, any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.