But I shall not forget a certain article in an American paper—“The New
York Times,” I fancy—which gave me fresh food for thought, here at
Patirion, in the sight of that old Hellenic colony, and with the light
chatter of those women still ringing in my ears. Its writer, with whom
not all of us will agree, declared that first in importance of all the
antiquities buried in Italian soil come the lost poems of Sappho. The
lost poems of Sappho—a singular choice! In corroboration whereof he
quoted the extravagant praise of J. A. Symonds upon that amiable and
ambiguous young person. And he might have added Algernon Swinburne, who
calls her “the greatest poet who ever was at all.”
Sappho and these two Victorians, I said to myself. . . . Why just these
two? How keen is the cry of elective affinity athwart the ages! _The
soul,_ says Plato, _divines that which it seeks, and traces obscurely
the footsteps of its obscure desire._