on which her adulators chiefly base their praises, is the
following fragment addressed [Greek: Pros Gunaika Eromenaen] ("to a
beloved woman"):

"That man seems to me peer of gods, who sits in thy
presence, and hears close to him thy sweet speech and
lovely laughter; that indeed makes my heart flutter in
my bosom. For when I see thee but a little I have no
utterance left, my tongue is broken down, and
straightway a subtle fire has run under my skin, with
my eyes I have no sight, my ears ring, sweat bathes me,
and a trembling seizes all my body; I am paler than
grass, and seem in my madness little better than one
dead. But I must dare all, since one so poor ..."

The Platonist Longinus (third century) said that this ode was "not one
passion, but a congress of passions," and declared it the most perfect
expression in all ancient literature of the effects of love. A Greek
physician is said to have copied it into his book of diagnoses "as a
compendium of all the symptoms of corroding emotion." F.B. Jevons, in
his history of Greek literature (139), speaks of the "marvellous
fidelity in her representation of the passion of love." Long before
him Addison had written in the _Spectator_ (No. 223) that Sappho "felt
the passion in all its warmth, and described it in all its symptoms."
Theodore Watts wrote: "Never before these songs were sung, and never
since, did the human soul, in the grip of a fiery passion, utter a cry
like hers." That amazing prodigal of superlatives, the poet Swinburne,
speaks of the

"dignity of divinity, which informs the most passionate
and piteous notes of the unapproachable poetess with
such grandeur as would seem impossible to such
passion."

And J.A. Symonds assures us that "Nowhere, except, perhaps, in some
Persian or Provencal love-songs, can be found more ardent expressions
of overmastering passion."

I have read this poem a score of times, in Greek, in the Latin version
of Catullus, and in English, German, and French translations. The more
I read it and compare with it the eulogies just quoted, the more I
marvel at the power of cant and conventionality in criticism and
opinion, and at the amazing current ignorance in regard to the
psychology of love and of the emotions in general. I have made a long
and minute study of the symptoms of love, in myself and in others; I
have found that the torments of doubt and the loss of sl