Believe me, SIR,
With every sentiment of respect,
Your Royal Highness's
Very grateful and devoted Servant,
THOMAS MOORE.
REMARKS ON ANACREON
There is but little known, with certainty of the life of Anacreon.
Chamaeleon Heracleotes, who wrote upon the subject, has been lost in the
general wreck of ancient literature. The editors of the poet have
collected the few trifling anecdotes which are scattered through the
extant authors of antiquity, and, supplying the deficiency of materials by
fictions of their own imagination, have arranged what they call a life of
Anacreon. These specious fabrications are intended to indulge that
interest which we naturally feel in the biography of illustrious men; but
it is rather a dangerous kind of illusion, as it confounds the limits of
history and romance, and is too often supported by unfaithful citation.
Our poet was born in the city of Teos, in the delicious region of Ionia,
and the time of his birth appears to have been in the sixth century before
Christ. He flourished at that remarkable period when, under the polished
tyrants Hipparchus and Polycrates, Athens and Samos were become the rival
asylums of genius. There is nothing certain known about his family; and
those who pretend to discover in Plato that he was a descendant of the
monarch Codrus, show much more of zeal than of either accuracy or
judgment.
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