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Cupid and the Bee

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

James Hutton
James Hutton*
Affiliation:
Cornell University
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Extract

“‘There's some herb that's good for everybody except for them J. that thinks they're sick when they ain't,’ announced Mrs. Todd, with a truly professional air of finality. ‘Come, William, let's have Sweet Home, an’ then mother'll sing Cupid an' the Bee for us.'” Accuracy in detail is a merit that no one would deny to the work of Sarah Orne Jewett and hence some time ago, on reading the words just quoted from The Country of the Pointed Firs, the present writer was puzzled at finding Cupid and the Bee linked with Sweet Home in a setting meant to call up nothing but the homely reality of Maine. The title suggested Theocritus (pseudo-Theocritus) or an Anacreon (pseudo-Anacreon) unlikely to be much on the mind of Mrs. Todd or her aged mother. Sweet Home is duly sung, but we hear no more of Cupid and the Bee. One only gathers that to Miss Jewett in 1896 it had the color of an old song suitable to the age of the singer. As I had long been noting down occurrences of the theme,

      As Cupid midst the roses played,
      Transporting in the damask shade,
      A bee stepped unseen among
      The silken leaves' his finger stung.
      His beauteous cheeks with tears were drowned;
      He stormed, he blew the burning wound,
      Then nimbly running through the grove
      Thus plaintive to the Queen of Love:
      “I'm killed, Mamma; alas, I die!
      A little serpent winged to fly
      That's called the bee in yonder plain,
      Has stung me, and I die with pain.”
      When Venus smiling thus rejoining:
      “My dear, if you such anguish find
      From the resentment of a bee,
      Think what they feel that's stung by thee.”

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 56 , Issue 4 , December 1941 , pp. 1036 - 1058
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1941

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References

1 Chapter xi, “The Old Singers.”

2 Harold W. Thompson, Body, Boots, and Britches (Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1940), p. 339.

3 The Works of Anacreon translated into English Verse … by Mr. Addison, London. The ambiguity of “Mr. Addison,” which misled many readers, may have been intentional.

4 In the first entitled The Bee and in the second (p. 188) Cupid and a Bee. For these references I am indebted to Professor Otto Kinkeldey of Cornell University and to the Music Division of the New York Public Library. I have at hand no facilities for tracing the song in English songbooks of the period. Music by Gossec for J. B. Gail's French version of the Anacreontic is printed at the end of Gail's Odes d'Anacréon (Paris, 1799).

5 By the present writer in The American Journal of Philology, xlix (1928), 105, and by Professor J. G. Fucilla, ibid., l (1929), 190, and in Classical Philology, xxvi (1931), 135.

6 Of the modern versions of this theme, more than a hundred and thirty, that are mentioned below, nine have previously been listed by Fritzsche, Theocriti Idyllia (Leipzig, 1870), ii, 103, eight others by Mustard, “Later Echoes of the Greek Bucolic Poets,” A.J.P., xxx (1909), 269, and ten of the English versions by Kerlin, Theocritus in English Literature (Lynchburg, 1910). I have been unable to consult R. Galos, “L'Amour et les abeilles,” in Irodalom-történeti közlemények (Budapest, 1937).

7 I find no real resemblance in the four Greek epigrams cited by Fritzsche, op. cit., ii, 102; there is more similarity in the epigram by Bianor (A.P. 9.548) compared with the Theocritean poem by Alciati (below), but it is accidental. Bullen, Anacreon (London, 1893), p. 219, speaks of “this favorite conceit, which we frequently find represented on gems”; but I find no justification for his statement. Bullen, indeed, reproduces on his cover a gem from the Poniatowski Collection, but this, as he says, is a modern fabrication. As such it is noteworthy for the modern influence of the theme. Before the Renaissance I know only the commonly-cited paraphrase of the Anacreontic in the twelfth-century romance by the Byzantine Nicetas Eugenianus (iv, 313).

8 Estienne communicated his discovery with several friends between 1549 and 1554; cf. Laumonier, Ronsard poète lyrique, 3rd ed. (Paris, 1932), p. 121. But no version of Cupid and the Bee seems to be affected by this fact.

9 In the more accessible edition of Naples, 1520, sig. biiii2. Angeriano's poems played a significant rôle in sixteenth-century lyric verse, since they were universally imitated by the vernacular poets. His method was to take a classical, usually a Greek theme, and give it a turn of his own. Thus his treatment of the present motive is typical:

Caelia dum fulgens per florea rura vagatur,
Saeva manum illius saeva momordit apes.
Unde has, inquit, habet volucris tarn parva sagittas?
Illato ut tumeat vulnere nostra manus?
Tunc respondit Amor: Sum parvus et ipse tenerque,
Et iaculis (quae stant) mollio saxa meis.
Tu paulo maior quid non facis? ore pusillo
Atque oculis montes et maris uris aquas.
Cf. below, under Amboise and Scève. Angeriano has a second poem (sig. aiiii7) on a bee slain by Caelia, happy to die by her hand, and buried by Love, who writes its epitaph. Cf. below, under Groto.

Dum Veneris puer alveolos furatur Hymetti,
Furanti digitum cuspide fixit apis.
Indoluit graviter, pueriliaque ora rigavit
Fletibus, et matri spicula questus, ait:
Unde hae tantillis vires animantibus? unde
Exili possunt laedere aculeolo?
Cui Dea subridens inquit, non tu quoque, nate,
Corpore non magno, vulnera magna facis?

11 From Velius' Poemata (Basel, 1522). The & is not in the first (1525) edition of Soter; in the third (1544) edition it appears on p. 65.

12 Of these versions in Soter, all except the anonymous translation interpret the words (“he blew on his hand”) as “his hand became swollen,” e.g. Velius: tumuerunt vulnere palmae. Vernacular versions having this peculiarity can therefore be suspected of depending on one of these translations; but cf. Angeriano above, and also Alciati (tumido ungue). A second peculiarity in the translations by Melanchthon and Camerarius is that Love's fingers bleed: digitos monstratque cruentos (Mel.), suffusum … cruorem (Cam.).

13 Theocriti Idyttia (Hagenau, 1530); Valckenaer's Theocritus (Leiden, 1810), p. 464.

Alveolis dum mella legit, percussit Amorem
Furacem mala apes, et summis spicula liquit
In digitis: tumido gemit at puer anxius ungue,
Et quatit errabundus humum, Venerique dolorem
Indicat, et graviter queritur, quod apicula parvum
Ipsa inferre animal tam noxia vulnera possit.
Cui ridens Venus: Hanc imitaris tu quoque, dixit,
Nate, feram, qui das tot noxia vulnera parvus.
The title of this emblem is “Fere simile ex Theocrito,” because Emb. 112, entitled, “Dulcia quandoque amara fieri,” is on a child similarly stung by a bee (imitation of A.P. 9.548 in which the child is killed). The immense popularity of Alciati's Emblems is a main element in the spread of this theme. Here we may mention the French translations of Alciati by Jean Le Fèvre (Paris, 1536), by Barthélemy Aneau (Lyons, 1558), and by Claude Mignault (Paris, 1583); the English version by Geoffrey Whitney, Choice of Emblems (London, 1586); and German versions (after Le Fèvre) by Wolfgang Hunger in M. Rubensohn, Griechische Epigramme und andere kleinere Dichtungen (Weimar, 1897), pp. 11, 15. I give the Italian version by Giovanni Marquale, Diverse Imprese … tratte da gli Emblemi dell' Alciato (Lyons: Roville, 1549), p. 77:
Lunge a la madre il pargoletto Amore
Fura del mele, onde lo punse un' Ape.
Così amaro dolor stringe e afferra
Colui, che di dolcezza empie la terra.
Here the “moral,” taken from Emb. 112, is combined with the fable; cf. Sabinus below.

15 I have not seen this translation.

16 Sabinus (Schuler) published his Poemata in 1544 and 1558 at Leipzig. I have seen neither of these books. The verses in question are given under Sabinus' name in Antonio Germano's Giardino di Sentenze (Rome, 1630), p. 296, and without his name in the Notes by Lorenzo Pignoria in Andreae Alciati Emblemata (Padua, 1621), p.470. I quote Pignoria's remarks since they relate to the only Renaissance painting that I have seen mentioned as embodying this theme: “Tabella picta huius argumenti [Cupid and the Bee] extat apud Aloysium Corradinum Juris Consultum [?of Padua] et quidem manu periti artificis depicta, in qua leguntur hi versus:

Dum puer alveolo furatur mella Cupido,
Furanti digitum cuspide fixit apis.
Sic etiam nobis brevis et peritura voluptas,
Quam petimus tristi mixta dolore nocet.
Sabinus has affixed his “moral” to an adaptation of the first two verses of Strozzi's translation given above.

17 A prose fable combining Moschus i and Theoc. 1–19, with the “moral”: “Voluptati dolor et calamitas plerumque comes est.”

18 I have not seen this translation.

19 Stigel's poems were originally collected in 1566–69 and 1572, after his death. He was a friend of Melanchthon, and his version of the present theme bears some relation to those of Melanchthon and Camerarius in Soter's Epigrammata. Thus he writes, “Figit apis cui dira manus digitosque tenellos”: cf. Melanchthon, “Fixit apis puerum Veneris digitosque tenellos”; again, “digitusque tumescit ab ictu”: cf. Camerarius, “digitusque tumebat ab ictu”; and, “Inque novo stimuli vulnere linquit acum”: cf. Camerarius, “stimulumque recenti in vulnere liquit.” All these points represent departures from the literal sense of the Greek.

20 Scaliger ascribes the original to Moschus.

21 Cunich's version also appears in his own Anthologie (Rome, 1771), p. 183, and again in his Theocrili Idyllia (Parma, 1799).

22 I have not seen this book; the translation of “Theocritus” 19 may be that of Cunich.

As probable echoes of the Theocritean poem may be mentioned two epigrams by Celio Calcagnini under the title, Apes in pharetra Cupidinis in Jo. Baptislae Pignae Carminum libri quatuor (Venice, 1553), pp. 199–200, the first beginning:

Pallantes excepit apes modo Cypride natus
In pharetram, e pharetra nunc nova mella legit.
Love is then compared with the bee, and contrasted:
Diversum hoc, sanabile apum, haud sanabile amoris
Vulnus, apesque semel, non semel ille ferit.
(The text has fuit, an obvious misprint).

Da umil verme tra l'erbe remote
Nella sinistra man fu punto Amore;
E sentendo il dolor che lo percote
Pallido, esangue, e perso ogni colore,
Gridava: Citerea, or come pote
Ferir breve animai con tal dolore?
Disse Vener ridendo: Taci ormai;
E tu che piccol sei, che piaghe fai?

Furando Amore il mele, un' ape ascosa
Gli punge il dito irata e venenosa,
Tal che forte piangente, e pien di duolo,
In grembo a Citerea sen fugge a volo,
Mostra il suo mal dicendo: Un animale
Che così picciol sia fa piaga tale?
Ella ridendo: E tu che picciol sei
Che piaghe fai tra gli uomini e gli dei?

The form of this epigram, in distichs, suggests that Alamanni may have followed one of the Latin versions also in distichs. Like Strozzi he omits most of Love's lively reaction; but the extension in his last line, “among men and gods,” not in the Greek, I find previously only in Ducher's imitation:

Si potes ipse tuis contra coelum omnia telis,
Qui fit ut in minimam sollicitemus apem?

In any case, Alamanni follows “Theocritus,” and Raffaelli should not have printed the title “Da Anacreonte” for a poem probably written in 1547. It seems not to have been noticed that four “unedited” lines by Alamanni in Frati's Rime inedite del cinquecento (Bologna, 1918), p. 34, are the second half of this epigram.

Mentre in grembo a la madre Amore un giorno
Dolcemente dormiva,
Una zanzara zufolava intorno
Per quella dolce riva,
Disse allor, desto a quel susurro, Amore:
Da sì picciola forma
Com' esce sì gran voce e tal rumore
Che sveglia ognun che dorma?
Con maniere vezzose
Lusingandogli il sonno col suo canto
Venere gli rispose:
E tu picciolo sei,
Ma pur gli uomini in terra col tuo pianto
E'n ciel desti gli dèi.
Here the reappearance of the motive “men and gods” suggests, as do some other passages, that Tasso may have had Alamanni's version before him. The substitution of a gnat for the bee involves this madrigal in a whole series of amatory poems concerned with this creature. See Marcel Françon, “Un Motif de la Poésie Amoureuse,” in PMLA, lvi (1941), 307–336.

26 Groto's madrigal is for the most part only a colorless reproduction of the theme: thus to represent the reaction of Cupid he has only the tame phrase “Sdegnato assai”; but his opening lines are unusual:

Un tronco, ov' hebber gia le pecchie il nido
Trovando Amor, comminciò trarne il mele
Commisto con la cera.

The hollow bee-tree (tronco) may be simply a trait from nature, but as Groto is a bookish poet it is worth notice that the engraving for Alciati's Emb. 112 represents the bees as occupying such a tronco. On an earlier page (Rime, p. 113) Groto has a madrigal made from the epigram of Angeriano mentioned above, in which the bee is happy to die at the hand of the lady.

27 Again a free handling of the theme:

Punto da un' ape, a cui
Rubava il mele il pargoletto Amore,
Quel rubato licore
Tutto pien d'ira e di vendetta pose
Su le labra di rose
A la mia Donna, e disse: In voi si serbe
Memoria non mai spenta
De le soavi mie rapine acerbe;
E chi vi bacia senta
De l'ape ch'io provai dolce e crudele
L'ago nel core, e ne la bocca il mele.

A musical setting for this madrigal is perhaps to be found in Madrigali a sei voci di Giosefo Biffi, Nuremberg, 1600 (cf. E. Vogel, Bibliothek der gedruckten weltlichen Vocalmusik Italiens, Berlin, 1892, i, 98: “Punto da un”); but, if so, it seems to have had no currency in this form. Yet it is hard to resist the impression that Guarini's madrigal is somehow behind the following song popular in England in the eighteenth century:

To heal the wound a bee had made
Upon my Kitty's face,
Honey upon her cheek she laid,
And bade me kiss the place.
Pleased I obeyed, but from the wound,
Imbibed both sweet and smart:
The honey on my lips I found,
The sting within my heart.

Two settings for this song are printed, and a third from the Gentleman's Magazine mentioned, in English Songs of the Georgian Period, ed. by A. Moffat and F. Kidson (London: Bayley and Ferguson, n.d.), pp. 194, 290.

28 A free imitation of “Theocritus” given in illustration of the Anacreontic. How free may be judged from what becomes of the expression, “he stamped and skipped about”:

E di flebili voci empiendo l'aria,
I fior colti in mal' ora a terra batte.

Desmarais doubtless followed one of the Latin versions: Love's finger swells, and there is a reference at the end to the gods.

29 Mentioned by Argelati, Biblioteca degli volgarizzatori (Milan, 1767), iv, 30. I have not seen this version.

30 A professed translation of Melanchthon's Latin version. It is easily accessible in Miss Hélène Harvitt's dissertation, Eustorg de Beaulieît, a disciple of Marot (New York, 1918), p. 71. Beaulieu provides a setting: “En ung verger, ou des mouches à miel Avoient leur nidz,” and extends the “point”: “Veu que toy seul blesses toute nature.”

31 Most of D'Amboise's epigrams have neo-Latin sources, and this one is from Angeriano, as the reader may see by turning back to that writer:

Ainsi qu'ung iour ma dame et ma maistresse
Parmi les champs s'en alloit esbatant,
Sa blanche main une mouche à miel blesse
De son esquille: elle, le mal sentant,
Dist: Comment peult si trespetite beste
Si grant mal faire? Alors ne t'en enqueste,
Respond Amours: plus beaucoup davantaige
le peux, qui suis court et brief de corsaige,
Car de mes dars ie rens les pierres molles,
Et si faits tout selon mon appetit,
Plus fort tu faitz: car de ton œil petit
La mer, la terre, et le ciel tu affolles.

32 As Parturier notes, Scève is dependent on D'Amboise, though he changes the point.

33 Bucher translates from Strozzi (above). Note, for example, Hymettus, pueriles lermettes, D'où vient, A quoy:

Quand Cupido, cest enfant impudique,
Sus Hymettus desroboit les avettes,
Les desrobant, l'une très fort le picque,
Et de douleur luy faict playes aigrettes,
Tant qu'il espand pueriles lermettes,
Et se complaint durement à sa mere.
—D'où vient, dist il, que telles bestelettes
Ont Paguillon de picqueure si fiere?
A quoy Venus en soubzriante chère
Respond ainsy: Et toy, mon enfant doulx,
Qui es petit, fais-tu pas playe amere,
Blessure à mort, et non sanables coups?

With this last motive cf. Calcagnini above (note 22).

34 The superscription, “Pris de Theocrite,” is right, and the editors are mistaken in correcting it to Anacreon. The version is not literal, but I have not succeeded in detecting an intermediate source.

35 Though composed in an anacreontic measure, this poem is from “Theocritus.” The ending recalls Alamanni:

Tu sois mingrelet,
Tu ne vaux pas mieux:
Voy quelle blessure
Tu fais qu'on endure
En terre et aux cieux.

As a whole, however, Baïf's poem, in the succession of motives and in certain phrases, recalls the Latin versions in Soter, and especially that of Melanchthon: cf. “ses tendres doigts” (digitos tenellos); “ses doigts s'en enflèrent” (intumuit manus); “Dépit s'en courrouce, La terre repouce, Et d'un leger saut Il s'élance en haut, Et vole à sa mère” (doloris Impatiens plodensque solum pernicious alis Subvolat ad malrem); “se prenant à rire” (Mater ait ridens: not subridens); “Tu ne vaux pas mieux” (apibus non corpore praestas).

36 Augé-Chiquet, J.-A. de Baïf (Paris, 1909), p. 389 ii, refers this unpublished poem to “Anacreon,” but the initial words given by Marty-Laveaux suggest “Theocritus,” and the fact that Baïf's earlier version is from this source supports my guess that here also “Theocritus” is the original.

37 “Translated out of Theocritus.” Kendall's immediate source eludes me. It must have contained the trait from “Anacreon” which he reproduces:

The Bee most vile and pestilent hath kilde Cupido thyne.

Hence it must be later than 1554 when the Anacreontea were first published.

38 Watson's note is: “The two first partes of this sonnet are an imitation of certaine Greeke verses of Theocritus; which verses as they are translated by many good Poets of later dayes, so moste aptlye and plainely by C. Urcinus Velius in his Epigrammes,” and he quotes the first six lines of Ursinus' translation. The first nine lines of Watson's poem are from this source, the remaining nine, on Love's cure by Aesculapius, are his own invention.

39 The list of versions, here broken off, is resumed below, following our remarks on Spenser.

40 Merritt Y. Hughes, “Spenser and the Greek Pastoral Triad,” Studies in Philology, xx (1923), 196–199.

41 The discovery that Spenser used Tasso for this poem might have been made by Francesco Viglione, if he had taken his own hint. See his recent book, La Poesia lirica di Edmondo Spenser (Genoa, 1937), p. 298. He believes that Spenser went directly to the Greek of “Anacreon,” and having said so, throws out a suggestion nearer the truth than he knew: “Se poi doveva essere spinto da imitatori, egli aveva, più del Ronsard, familiare il Tasso, che fu dei primi a scrivere odicine sulle orme del lirico di Ceo” (leg. Teo). I note this “near miss” because it brings out the relative sureness of our method of collecting for inspection a large number of versions of a given theme.

42 This madrigal is here noted only because Kastner regards it as condensed from Guarini's madrigal given above. I cannot see that it is related to Guarini's poem.

43 Mentioned by Fritzsche, p. 103, and by Kerlin, p. 45; not seen by me.

44 Not seen by me; mentioned by Kerlin, p. 46.

45 Mentioned by Fritzsche and Kerlin. I have not seen this translation.

46 This imitator has brought out a point, elsewhere, so far as I know, only made by Micyllus:

A bee enrag'd the thief to brand
Fix'd his keen sting upon his hand.
Micyllus: signât cuspide furem. The parallel seems to be only coincidence.

47 In his comment on the Anacreontic. Addison's Anacreon is dependent on Madame Dacier's edition.

48 Save for small textual differences, this anonymous poem, here referred to “Theocritus xix,” had figured in the same periodical for 1737 (p. 697) as an Imitation of Anacreon. It is, however, mainly from the Theocritean version, as witness,

He kick'd, he flung, he spurn'd the ground,
He blow'd and then he chafed the wound.

There may be an element of “Anacreon” in,

A little bird they call a bee;

but cf. Micyllus:

Vulnus, ait, faciat tarn saevum parva volucris.

With the first line given above compare the first line of the anonymous version in The Gentleman's Magazine for 1733, quoted just before. The resemblance, however, goes no further, and the present translation is the better poem.

49 Paraphrase in an ode On Pleasure, quoted in part by Kerlin, p. 72. Scott refers to Theoc. xix. Not seen by me.

50 Cf. the beginning of anon. in Gent. Mag., 1733, above, and also anon. in Lond. Mag., 1737, 1741, and Fawkes. The line coined by the anonymous imitator in 1733 seems to have rung in the ears of the eighteenth century; for surely this is not the only way of securing a rhyme for “hive.”

51 Reference may be made to the bibliography in J. B. Gail's Odes d'Anacréon (Paris, 1799); pp. 197–202; to A. Delboulle, Anacréon et les poèmes, anacrèontiques avec les traductions et imitations des poètes du xvie siècles (Havre, 1891); to L. A. Michelangeli, Anacreonte e la sua fortuna nei secoli, con una rassegna critica su gl' imitatori e i traduttori italiani delle anacreontee (Bologna, 1922); and to Báraibar, Menéndez y Palayo, and others, Poetas Liricos Griegos, “Bibl. Class.” (Madrid, 1898).

52 Influenced by Estienne's version. Raius was a pupil of Pier Vettori to whom Estienne had communicated the Anacreontea soon after their discovery.

53 To Barnes this ode is “omnium prima.”

54 Ten poems on this theme, in Greek and Latin, and in various metres: “Graeca et Latina aliquot variationis specimina, quae styli exercendi gratia Anonymus quidam in lepidissimam hanc fabellam lusit.” These versions all frankly employ motives from “Theocritus” as well as from “Anacreon.” Maittaire also quotes the Theocritean poem, with Estienne's translation. He gives two direct translations of the Anacreontic.

55 Laumonier, Ronsard poète lyrique (Paris, 1909), pp. 603–605, has successfully shown that this poem is a contamination of “Anacreon” and “Theocritus,” together with some motives of Ronsard's invention. It may be possible to go further. For the Anacreontic Ronsard would naturally turn to Estienne's edition and translation just published. For the Theocritean poem he probably also employed one of the Latin versions. If so, he used one containing the mistranslation, “his hand swelled,” for he has this motive; but my notes do not enable me to govern all the possibilities. Melanchthon's version has this point, and also digitos tenellos (Ronsard, “sa main tendrette”). I note also that Ducher's translation begins:

Furaturus erat lascivus mella Cupido
Inde, ubi parva casas aedificaret apis.

Compare:

Le petit enfant Amour
Cueilloit des fleurs, à l'entour
D'une ruche, où les avettes
Font leurs petites logettes.

I have at hand only these two lines of Ducher's version.

56 Belleau followed the Greek, but helped himself somewhat by Estienne's Latin translation, and had, I think, Ronsard's version beside him. That he followed the Greek is shown at several points where he is slightly more faithful than Estienne, e.g., “Venus la belle” Estienne, candidam Cytheren). That he looked at Estienne is clear from “Le mignon commence à se plaindre,” where the Greek is and Estienne renders: eiulare coepit (Elie André, simply eiulavit). That he recalled Ronsard is suggested by motives occurring in Ronsard but not in “Anacreon” or his translators, e.g., the swollen hand:

Belleau: Voyant enfler sa blanche main.
Ronsard: Voyés quelle enflure.

Again:

Belleau: Voyez donc ma plaie cruelle.
Ronsard: Lui montra sa plaie amere.
Belleau: Entre les replis de la rose.
Ronsard: Dans le fond d'une fleurette.

This last is scarcely the natural translation of for which Estienne has Inter rosas. André indeed has A pent rosae insidentem, but his version probably was not available to Ronsard.

57 An ode in eight eight-line stanzas, treating the theme freely, but proved to be from “Anacreon” (perhaps through Ronsard) by lines 9–13:

C'est cet oiselet …
Que le villageois appelle
Ce me semble mouche à miel.

Cf. Ronsard: “Les villageois … Le surnomment une avette.” Perhaps by coincidence this version shows the extension, “men and gods,” that we have found first in the imitations of “Theocritus” by Ducher and Alamanni, and this point becomes the chief motive of Magny's ode, being elaborated in the last five stanzas.

58 A fairly close translation, but influenced by Ronsard: e.g., “Cueillant des roses,” cf. Ronsard, “Cueilloit des fleurs” (not in “Anacreon”); “Venus souriant,” cf. Ronsard, “Venus se sourit.” The latter point Ronsard had from “Theocritus.” Doublet's line, “Au bout d'un doit de la main,” recalls “Theocritus,” but is not represented by Ronsard.

59 A chanson, much indebted to Ronsard:

Amour un iour ne vit point
Une avette qui luy poingt
Bien avant sa main tendrette
En cueillant une fleurette.
Ronsard: “avette … sa main tendrette … cueillant… fleurette.”

60 A prose-emblem. The motto of this, the second, Discours is: “Que les choses douces deviennent souvent amères,” taken evidently from Alciati, Emb. 112. Though the idea of making an emblem of this theme obviously came to Baudoin from Alciati, he follows “Anacreon,” whereas Alciati employed “Theocritus.” The Discours is preceded by a fullpage engraving by Briot of Cupid and the Bee.

61 A professed imitation of Anacreon, in seven stanzas. Note that Love is lying (asleep) on the roses, a new motive in French imitations, but compare Bateson below.

62 Quoted, but wrongly ascribed to Mathurin Regnier, by Bullen, Anacreon (London, 1893), p. 220.

63 This version is reprinted by Le Fort de La Morinière, Bibliothèque poétique (Paris, 1745), iii, 498 (ascribed to G**.), and by Brazen de La Martinière, Passetemps poétique (Paris, 1757), ii, 62 (anonymous).

64 To judge from the opening lines, for I have not a complete copy, this looks like an imitation of Regnier's or Sanadon's version of the theme.

65 See above, under “Theocritus.”

66 Entitled The Barginet [pastoral] of Antimachus. This very free treatment of the theme has been regularly claimed for “Theocritus,” e.g., by Kerlin (p. 25) and by Rollins (ii, 94); but on examination it turns irresistibly to the other tradition. The thread may be picked out thus: “Oft from her lap…. He leapt, and gathered sommer flowers, both violets and roses…. A bee that harbour'd hard thereby, Did sting his hand, and made him crye, Oh Mother, I am wounded…. the goddesse sayd, Who hath my Cupid so dismayd? He aunswered: Gentle Mother, The hony-worker in the hive.” Here Cupid gathers flowers (roses), not honey as in “Theocritus,” and the direct address, “Oh Mother, I am wounded,” is clearly from the Anacreontic. Further, the act of gathering flowers recalls Ronsard (“Cueilloit des fleurs”); and still other points suggest Ronsard as Lodge's source: as in Ronsard, Venus asks who wounded him (“Qui t'a, di moi, faus garson, Blessé de telle façon?”—“My little lad, the goddesse said, Who hath my Cupid so dismayd?”); she kisses him (“En le baisant le prit”—“She kist the lad”); she cures him (“Puis sa main lui a soufflée Pour guarir sa plaie enflée.”—“She suckt the wound, and swag'd the sting”). None of these points is in either of the Greek originals. Lodge has developed an elaborate setting of his own, and at the end has made a new application of the fable.

67 This excellent version seems to have been made directly from the Greek. It has, however, a peculiarity not found in earlier versions: “Cupid, in a bed of roses, sleeping,” whereas in the original it is the bee that is sleeping among the roses. Cupid sleeping may be a reminiscence of Spenser, or of Watson's imitation of “Theocritus” which begins: “Where tender Love had laide him down to sleepe,” but more likely it is a wilful variant. See below. The French had been able to sing Belleau's version to the music of Richard Renvoysy since 1559, and had to wait until the end of the eighteenth century for Gossec's new musical setting for the translation by Gail (I know of no evidence that either of these was popular). Bateson's charming air deserves to have been popular, but whether it continued in favor until the eighteenth century began to sing John Addison's translation is doubtful.

Cupid, as he lay among
Roses, by a Bee was stung.
Whereupon in anger flying
To his Mother, said thus crying:
Help! O help! your Boy's a dying.
And why, my pretty Lad, said she?
Then blubbering, replyed he,
A winged Snake has bitten me,
Which Country people call a Bee.
At which she smil'd; then with her hairs
And kisses drying up his tears:
Alas! said she, my Wag! if this
Such a pernicious torment is,
Come tel me then, how great's the smart
Of those, thou woundest with thy Dart.

Herrick's version seems to have been made from the Greek, but probably with Estienne's or André's Latin beside it (cf. André, momordit: “has bitten me”). The two Latin versions are both printed in the Plantin Lyric Poets, Pindari Olympia, etc. (Antwerp, 1567). But the case for the intervening Latin is not here so plain as in Herrick's The Cheat of Cupid which Delattre has shown to be dependent on Estienne: Floris Delattre: Robert Herrick (Paris, 1912), p. 405. The first two lines are very likely a reminiscence of Bateson's song, while other departures from the original, in lines 6 and 10–11, are probably due to Herrick himself (but cf. Ronsard and Lodge). See the next note.

Love, a Bee that lurk'd among
Roses saw not, and was stung:
Who for his hurt finger crying,
Running sometimes, sometimes flying,
Doth to his fair mother hie,
And O help, cries he, I die;
A wing'd snake hath bitten me,
Call'd by countrymen a Bee:
At which Venus, If such smart
A Bee's little sting impart,
How much greater is the pain,
They, whom thou hast hurt, sustain?

Stanley has taken Herrick's poem of the year before, and corrected it to the Greek text, also regularizing the trochaic metre. It is very successfully done. Note that he retains the charming glide between verses one and two. In the Notes to his Anacreon (ed. of 1651, p. 106) Stanley alludes to Pignoria's report of a painting on the subject, and quotes Sabinus' verses.

70 The tradition has now become fixed among the English, despite Stanley, that Cupid, not the bee, lay among the roses:

As Cupid once with wanton play,

Amidst the Rose-trees sporting lay, etc.

Once as Cupid tir'd with play,
On a bed of roses lay, etc.

72 Here once more the reader must be reminded of the shortcomings of my notes. It might repay some one to look again at the versions by Gazoldus, Ducher, Gouvéa, Rapitius, anon, in Taygetus, Capilupi, De Lemene, and Gamier, of which I have kept no copies, and also at those I note as not seen by me, though these are mostly late.

73 The list of poems on Cupid and the Bee drawn up in the preceding pages is probably far from complete. Two further instances have recently fallen to my notice, too late for inclusion in the series. One, a sonnet by Amadis Jamyn (Œuvres poétiques, Paris, 1584. f. 35r), having for its main subject a scratch received by the lady on her hand, employs the Greek theme as introduction, compressed into the first quatrain:

Amour fut autrefois picqué dedans la main
Par une mouche à miel volant à l'avanture.
Mais sa mère luy dist riant de sa pointure:
Ton trait blessant les cœurs est bien plus inhumain.

Despite the compression, there remains one mark (riant) to show that Jamyn follows “Theocritus.” Somewhat earlier, Claude Binet had turned out a jeu d'esprit on this theme as a contribution to La Puce de Mlle des Roches (1582) [La Jeunesse d'Estienne Pasquier, Paris, 1610, p. 622]: Amour, flame in hand, approaches the lady, but is driven off and wounded by the puce, so that he runs to his mother—and the rest follows the original save for changes occasioned by the substitution of flea for bee, thus:

C'est, dict-il, c'est un Serpenteau
Qui va sautellant sur la peau,
Puce est nommé par les Pucelles.

Clearly Binet's version is from “Anacreon.” But it is also affected by the modern tradition so far as to show the extension “men and gods” (cf. Notes 24, 25, 28, 35, 57 above):

aux grans dieux
Et aux humains dardant tes feux,
Tu fais une plaie incurable.

Finally, for the iconography (cf. Notes 7, 16, 60 above) add a painting with this subject by Bon Boullongne (1649–1717) reported to be in the museum of Angers: see Denais' edition of Colin Bucher, p. 71n.