Excerpt from The Modern Scottish Minstrel; Or the Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century, Vol. 3 of 6: With Memoirs of the Poets, and Sketches and Specimens in English Verse of the Most Celebrated Modern Gaelic Bards Setting these aside, we have few genuine efforts of the Greek lyric muse belonging to the dramatic period - the most important being several songs sung by the Greeks at their banquets, which have fortunately been pre served. After this era, we have no lyric poems of the Greeks worth mentioning. The verse - writers took hence forth to epigrams - epigrams on everything on the face of the earth. These have been collected into the Greek Anthology but the greater part of them are contemptible in a poetic point of view. They are interesting as throwing light on the times; but they are weak and vapid as expressions of the beatings of the human heart, and they are full of conceits. Besides these, there are the Anacreontic odes, known to all Greek scholars and to a great number of English, since they have been frequently translated. With one or two exceptions, they Were all written between the third and twelfth centuries of the Christian era, though some scholars have boldly asserted that they were forgeries even of a later date. Most of them seem to be expansions of lines of Anacreon. They are in general neat, pretty, and gaysome, but tame and insincere. There is nothing like earnestness in them, nothing like genuine deep feel ing but thus they are all the more suited for a certain class of lovers and drinkers, who do not wish to be greatly moved by anything under the sun. 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.