Greek poet, born at Teos, a city of Ionia, flourished about 532 years before the Christian era. Polycrates, tyrant of Samos, invited him to his court, and made him share with him in his business and his pleasure. He had a delicate wit, as may be judged from the inexpressible beauties and graces that shine in his works; but he was fond of pleasure, was of an amorous disposition, and addicted to drunkenness: yet, notwithstanding his debaucheries, he lived to the age of 85; when, we are told, he was choked by a grapestone which stuck in his throat as he was regaling on some new wine.

There is but a small part of Anacreon's works that remain: for, besides his odes and epigrams, he composed elegies, hymns, and iambics. His poems which are extant were rescued from oblivion by Henry Stephens, and are universally admired. The verses of Anacreon are sweeter, says Scaliger, than Indian sugar. His beauty and chief excellence, says Madame Dacier, lay in imitating nature, and in following reason; so that he presented to the mind no images but what were noble and natural. The odes of Anacreon, says Ra- Anaeropin, are flowers, beauties, and perpetual graces; it is familiar to him to write what is natural, and to the life, he having an air so delicate, so easy and graceful, that among all the ancients there is nothing comparable to the method he took, nor to that kind of writing he followed. He flows soft and easy, everywhere diffusing the joy and indolence of his mind through his verse, and tuning his harp to the smooth and pleasant temper of his soul. But none has given a jutter character of his writings than the God of Love, as taught to speak by Mr Cowley:

All thy verse is softer far Than the downy feathers are Of my wings, or of my arrows, Of my mother's doves and sparrows: Graceful, cleanly, smooth, or round, All with Venus' girdle bound.