The 30th Ode of Anacreon, "The Muses frolicksom and gay". There is no manuscript source. See Annotated Chronology No. 165; for text see For text see Texts, 1714 Steele. See also An Annotated Bibliography: Primary and Secondary Sources for all Finch's translations (paraphrases), imitations and adaptations.
ODE XXX, "De L'Amour"
L'autre jour les Muses ayant lié l'Amour avec des fleurs, le donnerent en garde à la Beauté. A Present la belle Venus le cherche avec une rançon pour le délivrer. Mais quoy qu'on luy oste ses chaines il ne s'en ira point: à cette heure qu'il est accoûtumé a servir, il demeurera là, & préferera sa servitude à sa liberté .
On p 160: Remarque sur l"ode XXX:
Cette Ode est fort belle, & la fiction en est tres ingenieuse. Je [p. 161] crois qu'Anacreon a voulu dire, que la beauté. toute seule ne peut pas longtemps retenir l'Amour, mais que lors que l'esprit & la beauté se rencontrent ensemble, il est impossible à l'Amour de se dégager.
From "Les Poésies d'Anacreon," in Les Poésies d'Anacreon et de Sapho, Traduites de Grec en François, avec des Remarques par Mademoiselle Lefèvre [later Dacier]. A Lyon. Chez Horace Molin, vis-a-vis le grand college. 1696,pp. 158 (the Greek text), 159 (facing French text), 160 (commentary).
Comment: the ingenuity of the piece recalls Anne's other elaborations upon brief lines of verse and prose in French. Now instead of modelling herself on earlier courtly and metaphysical styles, she writes in the new clear and impersonal satiric narrative vein of the early 1700's. Her "Cupid and Folly" in the Folger MS may come from same period as this free imitation. We can also note her repeated interest in a woman's loss of beauty and what beauty means to her. All her protests to the contrary (as in her free imitation from Dacier's life of Sappho (Melinda on an insipped Beauty, Annotated Chronology No 114), she grieved over her own loss of beauty, e.g., Parting with Beauty, MS F-H 283, p. 48-50; rewritten in the third person as Clarinda's Indifference at Parting with Her Beauty, MS Folger, p. 13, Annotated Chronology No. 81.