Look upon my soul-tormenting grief! I wish I were a bee, that I might come into your grotto, penetrating through the ivy and fern, however thick about you." Springing up and away from his dejection and supplication, he adds wildly, hundred and twentieth verse, merely because tion, such as it is, but merely the flat relation we find it in the fifth Idyl, nor because he of it. Instead of a narration about sending tells us it is rejected in the best editions. these precious crabs, and the promise of as Verses have been repeated both by Lucretius many more on the morrow, here in Theocri and by Virgil. In the present case the sen- tus the attentive lover says, "Behold! I bring tence, without it, seems obtruncated, and you ten apples. I gathered them myself wants the peculiar rhythm of Theocritus, from the tree whence you desired me to gathwhich is complete and perfect with it. In er them: to-morrow I will bring you more. the two last verses are aids uaigai Ovu σzigraσnte. Speaking to the she-goats he could not well say a, which could only be said in speaking of them. Probably the right reading is de, although we believe there is no authority for it. The repetition of that word is graceful, and adds to the sense, "Come hither, Kissaitha! milk this one: but you others! do not leap about here, lest, &c." The poet tells us he will hereafter sing more sweetly: it is much to say; but he will keep his promise: he speaks in the character of Thyrsis. When the goatherd gives the cup to the shepherd he wishes his mouth to be filled with honey, and with the honey comb! IDYL II. Νύν εγνων τον Ερωτα: βαρύς θεὸς ἢ τὰ λέαινας pose. Nunc scio quid sit amor : duris in cotibus illum Nec generis nostri puerum nec sanguinis edunt. Ismarus aut Rhodope aut extremi Garamantes Where is the difference of meaning here be this bustle about Ismarus and Rhodope and tween genus and sanguis? And why all the Garamantes? A lioness in an oak forest stands in place of them all, and much better. Love being the deity, not the passion, qui would have been better than quid, both in Is a monologue, and not bucolic. Cimatha, an enchantress, is in love with Delphis. The poem is curious, containing a complete system of incantation as practised by the Greeks. Out of two verses, by no means remarkable, Virgil has framed some of the most beautiful in all his works. Whether the Idyl was in propriety and in sound. There follows, this particular copied from Apollonius, or Alter ab undecimo jam tum me ceperat annus. whether he in the Argonautics had it before This is among the most faulty expressions in him, is uncertain. Neither of them is so admirable as, Sylvæque et sæva quierant At non infelix animi Phonissa; neque unquam Accipit: ingeminant curæ, rursusque resurgens Sævit amor. The woods and stormy waves were now at rest, IDYL III. Virgil. The words tum me jam sound woodenly and me ceperat annus is scarcely Latin. Perhaps the poet wrote mi: the simple e was often written for the diphthong. There has been a doubt regarding the exact meaning: but this should raise none. The meaning is, I was entering my ninth year." Unus ab undecimo would be the tenth of course alter ab undecimo must be the ninth. Virgil is a little more happy in his translations from Theocritus than he is in those from Homer. It is probable that they were only school-exercises, too many, and (in his opinion) too good to be thrown away. J. C. Scaliger, zealous for the great Roman poet, gives him the preference over Homer in every instance where he has copied him. But in fact there is nowhere a sentence, and only a single verse anywhere, in which he rises to an equality with his master. He says of Fame, A goatherd, whose name is not mentioned, declares his love, with prayers and expostulations, praises and reproaches, to Amaryllis. The restlessness of passion never was better expressed. The tenth and eleventh lines are copied by Virgil, with extremely ill success. Quod potui, puero sylvestri ex arbore lecta Aurea mala decem misi, cras altera mittam. How poor is quod potui! and what a selection (lecta) is that of crabs! moreover, punctuation: none after cos: for if there were any these were sent as a present (misi), and not in that place, we should have wished the words were offered in person. There is not even the ac-Bagvv Ocov. Ingrediturque solo et caput inter sidera condit. We have given not the editor's but our own IDYL IV. ter grace uninterrupted. Comatas, after re- clear, Battus and Corydon.* The greater part is tedious. But at verse thirty-eight begins a tender grief of Battus on the death of his Amaryllis. Corydon attempts to console him. "You must be of good courage, my dear Battus! Things may go better with you another And bees are flying for their hives, and through day." To which natural and brief reflection The shady branches birds their talk pursue. we believe all editions have added two verses, as spoken by Corydon. Nevertheless, we They both keep their places and look out suspect that Theocritus gave the following for an arbitrator to decide on the merit of one to Battus, and that he says in reply, or their songs. Morson, a woodman, is splitting rather in refutation, "There are hopes in the a tree near them; and they call him. living, but the dead leave us none.' Then, There is something very dramatic in their says Corydon, "The skies are sometimes appeal, and in the objurgation that follows. serene and sometimes rainy." Battus is The contest is carried on in extemporary comforted; he adds but Ougoso; for he per- verses, two at a time. After several, Comaceives on a sudden that the calves are nib- tas says, "All my she-goats, excepting two, bling the olives. Good Battus has forgotten are bearers of twins: nevertheless, a girl who at once all his wishes and regrets for Amaryl- sees me among them says, 'Unfortunate crealis, and would rather have a stout cudgel. ture! do you milk them all yourself!' His animosity soon subsides, however, and he con, as the words now stand, replies, "Pheu! asks Corydon an odd question about an old pheu!" an exclamation which among the shepherd, which Corydon answers to his satis- tragedians expresses grief and anguish, but faction and delight. which here signifies Psha, psha. Now it is evident that Comatas had attempted to make Lacon jealous, by telling him how sorComatas, a goatherd, and Lacon, a shep-ry the girl was that he should milk the goats herd, accuse one another of thievery. They himself without anybody to help him. Lacarry on their recriminations with much spi- con in return is ready to show that he also rit: but the beauty of the verses could alone had his good fortune. There is reason theremake the contest tolerable. After the for- fore to suspect that the name Дazov should tieth are several which Virgil has imitated, be aor because from all that precedes with little honour to his selection. Theo- we may suppose that Lacon was never poscritus, always harmonious, is invariably the most so in description. This is, however, too long continued in many places: but here we might wish it had begun earlier and last ed longer. Lacon says, IDYL V. The shrill cicala shakes the slumberous air. 91 La. sessed of such wealth, and that Comatas would have turned him into ridicule if he had boasted of it. "Psha! psha! you are a grand personage with your twin-bearing goats, no doubt! but you milk them yourself: now Damon is richer than you are he fills pretty nearly twenty hampers with cheeses, and Τον αναβον εν ανθεσι, This impersonation seems to us indubitable This is somewhat bolder than the original to be teased any more after he had been from the following speech of Lacon. Not will warrant, but not quite so bold as Virgil's taunted by Comatas, that Clearista, although 'rumpunt arbusta cicada." It is followed he was a goatherd, threw apples at him, and by what may be well in character with two shepherds of Sibaris, but what has neither began to sing the moment he drove his herd pleasantry nor novelty to recommend it: and by her, Lacon, out of patience at last, says, "Cratidas makes me wild with that beautiful the answer would have come with much bet- hair about the neck." There could have been no room for this if he had spoken of himself, however insatiable. For, in a later verse, Cratidas seems already to have made room for another. • The close of verse thirty-one is printed å TE Zakuros in other editions à Zavybos. Perhaps both are wrong. The first syllable of Zaxuvos is short, which is against the latter reading; and re would be long before Z, which is against the former. Might not a shepherd who uses the Doric dialect have said Aaxvv0os. We have heard of a coin inscribed Aaltor. In Virgil we read nemorosa Zacynthos but it seems impossible that he should may account for his appearance in Virgil. have written the word with a Z. 'Αλλ' εγω Ευμηδεις έραμαι μεγα, Finding Damon here in Theocritus, we No Greek letters are more easily mistaken one for the other than the capital 4 for 4, and the small × for μ. In the one hundred and fifth verse, Comatas boasts of possessing a cup sculptured by Praxiteles. This is no very grave absurdity in such a braggart: it suits the character. Virgil who had none to support for his shepherd, makes him state that his is only "divini opus Alcimedontis." It may be remarked, in conclusion, that no other Idyl contains so many passages after the fourth foot, which Hermann calls bucolic: nearly half of the verses have this cadence. mus. IDYL VI. IDYL VIII.* The subject is a contest in singing between Ego hunc vitulum, ne forte recuses, &c. It is evident that Virgil means by pecus the sheep only: pecora at this day means an ewe in Italian. Virgil's Menalcas had no objection to the robbery, but was afraid of the chastisement. appears, had made exactly such another, quite as good, and the cane of which it was made the contest in such sweet hexameters and pencut his finger in making it. They carry on tameters as never were heard before or since: but they finish with hexameters alone. The prize is awarded to Daphnis by the goatherd, This is dramatic, and is addressed to Aratus. The shepherds, Damætas and Daphnis, The Menalcus of Theocritus says, "I will had driven their flocks into one place, and, never lay what belongs to my father; but I sitting by a fountain, began a song about have a pipe which I made myself;" and acPolyphemus and Galatea. Daphnis acts the cording to his account of it, it was no ordicharacter of Galatea, Damætus of Polyphe-nary piece of workmanship. Damætas, it The various devices of the gigantic shepherd to make her jealous, and his confidence of success in putting them into practice, is very amusing. His slyness in giving a secret sign to set the dog at her, and the dog knowing that he loved her in his heart, and pushing his nose against her thigh instead of biting her, are such touches of true poetry as are seldom to be found in pastorals. In the midst of these our poet has been thought to have committed one anachronism. But where Galatea is said to have mistaken the game, when φεύγει φιλέοντα και οὐ φιλέοντα διώκει Και τον απο γραμμᾶς κινει λιθον, who is arbitrator. He must have been a goatherd of uncommonly fine discernment: the match seems equal: perhaps the two following verses turned the balance. 4λλ' υπο τα πετρα ταδ' ασομαι αγνας έχων τυ, Συνομα μαλ' εσόρων, των Σικελαν ἐς αλα. Of these, as of those above, we can only give the meaning: he who can give a representation of them can give a representation of ...Seeks him who loves not, him who loves the sea-breezes. avoids: And makes false moves, she herself is not represented as the speaker, nor is Polyphemus, but Daphnis. It is only at the next speech that either of the characters comes forth in person: here Damætus is the Polyphemus, and acts his part admirably. IDYL VII. It never was my wish to have possest The land of Pelops and his golden store; But only, as I hold you to my breast, Glance at our sheep and our Sicilian shore. IDYL IX. must both have taken cold. Again Menalcas and Daphnis; but they IDYL X. Battus what ails him, that he can neither Milo and Battus are reapers. Milo asks draw a straight furrow nor reap like his neigh The last was different in its form and character from the five preceding: the present is more different still. The poet, on his road to Alexandria with Eucritus and Amyntas, meets Phrasidamus and Antigenes, and is invited to accompany them to the festival of Ceres, called Thalysia. He falls in with Lycidas | Δαφνιδι πῶ χαριεντι...συνήντετο βουκολιο ντε of Cidon, and they relate their love-stories. Maka reuor is parti, &c. This Idyl closes with a description of sum * The two first lines are the least pleasant to our ear of any in this melodious poet. mer just declining into autumn. The invo-part is found in all editions; but Pierson has cation to the Nymphs is in the spirit of Pindar. Theocritus, addressed in Îdyl XXI. suggested Διοφάντε. Diophantus was a friend of bours. For simplicity none of the pastorals is not a dialogue: it is a narrative of the is more delightful, and it abounds in rustic loss of Hylas. The same story is related by irony. Propertius in the most beautiful of his elegies. is addressed to Nikias of Miletus, and appears is entitled Cynisca's Love, and is a dialogue to have been written in Sicily, by the words between her husband Æschines and his friend & Kvzhoч & лug' nur. It describes the love Thyonichus. Cynisca had taken a fancy_to of Polyphemus for Galatea, his appeal to her, Lucos. At an entertainment given by Eshis promises (to the extent of eleven kids and chines, a very mischievous guest, one Apis, four bear-cubs), and his boast that, if he can- sings about a wolf (Auxos), who was quite not have her, he can find another perhaps charming. Eschines had had some reason more beautiful; for that many are ready for jealousy before. Hearing Cynisca sigh enough to play with him, challenging him to at the name of Lucos, he can endure it no that effect, and giggling (zzgor) when he longer, and gives her a slap in the face, then listens to them. Virgil's imitation of this another, and so forth, until she runs out of Idyl is extremely, and more than usually, the house, and takes refuge with her Lucos feeble. The last verse, however, of The day and night. All this the husband relates ocritus, is somewhat flat.* to Thyonichus; and the verses from the thirty-fourth to the thirty-eighth, Oakлe qilor, are very laughable. Thyonichus advises that so able a boxer should enter the service of Ptolemy. IDYL XII. We now arrive at the first of those Idyls, of which the genuineness has been so pertinaciously disputed. And why? Because forsooth it pleased the author to compose it in the Ionic dialect. Did Burns, who wrote mostly in the Scottish, write nothing in the English? With how much better reason has the competitor of Apollonius and Callimachus deserted the Doric occasionally! Meleager, and other writers of inscriptions, mix frequently Ionic forms with Doric. In fact, the most accurate explorers must come at last to the conclusion, that even in the pastoral portion of these Idyls, scarcely a single one is composed throughout of unmingled Doric. The ear that is accustomed to the exuberant flow of Theocritus, will never reject as spurious this melodious and graceful poem. Here, and particularly toward the conclusion, as very often elsewhere, he writes in the style and spirit of Pindar, while he celebrates the loves extolled by Plato. IDYL XIII. is addrest to Nikias, as the eleventh was. IDYL XV. The Syracusan Gossips. Never was there so exact or so delightful a description of such characters. There is a little diversity, quite enough, between Praxinoë and Gorgo. Praxinoë is fond of dress; conceited, ignorant, rash, abusive in her remarks on her husband, ambitious to display her knowledge as well as her finery, and talking absurdly on what she sees about her at the festival of Adonis. Gorgo is desirous of insinuating her habits of industry. There are five speakers: Gorgo, Praxinoë, Eunoë, an old woman and a traveller, beside a singing girl, who has nothing to do with the party or the dialogue. "Gorgo: Don't talk in this way against your husband while your baby is by. See how he is looking at you. Praxinoë: Sprightly, my pretty Zopyrion! I am not talking of papa. Gor.: By Proserpine! he understands you. It deal of tattle, they are setting out for the fair, Papa is a jewel of a papa." After a good and the child shows a strong desire to be of the party. Gor.: "I can't take you, darling! There's a hobgoblin on the other side of the door; and there's a biting horse. Ay, ay, cry to your heart's content. Do you think I would have you lamed for life? Come, come; let us be off." Laughter is irrepres * φᾶον δε διαγ' ἣ χρυσον εδωκεν. "He lived more pleasantly than if he had given gold for it." This is barely sense; nor can it be improved without a bold substitution. ἢ χρυσον ἔχων τις. Such terminations are occasionally to be found in sible at their mishaps and exclamations in the our poet; for example, crowd. This poem, consisting of one hundred and forty-four verses, is the longest in Theocritus, excepting the heroics on Hercules. The comic is varied and relieved by the song of a girl on Adonis. She notices everything she sees, and describes it as it appears to her. After an invocation to Venus, she has a compliment for Berenice, not with- [verses, introduces twelve Spartan girls crownout an eye to the candied flowers and white ed with hyacinths, who sing and dance about pastry, and the pretty little baskets containing Menelaus. mossy gardens and waxwork Adonises, and tiny Loves flying over, *Οιοι αηδονικες εφεζόμενοι επι δενδρων The Graces. Here Hiero is reminded how becoming is liberality in the rich and powerful; and here is sometimes a plaintive undersong in the praise. The attributes of the Graces were manifold; the poet has them in view principally as the distributors of just "And so you are somewhat heavy in the knees, sweet spouse! rather fond of sleep, are you! You ought to have gone to sleep at the proper time, and have let a young maiden play with other young maidens at her mother's until long after daybreak." Then follow the praises of Helen, wishes for her prosperity, and promises to return at the crowing of the cock. IDYL XIX. Kariocleptes, or the Hive-stealer, contains but eight verses. It is the story of Cupid stung by a bee: the first and last bee that Ever) of both hands: for it is not 21905 ever stung all the fingers (Δακτυλα παντ' that the bee stung him, as he was plundering but zgor. Having said in the first verse the hive, we may easily suspect in what part the wound was inflicted; and, among the ex rewards. We have noticed the resemblance he often bears to Pindar: nowhere is it so striking as in this and the next. The best of Pindar's odes is not more energetic through out: none of them surpasses these two in the chief qualities of that admirable poet; rejec-tremely few things we could wish altered or omitted in Theocritus, are the words tion of what is light and minute, disdain of what is trivial, and selection of those blocks from the quarry which will bear strong ακραδε χείων. Δακτυλα πανθ' υπένυξεν, Ο δ' άλγες. strokes of the hammer and retain all the All the needful and all the ornamental would marks of the chisel. Of what we understand be comprised in by sublimity he has little; but he moves in the calm majesty of an elevated mind. Of Κηριον ἐκ σιμβλων συλευμένον, ὡς χερι all poets he least resembles those among us whom it is the fashion most to admire at the present day. The verses of this address to Hiero by Theocritus, from the thirty-fourth to the forty-seventh, are as sonorous and elevated as the best of Homer's; and so are those beginning at the ninety-eighth verse to the end. IDYL XVII. εφυσσε, δε. IDYL XX. The Oxherd. He complains of Eunica, who holds his love in derision and finds fault with his features, speech, and manners. From plain downright contemptuousness she bursts forth into irony. ὡς αγρια παισδεις How rustic is your play! This has nothing of the Idyl in it, but is a noble eulogy on Ptolemy Philadelphus, son of Ptolemy Lagus and Berenice. Warton is among the many who would deduct it from the works of our poet. It is grander even than the last on Hiero, in which he appears He entertains a very different opinion of himresolved to surpass all that Pindar has writ-self, boasts that every girl upon the hills is ten on the earlier king of that name. It is in love with him, and is sure that only a only in versification that it differs from him: town-lady (which he thinks is the same thing in comprehensiveness, power, and majesty, as a lady of the town) could have so little and in the manner of treating the subject, the taste. There is simplicity in this Idyl, but it same spirit seems to have guided the same is the worst of the author. hand. IDYL XVIII. The Epithalamium of Helen. There were two species of epithalamium: the zonizov, such as this, and such likewise as that of Catullus. sung as the bride was conducted to her chamber; and the grizov, sung as she arose in the morning. The poet, in the first IDYL XXI. The Fisherman. Two fishermen were lying stretched on seaweed in a wattled hut, and resting their heads against the wall composed of twigs and leaves. Around them were spread all the implements of their trade, which are specified in very beautiful verse. They arose before dawn, and one said to the |