June — Theocritus. 183 



XXXIV. 



Theocritus — Greek, French, and English — The real Subject of Greek 

 Idyl and Roman Eclogue — The Idyllic Shepherds — Their Immoral- 

 ity — A Protest — Nature of the Idyl — Few Landscape Pictures in 

 the great Idyllists — Method of the Idyllists — Their simplest Art 

 — Cunning of the Idyllists in describing Things — The pervading 

 Sylvan Spirit — Virgil and Theocritus compared — Personal Expe- 

 rience of Theocritus — His lively Description of Repose near a Coun- 

 try House — Description by Theocritus — Touches of Reality — The 

 true Idyllists call every thing by its own Name. 



THERE are not many separate landscape studies 

 in Virgil's idyllic poetry ; there are fewer still in 

 that of Theocritus. Greek and Roman remained within 

 the rigid limits of their art ; and perhaps the Greek, by 

 the quality of his language, even exceeded the Roman in 

 that brevity that we approach with so much difficulty 

 when we care to rival it at all. So Theocritus, in the 

 twenty-fifth Idyl, speaks of the hill-tops with many 

 springs, irokvirihaKo^ aKpcopeir)^, which the best French 

 translation calls collines aux sources nombreuses, — how 

 awkwardly ! and which could not be adequately trans- 

 lated into English without borrowing Tennyson's ex- 

 pression, ' many-fountained,' 



* Dear mother Ida, many-fountained Ida/ 



which is itself an exotic form, borrowed from the very 

 Greek word that Theocritus used, taken evidently from 

 Homer, who uses it in connection with Ida. 



But the real subject or motive of the Greek idyl and 



