But it is still more finely expressed to meet a particular personal mood. One must not think the world lost because a woman has been lost, he says, and such a love is not a thing for any man to be ashamed of, in spite of the fact that it has been disappointed. It was honourable, unselfish, not inspired by any passion or any folly, and the very brevity of the experience only serves to make it more precious. Observe the use of the words “shrive” and “assoiled.” These refer to the old religious custom of confession; to “shrive” signifies to forgive, to free from sin, as a priest is supposed to do, and “assoiled” means “purified.”

If this was a personal experience, it must have been an experience of advanced life. Elsewhere the story of a boyish love is told very prettily, under the title of “Two Fragments of Childhood.” This is the first fragment:

This is evidently the charming memory of a little sick boy sent to the seaside for his health, according to the English custom, and unhappy there, unable to play about like stronger children, and obliged to remain under the constant care of nurses and female relatives. But in the same house there is another family with a beautiful young daughter, probably sixteen or eighteen years old. The little boy wishes, wishes so much that the beautiful lady would speak to him and play with him, but he is shy, afraid to approach her—only looks at her with great admiring loving eyes. But one day she meets him on the stairs, and stoops down and kisses him on the forehead. Then he is in Heaven. Afterward no doubt she played with him, and they walked up and down by the shore of the sea together, and now, though an old man, whenever he hears the roar of the sea he remembers the beautiful lady who played with him and caressed him, when he was a little sick child. How much he loved her! But she was a woman, and he was only ten years old. The reference to “chivalrous blood” signifies just this, that at the moment when she kissed him he would have given his life for her, would have dared anything or done anything to show his devotion to her. No prettier memory of a child could be told.

We can learn a good deal about even the shyest of the poets through a close understanding of his poetry. From the foregoing we know that Cory must have been a sickly child; and from other poems referring to school life we can not escape the supposition that he was not a strong lad. In one of his verses he speaks of being unable to join in the hearty play of his comrades; and in the poem which touches on the life of the mature man we find him acknowledging that he believed his life a failure—a failure through want of strength. I am going to quote this poem for other reasons. It is a beautiful address either to some favourite student or to a beloved son—it is impossible to decide which. But that does not matter. The title is “A New Year’s Day.”

How beautiful this is, and how profoundly sad!

I shall return to the personal poetry of Cory later on, but I want now to give you some examples of his Greek work. Perhaps the best of this is little more than a rendering of Greek into English; some of the work is pure translation. But it is the translation of a very great master, the perfect rendering of Greek feeling as well as of Greek thought. Here is an example of pure translation:

What are “thy pleasant voices, thy nightingales”? They are the songs which the dear dead poet made, still sung in his native country, though his body was burned to ashes long ago—has been changed into a mere handful of grey ashes, which, doubtless, have been placed in an urn, as is done with such ashes to-day in Japan. Death takes away all things from man, but not his poems, his songs, the beautiful thoughts which he puts into musical verse. These will always be heard like nightingales. The fourth line in the first stanza contains an idiom which may not be familiar to you. It means only that the two friends talked all day until the sun set in the West, and still talked on after that. Tennyson has used the same Greek thought in a verse of his poem, “A Dream of Fair Women,” where Cleopatra says,

The Greek author of the above poem was the great poet Callimachus, and the English translator does not think it necessary even to give the name, as he wrote only for folk well acquainted with the classics. He has another short translation which he accompanies with the original Greek text; it is very pretty, but of an entirely different kind, a kind that may remind you of some Japanese poems. It is only about a cicada and a peasant girl, and perhaps it is twenty-four or twenty-five hundred years old.

How very human this little thing is—how actually it brings before us the figure of the girl, who must have become dust some time between two and three thousand years ago! She is working hard in the field, and the constant singing of the insect prompts her to make a comical protest. “Oh, Tithonus, what are you making that creaking noise for? You old dry thing, I have no time to play with you, or to idle in any way, but you do nothing but complain. Why don’t you work, as I do? Soon I shall have leave to sleep, because I have worked well. There is the evening star, and I shall have a good bed of hay, sweet-smelling fresh hay, to lie upon. How well I shall sleep. But you, you idle noisy thing, you do not deserve to sleep. You have done nothing to tire you. And you are empty, dry and thirsty. Serves you right!” Of course you recognize the allusion to the story of Tithonus, so beautifully told by Tennyson. The girl’s jest has a double meaning. The word “importunate” has the signification of a wearisome repetition of a request, a constant asking, impossible to satisfy. Tithonus was supposed to complain because he was obliged to live although he wanted to die. That young girl does not want to die at all. And she says that the noise of the insect, supposed to repeat the complaint of Tithonus, only makes it more tiresome for her to work. She was feeling, no doubt, much as a Japanese student would feel when troubled by the singing of semi on some very hot afternoon while he is trying to master some difficult problem.

That is pure Greek—pure as another mingling of the Greek feeling with the modern scholarly spirit, entitled “An Invocation.” Before quoting from it I must explain somewhat; otherwise you might not be able to imagine what it means, because it was written to be read by those only who are acquainted with Theocritus and the Greek idylists. Perhaps I had better say something too, about the word idyl, for the use of the word by Tennyson is not the Greek use at all, except in the mere fact that the word signifies a picturing, a shadowing or an imagining of things. Tennyson’s pictures are of a purely imaginative kind in the “Idyls of the King.” But the Greek poets who first invented the poetry called idyllic did not attempt the heroic works of imagination at all; they only endeavoured to make perfectly true pictures of the common life of peasants in the country. They wrote about the young men and young girls working on the farms, about the way they quarrelled or rejoiced or made love, about their dances and their songs, about their religious festivals and their sacrifices to the gods at the parish temple. Imagine a Japanese scholar of to-day who, after leaving the university, instead of busying himself with the fashionable studies of the time, should go out into the remoter districts or islands of Japan, and devote his life to studying the existence of the commoner people there, and making poems about it. This was exactly what the Greek idylists did,—that is, the best of them. They were great scholars and became friends of kings, but they wrote poetry chiefly about peasant life, and they gave all their genius to the work. The result was so beautiful that everybody is still charmed by the pictures or idyls which they made.

Well, after this disgression, to return to the subject of Theocritus, the greatest of the idylists. He has often introduced into his idyls the name of Comatas. Who was Comatas? Comatas was a Greek shepherd boy, or more strictly speaking a goatherd, who kept the flocks of a rich man. It was his duty to sacrifice to the gods none of his master’s animals, without permission; but as his master was a very avaricious person, Comatas knew that it would be of little use to ask him. Now this Comatas was a very good singer of peasant songs, and he made many beautiful poems for the people to sing, and he believed that it was the gods who had given him power to make the songs, and the Muses had inspired him with the capacity to make good verse. In spite of his master’s will, Comatas therefore thought it was not very bad to take the young kids and sacrifice to the gods and the Muses. When his master found out what had been done with the animals, naturally he became very angry, and he put Comatas into a great box of cedar-wood in order to starve him to death—saying, as he closed and locked the lid, “Now, Comatas, let us see whether the gods will feed you!” In that box Comatas was left for a year without food or drink, and when the master, at the end of the year, opened the box, he expected to find nothing but the bones of the goatherd. But Comatas was alive and well, singing sweet songs, because during the year the Muses had sent bees to feed him with honey. The bees had been able to enter the box through a very little hole. I suppose you know that bees were held sacred to the Muses, and that there is in Greek legend a symbolic relation between bees and poetry.

If you want to know what kind of songs Comatas sang and what kind of life he represented, you will find all this exquisitely told by Theocritus; and there is a beautiful little translation in prose of Theocritus, Bion and Moschus, made by Andrew Lang, which should delight you to read. Another day I shall give you examples of such translations. Then you will see what true idyllic poetry originally signified. These Greeks, although trained scholars and philosophers, understood not only that human nature in itself is a beautiful thing, but also that the best way to study human nature is to study the life of the peasants and the common people. It is not to the rich and leisurely, not to rank and society, that a poet must go for inspiration. He will not find it there. What is called society is a world in which nobody is happy, and in which pure human nature is afraid to show itself. Life among the higher classes in all countries is formal, artificial, theatrical; poetry is not there. Of course no kind of human community is perfectly happy, but it is among the simple folk, the country folk, who do not know much about evil and deceit, that the greater proportion of happiness can be found. Among the youths of the country especially, combining the charm of childhood with the strength of adult maturity, the best possible subjects for fine pure studies of human nature can be found. May I not here express the hope that some young Japanese poet, some graduate of this very university, will eventually attempt to do in Japan what Theocritus and Bion did in ancient Sicily? A great deal of the very same kind of poetry exists in our own rural districts, and parallels can be found in the daily life of the Japanese peasants for everything beautifully described in Theocritus. At all events I am quite sure of one thing, that no great new literature can possibly arise in this country until some scholarly minds discover that the real force and truth and beauty and poetry of life is to be found only in studies of the common people—not in the life of the rich and the noble, not in the shadowy life of books.

Well, our English poet felt with the Greek idylists, and in the poem called “An Invocation” he beautifully expresses this sympathy. All of us, he says, should like to see and hear something of the ancient past if it were possible. We should like, some of us, to call back the vanished gods and goddesses of the beautiful Greek world, or to talk to the great souls of that world who had the experience of life as men—to Socrates, for example, to Plato, to Phidias the sculptor, to Pericles the statesman. But, as a poet, my wish would not be for the return of the old gods nor of the old heroes so much as for the return to us of some common men who lived in the Greek world. It is Comatas, he says, that he would most like to see, and to see in some English park—in the neighbourhood of Cambridge University, or of Eton College. And thus he addresses the spirit of Comatas:

A few phrases of these beautiful stanzas need explanation. “Broken sunlight” refers, of course, to the imperfect shade thrown by the trees under which the poet is lying. The shadow is broken by the light passing through leaves, or conversely, the light is broken by the interposition of the leaves. The reference to trees from distant forests no doubt intimates that the poet is in some botanical garden, a private park, in which foreign trees are carefully cultivated. The “torch race” is a simile for the pursuit of knowledge and truth. Greek thinkers compare the transmission of knowledge from one generation to another, to the passing of a lighted torch from hand to hand, as in the case of messengers carrying signals or athletes running a mighty race. As a runner runs until he is tired, or until he reaches the next station, and then passes the torch which he has been carrying to another runner waiting to receive it, so does each generation pass on its wisdom to the succeeding generation, and disappear. “My sun is stooping westward” is only a beautiful way of saying, “I am becoming very old; be quick, so that we may see each other before I die.” And the poet suggests that it is because of his age and his experience and his wisdom that he could hope to be of service to the dear divine Comatas. The expression, “there is fruitage in my garden,” refers to no material garden, but to the cultivated mind of the scholar; he is only saying, “I have strange knowledge that I should like to impart to you.” How delightful, indeed, it would be, could some university scholar really converse with a living Greek of the old days!

There is another little Greek study of great and simple beauty entitled “The Daughter of Cleomenes.” It is only an historical incident, but it is so related for the pleasure of suggesting a profound truth about the instinct of childhood. Long ago, when the Persians were about to make an attack upon the Greeks, there was an attempt to buy off the Spartan resistance, and the messenger to the Spartan general found him playing with his little daughter, a child of six or seven. The conference was carried on in whispers, and the child could not hear what was being said; but she broke up the whole plot by a single word. I shall quote a few lines from the close of the poem, which contain its moral lessons. The emissary has tried to tempt him with promises of wealth and power.

All the little girl could know about the matter was instinctive; she only saw the cunning face of the stranger, and felt sure that he was trying to deceive her father for a bad purpose—so she cried out, “Father, come away with me, or else that man will deceive you.” And she spoke truth, as her father immediately recognized.

There are several more classical studies of extraordinary beauty; but your interest in them would depend upon something more than interest in Greek and Roman history, and we can not study all the poems. So I prefer to go back to the meditative lyrics, and to give a few splendid examples of these more personal compositions. The following stanzas are from a poem whose Latin title signifies that Love conquers death. In this poem the author becomes the equal of Tennyson as a master of language.

Very possibly this charming meditation was written on the Welsh coast; there is just such scenery as the poem describes, and the grand peak of Snowdon would well realize the imagination of the line about the girlhood of the growing hills. The melancholy of the latter part of the composition is the same melancholy to be found in “Mimnermus in Church,” the first of Cory’s poems which we read together. It is the Greek teaching that there is nothing to console us for the great doubt and mystery of existence except unselfish affection. All through the book we find the same philosophy, even in the beautiful studies of student life and the memories of childhood. So it is quite a melancholy book, though the sadness be beautiful. I have given you examples of the sadness of doubt and of the sadness of love; but there is yet a third kind of sadness—the sadness of a childless man, wishing that he could have a child of his own. It is a very pretty thing, simply entitled “Scheveningen Avenue”—probably the name of the avenue where the incident occurred. The poet does not tell us how it occurred, but we can very well guess. He was riding in a street car, probably, and a little girl next to him, while sitting upon her nurse’s lap, fell asleep, and as she slept let her head fall upon his shoulder. This is a very simple thing to make a poem about, but what a poem it is!

There is an almost intolerable acuity of sadness in the last two mocking verses, but how pretty and how tender the whole thing is, and how gentle-hearted must have been the man who wrote it! The same tenderness reappears in references to children of a larger growth, the boys of his school. Sometimes he very much regrets the necessity of discipline, and advocates a wiser method of dealing with the young. How very pretty is this little verse about the boy he loves.

But a little reflection further on in the same poem reminds us how necessary the discipline must be for the battle of life, inasmuch as each of those charming boys will have to fight against evil—

One might easily lecture about this little volume for many more days, so beautiful are the things which fill it. But enough has been cited to exemplify its unique value. If you reread these quotations, I think you will find each time new beauty in them. And the beauty is quite peculiar. Such poetry could have been written only under two conditions. The first is that the poet be a consummate scholar. The second is that he must have suffered, as only a great mind and heart could suffer, from want of affection.

Chapter XV

Old Greek Fragments

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The other day when we were reading some of the poems in “Ionica,” I promised to speak in another short essay of Theocritus and his songs or idyls of Greek peasant life, but in speaking of him it will be well also to speak of others who equally illustrate the fact that everywhere there is truth and beauty for the mind that can see. I spoke last week about what I thought the highest possible kind of literary art might become. But the possible becoming is yet far away; and in speaking of some old Greek writers I want only to emphasize the fact that modern literary art as well as ancient literary art produced their best results from a close study of human nature.

Although Theocritus and others who wrote idyls found their chief inspiration in the life of the peasants, they sometimes also wrote about the life of cities. Human nature may be studied in the city as well as in the country, provided that a man knows how to look for it. It is not in the courts of princes nor the houses of nobles nor the residences of the wealthy that such study can be made. These superior classes have found it necessary to show themselves to the world very cautiously; they live by rule, they conceal their emotions, they move theatrically. But the ordinary, everyday people of cities are very different; they speak their thoughts, they keep their hearts open, and they let us see, just as children do, the good or the evil side of their characters. So a good poet and a good observer can find in the life of cities subjects of study almost as easily as in the country. Theocritus has done this in his fifteenth idyl. This idyl is very famous, and it has been translated hundreds of times into various languages. Perhaps you may have seen one version of it which was made by Matthew Arnold. But I think that the version made by Lang is even better.

The scene is laid in Alexandria, probably some two thousand years ago, and the occasion is a religious holiday—a matsuri, as we call it in Japan. Two women have made an appointment to go together to the temple, to see the festival and to see the people. The poet begins his study by introducing us to the chamber of one of the women.

Gorgo. “Is Praxinoe at home?”

Praxinoe. “Dear Gorgo, how long is it since you have been here! She is at home. The wonder is that you have got here at last! Eunoe, come and see that she has a chair and put a cushion on it!”

G. “It does most charmingly as it is.”

P. “Do sit down.”

How natural this is. There is nothing Greek about it any more than there is Japanese; it is simply human. It is something that happens in Tokyo every day, certainly in houses where there are chairs and where it is a custom to put a cushion on the chair for the visitor. But remember, this was two thousand years ago. Now listen to what the visitor has to say.

“I have scarcely got to you at all, Praxinoe! What a huge crowd, what hosts of carriages! Everywhere cavalry boots, everywhere men in uniform! And the road is endless; yes, you really live too far away!”

Praxinoe answers:

“It is all for that mad man of mine. Here he came to the ends of the earth and took a hall, not a house, and all that we might not be neighbours. The jealous wretch, always the same, ever for spite.”

She is speaking half in jest, half in earnest; but she forgets that her little boy is present, and the visitor reminds her of the fact:

“Don’t talk of your husband like that, my dear girl, before the little boy,—look how he is staring at you!—Never mind, Zaphyrion, sweet child, she is not speaking about papa.”

P. “Our Lady! (Persephone) The child takes notice!”

Then the visitor to comfort the child says “Nice papa,” and the conversation proceeds. The two talk about their husbands, about their dresses, about the cost of things in the shops; but in order to see the festival Praxinoe must dress herself quickly, and woman, two thousand years ago, just as now, takes a long time to dress. Hear Praxinoe talking to her maid-servant while she hurries to get ready:

“Eunoe, bring the water and put it down in the middle of the room,—lazy creature that you are. Cat-like, always trying to sleep soft! Come, bustle, bring the water; quicker! I want water first,—and how she carries it! Give it me all the same;—don’t pour out so much, you extravagant thing! Stupid girl! Why are you wetting my dress? There, stop, I have washed my hands as heaven would have it. Where is the key of the big chest? Bring it here.”

This is life, natural and true; we can see those three together, the girlish young wife hurrying and scolding and chattering naturally and half childishly, the patient servant girl smiling at the hurry of her mistress, and the visitor looking at her friend’s new dress, wondering how much it cost and presently asking her the price. At last all is ready. But the little boy sees his mother go out and he wants to go out too, though it has been decided not to take him, because the crowd is too rough and he might be hurt. Here the mother first explains, then speaks firmly:

“No, child, I don’t mean to take you. Boo! Bogies! There is a horse that bites! Cry as much as you please, but I cannot have you maimed.”

They go out, Praxinoe and Gorgo and the maid-servant Eunoe. The crowd is tremendous, and they find it very hard to advance. Sometimes there are horses in the way, sometimes wagons, occasionally a legion of cavalry. We know all this, because we hear the chatter of the women as they make their way through the press.

“Give me your hand, and you, Eunoe, catch hold of Eutychis,—for fear lest you get lost…. Here come the kings on horses! My dear man, don’t trample on me. Eunoe, you fool-hardy girl, will you never keep out of the way? Oh! How tiresome, Gorgo, my muslin veil is torn in two already…. For heaven’s sake, sir, if you ever wish to be fortunate, take care of my shawl!”

Stranger. “I can hardly help myself, but for all that I will be as helpful as I can.”

The strange man helps the women and children through the pushing crowd, and they thank him very prettily, praying that he may have good fortune all his life. But not all the strangers who come in contact with them happen to be so kind. They come at last into that part of the temple ground where the image of Adonis is displayed; the beauty of the statue moves them, and they utter exclamations of delight. This does not please some of the male spectators, one of whom exclaims, “You tiresome women, do cease your endless cooing talk! They bore one to death with their eternal broad vowels!”

They are country women, and their critic is probably a purist—somebody who has studied Greek as it is pronounced and spoken in Athens. But the women bravely resent this interference with their rights.

Gorgo. “Indeed! And where may this person come from? What is it to you if we are chatterboxes? Give orders to your own servants, sir. Do you pretend to command the ladies of Syracuse? If you must know, we are Corinthians by descent, like Bellerophon himself, and we speak Peloponnesian. Dorian women may lawfully speak Doric, I presume.”

This is enough to silence the critic, but the other young woman also turns upon him, and we may suppose that he is glad to escape from their tongues. And then everybody becomes silent, for the religious services begin. The priestess, a comely girl, chants the psalm of Adonis, the beautiful old pagan hymn, more beautiful and more sensuous than anything uttered by the later religious poets of the West; and all listen in delighted stillness. As the hymn ends, Gorgo bursts out in exclamation of praise:

“Praxinoe! The woman is cleverer than we fancied! Happy woman to know so much!—Thrice happy to have so sweet a voice! Well, all the same, it is time to be making for home; Diocleides has not had his dinner, and the man is all vinegar,—don’t venture near him when he is kept waiting for dinner. Farewell, beloved Adonis—may you find us glad at your next coming.”

And with this natural mingling of the sentimental and the commonplace the little composition ends. It is as though we were looking through some window into the life of two thousand years ago. Read the whole thing over to yourselves when you have time to find the book in the library, and see how true to human nature it is. There is nothing in it except the wonderful hymn, which does not belong to to-day as much as to the long ago, to modern Tokyo as much as to ancient Greece. That is what makes the immortality of any literary production—not simply truth to the life of one time, but truth to the life of every time and place.

Not many years ago there was discovered a book by Herodas, a Greek writer of about the same period. It is called the “Mimes,” a series of little dramatic studies picturing the life of the time. One of these is well worthy of rank with the idyl of Theocritus above mentioned. It is the study of a conversation between a young woman and an old woman. The young woman has a husband, who left her to join a military expedition and has not been heard of for several years. The old woman is a go-between, and she comes to see the young person on behalf of another young man, who admires her. But as soon as she states the nature of her errand, the young lady becomes very angry and feigns much virtuous indignation. There is a quarrel. Then the two become friends, and we know that the old woman’s coming is likely to bring about the result desired. Now the wonder of this little study also is the play of emotion which it reveals. Such emotions are common to all ages of humanity; we feel the freshness of this reflection as we read, to such a degree that we cannot think of the matter as having happened long ago. Yet even the city in which these episodes took place has vanished from the face of the earth.

In the case of the studies of peasant life, there is also value of another kind. Here we have not only studies of human nature, but studies of particular social conditions. The quarrels of peasants, half good natured and nearly always happily ending; their account of their sorrows; their gossip about their work in the fields—all this might happen almost anywhere and at almost any time. But the song contest, the prize given for the best composition upon a chosen subject, this is particularly Greek, and has never perhaps existed outside of some place among the peasant folk. It was the poetical side of this Greek life of the peasants, as recorded by Theocritus, which so much influenced the literatures of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in France and in England. But neither in France nor in England has there ever really been, at any time, any life resembling that portrayed by Theocritus; to-day nothing appears to us more absurd than the eighteenth century habit of picturing the Greek shepherd life in English or French landscapes. What really may have existed among the shepherds of the antique world could not possibly exist in modern times. But how pretty it is! I think that the tenth idyl of Theocritus is perhaps the prettiest example of the whole series, thirty in number, which have been preserved for us. The plan is of the simplest. Two young peasants, respectively named Battus and Milon, meeting together in the field, talk about their sweethearts. One of them works lazily and is jeered by the other in consequence. The subject of the jeering acknowledges that he works badly because his mind is disturbed—he has fallen in love. Then the other expresses sympathy for him, and tells him that the best thing he can do to cheer himself up will be to make a song about the girl, and to sing it as he works. Then he makes a song, which has been the admiration of the world for twenty centuries and lifts been translated into almost every language possessing a literature.

“They all call thee a gipsy, gracious Bombyca, and lean, and sunburnt;—’tis only I that call thee honey-pale.

“Yea, and the violet is swart and swart the lettered hyacinth; but yet these flowers are chosen the first in garlands.

“The goat runs after cytisus, the wolf pursues the goat, the crane follows the plough,—but I am wild for love of thee.

“Would it were mine, all the wealth whereof Croesus was lord, as men tell! Then images of us, all in gold, should be dedicated to Aphrodite, thou with thy flute, and a rose, yea, or an apple, and I in fair attire and new shoon of Amyclae on both my feet.

“Ah, gracious Bombyca, thy feet are fashioned like carven ivory, thy voice is drowsy sweet, and thy ways—I can not tell of them.”

Even through the disguise of an English prose translation, you will see how pretty and how simple this little song must have been in the Greek, and how very natural is the language of it. Our young peasant has fallen in love with the girl who is employed to play the flute for the reapers, as the peasants like to work to the sound of music. His comrades do not much admire Bombyca; one calls her “a long grasshopper of a girl”; another finds her too thin; a third calls her a gipsy, such a dark brown her skin has become by constant exposure to the summer sun. And the lover, looking at her, is obliged to acknowledge in his own mind that she is long and lean and dark and like a gipsy; but he finds beauty in all these characteristics, nevertheless. What if she is dark? The sweetest honey is darkish, like amber, and so are beautiful flowers, the best of all flowers, flowers given to Aphrodite; and the sacred hyacinth on whose leaves appear the letters of the word of lamentation “Ai! Ai!”—that is also dark like Bombyca. Her darkness is that of honey and flowers. What a charming apology! He cannot deny that she is long and lean, and he remains silent on these points, but here we must all sympathize with him. He shows good taste. It is the tall slender girl that is really the most beautiful and the most graceful, not the large-limbed, strong-bodied peasant type that his companions would prefer. Without knowing it, he has fallen in love like an artist. And he is not blind to the, grace of slenderness and of form, though he cannot express it in artistic language. He can only compare the shape of the girl’s feet to the ivory feet of the divinities in the temples—perhaps he is thinking of some ivory image of Aphrodite which he has seen. But how charming an image does he make to arise before us! Beautiful is the description of the girl’s voice as “drowsy sweet.” But the most exquisite thing in the whole song is the final despairing admission that he can not describe her at all—“and thy ways, I can not tell of them”! This is one of the most beautiful expressions in any poem ancient or modern, because of its supreme truth. What mortal ever could describe the charm of manner, voice, smile, address, in mere words? Such things are felt, they can not be described; and the peasant boy reaches the highest height of true lyrical poetry when he cries out “I can not tell of them.” The great French critic Sainte-Beuve attempted to render this line as follows—“Quant à ta manière, je ne puis la rendre!” This is very good; and you can take your choice between it and any English translation. But good judges say that nothing in English of French equals the charm of the original.

You will find three different classes of idyls in Theocritus; the idyl which is a simple song of peasant life, a pure lyric expressing only a single emotion; the idyl which is a little story, usually a story about the gods or heroes; and lastly, the idyl which is presented in the form of a dialogue, or even of a conversation between three or four persons. All these forms of idyl, but especially the first and the third, were afterward beautifully imitated by the Roman poets; then very imperfectly imitated by modern poets. The imitation still goes on, but the very best English poets have never really been able to give us anything worthy of Theocritus himself.

However, this study of the Greek model has given some terms to English literature which every student ought to know. One of these terms is amoebæan,—amoebæan poetry being dialogue poetry composed in the form of question and reply. The original Greek signification was that of alternate speaking. Please do not forget the word. You may often find it in critical studies in essays upon contemporary literature; and when you see it again, remember Theocritus and the school of Greek poets who first introduced the charm of amoebæan poetry. I hope that this little lecture will interest some of you in Theocritus sufficiently to induce you to read him carefully through and through. But remember that you can not get the value of even a single poem of his at a single reading. We have become so much accustomed to conventional forms of literature that the simple art of poetry like this quite escapes us at first sight. We have to read it over and over again many times, and to think about it; then only we feel the wonderful charm.

INDEX

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• “A dry cicale chirps to a lass making hay,” 297
• Aicard, Jean, 222
• Aldrich, Thomas Bailey, 83
• “Along the garden ways just now,” 31
• “Amaturus,” 56
• “A Ma Future,” 51
• “Amelia,” 37
• “Amis and Amile,” Introduction, 268-278
• “Amphibian,” 166-172
• Andrews, Bishop Lancelot, 101
• “Angel in the House, The,” 37
• “An Invocation,” 299, 302
• “Appreciations of Poetry,” Introduction
• “Arabian Nights, The,” 268
• “Arachne,” 191
• Arnold, Sir Edwin, 50, 51
• Arnold, Matthew, 116, 313
• “Art of Worldly Wisdom, The,” 127
• Ashe, Thomas, 58
• “A simple ring with a simple stone,” 69
• “Atalanta in Calydon,” 258
• “Atalanta’s Race,” 26
• “Bhagavad-Gita, The,” 94
• Bible, The, Introduction, 64, 92-105, 233, 253, 277
• Bion, 301, 302
• Blake, William, 96, 176
• Book of Common Prayer, The, 233, 253
• Breton, Jules, 219
• “Bright star, would I were steadfast as thou art,” 46
• Browning, Robert, 10, 39, 65-69, 71, 73, 166-172, 280
• “Burly, dozing humble bee,” 179
• “Busy, curious thirsty fly,” 176
• Byron, George Gordon, Lord, 10, 62
• Carew, Thomas, 61
• Carlyle, Thomas, 89, 105
• Chesterfield, Philip Dormer Stanhope, Fourth Earl of, 113
• Cicero, Marcus Tullius, 29
• Coleridge, Hartley, 74
• Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 10, 95, 163
• “Conservative, A,” 188
• Cooke, Rose Terry, 191
• Cory, William, Introduction, 57, 279
• Crashaw, Richard, 52
• Dante Alighieri, 23
• “Daughter of Cleomenes, The,” 305
• Descartes, Rene, 195
• “Deteriora,” 291
• Dickens, Charles, Introduction
• “Djins, Les,” 79
• “Dream of Fair Women, A,” 297
• “Emaux et Camées,” 216
• Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 82, 178
• “Epigramme Funeraire,” 210, 211
• “Evelyn Hope,” 67
• “Fable, A,” 288
• “Fifine at the Fair,” 166
• Francis of Assisi, Saint, 196
• Freneau, Philip, 186
• Gautier, Théophile, 216
• “Gazing on stars, my star?” 47
• Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, 78, 82
• “Golden Legend, The,” 272
• Gracian, Baltasar, 126
• “Grasshopper, The,” 226
• Gray, Thomas, 202
• “Greater Memory,” 32
• Greek Anthology, Introduction, 77, 284
• “Grillon solitaire,” 213
• “Havamal, The,” Introduction, 105-133
• Hearn, Lafcadio, Introduction
• Heredia, José, Maria de, Introduction, 87-91, 205, 209-211
• Herodas, 318
• Herrick, Robert, 78
• “He that loves a rosy cheek,” 61
• Holmes, Oliver Wendell, 185
• Hood, Thomas, 62
• Hugo, Victor, 26, 43, 79, 89, 209
• “Idyls of the King,” 299
• “I love to hear thine earnest voice,” 185
• “In a branch of willow hid,” 186
• “Interpretations of Literature,” Introduction
• “Ionica,” Introduction, 56, 57
• “I strove with none, for none was worth my strife,” 80
• “It is a golden morning of the spring,” 40
• Jonson, Ben, 72, 78
• “Kalevala, The,” Introduction, 228-260
• Keats, John, Introduction, 46, 47, 95, 181
• “King Solomon and the Ants,” 198
• “La Demoiselle,” 209
• “Lady of Shalott, The,” 226
• Landor, Walter Savage, 80
• Lang, Andrew, Introduction, 313
• Lamartine, 213, 216
• Lamb, Charles, 201
• “Le Daimio,” 89
• Lemerre, Alphonse, 160
• “Le Samourai,” 87
• “Les Cigales,” 219
• “Life and Literature,” Introduction
• de Lisle, Leconte, 87
• “Lives there whom pain has evermore passed by,” 82
• Locker-Lampson, Frederic, 50, 51, 159
• “Locksley Hall,” 36
• Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth, 91, 106, 226, 228, 231, 254, 255, 272
• Lönnrot, 229, 230, 231
• Lovelace, Richard, 225
• Lubbock, Sir John, 137
• Macaulay, Thomas Babington, 161
• “Ma Libellule,” 205-209
• “Maud,” 24, 25
• Meredith, George, Introduction, 129
• “Mimes,” 318
• “Mimnermus in church,” 281, 308
• Moschus, 301
• “Nay but you, who do not love her,” 65
• “Never the time and the place,” 39
• “New Ethics, The,” Introduction
• “New Year’s Day, A,” 295
• Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm, 135, 144
• “Njal-Saga, The.” 7
• “Ode on the Spring,” 202
• Oldys, William, 176, 177
• O’Shaughnessy, Arthur, 30
• “Pansie,” 58
• “Patchwork,” 50
• Pater, Walter, Introduction, 274
• Patmore, Coventry, 37, 159
• “Pause, A,” 35
• Plato, 17
• Poe, Edgar Allan, 254
• “Poems of Places,” 91
• Porson, Richard, 161
• Powell, Frederick York, 106
• “Princess, The,” Introduction
• Quiller-Couch, Sir Arthur Thomas, 172
• “Reparabo,” 286
• Rossetti, Christina, 35, 36, 55
• Rossetti, Dante Gabriel, 10, 30, 219
• Ruskin, John, 105, 150
• “Ruth,” 63, 64
• “Saga of King Olaf, The,” 106
• Sainte-Beuve, 323
• Saintsbury, Professor George, 101
• “Scheveningen Avenue,” 308
• Scott, Sir Walter, 125, 126
• Shakespeare, William, 226
• Shelley, Percy Bysshe, 10
• “She walks in beauty, like the night,” 62
• “She was a phantom of delight,” 60, 61
• “Solitary-Hearted, The,” 74
• “Somewhere or other,” 55
• “Song in time of Revolution, A,” 258, 259
• “Song of Hiawatha, The,” 228, 231, 254-257
• “Song of Songs,” 200
• Spencer, Herbert, 18, 116, 126, 135, 137, 142, 143
• “Stay near me, do not take thy flight” 165
• Stetson, Charlotte Perkins, 187
• Stevenson, Robert Louis, 10
• “Story of Burnt Njal, The,” 7
• “Studies in Greek Poets,” 77
• “Such Kings of shreds have wooed and won her,” 83
• “Sudden Light,” 30
• Sully-Prudhomme, René, François Armande, 87
• “Summum Bonum,” 71
• Swinburne, Algernon Charles, 254, 258, 259
• Symonds, John Addington, 47, 77
• Ten Brink, Bernhard Egidius Konrad, 277
• Tennyson, Alfred, Lord, Introduction, 10, 19, 24, 25, 36, 47, 95, 175, 178, 182-184, 226, 254, 280, 297, 299
• Tennyson, Frederick, 40, 41
• Thackeray, William Makepeace, Introduction
• “The butterfly the ancient Grecians made,” 163
• Theocritus, Introduction, 300-302, 312-324
• “The poetry of earth is never dead,” 181
• “The thousand painful steps at last are trod,” 82
• “The trembling arm I pressed,” 43
• “They told me, Heraclitus, they told me you were dead,” 296
• “Think not thy wisdom can illume away,” 81
• Thompson, Maurice, 27, 28
• “Thou canst not wave thy staff in air,” 83
• “To Lucasta, on Going to the Wars,” 225
• “Two Fragments of Childhood,” 293
• “Two Voices, The,” 175
• “Unknown Eros, The,” 37
• Vigfusson, Gudbrandt, 106
• “Voice of the summer wind,” 183
• Watson, William, 81, 159
• “When spring grows old,” 27
• “White Moth, The,” 172
• Whittier, John Greenleaf, 198
• “Wishes to the Supposed Mistress, 52
• Wordsworth, William, 10, 60, 61, 95, 164, 165
• Wycliffe, John, 98