mon.

has its right to be heard; common affections and common wants;―aye, the more in the latter case, because they are comThe worst of it is, that commonn-place in power, is not fond of allowing this right to its brother common-place out of it. The progress of knowledge, however, tends to a greater impartiality; and the consideration of this fact must be the honey, meantime, to many a bitter thought.

CHAPTER IV.

THEOCRITUS.

PASTORAL POETRY.-SPECIMENS OF THE STRENGTH AND COMIC HUMOUR OF THEOCRITUS-THE PRIZE-FIGHT BETWEEN POLLUX AND AMYCUS -THE SYRACUSAN GOSSIPS.

have origi

nated in Si

cily, at one and the same

time with

comedy. At

all events, it was perfected there. Comedy is understood to have been suggested by the licence with which it was the custom for peasants to rail at passengers, and at one another, during the jollity of the vintage; and pastoral poetry was at first nothing but the more rustical part of comedy. Its great master, Theocritus, arose during a period

of refinement; and being a man of a universal genius, with a particular regard for the country, perfected this homelier kind of pastoral, and at the same time anticipated all the others. His single scenes are the germ of the pastoral drama. He is as clownish as Gay, as domestic as Allan Ramsay, as elegant as Virgil and Tasso, and (with the allowance for the difference between ancient and modern imagination) as poetical as Fletcher; and in passion he beats them all. In no other pastoral poetry is there anything to equal his Polyphemus.

The world has long been sensible of this superiority. But, in one respect, even the world has not yet done justice to Theocritus. The world, indeed, takes a long time, or must have a two-fold blow given it as manifest and sustained as Shakspeare's, to entertain two ideas at once respecting anybody. It has been said of wit, that it indisposes people to admit a serious claim on the part of its possessor; and pastoral poetry subjects a man to the like injustice, by reason of its humble modes of life, and its gentle scenery. People suppose that he can handle nothing stronger than a crook. They should read Theocritus's account of Hercules slaying the lion, or of the stand-up fight," the regular and tremendous "set-to," between Pollux and Amycus. The best Moulsey-Hurst business was a feather to it. Theocritus was a son of Ætna-all peace and luxuriance in ordinary, all fire and wasting fury when he chose it. He was a genius equally potent and universal; and it is a thousand pities that unknown circumstances in his life hindered him from completing the gigantic fragments, which seem to have been portions of some intended great work on the deeds of Hercules, perhaps on the Argonautic Expedition. He has given us Hercules and the Serpents, Hercules and Hylas, Hercules and the Lion, and the pugilistical contest of

66

the demigod's kinsmen with a barbarian; and the epithalamium of their relation Helen may have been designed as a portion of the same multifarious poem-an anticipation of the romance of modern times, and of the glory of Ariosto. What a loss ! *

In the poem on the Prize-fight (for such is really the subject, the prize being the vanquished man), Pollux the demigod, one of the sons of Leda by Jupiter, goes to shore from the ship Argo, with his brother Castor, to get some water. They arrive at a beautiful fountain in a wood, by the side of which is sitting a huge overbearing-looking fellow (avnр inεрожλо, man presuming on his strength), who returns their salutation with insolence. The following, without any great violence to the letter of the ancient dialogue, may be taken as a sample of its spirit. The ruffian is addressed by Pollux.

THE PRIZE-FIGHT BETWEEN POLLUX AND AMYCUS.

Good day, friend. What sort of people, pray, live hereabouts?
RUFFIAN. I see no good day when I see strangers.

P. Don't be disturbed. We are honest people who ask the question, and come of an honest stock.

*There have been writers who concluded that Theocritus did not write some of these poems, because the style of them differed from that of his pastorals. "As though (says Mr. Chapman, his best translator) the same poet could not possibly excel in different styles." But this is the way the opinions we have alluded to come up. A writer's powers are turned against himself, and his very property is to be denied him, because critics of this kind have brains for nothing but one species of handicraft. It is lucky for the human being in the abstract, that he is gifted with tears and smiles; otherwise one or the other of those natural possessions would assuredly have been called in question. In fact, the marvel is, not that genius should deal in both, but that it should ever show itself incapable of either. Exclusive gravity and exclusive levity are alike a solecism, as far as regards the common source of emotion, which is sensitiveness to impressions.

R. I'm not disturbed at all, and don't require to learn it from such as you.

P. You're an ill-mannered, insolent clown.

R. I'm such as you see me. I never came meddling with you in your country.

P. (good-humouredly.) Come and meddle, and we 'll help you to a little hospitality to take home with you.

R. Keep it to yourselves: I neither give nor take.

P. (smiling) Well, my good friend, may we have a taste of your spring?

R. Ask your throats when they 're dry.

P. Come, what's your demand for it? What are we to pay?

R. Hands up, and man against man.

P. What, a fight; or is it to be a kicking-match?

R. A fight; and I would advise you to look about you.

P. I do, and can't even see my antagonist.

R. Here he sits. You'll find me no woman, I can tell you.

P. Good; and what are we to fight for? What's the prize? R. Submission. If you win, I'm to be at your service; and if I win, you're to be at mine.

P. Why those are the terms of cocks upon dunghills.

R. Cocks or lions, those are my terms, and you'll have the water on no other.

With these words, Amycus (for it was he-a son of Neptune and the greatest pugilist but one, then known in the world) blew a blast on a shell, and a multitude of longhaired Bebrycians (his countrymen) came pouring in about the plane-tree, under which he had been sitting. Castor went and called his brother shipmates out of the Argo, and the combatants, putting on their gauntlets, faced one another, and

set to.