And yet one natural strain is heard
amid all this artificial jingle--that of Theocritus. It is not
altogether Alexandrian. Its sweetest notes were learnt amid the
chestnut groves and orchards, the volcanic glens and sunny pastures of
Sicily; but the intercourse, between the courts of Hiero and the
Ptolemies seems to have been continual. Poets and philosophers moved
freely from one to the other, and found a like atmosphere in both; and
in one of Theocritus' idyls, two Sicilian gentlemen, crossed in love,
agree to sail for Alexandria, and volunteer into the army of the great
and good king Ptolemy, of whom a sketch is given worth reading; as a man
noble, generous, and stately, "knowing well who loves him, and still
better who loves him not." He has another encomium on Ptolemy, more
laboured, though not less interesting: but the real value of Theocritus
lies in his power of landscape-painting.
One can well conceive the delight which his idyls must have given to
those dusty Alexandrians, pent up forever between sea and sand-hills,
drinking the tank-water, and never hearing the sound of a running
stream--whirling, too, forever, in all the bustle and intrigue of a
great commercial and literary city.
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