his stately hall, now defying the winter's
cold, now submitting to the summer's
heat, and now moralising on men and
ramparts, regarding the former as better
defences of the city than the latter.

From the second group we may select
the name of Theocritus, the prince of
pastoral poets. Notwithstanding the legend
of pastoral poetry having been invented
by Daphnis, a descendant of the gods, who,
in the fabulous ages, pastured his flocks at
the foot of Mount Ætna, Theocritus has an
unquestioned right to be regarded as the
father of bucolic song. He was the first who
cultivated the idyl. The form does not seem
to have been confined to any one topic
exclusively, though it was principally employed
in representing pastoral scenes. Bion and
Moschus imitated Theocritus in it,  but
failed to attain anything like his degree of
excellence. Poets in all countries and
languages have attempted it, but scarcely
in a satisfactory manner. Our own poets
have perpetrated many miserable examples,
and among them some have borne high
names, such as Pope, Phillips, Shenstone,
to say nothing of Wither and Lord Lyttelton.
But there are higher names than
these, and they have done better;  such as
Spenser, Browne, Drayton, Shakespeare,
Milton, Fletcher, Cowper, Keats, and
Tennyson. The last, by his Å’none, takes
a classic position among the writers of
idyls in these days;  in those preceding,
Milton's Lycidas ranks higher than any
other effort. For part of its effect it is
indebted to the imitation of Theocritus,
who wrote:

Where were ye, nymphs, where were ye, when young
Daphnis
Was pining to his death? In the fair valleys
Of Tempe, by Peneus, or on Pindus?
For ye were not by the Sicilian waters,
Nor Ætna's top, nor Acis' sacred fountain?

Milton's lines reproducing this passage
are too well known to require quotation.
There are many others borrowed from the
same poem less known, but quite as
beautiful. Dr. Johnson has complained of the
artificial character of the Lycidas;  his
complaint is unjust, because, if valid, it
should be levelled against pastoral poetry
itself, which, from the first, was altogether
artificial, and derived from an imaginary
condition of life—a state which, indeed,
never existed in any country. The more
to recommend this fanciful representation
of life, the pastoral poets have always
been careful to model the strains in which
it has been described with a special
regard to their polish, sweetness, and
metrical exactness. More than any other
order of writers, they have sought to
propitiate the reader by whatever was
pleasing and musical in verse. The apparent
facility of their numbers is, however, an
acquired art:  it has, indeed, little of a
natural gift.

Among the Doric poets, Pindar ranks
high. He was born at Cynocephalæ, a
village of BÅ“otia, between Thebes and
Thespia, and flourished about five hundred
years before the Christian era, employing
himself in celebrating the triumphs of
heroes, and the victors who distinguished
themselves in the public games, known as
the Olympian, Pythian, Nemean, and
Isthmian. Pindar had great advantages,
for he was taught early the arts of music and
poetry, by Lasus of Hermione and Simonides
of Ceos.  When he became eminent,
myths of him were invented, relative to
his infancy. When a youth, it was said,
that as he threw himself upon the grass,
weary and sleepy, a swarm of bees shed
their honey on his lips, thus prefiguring
the sweetness of his poetry.

Some authorities tell us that he was the
son of Daiphantus and Cleidice, and was
born during the celebration of the Pythian
games, that is, either in the month of
August or September. One might have
taken this for a mythological statement,
but that it is confirmed in one of his
own fragments. He seems to have been
twice married, and to have had one son and
two daughters His family claimed descent
from Cadmus, the supposed inventor of the
earliest Greek alphabet, and ranked among
the noblest in Thebes. They also enjoyed
an hereditary celebrity for skill in music,
especially for flute-playing, a profession
which, at that time, was in high repute.
It is not extraordinary, therefore, that the
young poet to whom the family talent had
descended, at first applied himself to that
branch of poetry which was best fitted for
flute-accompaniment. His father, who
appears to have been a man of discernment,
sent him to Athens, where, under the
tuition of Lasus, who was, indeed, the
founder of the Athenian school of dithyrambic
poetry, he received, as we have
said, the requisite instruction.

A dithyramb is a hymn in honour of
Bacchus, in which the wildness of intoxication
is supposed to have been imitated, so
that it was full of transport and poetic
fury. It came at last to mean a poem
written in wild enthusiastic strains;  and