It is quite out of the question to claim Theocritus as a farm-writer; and yet in all old literature there is not to be found such a lively bevy of heifers, and wanton kids, and “butting rams,” and stalwart herdsmen, who milk the cows “upon the sly,” as in the “Idyls” of the musical Sicilian.

There is no doubt but Theocritus knew the country to a charm:  he knew all its roughnesses, and the thorns that scratched the bare legs of the goatherds; he knew the lank heifers, that fed, “like grasshoppers,” only on dew; he knew what clatter the brooks made, tumbling headlong adown the rocks,—­

  [Greek:  apo tus petras kataleibetai ypsothen ydor]

he knew, moreover, all the charms and coyness of the country-nymphs, giving even a rural twist to his praises of the courtly Helen:—­

  “In shape, in height, in stately presence
        fair,
  Straight as a furrow gliding from the
        share."[B]

[Footnote B:  Elton’s translation, I think.  I do not vouch for its correctness.]

A man must have had an eye for good ploughing and a lithe figure, as well as a keen scent for the odor of fresh-turned earth, to make such a comparison as that!

Theocritus was no French sentimentalist; he would have protested against the tame elegancies of the Roman Bucolics; and the sospiri ardenti and miserelli aman of Guarini would have driven him mad.  He is as brisk as the wind upon a breezy down.  His cow-tenders are swart and bare-legged, and love with a vengeance.  There is no miserable tooting upon flutes, but an uproarious song that shakes the woods; and if it comes to a matter of kissing, there are no “reluctant lips,” but a smack that makes the vales resound.

It is no Boucher we have here, nor Watteau:  cosmetics and rosettes are far away; tunics are short, and cheeks are nut-brown.  It is Teniers, rather:—­boors, indeed; but they are live boors, and not manikin shepherds.

I shall call out another Sicilian here, named Moschus, were it only for his picture of a fine, sturdy bullock:  it occurs in his “Rape of Europa":—­

  “With yellow hue his sleekened body beams;
  His forehead with a snowy circle gleams;
  Horns, equal-bending, from his brow emerge,
  And to a moonlight crescent orbing verge.”

Nothing can be finer than the way in which this “milky steer,” with Europa on his back, goes sailing over the brine, his “feet all oars.”  Meantime, she, the pretty truant,

  “Grasps with one hand his curved projecting horn,
  And with the other closely drawn compressed
  The fluttering foldings of her purple vest,
  Whene’er its fringed hem was dashed with dew
  Of the salt sea-foam that in circles flew: 
  Wide o’er Europa’s shoulders to the gale
  The ruffled robe heaved swelling, like a sail.”

Moschus is as rich as the Veronese at Venice; and his picture is truer to the premium standard.  The painting shows a pampered animal, with over-red blotches on his white hide, and is by half too fat to breast such “salt sea-foam” as flashes on the Idyl of Moschus.