[3] The tendency to form an ideal picture of his own youth is common both to mankind and man.  The romance of childhood is the dream with which age consoles itself for the disillusionments of life.  This it is that gives a peculiar appropriateness to the title of Mr. Graham’s pictures of childhood in The Golden Age, a work of the profoundest insight and genius, as delightful as it is unique.  I am not aware that there has ever been another author in English who could have written thus intimately of children without once striking a false note.

[4] There is some truth in the charge.  Even Symonds wrote of Theocritus, possibly with Fontenelle’s words in his mind:  ’As it is, we find enough of rustic grossness on his pages, and may even complain that his cowherds and goatherds savour too strongly of their stables.’ (Greek Poets, ii. p. 246.)

[5] Landscapes as decoration may be seen on the walls of the so-called Casa Nuova at Pompeii.  It should be remarked that one idyl is addressed to Hiero, ruler of Syracuse, and it is quite possible that Theocritus may have been a frequent visitor there.

[6] Theocritus flourished in the first half of the third century B.C.  Some authorities place the younger poets more than a hundred years later.

[7] Familiar to English readers through Matthew Arnold’s translation.

[8] Suidas says that Moschus came from Sicily, and some authorities speak of him as a Syracusan.  But in his ‘Lament’ he alludes to his ‘Ausonian’ song, apparently as distinguished from that of Theocritus ‘of Syracuse.’  The passage, however, is rendered obscure by an hiatus.  Another tradition made Theocritus a native of the island of Cos.  More probably it was between the time of his leaving Syracuse and that of his settling at Alexandria that he was the pupil of the Coan poet and critic, Philetas.

[9] Ernest Myers’ version from Andrew Lang’s delightful volume in the Golden Treasury Series.

[10] Placing the romance, that is, in the third century A.D.  Authorities assign it to various dates from the second to the sixth centuries, according as they regard it as a model or an imitation of Heliodorus’ work.

[11] A similar use of [Greek:  a)nagno/risis] is very frequent in the Italian pastoral drama, where, however, it is more probably derived from Latin comedy.

[12] This was not the first Italian version of Longus. Daphnis and Chloe had been translated directly from the Greek by Annibale Caro in the previous century.

[13] Two poems, written in close imitation of Theocritus’ natural manner, and entitled respectively Moretum and Copa, have sometimes, but wrongly, been attributed to Vergil.

[14] Greek Poets, ii. p. 265.

[15] Symonds speaks strongly on the point.  ’Virgil not only lacks his [Theocritus’] vigour and enthusiasm for the open-air life of the country, but, with Roman bad taste, he commits the capital crime of allegorising.’ (Greek Poets, ii. p. 247.)