immediately after it, one of those glorious old Homeric hymns to the
very same deities; let him contrast the insincere and fulsome idolatry
of Callimachus with the reverent, simple and manful anthropomorphism of
the Homerist--and let him form his own judgment.

The other hint is this. If Callimachus, the founder of Alexandrian
literature, be such as he is, what are his pupils likely to become, at
least without some infusion of healthier blood, such as in the case of
his Roman imitators produced a new and not altogether ignoble school?

Of Lycophron, the fellow-grammarian and poet of Callimachus, we have
nothing left but the Cassandra, a long iambic poem, stuffed with
traditionary learning, and so obscure, that it obtained for him the
surname of [Greek text: skoteinos] the dark one. I have tried in vain
to read it: you, if you will, may do the same.

Philetas, the remaining member of the Alexandrian Triad, seems to have
been a more simple, genial, and graceful spirit than the other two, to
whom he was accordingly esteemed inferior. Only a few fragments are
left; but he was not altogether without his influence, for he was, as I
have just said, one of the models on which Propertius and Ovid formed
themselves; and some, indeed, call him the Father of the Latin elegy,
with its terseness, grace, and clear epigrammatic form of thought, and,
therefore, in a great degree, of our modern eighteenth century poets;
not a useless excellence, seeing that it is, on the whole, good for him
who writes to see clearly what he wants to say, and to be able to make
his readers see it clearly also. 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