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. Refreshing indeed it must have been
to them to hear of those simple joys and simple sorrows of the Sicilian
shepherd, in a land where toil was but exercise, and mere existence was
enjoyment. To them, and to us also. I believe Theocritus is one of the
poets who will never die. He sees men and things, in his own light way,
truly; and he describes them simply, honestly, with little careless
touches of pathos and humour, while he floods his whole scene with that
gorgeous Sicilian air, like one of Titian's pictures; with still
sunshine, whispering pines, the lizard sleeping on the wall, and the
sunburnt cicala shrieking on the spray, the pears and apples dropping
from the orchard bough, the goats clambering from crag to crag after the
cistus and the thyme, the brown youths and wanton lasses singing under
the dark chestnut boughs, or by the leafy arch of some