great astronomer, upon his own science, a science then not yet
divorced from art and letters. The picture touched by Callimachus of
that ancient and brilliant life, where two friends, each an
accomplished scholar, each a poet, saw the summer sun set in their
eager talk, and listened through the dusk to the singing nightingales,
is a more exquisite tribute than all other ancient writings have given
to the imperishable delight of literature, the mingled charm of youth
and friendship, and the first stirring of the blood by poetry, and the
first lifting of the soul by philosophy.[19] And on yet a further
height, above the nightingales, under the solitary stars alone,
Ptolemy as he traces the celestial orbits is lifted above the touch of
earth, and recognises in man's mortal and ephemeral substance a
kinship with the eternal. /Man did eat angels' food: he opened the
doors of heaven./[20]
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[1] Anth. Pal. vii. 39, 34, 21, 22.

[2] Ibid. ix. 97, 358, 205.

[3] Cf. iv. 1 in this selection.

[4] Anth. Pal. vii. 696, App. Plan. 8, 225, 226, 244.

[5] Anth. Pal. ix. 433. On this epigram Jacobs says, /Frigide hoc
carmen interpretantur qui illud tabulae pictae adscriptum fuisse
existimant/. But the art of poems on pictures, which flourished to
an immense degree in the Alexandrian and later periods, had not
then been revived. One can fancy the same note being made hundreds
of years hence on some of Rossetti's sonnets.