were, through the eyes of art sought above all things simplicity of
composition and clearness of outline. The scanty vocabulary of colour
in Greek poetry, so often noticed, is a special and patent example of
this difference in the spirit with which Nature was regarded. As the
poetry of Chaucer corresponds, in its wealth and intimacy of
decoration, to the illuminations and tapestries of the middle ages, so
the epigrams given under this section constantly recall the sculptured
reliefs and the engraved gems of Greek art.

But any such general rules must be taken with their exceptions. As
there is a risk of reading modern sentiment into ancient work, and
even of fixing on the startling modernisms that occur in Greek
poetry,[11] and dwelling on them till they assume an exaggerated
importance, so there is a risk perhaps as great of slurring over the
inmost quality, the poetry of the poetry, where it has that touch of
romance or magic that sets it beyond all our generalisations. The
magical charm is just what cannot be brought under any rules; it is
the result less of art than of instinct, and is almost independent of
time and place. The lament of the swallow in an Alexandrian poet[12]
touches the same note of beauty and longing that Keats drew from the
song of the nightingale; the couplet of Satyrus, where echo repeats
the lonely cry of the birds,[13] is, however different in tone, as
purely romantic as the opening lines of /Christabel/.
----------

[1] Anth. Pal. ix. 823.

[2] App. Plan. 230, 227; Anth. Pal. ix. 71.

[3] vi. 28 in this selection.