One through the ranges of the vine proceeds,
And on the hanging vintage slily feeds;

The other plots and vows his scrip to search,
And for his breakfast leave him in the lurch.
Meanwhile he twines, and to a rush fits well
A locust-trap, with stalks of asphodel;
And twines away with such absorbing glee,
Of scrip or vines he never thinks, not he!”
CHAPMAN, p. 8.

In the pastorals of Bion we know nothing of prominent interest, though he is eloquent and worth reading. But in those of Moschus there is a passage which has found an echo in all bosoms, like the sigh that answers a wind over a churchyard. It is in the Elegy on Bion's death :—

66

Αι, αι, ται μαλαχαι μεν επαν κατα καπον ολωνται,
Η τα χλωρα σελινα, το τ' ευθαλες ουλον ανηθον,
Ύστερον αυ ζωοντι, και εις ετος αλλο φυοντι
Αμμες δ' δι μεγάλοι, και καρτεροι, η σοφοι ανδρες,
Οπποτε πρατα θάνωμες, ανακοοι εν χθονι κοιλα,
Ενδομες εν μαλα μακρον, ατέρμονα, νηγρετον ύπνον.

IDYLL III., v. 104.

Alas! when mallows in the garden die,
Green parsley, or the crisp luxuriant dill,
They live again, and flower another year;

But we, how great soe 'er, or strong, or wise,

When once we die, sleep, in the senseless earth,
A long, an endless, unawakeable sleep.

The beautiful original of these verses, every word so natural and sincere, so well placed, and the whole so affecting, may stand by the side of any poetry, even that of the in the book of Job too well known to most of us.

passage But we

confess that after such Greek verses as these, and the fresh flowers of Theocritus, we never have the heart to quote the artificial ones of Virgil, critically accomplished as they are. They are the pattern of too many others which brought the word Pastoral into disrepute; and it is not pleasant to be forced to object to a great name.

Virgil, however, appears to have been very fond of the country; and after he was settled in Rome, longed for it, like Horace, with a feeling which produced some of his most admired passages; things which other metropolitan poets and tired court gentlemen have delighted to translate. Such are the Delights of a Country Life, versified out of the Georgics by Cowley, Sir William Temple, Dryden, and others, lines of which remain for ever in the memory.

"Oh happy (if his happiness he knows)

The country swain," &c.

He has no great riches, or visitors, or cares, &c., but his life
Does with substantial blessedness abound,

And the soft wings of peace cover him round."

That is Cowley, who betters his original.
"In life's cool vale let my low scene be laid;
Cover me, gods! with Tempe's thickest shade."

So again of the shepherd :

"In th' evening of a fair sunny day,
With joy he sees his flocks and kids to play,
And loaded kine about his cottage stand,
Inviting with known sound the milker's hand;
And when from wholesome labour he doth come,
With wishes to be there, and wish'd for home,
He meets at door the softest human blisses,
His chaste wife's welcome, and dear children's kisses."

Of a similar kind is Cowley's translation of Claudian's Old Man of Verona :

"Happy the man who his whole time doth bound
Within th' enclosure of his little ground.-
Him no false distant lights, by fortune set,
Could ever into foolish wanderings get ;-
No change of consuls marks to him the year;
The change of seasons is his calendar:

The cold and heat winter and summer shows;
Autumn by fruits, and spring by flow'rs, he knows :—
A neighb'ring wood born with himself he sees,

And loves his old contemporary trees."

The most original bit of pastoral in Virgil (if it be his) is to be found in a poem of doubtful authority called the Gnat (Culex), which has been beautifully translated by Spenser. It is a true picture, combining the elegance of Claude with the minuteness of the Flemish painters:

"The fiery sun was mounted now on height

Up to the heavenly towers, and shot each where
Out of his golden charet glistering light;
And fayre Aurora, with her rosie haire,
The hatefull darkness now had put to flight;
When as the shepherd, seeing day appeare,
His little goats gan drive out of their stalls,
To feede abroad, where pasture best befalls.

hills:

To an high mountain's top he with them went,
Where thickest grasse did cloath the open
They, now amongst the woods and thickets ment,
Now in the vallies wandring at their wills,
Spread themselves farre abroad through each descent;
Some on the soft green grasse feeding their fills;
Some, clambring through the hollow cliffes on hy,
Nibble the bushie shrubs which growe thereby.

"Others the utmost boughs of trees doe crop,

And brouze the woodbine twigges that freshly bud;
This with full bit doth catch the utmost top

Of some soft willow or new-growen stud;

That with sharpe teeth the bramble leaves doth lop,
And chaw the tender prickles in her cud;

The whiles another high doth overlooke

Her own like image in a cristall brook."

This is picturesque and charming. Yet Virgil, though a country-loving, and also an agricultural poet, would have been nothing as a pastoral poet without Theocritus, and, as it was, he spoiled him. We shall see in what manner, when we come to speak of Pope.

CHAPTER VI.

NORMAN TIMES-LEGEND OF KING ROBERT.

HOW KING ROBERT OF SICILY WAS DISPOSSESSED OF HIS THRONE; AND WHO SAT UPON IT.-HIS WRATH, SUFFERINGS, AND REPENTANCE.

N the glance

at the an

cient histo

ry of Sicily in our third chapter, we

have seen that the Greek and Roman sway was succeeded by that of the Saracens. They were

masters of the island for the space of two hundred years, but have left no memorials, with the exception of a building or two, and traces of Arabic in the Sicilian tongue. The island was then conquered by a handful of Norman gentlemen, who had obtained possession of Naples, and whose history would be rorepeating, if it were anything but Their wonderful ascendency, and no

mantic enough to be worth

a succession of wars.

less extraordinary personal prowess, are supposed by some,