But one of the poets who worked in the Mouseion—Theocritus—was a genius of a very different kind, a genius that Alexandria matured but cannot be said to have formed. Theocritus came here late in his career. He had been born at Cos and had lived in Sicily, and he arrived full of memories that no town-dweller could share—memories of fresh air and the sun, of upland meadows and overhanging trees, of goats and sheep, of the men and the women who looked after them, and of all the charm and the coarseness that go to make up country life. He had thrown these memories into poetical form, sometimes idealising them, sometimes giving them crudely, and he had called these poems Idylls—little pictures of rural existence. Love, mythological fancies, decorative treatment—he liked these things too, but he backed them with a width of experience and a zest for it that Callimachus and Apollonius never knew. While they are “Classics” who have to be studied, Theocritus appeals to us at once; his Fifteenth Idyll, describing life in the Greek Quarter at Alexandria, is as vivid now as when he wrote it. The dialogue with which it opens can be heard to-day in any of the little drawing rooms of Camp de César or Ibrahimieh. Praxinoe, a lady of the middle classes, is discovered seated, doing nothing in particular. In comes Gorgo, her friend.
Gorgo. Is Praxinoe at home?
Praxinoe. Oh my dear Gorgo, it’s ages since you were here. She is at home. The wonder is that you’ve come even now. (calls to the maid). Eunoe, give her a chair and put a cushion on it.
Gorgo. Oh it does beautifully as it is.
Praxinoe. Sit down!
G. My nerves are all to bits—Praxinoe, I only just got here alive ... what with the crowd, what with the carriages ... soldiers’ boots—soldiers’ great-coats, and the street’s endless—you really live too far.
P. That’s my insane husband. We took this hut—one can’t call it a house—at the ends of the earth so that we shouldn’t be neighbours. Mere jealousy. As usual.
G. But, dear, don’t talk about your husband when the little boy’s here—he’s staring at you. (to the little boy) Sweet pet—that’s all right—she isn’t talking about papa.—Good Heavens, the child understands.—Pretty papa!
P. The other day, papa—we seem to call every day the other day—the other day he went to get some soda at the Baccal and brought back salt by mistake—the great overgrown lout.
G. Mine’s exactly the same, he....[[3]]