To English readers, the three elegies, on Daphnis, on Adonis, and on Bion, severally attributed to Theocritus, Bion, and Moschus, will always be associated with the names of Milton and Shelley. There is no comparison whatever between Lycidas and Daphnis. In spite of the misplaced apparition of St. Peter, and of the frigidity which belongs to pastoral allegory, Lycidas is a richer and more splendid monument of elegiac verse. The simplicity of the Theocritean dirge contrasts strangely with the varied wealth of Milton's imagery, the few ornaments of Greek art with the intricate embroideries of modern fancy. To quote passages from these well-known poems would be superfluous; but let a student of literature compare the passages πᾷ ποκ' ἄρ' ἦσθ' and ὦ Πάν Πάν with Milton's paraphrase "Where were ye, nymphs—," or the concise paragraphs about the flowers and valleys that mourned for Daphnis with the luxuriance of Milton's invocation "Return, Alpheus."
When Shelley wrote Adonais his mind was full of the elegies on Bion and Adonis. Of direct translation in his Lament there is very little; but he has absorbed both of the Greek poems, and transmuted them into the substance of his own mind. Urania takes the place of Aphrodite—the heavenly queen, "most musical of mourners," bewails the loss of her poetical consort. Instead of loves, the couch of Adonais is surrounded by the thoughts and fancies of which he was the parent; and, instead of gods and goddesses, the power of nature is invoked to weep for him and take him to herself. Whatever Bion and Moschus recorded as a fact becomes, consistently with the spiritualizing tendency of modern genius, symbolical in Shelley's poem. His art has alchemized the whole structure, idealizing what was material and disembodying the sentiments which were incarnated in simple images. Adonais is a sublime rhapsody; its multitudinous ideas are whirled like drops of golden rain, on which the sun of the poet's fancy gleams with ever-changing rainbow hues. In drifts and eddies they rush past, delighting us with their rapidity and brilliancy; but the impression left upon our mind is vague and incomplete, when compared with the few and distinct ideas presented by the Doric elegies. At the end of Alastor there occurs a touching reminiscence of Moschus, but the outline is less faint than in Adonais, the transmutation even more complete.
Tennyson, among the poets of the nineteenth century, owes much to the Greek idyllists. His genius appears to be in many respects akin to theirs, and the age in which he lives is not unlike the Ptolemaic period. Unfitted, perhaps, by temperament for the most impassioned lyrics, he delights in minutely finished pictures, in felicities of expression, and in subtle harmonies of verse. Like Theocritus, he finds in nature and in the legends of past ages subjects congenial to his muse. Œnone and Tithonus are steeped in the golden beauty of Syracusan art. "Come down, O maid," transfers, with perfect taste, the Greek idyllic feeling to Swiss scenery; it is a fine instance of new wine being poured successfully into old bottles, for nothing can be fresher, and not even the Thalysia is sweeter. It would be easy enough to collect minor instances which prove that the laureate's mind is impregnated with the thoughts and feelings of the poems I have been discussing. For instance, both the figure "softer than sleep," and the comparison of a strong man's muscles to the smooth rush of running water over sunken stones, which we find in Enid, occur in Theocritus.
At the end of this chapter I cannot refrain from once more recommending all lovers of pure verse and perfect scenery to study the Greek idyllists upon the shores of the Mediterranean. Nor would it be possible to carry a better guide-book to the statue-galleries of Rome and Naples. For in the verses of Theocritus, Bion, and Moschus, the æsthetic principles of the Greeks, in the age to which our relics of their statuary for the most part belong, are feelingly and pithily expressed; while the cold marble, that seems to require so many commentaries, receives from their idyllic coloring new life.
FOOTNOTES:
Down the dark stream he went; the eddies drowned
The muses' friend, the youth the nymphs held dear.
[143] I may refer my readers to the chapter on the Cornice in my Sketches in Italy and Greece for a fuller treatment of this landscape.