Pastoral poetry is supposed to have originated in Sicily, at one and the same time with comedy. At all events, it was perfected there. Comedy is understood to have been suggested by the licence with which it was the custom for peasants to rail at passengers, and at one another, during the jollity of the vintage; and pastoral poetry was at first nothing but the more rustical part of comedy. Its great master, Theocritus, arose during a period of refinement; and being a man of a universal genius, with a particular regard for the country, perfected this homelier kind of pastoral, and at the same time anticipated all the others. His single scenes are the germ of the pastoral drama. He is as clownish as Gay, as domestic as Allan Ramsay, as elegant as Virgil and Tasso, and (with the allowance for the difference between ancient and modern imagination) as poetical as Fletcher; and in passion he beats them all. In no other pastoral poetry is there anything to equal his Polyphemus.
The world has long been sensible of this superiority. But, in one respect, even the world has not yet done justice to Theocritus. The world, indeed, takes a long time, or must have a twofold blow given it as manifest and sustained as Shakspeare’s to entertain two ideas at once respecting anybody. It has been said of wit, that it indisposes people to admit a serious claim on the part of its possessor; and pastoral poetry subjects a man to the like injustice, by reason of its humble modes of life, and its gentle scenery. People suppose that he can handle nothing stronger than a crook. They should read Theocritus’s account of Hercules slaying the lion, or of the “stand-up fight,” the regular and tremendous “set-to,” between Pollux and Amycus. The best Moulsey-Hurst business was a feather to it. Theocritus was a son of Ætna—all peace and luxuriance in ordinary, all fire and wasting fury when he chose it. He was a genius equally potent and universal; and it is a thousand pities that unknown circumstances in his life hindered him from completing the gigantic fragments, which seem to have been portions of some intended great work on the deeds of Hercules, perhaps on the Argonautic Expedition. He has given us Hercules and the Serpents, Hercules and Hylas, Hercules and the Lion, and the pugilistical contest of the demigod’s kinsman with a barbarian; and the epithalamium of their relation Helen may have been designed as a portion of the same multifarious poem—an anticipation of the romance of modern times, and of the glory of Ariosto. What a loss![2]
In the poem on the Prize-fight (for such is really the subject, the prize being the vanquished man), Pollux, the demigod, one of the sons of Leda by Jupiter, goes to shore from the ship Argo, with his brother Castor, to get some water. They arrive at a beautiful fountain in a wood, by the side of which is sitting a huge overbearing-looking fellow (ἀνὴρ ὑπέροπλος, man presuming on his strength), who returns their salutation with insolence. The following, without any great violence to the letter of the ancient dialogue, may be taken as a sample of its spirit. The ruffian is addressed by Pollux:—
THE PRIZE-FIGHT BETWEEN POLLUX AND AMYCUS.
Pollux. Good day, friend. What sort of people, pray, live hereabouts?
Ruffian. I see no good day when I see strangers.
P. Don’t be disturbed. We are honest people who ask the question, and come of an honest stock.
R. I’m not disturbed at all, and don’t require to learn it from such as you.
P. You’re an ill-mannered, insolent clown.
R. I’m such as you see me. I never came meddling with you in your country.