their disappointed loves and child-like woes; can appreciate the delicately-veiled compliments paid by the poet to his patron; can enjoy the inventive genius and poetical power which they display; and can be elevated by the exalted sentiments which they sometimes breathe. We feel that it is all an illusion; but we willingly permit ourselves to be transported from the matter-of-fact realities of a hard and prosaic world. Virgil in his Eclogues was too much cramped by following his Greek original to present us with true pictures of Italian country life; although the criticism of his friend Horace with justice attributes to his rural pieces delicacy of touch and graceful wit:— molle atque facetum Virgilio annuerunt gaudentes rure Camœnæ.[552] The Idylls of Theocritus are transfusions into appropriate Greek of old popular Sicilian legends which had taken root in the country, and had become part and parcel of the national character. His subjects are not always strictly pastoral, for his characters are sometimes reapers and fishermen.[553] His language, characters, sentiments, scenery, habits, incidents, are all Sicilian, and therefore all are in perfect harmony. The characters of Theocritus have a specific individuality, and are therefore different from each other; those of Virgil are generic, the representatives of a class, and therefore there is little or no variety. But still Virgil’s defects do not detract much from the enjoyment experienced in reading his Bucolic poetry. The Aminta of Tasso, the Pastor Fido of Guarini, the Calendar of Spenser, the Lycidas of Milton, the Perdita of Shakspeare, the pastorals of Drayton, Drummond, and Florian, are equally open to objection, and yet who does not admire their beauties? The Bucolics may be arranged in two classes. Those in the first are composed entirely after the Greek model, and contain the following poems:— I. The first, in which the poet, representing himself under the character of Tityrus, expresses his gratitude for the restoration of his property, whilst Melibœus, as an exiled Mantuan, bewails his harder fortune. II. The second, which is generally supposed to have been the first pastoral written by him, and is principally copied from the Cyclops of Theocritus. III. The third is an imitation of the fourth and fifth Idylls of Theocritus, and as well as the seventh, represent improvisatorial trials of musical skill between shepherds. V. The fifth, in which two shepherds pay the last honours to a departed friend, the one singing his epitaph, the other his apotheosis. Scaliger[554] has with good reason supposed that this poem allegorized the murder and deification of Julius Cæsar. It has been often imitated by modern poets: the most beautiful imitations are Spenser’s lament for Dido, Milton’s Lycidas, Drayton’s sixth Eclogue, and Pomfret’s Elegy on Queen Mary.