Even more amusing is the supposed indebtedness on one side or the other in the reference made by Theocritus and Canticles to the ravages of foxes in vineyards. Theocritus has these beautiful lines in his first Idyll (lines 44 _et seq._): Hard by that wave-beat sire a vineyard bends Beneath its graceful load of burnished grapes; A boy sits on the rude fence watching them. Near him two foxes: down the rows of grapes One ranging steals the ripest; one assails With wiles the poor lad's scrip, to leave him soon Stranded and supperless. He plaits meanwhile With ears of corn a right fine cricket-trap, And fits it in a rush: for vines, for scrip, Little he cares, enamored of his toy. How different the scene in Canticles (ii. 14 _et seq_.) that has been quoted above! Take us the foxes, The little foxes, That spoil the vineyards, For our vineyards are in blossom! Canticles alludes to the destruction of the young shoots, Theocritus pictures the foxes devouring the ripe grapes. (Comp. also Idyll v. 112.) Foxes commit both forms of depredation, but the poets have seized on different aspects of the fact. Even were the aspects identical, it would be ridiculous to suppose that the Sicilian or Judean had been guilty of plagiarism. To-day, as of old, in the vineyards of Palestine you may see the little stone huts of the watchers on the lookout for the foxes, or jackals, whose visitations begin in the late spring and continue to the autumn. In Canticles we have a genuine fragment of native Judean folk-song; in Theocritus an equally native item of every season's observation. So with most of the other parallels. It is only necessary to set out the passages in full, to see that the similarity is insignificant in relation to the real differences. One would have thought that any poet dealing with rustic beauty might light on the fact that a sunburnt skin may be attractive. Yet Margoliouth dignifies this simple piece of observation into a _theory_! "The theory that swarthiness produced by sun-burning need not be disfiguring to a woman" is, Margoliouth holds, taken by Theocritus from Canticles. Graetz, as usual, reverses the relation: Canticles took it from Theocritus. But beyond the not very recondite idea that a sunburnt maid may still be charming, there is no parallel. Battus sings (Idyll x. 26 _et seq_.): Fair Bombyca! thee do men report Lean, dusk, a gipsy: I alone nut-brown. Violets and pencilled hyacinths are swart, Yet first of flowers they're chosen for a crown. As goats pursue the clover, wolves the goat, And cranes the ploughman, upon thee I dote! In Canticles the Shulammite protests (i. 5 _et seq_.):