Sleep that gentlier on the spirit lies Than tired eyelids upon tired eyes, and again, The moan of doves in immemorial elms, And murmurings of innumerable bees, are, if not translated from Theocritus, certainly suggested by him. A more explicit borrowing from the Greek will be found in the comparison of a strong man’s biceps to the passing of running water over a stone that does not break it: And bared the knotted column of his throat, The massive square of his heroic breast, And arms on which the standing muscle sloped As slopes a wild brook o’er a little stone, Running too vehemently to break upon it. But in every page of that poet which is not mere familiar home life, I feel in the splendour of his style the very echo of Greek work, and I can well imagine how Euripides would have revelled in the lines, His honour rooted in dishonour stood, And faith unfaithful kept him falsely true. The influence of Greek comedy is too complicated to be discussed at the close of this discourse. For the greatest of the Greek masters, Aristophanes, has so intensely Attic a quality that we might as well try to imitate the work of Phidias. But his genteel successor Menander has become, through the versions of Plautus and Terence, the father of genteel comedy in Europe. He was extravagantly praised and popular in decadent Greece. I for one cannot hold that his legacy stands high among the priceless treasures bequeathed to us by his nation. But of his influence there can be no question.[9]