and died in order to produce an elaborate mound of charred bones! Mr.
Roth himself, though a classicist of the classicists, managed to make
the Romans interesting in conversation; he always impressed one that the
Roman baths, or the chariot races, or the banquets, which he admitted
were full of colour and life, were by comparison faded and pale in the
glow and aroma of the sentences invented by the Latins to describe them!

The impossibility of getting anything out of the study of Greek by hard
work, sent me, after I had read Maurice de Gu['e]rin's "Centaure," to read
joyously an edition of the "Idyls of Theocritus" in French. While
browsing I found on the shelves of the Mercantile Library the novels of
Tourgu['e]neff in the same language. This delayed me a little. I found
Theocritus and Bion and Moschus in the Bohn Edition, which I think has
now become the beneficent "Everyman's Library." I revelled! The Mimes of
Herondas had not yet been discovered, but some of the dialogues in these
poems contained all the best of their essences. My friends among the
hard workers at the "Classics" scorned me. The elderly gentleman from
Oxford who gave us lessons three or four times a week and held that,
when we were able to translate at sight a certain page of Greek which he
had composed himself from various great authors, that we were perfect,
treated me as a pariah; but that made no difference. I continued, in
merciful leisure, to saturate myself in the golden glow of the Sicilian
poets. I tried hard to express my devotion to Theocritus by paraphrases,
very slightly from the original Greek, mostly from the French, and
partly from the Bohn Edition. I quote a result which Mr. Edmund Clarence
Stedman said was too paraphrastic. It is from the "Cyclops":

Softer than lambs and whiter than the curds,
O Galatea, swan-nymph of the sea!
Vain is my longing, worthless are my words;
Why do you come in night's sweet dreams to me,
And when I wake, swift leave me, as in fear
The lambkin hastens when a wolf is near?

Why did my mother on a dark-bright day
Bring you, for hyacinths, a-near my cave?
I was the guide, and through the tangled way
I thoughtless led you; I am now your slave.
Peace left my soul when you knocked at my heart--
Come, Galatea, never to depart!

Though I am dark and ugly to the sight--
A Cyclops I, and stronger there are few--
Of you I dream through all the quic