er people there, and making poems about it. This
was exactly what the Greek idylists did,--that is, the best of them. They
were great scholars and became friends of kings, but they wrote poetry
chiefly about peasant life, and they gave all their genius to the work.
The result was so beautiful that everybody is still charmed by the
pictures or idyls which they made.

Well, after this disgression, to return to the subject of Theocritus, the
greatest of the idylists. He has often introduced into his idyls the name
of Comatas. Who was Comatas? Comatas was a Greek shepherd boy, or more
strictly speaking a goatherd, who kept the flocks of a rich man. It was
his duty to sacrifice to the gods none of his master's animals, without
permission; but as his master was a very avaricious person, Comatas knew
that it would be of little use to ask him. Now this Comatas was a very
good singer of peasant songs, and he made many beautiful poems for the
people to sing, and he believed that it was the gods who had given him
power to make the songs, and the Muses had inspired him with the capacity
to make good verse. In spite of his master's will, Comatas therefore
thought it was not very bad to take the young kids and sacrifice to the
gods and the Muses. When his master found out what had been done with the
animals, naturally he became very angry, and he put Comatas into a great
box of cedar-wood in order to starve him to death--saying, as he closed
and locked the lid, "Now, Comatas, let us see whether the gods will feed
you!" In that box Comatas was left for a year without food or drink, and
when the master, at the end of the year, opened the box, he expected to
find nothing but the bones of the goatherd. But Comatas was alive and
well, singing sweet songs, because during the year the Muses had sent bees
to feed him with honey. The bees had been able to enter the box through a
very little hole. I suppose you know that bees were held sacred to the
Muses, and that there is in Greek legend a symbolic relation between bees
and poetry.

If you want to know what kind of songs Comatas sang and what kind of life
he represented, you will find all this exquisitely told by Theocritus; and
there is a beautiful little translation in prose of Theocritus, Bion and
Moschus, made by Andrew Lang, which should delight you to read. Another
day I shall give you examples of such translations. Then you will see what
true idyllic poetry originally signified. These