Page:Hutcheson Macaulay Posnett - Comparative Literature (1886).djvu/280

 of the twenty-first idyll as a picture in which the human interest predominates; and, though the idyll opens with the heartless sophism of wealth—the description of the two ancient fishers" could not have been written by a man whose sympathies were bounded by the courtly life of Alexandria. Mr. Calverley here saves me the trouble of translating; his scholarly translation runs thus:—

Elsewhere the framework of natural scenery attains to greater prominence, as in the following description at the end of the seventh idyll.

Theocritus has combined dramatic pictures of human life and character with graphic description of Nature; but