Page:The nature and elements of poetry, Stedman, 1892.djvu/120

90 nature, so full of sentiment withal as to seem the The Greek idyllists. forerunner of Christian art,—in some respects the prototype of our own idyllic poetry. The studiously impassioned lament of Moschus for Bion is nearer than the poetry of his dead master, and of that master's master, Theocritus (always excepting the latter's "Thalysia"), to our own modes of feeling and treatment. It set the key for our great English elegies, from Spenser's "Astrophel" and Milton's "Lycidas" to Shelley's "Adonais" and Arnold's lament for Clough. The subjectivity of the Greek idyllists is thus demonstrated. They were influenced largely by the Oriental feeling, alike by its sensuousness and its solemnity, and at times they borrowed from its poets,—as in the transfer by Moschus of a passage from Job into his Dorian hexameters, of which I will read my own version:—

We pass with something like indifference to the Latin sentiment. Latin poets, because their talent, in spite of many noble legacies bequeathed us, so lacked the freedom, the originality, the inimitable poetic subtilties which animated everything that was Grecian. Hellas was creative of beauty and