OLD GREEK FRAGMENTS The other day when we were reading some of the poems in "Ionica," I promised to speak in another short essay of Theocritus and his songs or idyls of Greek peasant life, but in speaking of him it will be well also to speak of others who equally illustrate the fact that everywhere there is truth and beauty for the mind that can see.

I spoke last week about what I thought the highest possible kind of literary art might become.

But the possible becoming is yet far away; and in speaking of some old Greek writers I want only to emphasize the fact that modern literary art as well as ancient literary art produced their best results from a close study of human nature.
Although Theocritus and others who wrote idyls found their chief inspiration in the life of the peasants, they sometimes also wrote about the life of cities.

Human nature may be studied in the city as well as in the country, provided that a man knows how to look for it.

It is not in the courts of princes nor the houses of nobles nor the residences of the wealthy that such study can be made.