Out of Syracuse, with its petty court about a petty tyrant, Theocritus had come back to the sea and the sky and the hardy pastoral life with a joy which touches some of his lines with penetrating tenderness.

Better a thousand times for him and for us the long, tranquil days under the pine and the olive than a great position under Hiero's hand and the weary intrigue and activity which made the melancholy semblance of a successful life for men less wise and genuine.

The lines which the hand of Theocritus has left on the past are few and marvellously delicate, but they seem to gain distinctness from the remorseless years that have almost obliterated the features of the age in which he lived.

It is better to see clearly one or two things in life than to move confused and blinded in the dust of an impotent activity; it is better to hear one or two notes sung in the overshadowing trees than to spend one's years amid a murmur in which nothing is distinctly audible.

Theocritus, shunning courts and cities, sought to assuage the pain of life at the heart of Nature, and did not seek in vain.