Note 316 — Chapter VII · THEOCRITUS—THE GREEK EPIGRAMMATISTS
Reading edition
“Theocritus gives nature, not behind the footlights, but beneath the truthful blaze of Sicily’s sunlit sky. For it was here that the first vibrations of this spontaneous note were heard in their original purity, before art could distort them with allegory, or echo weaken them with imitation. This is all the more remarkable from the contrast which it offers to what Kingsley calls the ‘artificial jingle’ of the Alexandrian school. Simplicity, honesty, truth, and beauty recommend Theocritus as a genuine artist. His imitators, as compared with their model, were like—
‘Those many jackdaw-rhymers, who with vain Chattering contend against the Chian Bard,’
as he himself describes (Id., VII. 47) Homer’s imitators.” Against this verdict by H. Snow on the Alexandrians must be set the more truthful appreciation of their work by Mackail, op. cit., pp. 178-207, especially p. 184: “They are called artificial poets, as though all poetry were not artificial, and the greatest poetry were not the poetry of the most consummate artifice.”