solid rock, each containing seven hundred gallons of wine at their service. One day five hundred horsemen halted at his door, who had been overtaken by a storm. He lodged and entertained them all; and, by way of dry clothes, made each man a present of a new tunic and robe.

His wit appears to have been as ready as it was pungent. He was sent ambassador on some occasion to the people of Centauripa, a place at the foot of Mount Etna. When he rose in the assembly to address them, his poor little figure made so ridiculous a contrast with his mission, that they burst into fits of laughter. Gellias waited his time, and then requested them not to be astonished;-" for," said he, "it is the custom with Agrigentum to suit the ambassador to his locality; to send noble-looking persons to great cities, and insignificant ones to the insignificant.”

The combined magnanimity and address of this sarcasm are not to be surpassed. Ambassadors are privileged people; but they have not always been spared by irritated multitudes; yet our hero did not hesitate to turn the ridicule of the Centauripans on themselves. He "showed up" the smallness of their pretensions, both as a community and as observers. He did not blink the fact of his own bodily insignificance-too sore a point with little people in general, notwithstanding the fact that many of the greatest spirits of the world have resided in frames as petty. He made it the very ground for exposing the still smaller pretensions of the souls and understandings of his deriders. Or, supposing that he said it with a good-humoured smile,-with an air of rebuke to their better sense,—still the address was as great, and the magnanimity as candid. He not only took the "bull by the horns," but turned it with his mighty little hands into a weapon of

triumph. Such a man, insignificant as his general exterior may have been, must, after all, have had something fine in some part of it—something great in some part of its expression; probably fine eyes, and a smile full of benignity.

Gellias proved that his soul was of the noblest order, not only by a princely life, but by the heroical nature of his death. Agrigentum lay on the coast opposite Carthage. It had been a flourishing place, partly by reason of its commerce with that city; but was at last insulted by it and subdued. Most of the inhabitants fled. Among those who remained was Gellias. He fancied that his great wealth, and his renown for hospitality, would procure him decent treatment. Finding, however, that the least to be expected of the enemy was captivity, he set fire to a temple into which he had conveyed his wealth, and perished with it in the flames; thus, says Stolberg, at once preventing "the profanation of the place, the enriching of the foe, and the disgrace of slavery."

There ought to be a book devoted to the history of those whose reputations have not received their due. It would make a curious volume. It would be old in the materials, novel in the interest, and of equal delight and use. It is a startling reflection, that while men, such as this Gellias, must be dug up from the by-ways of history, its high road is threeparts full of people who would never have been heard of, but for accidents of time and place. Take, for instance, the majority of the Roman emperors, of those of Germany, of the turbulent old French noblesse, and indeed of three-fourths, perhaps nine-tenths of historical names all over the world. The reflection, nevertheless, suggests one of a more consolatory kind, namely, that genius and great qualities are not the only things to be considered in this world;-that common-place also

mon.

has its right to be heard; common affections and common wants;―aye, the more in the latter case, because they are comThe worst of it is, that common-place in power, is not fond of allowing this right to its brother common-place out of it. The progress of knowledge, however, tends to a greater impartiality; and the consideration of this fact must be the honey, meantime, to many a bitter thought.

CHAPTER IV.

THEOCRITUS.

PASTORAL POETRY.-SPECIMENS OF THE STRENGTH AND COMIC HUMOUR OF THEOCRITUS-THE PRIZE-FIGHT BETWEEN POLLUX AND AMYCUS -THE SYRACUSAN GOSSIPS.

nated in Si

cily, at one

and the same

time with

comedy. At

all events, it was perfected there. Comedy is understood to have been suggested by the licence with which it was the custom for peasants to rail at passengers, and at one another, during the jollity of the vintage; and pastoral poetry was at first nothing but the more rustical part of comedy. Its great master, Theocritus, arose during a period

of refinement; and being a man of a universal genius, with a particular regard for the country, perfected this homelier kind of pastoral, and at the same time anticipated all the others. His single scenes are the germ of the pastoral drama. He is as clownish as Gay, as domestic as Allan Ramsay, as elegant as Virgil and Tasso, and (with the allowance for the difference between ancient and modern imagination) as poetical as Fletcher; and in passion he beats them all. In no other pastoral poetry is there anything to equal his Polyphemus.

The world has long been sensible of this superiority. But, in one respect, even the world has not yet done justice to Theocritus. The world, indeed, takes a long time, or must have a two-fold blow given it as manifest and sustained as Shakspeare's, to entertain two ideas at once respecting anybody. It has been said of wit, that it indisposes people to admit a serious claim on the part of its possessor; and pastoral poetry subjects a man to the like injustice, by reason of its humble modes of life, and its gentle scenery. People suppose that he can handle nothing stronger than a crook. They should read Theocritus's account of Hercules slaying the lion, or of the "stand-up fight," the regular and tremendous "set-to," between Pollux and Amycus. The best Moulsey-Hurst business was a feather to it. Theocritus was a son of Ætna-all peace and luxuriance in ordinary, all fire and wasting fury when he chose it. He was a genius equally potent and universal; and it is a thousand pities that unknown circumstances in his life hindered him from completing the gigantic fragments, which seem to have been portions of some intended great work on the deeds of Hercules, perhaps on the Argonautic Expedition. He has given us Hercules and the Serpents, Hercules and Hylas, Hercules and the Lion, and the pugilistical contest of