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It will be enough to observe that in the earliest elegiac poets, such as Archilochus, Tyrtaeus and Theognis, reminiscences of Homeric language and thought meet us on every page.

The Prince had to be content with the part of Tyrtaeus, and in odes, not deficient in merit, stirred the patriotic feelings of his countrymen.

From the days of Tyrtaeus and Pindar, to Byron, Shelley, and Swinburne, one or other of these themes has been the seed of song.

The paradox is that it was FitzGerald who was always urging “Alfred” to go on, and finding fault with him for not doing more, and not singing in grander, sterner strains,—not becoming the Tyrtaeus of his country.

For Roman elegy is mainly amatory or sentimental; and its masters imitated, as a rule, not the early Greek elegists, not Tyrtaeus or Theognis, but the later Alexandrian elegists, such as Callimachus or Philetas.