SOURCE: An introduction to Theocritus in English Literature, J. P. Bell Company, 1910, pp. 1-12.

In the following excerpt, Kerlin discusses the scope and importance of Theocritus's work, its characteristics, and its influence on English literature.

1. Nature and Scope of the Work

It will be appropriate first to indicate the scope and character of the influence I am to describe before we engage ourselves with the minutiæ of allusions, imitations, parallels, translations, and the like matters. These first paragraphs, then, will consist of general statements, of condensed results, which will at once give meaning to and derive support from the mass of details in the pages following.

A multitude of questions will here be answered in a general way, and later in a specific way, which, in the case of any great poet in whom we are interested, must satisfy a certain intellectual desire, a curiosity, if you will...