ABSTRACT
These lines are a relatively close translation of Moschus’s Idyll v. Moschus was a Gk Bucolic poet of the second century bc, and S. also translated his Idylls iii and iv (see nos 107 and 162). A date for this translation is difficult to establish. Mary’s jnl records that S. read Theocritus and Moschus in Gk in 1816 (Mary Jnl i 97), but none of his three translations from Moschus can be comfortably dated to that period, and it is likely that he carried his copy of the Greek bucolic poets with him to Italy (as Walter Peck (TLS, 7 April 1921) has shown, the Gk edition of the Bucolics used by S. was Theocriti, Bionis et Moschi Carmina Bucolica, ed. L. C. Valckenaer, Edinburgh 1810). Eds have usually dated the poem in 1818 or earlier; Webb 87-8 appears to imply a very early date for the poem, and a context in the S., Harriet and Hogg situation. It is certainly possible that the lines might date from at least as early as December 1817-July 1818; S. produced various translations, particularly from Gk, in that period. The poem might alternatively date from the period of the Shelleys’ stay in Naples, December 1818-February 1819, and might conceivably be connected with the strange story of S.’s lady admirer who, so Medwin claimed, had fallen in love with S. through reading his verses (see headnote to no. 202).
