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advance towards making things pleasant with the other, and a first overture to the treaty he was desir- ous to negotiate with the victorious party. No mean or coward heart will I commend In an old comrade or a party friend ; Nor with ungenerous hasty zeal decry A noble-minded gallant enemy." (F.) But the bait, though specious, did not tempt those for whom it was designed,. In another short fragment is recorded the outburst of the poet's disappointment at finding it " labour lost." He seems to have aban- doned hope at last in the words " Not to be born never to see the sun No worldly blessing is a greater one ! And the next best is speedily to die, And lapt beneath a load of earth to lie." (F.) But even a man without hope must live that is, unless he terminate his woes by self-slaughter, a der- nier ressort to which, to do him justice, Theognis makes no allusion. AjuLso it would seem because Thebes, though it gave sympathy and hospitality, did not give means of earning a subsistence to the Megarian re- fugees we find him in the next fragment the last of those addressed to Cyrnus announcing a resolu- tion to flee from poverty, the worst of miseries : " In poverty, dear Cyrnus, we forego I Freedom in word and deed body and mind, Action and thought are fettered and confined. Let us then fly, dear Cyrnus, once again ! Wide as the limits of the land and main,