IDYL or IDYLL, a short poem of a pastoral or rural char acter, in which something of the element of landscape is pre served or felt. The earliest commentators of antiquity used the term to designate a great variety of brief and homely poems, in which the description of natural objects was introduced, but the pastoral idea came into existence in connection with the Alexan drian school and particularly with Theocritus, Bion and Moschus, in the 3rd century before Christ. It appears, however, that eibvXXcov was not, even then, used consciously as the name of a form of verse, but as a diminutive of E.5os, and merely signified "a little piece in the style of" whatever adjective might follow. Thus the idyls of the pastoral poets were ELBvXXca aiiroXKac, little pieces in the goatherd style. We possess ten of the so-called "Idyls" of Theocritus, and these are the type from which the popular idea of this kind of poem is taken. The word was revived at the Renaissance. In 1658 the English critic, Edward Phillips, defined an "idyl" as "a kind of eclogue," but it was seldom used to describe a modern poem. The general use, or abuse, of the word in the second half of the i9th century, both in English and French, arises from the popularity of two works, by two eminent poets. The Idylles heroiques (1858) of Victor de Laprade and the Idylls of the King (1859) of Tennyson enjoyed a success in either country which led to a wide imitation of the title among those who had, perhaps, a very inexact idea of its meaning. On the whole, it is impossible to admit that the idyl has a place among definite literary forms.