Firstly, there is the remarkable novel, Daphnis and Chloe, in which, about the fifth century after Christ, the Greek prose-writer Longus strove to give an entirely new form to the conventions of Theocritus.1 Daphnis and Chloe, with its early traces of 'romantic' love, its early passion for scenery, is undeniably a notable ancestor of the later pastoral developments of the romance, as they present themselves in Sannazaro, in Montemayor, in Sidney. Secondly, there is the pastourelle of mediæval France, a short lively poem-half dialogue, half recital-in some degree Provençal in its origin, and always constant to a single type of structure. A noble youth meets a shepherdess in the fields; he dismounts to woo her, is successful or unsuccessful in his love, and in either event mounts and rides away. The pastourelles of the troubadour Colin Musset are lost to us, but in the thirteenth century the form was dramatized by Adam de la Halle in his Feu de Robin et Marion, which still exists.2 The typical incident of the pastourelle has left its trace upon the love-stories of Florizel, and of many another disguised Elizabethan prince; and the name of Robin recurs in the eclogues of Clément Marot, to which the author of The Shepheard's Calender recognizes his debt. And finally, one must not leave out of account the pastoral affinities in the one book which of all others most

1 Daphnis and Chloe was translated into English, from the French of Amyot (1559), by Angel Day in 1587, and this translation has been recently reprinted by Mr. Joseph Jacobs (1890).

2 Bartsch, Altfranzösische Romanzen und Pastourellen (1870). See also Dr. Grosart's essay in the third volume of his edition of Spenser, and G. Paris, La littérature Française au moyen âge, §§ 122, 127,

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profoundly impressed the Englishmen of the sixteenth century. The Old and the New Testament, accessible at last in the splendid new words of Tyndale and of Coverdale, yielded each its episodes of pastoral life. The Old gave them David, with his idyllic boyhood among the sheep-folds; the New that wakeful night of the shepherds under the same starry heavens of Bethlehem, already a theme familiar for its quaint renderings in the miracle-plays of the north; nor could it be forgotten how in parable deliberate choice had been made. of the Good Shepherd to serve as symbol for the Founder of Christianity himself, of the faithful shepherd and the hireling as types respectively of the just and the unjust amongst his appointed teachers. So that 'pastoral' came to have its clear ecclesiastical signification, and it fell out naturally for Spenser or Milton to adapt to the bucolic forms their allegories of the religious life. And it was characteristic of the medley of ideas which everywhere distinguishes Renascence art, that the pastoral should thus absorb into itself pagan and religious elements, and present them side by side without fear of incongruity; Peter mourning in the company of Triton and the Muses over the hearse of Lycidas, while "the mighty Pan" must do duty in The Shepheard's Calender, alike for the wood-god of classical myth, for the historic Henry the Eighth, and for the very person of the Almighty.

The Latin writers of pastoral adhered precisely

1 See A. W. Pollard, English Miracle Plays (1890). Mr. Pollard includes amongst his extracts the Secunda Pastorum from the Towneley Plays.

to the manner of the formal eclogue.1 The varieties of this fell within comparatively narrow limits. Sometimes descriptive, it was more often dramatic or pseudo-dramatic in its setting, the dialogue or monologue, generally interspersed with songs, of imagined shepherds. The metre was invariably the hexameter; the typical situations followed the models already set by Theocritus and Virgil. The eclogue, thus constituted, by no means disappeared at the Renascence. Spenser and Drayton, to name no others, were content to accept its broad outlines. But even they reject the classical uniformity of metre. Googe, indeed, confines himself to monotonous seven-foot lines; but Spenser uses a bewildering variety of rhythms, and makes a further distinction, within each eclogue, between the metre of the dialogue and that of the more lyrical portions. Even these innovations left the formal eclogue stiff and constrained in its English dress. The path of development for the Elizabethan pastoral lay in the direction of still enlarged liberty. Those who handled it most successfully, while maintaining

1 Eclogues, ékλoyal, are literally 'selections'. The name is given in MSS. to the bucolics of Virgil, Calpurnius, and Nemesianus, and to certain short astronomical poems of Ausonius. The Elizabethans misunderstood and mis-spelt the word. Thus, in the Generall Argument to the Shepheard's Calender, E. K. writes "glogai, as it were alywv, or alyvoμwv Móyo, that is, Goteheards tales".

Idyll, eldúov, is the name for a short descriptive poem, and means literally 'a little picture'. The name was applied both to the pastoral The Romans of the Empire

and the mythological poems of Theocritus. used both eclogue' and 'idyll' as general names for a short poem. Cf. Pliny, Epistles, iv. 14, 9, "sive epigrammata sive idyllia sive eclogas ... sive poematia vocare malueris".

Bucolic is derived from the Greek Bouxóλos, a herdsman.

2 Barnabe Googe, Eglogs, Epytaphes, and Sonettes (1563), re-edited by Prof. Arber in his English Reprints (1871).

the essential features of the old bucolic convention, the scenery, the dramatis persona, the traditional range of sentiment and emotion, yet allowed themselves extreme freedom of choice as to the forms in which they gave it expression. Thus it was that the pastoral came to invade almost every sphere of literature, and notably those of drama and romance.

Pastoral drama may be said to begin, in Italy, with the Favolo di Orfeo of Politian in 1472. Its two masterpieces were the Aminta of Torquato Tasso (1573), and the Pastor Fido of Guarini (1590); delicately sensuous love-poems these, full of colour and sunshine and song, already containing in the abundance of their lyrical elements the germs of the Italian opera that was to be.1 In England, the pastoral drama found itself a home at court, where everything artificial was sure of a welcome from Elizabeth. Sir Philip Sidney's masque, The Lady of the May, was presented before her at Wanstead in 1578, and was followed, a few years later, by Peele's pretty comedy, The Arraignment of Paris (15817), in which the scene is set among the flocks of Ida. The sub-plot tells of the loves of Colin and Thestylis, while in the main action, by a flattery not too gross to hit its mark, the golden apple which moved such divine discord is bestowed in a full council of heaven upon the Virgin Queen. In

3

1 See J. A. Symonds, Renaissance in Italy: the Catholic Reaction, chapters vii. xi. There are English translations of the Pastor Fido by Fanshawe (1647), and by Settle (1677).

2 The Lady of the May was printed with the 3rd edition of the Arcadia (1598). It may be found in W. Gray's Miscellaneous Works of Sir Philip Sidney.

3 Peele's Works have been edited by Dyce, and more recently by Mr. A. H. Bullen.

the comedies written by Lyly for the children of Paul's from 1587 to 1590,1 as in the 'entertainments' of this, and the court masques of the next reign, pastoral elements repeatedly occur. Shakespeare glorified the prevailing fashion in As You Like It (1600?), and in the fourth act of A Winter's Tale (1610?). Fletcher modelled upon the Pastor Fido his own Faithful Shepherdess (1608?), and Jonson interwove a shepherd story with the legends of Robin Hood in his memorable fragment of The Sad Shepherd (before 1637). Works of less genius are Rutter's Shepherd's Holiday (1635), Goffe's Careless Shepherdess (publ. 1636, acted before 1629), and Randolph's Amyntas (1638); while Day in his Isle of Gulls (publ. 1606, acted 1605?), and Shirley in his Arcadia (publ. 1639, acted 1632?), adapted to the purposes of the stage certain episodes from Sidney's famous romance.

For pastoral fiction, as well as pastoral comedy, looked to Sidney as its English Hippocrene. His Arcadia was the third of the three great sixteenthcentury romances. The Italian Arcadia of Giacomo Sannazaro had preceded it in 1504, and the Spanish Diana Enamorada of the Portuguese Jorge di Montemayor in 1542. In these interminable tales the pastoral novel of Longus is wedded to the

1 Lyly's Dramatic Works have been edited by F. W. Fairholt. J. S. L. Strachey, Best Plays of Beaumont and Fletcher (Mermaid Series), vol. 2.

3 Cunningham, Works of Ben Jonson, vol. 2.

4 Hazlitt's Dodsley's Old Plays, vol. xii.

5 There is no modern edition of The Careless Shepherdess.

6 W. C. Hazlitt, Poems of Randolph.

7 A. H. Bullen, Works of John Day (1881).

8 Dyce, Works of Shirley (1833), vol. vi.