hence soon arose a distinct school of poetry, in which the poet and his friends are introduced in the dramatic form of shepherds, telling of their flocks and herds, their rustic amours, and the joys of a country life.'

But pastoral poetry was not destined to remain long in this state of uniform simplicity. The real and the dramatic characters soon became blended into one, and the shepherd was identified with the poet. Even in Theocritus we see the beginnings of this very natural confusion, for in the seventh Idyll the swain Simichidas professes his inferiority to Philetas and Asclepiades, actual poets of the day and the instructors of Theocritus, who, in fact, introduces himself under the name of Simichidas; but this Idyll is the only one which contains personal allusions to the poet, and in which real and imaginary names are intermingled. Passing on to the Επιτάφιος Βίωνος of Moschus, we find the same phenomenon more apparent; for there not only is the deceased bard lamented by name in the midst of a highly allegorical passage, and the real cause of his death by poison nakedly stated, but so transparent is the veil of pastoral allegory which disguises the personality of the poet, that Bion is represented as piping to his flocks and milking his goats at the same time that he is compared with Homer, Hesiod, and Pindar, with his own master Theocritus, and even with Moschus himself, in language which expressly intimates that something like a school of bucolic poetry was even thus early establishing itself in Sicily. Whether such an idea ever had any recognised existence, or had reached any degree of maturity during the period of 200 years that intervened between Theocritus and Virgil, is a question we have no means of deciding; suffice it to say that in the time of the latter poet the terms 'Sicilian' and 'Syracusan' had come to be used as distinctive literary epithets of pastoral song (Virgil, Ecl. iv. 1 ;

'At secura quies et nescia fallere vita,

Dives opum variarum, at latis otia fundis

Mugitusque boum mollesque sub arbore somni

Non absunt.'-VIRG. G. ii. 467.

vi. 1). This fact of itself shows how conventional the method of treating the subject had now become, and also prepares us for what we actually find when we examine the Eclogues of Virgil. The pastoral, which was at first a true and simple inspiration of nature, was already passing into an artificial stage in which it became the mouth-piece of general poetic utterance, and not seldom a mere toy for tiros in verse, as young birdes, that be newly crept out of the nest, by little first prove theyr tender wyngs, before they make a greater flyght.' Such a fate indeed. it was only too certain to incur when once it had taken its regular place in literature and lost its original simplicity. The poets who adopted the new fashion, though they assumed the character of shepherds, yet failed to attain the true pastoral result, since neither their own inclination nor surrounding influences favoured a consistent treatment. But in Virgil first of all the unreality and confusion of subject-matter and the general departure from primitive simplicity begin to be most conspicuous. His Eclogues are close imitations, often literal translations, of Theocritus; and in them we find the Greek pastoral applied to Roman life, and the scenery of Sicily transferred to the Mantuan district. Also the persistency with which shepherds bearing Greek names talk of Rome and the things of Rome, and adapt not only the pastoral imagery but even the very circumstances of the Idylls of Theocritus to the every-day occupations of Roman life, seems to prove that Virgil not merely recognised the Greek pastoral as the source of his inspiration, but sought to invest Theocritus himself with a Latin dress. And in numerous passages we cannot help seeing that he has allowed his excessive fondness of imitation to cramp his native originality, and to close his eyes to the open face of nature. At Rome Greek literature was a beau idéal of excellence, and Greek models were accepted as supreme; so that an aptness for applying the matter no less than the metre

1 Spenser, Epistle to Gabriell in his Introduction to Virgil's BuHarvey (quoted also by Conington

colics).

of Greek poetry to Roman uses did not in those days appear to derogate in the least from the character of originality. Nevertheless Virgil, though he lived and breathed so fully in the atmosphere of Greece, and reproduced with such exactness the tastes and impressions he had there imbibed, copied as one who brought with him native insight and vision, and had the power of impressing his own stamp upon much that he had gathered from others. The confusion of the pastoral may be considered as fully developed in the Eclogues, though oftentimes so perfect is the poet's art, and so exquisite his grace, that we may be led to forget or even to reconcile ourselves to what he has done in this direction. Henceforth pastoral poetry is no more than a particular mode of poetical expression, and has nothing in common with Theocritus beyond its outside form. It seems strange indeed that a people like the Romans, claiming descent from a pastoral ancestry and nursed by a regular recurrence of festivals in pastoral recollections, should afterwards have been almost wholly indifferent to the cultivation of this class of poetry; yet the later Roman bucolic poets, such as Calpurnius and Nemesianus, occupy but a low place among the post-Augustan authors, and need only be mentioned as specimens to show how little regard was paid to the Pastoral for some time after the days of Virgil. Their poetry, which invests political subjects with a pastoral dress, is miserably unreal, and, though obviously Virgilian in its style and aim, is wholly destitute of the master's power and elegance. It may be interesting to notice here in passing an eclogue (Conflictus Veris et Hiemis, sive Cuculus) by the Venerable Bede, which was one of the few and scattered pastoral reminiscences during the long and dreary period which intervened between the old and the new epochs of literature.

From what has been said it appears that there may be two kinds of pastoral-one real and the other allegorical: the first

1 For a fuller and nearly exhaustive criticism of Virgil's Eclogues, in their relation to the Idylls of Theo

critus, see Conington's Introduction to the Bucolics, in vol. i. of his edition of Virgil.

gives an actual representation of rural life in any country whatever, such as we partially find in the Idylls of Theocritus, while among our own poets perhaps Ben Jonson, in his Sad Shepherd, has approached most nearly to this primitive type. The second class is represented by Spenser and his contemporaries, its object being to disentangle the poet from all local and surrounding associations, and to place him in such a state of ideal freedom as shall afford full scope for his imagination. For this the fiction of some Arcadia, a kind of visionary land, was most suitable, where the poet, in shepherd guise, could adapt to his purpose as much of pastoral life as he saw fit. And although Spenser, in the opening lines of the Faery Queen, gives notice of changing his 'oaten reeds for trumpets stern,' and for ‘knights and ladies gentle deeds,' much of the pastoral nevertheless shows itself even here. Whatever the theme might be, it was thrown by the poetical fashion of the time into an imaginary world, and an ideal scene was fitted to it.1

The earliest modern pastorals are Portuguese, in or even before the fourteenth century. They mainly deal with the passion of love in its relation to the ideal felicity of shepherd life. Spain followed in the same course; but the adoption of the fashion by the Italians, whose language was more widely known, started an epoch of great popularity for this kind of composition in Europe. Sannazaro wrote his Arcadia in 1502, and the Piscatory Eclogues, which are in Latin and very Virgilian, appeared about 1520. Soon afterwards began the regular pastoral drama, of which 'Il Sagrifizio of Beccari, in 1554, was the first specimen. This, as Hallam thinks, may have been suggested by the 'Sicilian_Gossips' (Adoniazusa) of Theocritus, where there is the germ of a dramatic action in the dialogue. George de Montemayor, who, by his Diana, made

See Masson, Life of Milton, 'vol. i. p. 412.

2 On these Eclogues Dr. Johnson (Rambler, 1750) observes that, as the range of pastoral is narrow and its images few and general, Sanna

zaro tried to vary them by depicting the sea and fishermen ; but the sea having less variety than the land, and being less known to the generality of men, is therefore less fit for pastoral.

this kind of poetry fashionable in Spain, followed Sannazaro, but improved upon him by giving more variety, more passion, more reasoning, and a more connected story. Then followed Lope de Vega with his Arcadia, about the end of the sixteenth century. Towards 1580 came Tasso's Aminta, and in 1585 Guarini's Pastor Fido, containing musical choruses, the prototypes of the Italian Opera which added recitatives to the choruses.'

In 1690 the Society of Arcadians was founded at Florence by Crescentini. They assumed all the accessories of Greek pastoral, and took as their device the pipe of seven reeds bound with laurel; and their president was designated 'custode generale.' Their influence was great in purifying the national taste; and though the poetry rather lacked power of feeling, its natural imagery and pastoral character have invested it with a charm and beauty which to the imaginative reader is quite irresistible. From Italy the fashion passed to England about the sixteenth century, when travel led the way to knowledge, and translations began to be made. Though the influence of Italian poetry upon English literature goes back at least to Chaucer, who translated many lines from the Italian, and probably borrowed his Palamon and Arcite and his Troilus from the Theseida and Filostrato of Boccaccio respectively, yet it was not till much later that Italian poets and romances were popularly known in avowed translations. Ascham, in his Scholemaster (1589), complains of them as 'carrying the will to vanitie and marring good manners.' Boccace's novels were translated by W. Paynter in 1566, and Burton, in his Anatomy of Melancholy, mentions the reading aloud of them as a winter evening's diversion. A translation of Ariosto's Orlando Furioso by Harvington appeared in 1590, and one of Tasso's Gerusalemme Liberata, probably by Carew, in 1593.

The first English pastorals were Barkley's Eclogues (1514), chiefly moral and satirical, with little rural scenery. They were

' From Hallam's History of European Literature, vol. ii.