y of the pastoral form,--man's love of ease, his love
of simplicity, and his love of the country. Pope's remarks on the
pastoral, which may be found in _The Guardian_, No. 40, are also worth
referring to in this connection.]

Probably Doctor Johnson was entirely right about the perennial charm
of the pastoral and in his theory that its charm is potent in the
direct ratio to the square of the distance that separates the writer
and reader from rural life itself. It is not strange, therefore, that
in the newly awakened interest in the classics that characterized the
Renaissance, when literature was so largely a product of city
culture, the revival of the pastoral should have been one of the first
manifestations of the earlier Renaissance humanism.

_Spanish Influence._ Even when all due credit has been given to the
charm of the pastoral romance, it still remains doubtful whether the
influence of the Greek and Latin classics alone is sufficient to
explain its vogue in the Elizabethan age. Their influence, though
undoubtedly great, was scarcely sufficient to account for the
naturalization in England of so exotic a form as the pastoral. Indeed
the pastoral never was thoroughly naturalized, remaining to the end
somewhat alien to its English surroundings. Shepherds with their oaten
pipes were never quite at home in the English climate, which is ill
suited to life in the open, to loose tunics, and bare limbs.[1] It is
doubtful whether the pastoral would have become popular in England
without the stimulus furnished by contemporary European literature.
Most influential of these contemporary influences was the "Diana
Enamorada," published about 1558, a Spanish pastoral romance written
by Jorge de Montemayor, a Portuguese by birth, a Spaniard by adoption.
Although the English translation of the "Diana" did not appear until
1598[2] it was well known to Sidney, who translated parts of it, and
imitated it in his "Arcadia" (1590), and to Greene, whose "Menaphon,"
also an imitation of the "Diana," had appeared in 1589, the year
before "Rosalynde." Though it is entirely possible that Lodge may have
imitated Greene, it is probable that he, like Greene, had read the
"Diana," for it is certain that he knew Spanish,[3] as well as French
and Italian, and the "Diana" was already, it is said,[4] the most
popular book in Europe.

[Footnote 1: Steele, speaking of the pastoral (_The Guardian_, No.
30), says, "The difference of the climate is als