simply a reminder of the fopperies of a vanished
time. There is in it, as in the paintings, a lightness and daintiness
of coloring, and an indescribable air of freshness that have made the
romance appeal to poets as the work of Watteau has appealed to
painters. Shakespeare felt its charm so much that he made it the basis
of the plot of "As You Like It." That it became one of his "sources"
has injured it incalculably in the popular estimation. It has become a
commonplace of criticism to declare that "Rosalynde's" chief title to
be remembered is its having furnished a hint to Shakespeare. As a
matter of fact, however, it had, to use Johnson's phrase, "enough wit
to keep it sweet," even without Shakespeare's play "to preserve it
from putrefaction." Lodge really had a pretty story to tell, and he
tells it, if not with gusto, at least with grace and with some degree
of skill. Exquisitely graceful are some of the narrative passages,
where the very words seem to possess a clear and pellucid quality like
the water of the spring that Rosalynde and Aliena found in Arden, "so
crystalline and clear, that it seemed Diana and her Dryades and
Hamadryades had that spring, as the secret of all their bathings."[1]
Such, for instance, is the account of the night and morning succeeding
the first meeting of Rosalynde and Rosader in the Forest of Arden.[2]
Graceful, too, are the descriptions of the landscapes in Arden, such
as that of the "fair valley" where Rosalynde and Aliena found Montanus
and Corydon "seeing their sheep feed, playing on their pipes many
pleasant tunes, and from music and melody falling into much amorous
chat." So charmingly graceful are these descriptions that, together
with Shakespeare, Lodge has made the Forest of Arden almost as much
the accepted home of the pastoral as Sicily and Arcadia[3] had been
hitherto.

[Footnote 1: P. 31.]

[Footnote 2: Pp. 58 and 60.]

[Footnote 3: Theocritus (283-263 B.C.) localized his "Idyls" in
Sicily; Vergil (70-19 B.C.), his "Eclogues" in Arcadia.]

_Lodge's Skill as a Story-teller._ To say that Lodge is a skillful as
well as a graceful story-teller is, of course, to make an indefensible
assertion. In the sixteenth century English fiction was still in its
infancy, and English prose was still undeveloped. Yet we do find in
Lodge certain qualities of style that show clearly an advance over the
formlessness of some of the stories that had preceded. Though the
sentence and paragraph