ave growne a monster, and more sorry might I
bee that they came in than that they gat out." His "Apologie" was
perhaps from its style more useful to the development of the novel than
the "Arcadia"; but the latter, in spite of its enormous defects of style
and composition, was also of use, and it is not unimportant to note that
its influence lasted until and even beyond the time of Richardson.

Sidney's romance is not, as might be believed, an enormous pseudo-Greek
pastoral, with tunic-wearing shepherds in the foreground, piping their
ditties to their flocks, to their nymphs, to Echo. Elizabethan Arcadias
were knightly Arcadias. Sidney's heroes are all princes or the daughters
of kings. Their adventures take place in Greece, undoubtedly, and among
learned shepherds, but the great parts are left to the noblemen, and the
distance between the two classes is well marked. However intelligent and
well bred the shepherds may be, they are only there for decoration and
ornament, to amuse the princes with their songs, and to pull them out of
the water when they are drowning. There are Amadises and Palmerins in
Sidney's work. Amadis has come to live among the shepherds, but he
remains Amadis, as valiant and as ready as ever to draw his sword. To
please his sister the better, Sidney mingles thus the two kinds of
affectations in fashion, the affectation of pastoral and of chivalry,
taking in this as his example the famous "Diana" of George de
Montemayor, which was then the talk not only of Spain, but of all the
reading public in Europe.[191] As for the shepherds, are we to pity them
because their domain is invaded by foreign knights, by whom they are
dispossessed of the high rank belonging to them, of all places, in
Arcady? There is no need for pity; a time will come when they will repay
their invaders, and the end of their piping has not come yet. Leaving
their country, where their place has been taken by British noblemen, we
shall see them some day invade the land of their conquerors, and,
sitting in their turn under the elms of Windsor Park, sing their songs
at the call of Mr. Pope. They will look a little awry, no doubt, among
the mists of an English landscape, with their loose tunics, bare limbs,
and "in-folio" wigs; but they will prove none the less fine speakers,
and they will for a time concentrate upon themselves the attention of
the capital. Better still will be their treatment at the hands of a
Frenchman, not a poet, but a