and tender glances; when they have to
suffer a scarcity of this heavenly food they can only die: "Hee dieth:
it is most true, hee dieth; and he in whom you live dieth. Whereof if
though hee plaine, hee doth not complaine: for it is a harme but no
wrong which hee hath received. He dies, because in wofull language all
his senses tell him, that such is your pleasure." Fair Pamela feels
deeply moved when reading this, and confesses her harshness; she denied
him a look: "Two times I must confess," says she to her sister, not
without a pretty touch of humour of a very modern sort, "I was about to
take curtesie into mine eyes, but both times the former resolution stopt
the entrie of it: so, that hee departed without obtaining any further
kindenesse. But he was no sooner out of the doore, but that I looked to
the doore kindly!" The poor lover who did not see this change in his
lady's countenance went away fainting, "as if he had beene but the
coffin that carried himselfe to his sepulchre!"[202]

Happiness produces the same effect on these heroes. Pyrocles-Zelmane
when present in his false quality of woman at the bath of his mistress
in the Ladon is on the point of swooning with admiration.[203] His
friend, Prince Musidorus, in the ecstasies of his passion, falls "downe
prostrate," uttering this prayer to the awful god who reigns paramount
in Arcady: "O thou, celestiall or infernall spirit of Love, or what
other heavenly or hellish title thou list to have (for effects of both I
find in my selfe), have compassion of me, and let thy glory be as great
in pardoning of them that be submitted to thee as in conquering them
that were rebellious."[204]

But Sidney painted also amours of another sort, and one of the great
attractions of his book is the variety in the descriptions of this
passion. Never had the like been seen before in any English novel, and
as for France, it must be remembered, that d'Urfe's "Astree," which has
kept its place in literature for the very same quality, for its
inconstant Hylas and its faithful Celadon, for its Astree and its
Madonte, was yet to be written. Sidney has, among several others,
created one character which, forgotten as it is now, would be enough to
give a permanent interest to this too much neglected romance; it is the
Queen Gynecia, who is consumed by a guilty love, and who is the worthy
contemporary of the strongly passionate heroes of Marlowe's plays. With
her, and for the first time, the dra