After dinner, they spent some time reading Tasso's Aminta together; and then Mrs. Delano said: "I wish to go and have a talk with Mr. and Mrs. Percival.

Agreeable to what Tasso exclaimed on seeing Guarini's Pastor Fido; 'If he had not seen my Aminta, he had not excelled it.'

Tasso and his Aminta IV. Guarini and the Pastor fido V. Minor pastoral drama Chapter IV.

It does not lie primarily, or chiefly, in the fact that it is associated with names of the first rank in literature, with Theocritus and Vergil, with Petrarch, Politian, and Tasso, with Cervantes and Lope de Vega, with Ronsard and Marot, with Spenser, Ben Jonson, and Milton; nor yet that works such as the Idyls, the Aminta, the Faithful Shepherdess, and Lycidas contain some of the most graceful and perfect verse to be found in any language.

The association of this ideal world with the simplicity of pastoral life was effected by Vergil, and in this form it was treated with loving minuteness by Tasso in his Aminta and by Browne in his Britannia's Pastorals.

This translation, 'somewhat altered' to serve as a sequel to an English hexametrical version of Tasso's Aminta, was republished in 'The Countesse of Pembrokes Ivychurch' of 1591.

Another translation is the poem headed 'A Pastorall' in Daniel's Delia of 1592, a rendering of the famous chorus to the first act of Tasso's Aminta.

Poliziano's Latin translation of Moschus was commended by E. K. in his notes to the Shepherd's Calender, and the same original supplied Tasso with the subject of his Amore fuggitivo, which served as epilogue to the Aminta.

The idea with which the poem opens, the escape to a land where all conventional restrictions cease to have a meaning, was of course suggested by the first chorus of the Aminta: quel vano Nome senza soggetto, Quell' idolo d' errori, idol d' inganno; Quel che dal volgo insano Onor poscia fu detto Che di nostra natura 'l feo tiranno.

The exposing of a maiden to the rage of a sea-monster has been, of course, no novelty since the days of Andromeda, but it is unnecessary to seek a more immediate source; while the intrusion of Cupid in disguise among the nymphs was doubtless suggested by the well-known idyl of Moschus, and probably owes to this community of source such resemblance as it possesses to the prologue of the Aminta.

So far as we can tell no further translation of the Aminta was attempted till 1628, when there appeared an anonymous version which bibliographers have followed one another in ascribing to one John Reynolds, but which was more probably the work of a certain Henry Reynolds.

The following is a characteristic specimen chosen from the story of Aminta's early love for Silvia.

Before leaving the Aminta it will be worth while straying beyond the strict chronological limits of this inquiry to glance for a moment at the version produced by John Dancer in 1660, for the sake of noting the change which had come over literary hack-work of the kind in the course of some thirty years.

Silvia relates how, wounded by her 'cruelty,' Palaemon sought to imitate Aminta by throwing himself from a cliff, but was prevented by her timely relenting.

At least so it appears by comparison, for Daniel everywhere takes himself and his subject with a distressing seriousness wholly unsuited to the style; we look in vain for a gleam of humour such as that which in the final chorus of the Aminta casts a reflex light over the whole play.

In any case, but for the Aminta and Pastor fido, the Faithful Shepherdess would never have come into being; as a type it reveals neither original invention nor literary evolution, but is a conscious attempt to adapt the Italian pastoral to the requirements of the English stage.

A somewhat ultra-medicinal power of herbs, the introduction of an oracle in the preliminary history and of a wholly superfluous seer in the dénoûment make up the whole sum so far as the Pastor fido is concerned, while the Aminta cannot even show as much as this.

In general, two types of love may be traced in the Italian pastoral, namely the honest human desire of such characters as Mirtillo and Amarillis, Dorinda, Aminta, and the more or less close approach to mere sensuality found in Corisca and the satyrs.

Dorylas is one of the most inimitable and successful of the descendants of Lyly's pages; while the characters of Mopsus and Jocastus, although the former no doubt owes his conception to a hint in the Aminta, belong essentially to the English romantic farce.

This is a certain genially humorous conception of the whole, quite apart from and beyond the mere introduction of comedy and farce, which we have never found so marked before, and which has indeed been painfully absent from the pastoral since Tasso penned the final chorus of the Aminta.

Randolph's Amyntas, it is true, renounces the high ideality of its predecessors, of the Aminta and the Pastor fido, of Hymen's Triumph and the Faithful Shepherdess; but it makes up for it by human sanity of feeling and expression, by good humour and by wit.

With Tasso's Aminta and Fletcher's Faithful Shepherdess it cannot, in point of poetic merit, for one moment compare, falling as far below them in this as it surpasses them in complexity and general suitability of dramatic construction.

From the Aminta, of course, comes Nerina's description of how her lover stole a kiss, though little of the sensuous charm of the original survives; from the Pastor fido her confession of love as soon as she finds herself alone.

Verbal reminiscences of the Aminta also are scattered through the play, for instance, the lines in which Nerina protests her hatred of all who seek to win her from her state of unfettered virginity, protestations particularly fatuous, seeing that she is in love with Hylas throughout.

Those who have borne with me in my remarks on the Aminta and the Faithful Shepherdess, will probably also agree with me here, when I say that to me at least there is something not altogether pleasing in Milton's presentment of virtue.