Enter Aminta as passing over the Stage, is stayed by Olinda.

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.

Guarini's comment on the Aminta in his letter to Speroni has been already quoted: it does little credit to the writer.

It is, perhaps, not a little strange that the pedant who made the preposterous experiment of turning the Aminta into English hexameters should nevertheless have been capable of clearly perceiving, however incapable he was of adequately rectifying, the hopelessly undramatic character of the last act of Tasso's play.

Enter Aminta like Glory, Alcander representing Honour.

Thus the piece may be regarded as a dramatization of Sannazzaro's Salices, expanded by the free introduction of mythological characters, and bears no connexion with the real nature of pastoral, the life-blood of which, whether in the idyls of Theocritus, the Arcadia of Sannazzaro, or the Aminta of Tasso, is primarily and essentially human.

The question of the influence of the Aminta on later works and on European thought generally opens up large and difficult issues.

It is as far superior to The Faithful Shepherdess, as The Faithful Shepherdess is to the Aminta, or the Aminta to the Pastor Fido.