There was, indeed, an entire harmony in their political principles; but questions of literature touch an author yet more sensibly than those of state; and the "idem sentire de republica," was an imperfect bond of amity between men who appreciated so differently the Comus and Lycidas of Milton, and the Bucolics of Theocritus.

There had been a revival of pastoral poetry in Italy and France, but, with one or two insignificant exceptions, Spenser's were the first bucolics in English.

This was the incident so frequently spoken of by Mr. Ralph Ashley afterwards, as the Bucolic of the kite.

While there is little that is distinctly bucolic about the Ameto, the atmosphere is eminently pastoral in the wider sense.

We shall here treat the Bucolics in what seems to be their order of composition, not the order of their position in the collection.