Poetrie"--and verse--"Astrophel and Stella." The elaborate and
artificial romance "Arcadia" was written for his sister Mary,
Countess of Pembroke, probably between 1578-80. It was left
incomplete, and was not published until four years after his
death. It has been described as forming the earliest model for
the art of prose. In our epitome we have followed the central
thread of a story which has innumerable episodic extensions.


_I.--Lost and Found_


It was the time that the earth begins to put on her new apparel against
the approach of her lover, when the shepherd, Strephon, on the sands
which lie against the island of Cithera, called upon him his friendly
rival, Claius, and bewailed their hopeless wooing of the fair
shepherdess, Urania, whose beauty taught the beholders chastity. As they
were going on with their praises, they perceived the thing which floated
nearer and nearer to the shore, by the favourable working of the sea,
till it was cast up hard before them, and they fully saw it was a man.
So they fell to rub and chafe him, till they brought him to recover both
breath, the servant, and warmth, the companion of living. Whereupon,
without so much as thanking them for their pains, he got up and cried,
as he looked round to the uttermost limits of his sight, "What, shall
Musidorus live after Pyrocles's destruction?" Then they, hearing him
speak in Greek, which was their natural language, became the more
tender-hearted towards him.

"Since you take care of me," said he, "I pray you find some bark that
will go out of the haven, that it possible we may find the body of