pronounced Aesopic cast. In the 'June' we return to the love-motive of
Rosalind, which, though alluded to in the April eclogue, has played no
prominent part since January. It is a dialogue between Colin and Hobbinol,
in which the former recounts his final defeat and the winning of Rosalind
by Menalcas. This eclogue contains Spenser's chief tribute to Chaucer:

The God of shepheards, Tityrus, is dead,
Who taught me homely, as I can, to make;
He, whilst he lived, was the soveraigne head
Of shepheards all that bene with love ytake:
Well couth he wayle his Woes, and lightly slake
The flames which love within his heart had bredd,
And tell us mery tales to keepe us wake
The while our sheepe about us safely fedde.

The July eclogue again leads us into the realm of ecclesiastical politics.
It is a disputation between upland and lowland shepherds, the descendant
therefore of Mantuan and Barclay, though the use of 'high places' as
typifying prelatical pride appears to be original. The confusion of things
Christian and things pagan, of classical mythology with homely English
scenery, nowhere reaches a more extravagant pitch than here. Morrell, the
advocate of the old religion, defends the hills with the ingeniously
wrong-headed argument:

And wonned not the great God Pan
Upon mount Olivet,
Feeding the blessed flocke of Dan,
Which dyd himselfe beget?

or else, gazing over the Kentish downs, he announces that