the herald of a glory not of this world, a preparation as it were, a
decking of the chamber against the advent of the bride; and thus the
pastoral which sang of the greatness of pagan Rome appeared at the same
time a hymn prophetic of the glory of the Church[23].

Moreover, during the centuries that had elapsed since the days of Vergil
the term 'pastoral' had gained a new meaning and new associations. In the
days of Augustus Pan was a boorish anachronism; it was left to medieval
Christianity to create a god who was in fact a shepherd of men[24] and so
to render possible a pastoral allegory that should embody the dearest
hopes and aspirations of the human heart. That Christian pastoralists
availed themselves successfully of the possibilities of the theme it would
be difficult to maintain. It is a singular fact that, at a time when
allegory was the characteristic literary form, it was yet so impossible
even for the finer spirits to follow a train of thought clearly and
consistently, that it was only when a mind passed beyond the limitations
of its own age, and assumed a position _sub specie aeternitatis_, that it
was able to free itself from the prevalent confusion of the imaginary and
the real, the word and the idea, and to perceive that success in allegory
depends, not on the chaotic intermingling of the attributes of the type
and the thing typified, but on so representing the one as to suggest and
illuminate the other.

In the early days of renascent humanism, the first to renew the pastoral
tradition, broken for some ten centuries, was Francesco Petrarca. It is
not without significance that the first modern eclogues were from the same
pen as the sonnet 'Fontana di dolore, albergo d'ira,' expressive of the
shame with which earnest sons of the Church contemplated the captivity of
the holy father at Avignon; for thus on the very threshold of Arcadia we
are met with those bitter denunciations of ecclesiastical corruption which