originality; for the novel, if it ever existed, has been lost.]

_Form: A Pastoral Romance._ As a pastoral romance it belongs to the
class of books of which Sidney's' "Arcadia" is the most famous
representative in English. The "Arcadia" was published in 1590--the
same year as "Rosalynde"--though it had been written some ten years
earlier. The literary genus to which they belong is a very old one.
The prose pastoral romance, that kind of prose romance which
professes to delineate the scenery, sentiments, and incidents of
shepherd life,[1] is, like most other literary forms, Greek in origin.
It goes back at least to the "Daphnis and Chloe" of Longus, the
Byzantine romancer of the fifth century A.D. Longus represents the
romantic spirit in expiring classicism, the longing of a highly
artificial society for primitive simplicity, and the endeavor to
create a corresponding ideal. Indeed the pastoral has always been a
product of a highly artificial age. Naturally, therefore, it has
always been written by men of the city rather than by men of the
country. It is distinctly an urban product. That it was so accounts in
part for the idealized view of life that it presents. Speaking of the
pastoral, Doctor Johnson says in his ponderous way:[2]

Our inclination to stillness and tranquillity is seldom much
lessened by long knowledge of the busy and tumultuary part
of the world. In childhood we turn our thoughts to the
country, as to the region of pleasure; we recur to it in old
age as a port of rest, and perhaps with that secondary and
adventitious gladness, which every man feels on reviewing
those places, or recollecting those occurrences, that
contributed to his youthful enjoyments, and bring him back
to the prime of life, when the world was gay with the bloom