of novelty, when mirth wantoned at his side, and hope
sparkled before him.

[Footnote 1: Dr. Johnson defines a pastoral as "the representation of
an action or passion by its effects upon a country life." See _The
Rambler_, Nos. 36 and 37.]

[Footnote 2: _The Rambler_, No. 36. See also Steele's essays on the
pastoral in _The Guardian_, Nos. 22, 23, 28, 30, 32. No. 22 is
particularly interesting, because in it Steele assigns three causes
for the popularity of the pastoral form,--man's love of ease, his love
of simplicity, and his love of the country. Pope's remarks on the
pastoral, which may be found in _The Guardian_, No. 40, are also worth
referring to in this connection.]

Probably Doctor Johnson was entirely right about the perennial charm
of the pastoral and in his theory that its charm is potent in the
direct ratio to the square of the distance that separates the writer
and reader from rural life itself. It is not strange, therefore, that
in the newly awakened interest in the classics that characterized the
Renaissance, when literature was so largely a product of city
culture, the revival of the pastoral should have been one of the first
manifestations of the earlier Renaissance humanism.

_Spanish Influence._ Even when all due credit has been given to the
charm of the pastoral romance, it still remains doubtful whether the
influence of the Greek and Latin classics alone is sufficient to
explain its vogue in the Elizabethan age. Their influence, though
undoubtedly great, was scarcely sufficient to account for the
naturalization in England of so exotic a form as the pastoral. Indeed