[130] The mediaeval pastourelle is no doubt to some extent conventional and "made in moulds." But it is by no means so unreal as (whether Greek was so or not) Roman pastoral pretty certainly was, and as modern has been beyond possibility of doubt. How good it could be, without any convention at all, Henryson showed once for all in our own language by Robene and Makyne.
[131] Theagenes and Chariclea had preceded it by thirteen years, though a fresh translation appeared in the same year, as did the first of Hysminias and Hysmine. Achilles Tatius (Cleitophon and Leucippe) had been partly done in 1545, but waited till 1568 for completion.
[132] Op. cit. sup.
[133] They are almost always Amours after their Greek prototypes, sometimes simple, often qualified, and these most frequently by such adjectives as "Infortunées et chastes," "Constantes et infortunées," "Chastes et heureuses," "Pudiques," etc. etc. Not a few are taken direct from episodes of Ariosto or other elders; otherwise they are "loves" of Laoniphile, Lozie, Poliphile and Mellonimphe, Pégase (who has somehow or other become a nymph) and Léandre, Dachmion and Deflore (a rather unlucky heroine-name), etc. etc. Their authors are nearly as numerous as their titles; but the chief were a certain Sieur de Nervèze, whose numerous individual efforts were collected more than once to the number at least of a good baker's dozen, and a Sieur des Escuteaux, who had the same fortune. Sometimes the Hellenism went rather to seed in such titles as Erocaligenèse, which supposed itself to be Greek for "Naissance d'un bel amour." It is only (at least in England) in the very largest libraries, perhaps in the British Museum alone, that there is any chance of examining these things directly; some of them escaped even the mighty hunt of M. Reynier himself. What the present writer has found is treated shortly in the text.
[134] M. Reynier (most justly, but of course after many predecessors) points out that the common filiation of these things on Marini and Gongora is chronologically impossible. We could, equally of course, supply older examples still in English; and persons of any reading can carry the thing back through sixteenth- and fifteenth-century examples to the Dark Ages and the late Greek classics—if no further.
[135] It is fair to say that the first is "make-weighted" with a pastoral play entitled Athlette, from the heroine's rather curious name.
[136] It has two poems and some miscellanea. Something like this is the case with another bookmaker of the class, Du Souhait.
[137] It may be childish, but the association in this group of ladies—three of them bearing some of the greatest historic names of France, and the fourth that of the admirable critic with no other namesake of whom I ever met—seemed to me interesting. It is perhaps worth adding that Isabel de Rochechouart seems to have been not merely dedicatee but part author of the first tale.
[138] The habit is common with these authors.
[139] He gives more analysis than usual, but complains of the author's "affectation and bad taste." I venture to think this relatively rather harsh, though it is positively too true of the whole group.