This served, of course, no other purpose than to salve the author's artistic conscience, since it is perfectly evident that the polished civility of his characters belongs to them by nature, and is not in any way an external importation. The remark, however, is interesting in respect of the philosophy of love as a civilizing power, which we have seen constantly recurring from the days of Boccaccio onward. Ben Jonson expressed himself sharply on this subject, with respect to Guarini and Sidney, in his conversations with Drummond. 'That Guarini, in his Pastor Fido, keept not decorum, in making Shepherds speek as well as himself could.... That Sidney did not keep a decorum in making everyone speak as well as himself.'[[359]] The critical foundation of these censures in an a priori definition of pastoral is obvious, and they are more interesting for their authorship than for their intrinsic merit. It would be curious to know how Jonson defended such a character as his Sad Shepherd--but his views had time to alter.
It is to the critics of the late years of the seventeenth century and early ones of the eighteenth that we owe the attempt to formulate a theory of pastoral composition. The attempt has not for us any great importance. All the work we have been considering had appeared, and the vast majority of it had passed into oblivion, before the French critics first engaged upon the task. Nor has the attempt much intrinsic interest. The theories of individual writers such as those already mentioned are of value, as showing the critical mood in which they themselves created; but these, and still more the theories of pure critics, are of no importance, either in the field of abstract critical theory or of historical inquiry. Fontenelle, offended at the odour of Theocritus' hines, Rapin, with his Jesuitical prudicity and ethico-literary theories of propriety, are not the kind of thinkers to advance critical and historical science. Yet it was to their school that the far greater English critics of the early eighteenth century belonged. Their work consists for the most part of various combinations of a priori definition and arbitrary rules, based on the notion of propriety. Thus Pope in the Discourse on Pastoral, prefixed to his eclogues in 1717, writes: 'A pastoral is an imitation of the action of a shepherd, or one considered under that character.... If we would copy nature, it may be useful to take this idea along with us, that pastoral is an image of what they call the golden age. So that we are not to describe our shepherds as shepherds at this day really are, but as they may be conceived then to have been, when the best of men followed the employment.' Shallow formalism this; but what else was to be expected from Alexander Pope at the age of sixteen? His contemporaries, however, and successors down to Johnson, took his solemn vacuity in all seriousness. Steele, writing in the Guardian in 1713 (Nos. 22, &c.), follows much the same lines. He speaks of 'Innocence, Simplicity, and whatever else has been laid down as distinguishing Marks of Pastoral.' Again, the reader is informed that 'Whoever can bear these'--namely, certain concetti from Tasso and Guarini--'may be assured he hath no Taste for Pastoral.' We find the same pedantic and ignorant objections to Sannazzaro's piscatorials as were later advanced by Johnson: 'who can pardon him,' loftily queries the censor, 'for his Arbitrary Change of the sweet Manners and pleasing objects of the Country, for what in their own Nature are uncomfortable and dreadful?' An afternoon's idling along the cliffs of Sorento or the shore of Posilipo will supply a sufficient answer to such ignorant conceit as this. Lastly, in the same familiar strain, but with all the pompous weight of undisputed dictatorship, we find Dr. Johnson a generation later laying down in the Rambler that a pastoral is 'a Poem in which any action or Passion is represented by its Effects upon a Country Life.... In Pastoral, as in other Writings, Chastity of sentiment ought doubtless to be observed, and Purity of Manners to be represented; not because the Poet is confined to the Images of the golden Age'--this is a rap at Pope--'but because, having the subject in his own Choice, he ought always to consult the Interest of Virtue.' The one fixed idea which runs throughout these criticisms is that pastoral in its nature somehow is, or should be, other than what it is in fact[[360]].
This is a view which very rightly meets with small mercy at the hands of the modern historical school of criticism. A last fragment of the hoary fallacy may be traced in Dr. Sommer's remark: 'Die Theorie des Hirtengedichtes ist kurz in folgenden Worten ausgedrückt: schlichte und ungekünstelte Darstellung des Hirtenlebens und wahre Naturschilderung.' It cannot be too emphatically laid down that there is and can be no such thing as a 'theory' of pastoral, or, indeed, of any other artistic form dependent, like it, upon what are merely accidental conditions.[[361]] As I started by pointing out at the beginning of this work, pastoral is not capable of definition by reference to any essential quality; whence it follows that any theory of pastoral is not a theory of pastoral as it exists, but as the critic imagines that it ought to exist. 'Everything is what it is, and not another thing,' and pastoral is what the writers of pastoral have made it.
It may be convenient before closing this chapter to summarize briefly the results of our inquiry into the history of pastoral tradition on the pre-restoration stage in England, without the elaboration of detail and the many necessary though minor distinctions unavoidable in the foregoing account. We saw, in the first place, that the idea of a literature dealing with the humours and romance of farm and sheepcot was not wholly alien to national English literature; but, on the contrary, that the shepherd plays of the religions cycles, the popular ballads, and a few of the Scots poets of the time of Henryson, all alike furnish verse which may be regarded as the index of the readiness of the popular mind to receive the introduction of a formal pastoral tradition. Next, preceding, as in Italy, the introduction or evolution of a regular pastoral drama, we find a series of mythological plays embodying incidentally elements of pastoral, written for the amusement of court circles, and founded on the Metamorphoses of Ovid. In these the nature of the pastoral scenes appear to be conditioned, in so far as they are independent of their classical source, partly by the already existing eclogue, and partly perhaps by the native impulse mentioned above[[362]]. All this anticipates the rise of the pastoral drama proper. The foreign pastoral tradition reached England through three main channels. The earliest of these, the eclogue, was imitated by Spenser from Marot, who, while depending somewhat more closely, perhaps, than was usual upon the ancients, and adding to his work a certain original flavour, yet belonged essentially to the tradition of the allegorical pastoral which took its fashion from the works of Petrarch and Mantuan. The second, and for the English drama vastly the more important channel, was the pastoral-chivalric romance borrowed by Sidney from Montemayor, the great exponent of the Spanish school, which was, however, based upon the Italian work of Sannazzaro. The third was the Arcadian drama of the Ferrarese court, which was imitated, chiefly from Guarini, by Samuel Daniel. Thus, of the three forms, verse, prose, and drama, adopted by England from Italy, the first came by way of France, the second by way of Spain, while the third alone was taken direct[[363]]. These three blended with the pre-existing mythological play, and with the traditions of the romantic drama generally, to produce the pastoral drama of the English stage. The influence ot the eclogue was on the whole slight, but to it we may reasonably ascribe a share of the topical and allusive elements, when these do not appear assignable either to the Arcadian drama or to masque literature generally.[[364]] The influence of the mythological drama, again, is not of the first importance, and is also very restricted in its occurrence; the Maid's Metamorphosis is the most striking example. The three main influences at work in fashioning the pastoral drama upon the English stage were, therefore, the Arcadian drama of Italy, the Sidneian romance borrowed from Spain, and the native tradition of the romantic drama.[[365]] But we have seen that the most important examples of dramatic pastoral in this country, though to some extent conditioned like the rest by the above-mentioned influences, were the outcome of direct and conscious experiment. In part, at least, the earliest, and by far the most simple, was the work of Samuel Daniel himself, which aimed at nothing beyond the mere transference of the Italian tradition unaltered on to the English stage. A different aim underlay the attempts alike of Fletcher and Randolph; the combination, namely, of the traditions of the Arcadian and romantic dramas. This common end they sought, however, by very diverse means. Fletcher, while adopting the machinery and methods of the popular drama, left the ideal and imaginary content practically untouched, and even chose a plot which in its structure resembled those familiar in the romantic drama even less than did Guarini's own. Randolph, on the other hand, while preserving much of the classical mechanism as he found it in Guarini, altered the whole tone and character of the piece to correspond to the greater complexity of interest, more genial humour, and more genuine romanticism of the English stage. Lastly, we found Jonson cutting himself almost entirely adrift from the tradition of Italian Arcadianism, and seeking to create an essentially national pastoral by the combination of shepherd lads and girls, transmuted from actuality by a natural process of refinement akin to that of Theocritus, with the magic and fairy lore of popular fancy, and with the characters of Robin and Marian and all the essentially English tradition of Sherwood. These three chief experiments in the production of an English pastoral drama which should rival that of Italy stand, together with Daniel's two plays, apart from the general run of pieces of the kind. It is also worth notice that they are all alike unaffected by the Sidneian romance. The remaining plays which form the great bulk of the contribution made by English drama to pastoral, and among which we must look for such dramatic pastoral tradition as existed, are almost all characterized by a more or less prevalent court atmosphere, disguisings and adventures in shepherd's garb forming the mainstay of the plot, while the genuine pastoral elements supply little beyond the background of the action.
Into the post-restoration pastorals it is no part of my present scheme to enter. They flourished for a while under the wing of the fashionable romance of France, but were almost more than their predecessors the things of artificial convention, having their form and being in a world whose only pre-occupations were the pangs and transports of sensibility. They occupy by right a small corner in the Carte du Tendre. Nor do I propose to do more than allude in passing to Allan Ramsay's Gentle Shepherd. In spite of the almost unvarying praise which has been lavished upon this 'Scots pastoral,' and even though the characters may have some points of humanity in common with actual Lothian rustics, the whole composition of the piece can scarcely be pronounced less artificial than that of the Arcadian drama itself, and the play has undoubtedly shared in the exaggerated esteem which has fallen to the lot of dialectal literature generally. The tradition lingered on throughout the eighteenth and into the nineteenth century. Goethe in his youth, while under the French influence, composed the Laune des Verliebten, and in his later days at Weimar the Fischerin, a piscatorial adapted for representation on an open-air stage, in which the interest was purely spectacular. As a general rule, however, pastoral inanity seldom strayed beyond the limits of the opera.
That the pastoral should flourish by the side of the romantic drama was not to be expected. It was impossible in England, as it was impossible in Spain. In either case it might now and again achieve a mild success at court, or under some exceptional conditions of representation; it never held the popular stage. No literature based on the accidents of a special form of civilization, or upon a set of artificially imagined conditions, can ever hope to outlive the civilization or the fashion that gave it birth. 'Love in vacuo' failed to arouse the interest of general mankind. Every literature of course wears the livery of its age, but where the body beneath is instinct with human life it can change its dress and pass unchanged itself from one order of things to another; where the livery is all, the form cannot a second time be galvanized into life. Pastoral, relying for its distinctive features upon the accidents rather than the essentials of life, failed to justify its pretentions as a serious and independent form of art. The trivial toy of a courtly coterie, it attempted to arrogate to itself the position of a philosophy, and in so doing exposed itself to the ridicule of succeeding ages. Men with a stern purpose in life turned wearily from the sickly amours of romantic poets who dreamed that human happiness found its place in the economy of the world. They left it to a rout of melodious idlers to imagine unto themselves a state in which serious importance should attach to the gracious things of sentiment and the loves of youth and maiden.
Addenda
Page 19.--Even apart from the evidence of the Bucolica Quirinalium, it is, of course, clear that Vergil's eclogues were familiar to the writers of the early middle ages. How far their interest in them was literary, and how far, like that of the mystery-writers, it was theological, may, however, be questioned. It is worth noticing in this connexion that a German translation was projected by no less a person than Notker, and since they are coupled by him with the Andria, we may reasonably infer that in this case at least the writer's concern, if not distinctively literary, was at any rate educational. (See W. P. Ker, The Dark Ages, p. 317.)
Page 112, note 2.--There is an error here. The Passionate Pilgrim version of 'As it fell upon a day' does not contain the couplet found in England's Helicon. I was misled by its being supplied from the latter by the Cambridge editors. Another poem of the same description appears in Francis Sabie's Pan's Pipe. (See Sidney Lee's introduction to the Oxford Press facsimile of the Passionate Pilgrim, p. 31.)
Page 204.--It is perhaps hardly surprising to find Tasso's 'S' ei piace, ei lice' quoted by English writers as summing up the cynical philosophy of those whom they not unaptly styled 'politicians.' In Marston's tragedy on the story of Sophonisba, for instance, the villain Syphax concludes a 'Machiavellian' speech with the words: