as can never have been spoken by any sane rustic.  Still more than of Spenser is Ben’s dictum true of himself, that where he departed from the cultivated English of his day, whether in imitation of the ancients or of provincial dialect matters not, he failed to write any language at all.  Yet here, if anywhere, we should be justified in arguing that it is unfair to judge an unrevised fragment as if it were a completed work in the form in which the author decided to give it to the world.  Jonson, as his English Grammar shows, was not without a knowledge of the antiquities at least of our tongue, and it is reasonable to suppose that, had he lived to publish his pastoral himself, he would have removed some of the more glaring enormities of language, along with certain other improprieties which could hardly have escaped his critical eye.

Jonson then, as it seems to me, setting aside a few points of minor importance, successfully combined what he found suited to his purpose in previous pastoral tradition, with what was most romantic and attractive in popular legend and a genuine idealization from actual types, to produce a veritable English pastoral, which failed of success only in that it remained unfinished at the death of its author.

* * * * *

In 1783 F. G. Waldron published his continuation of Jonson’s fragment.  This work, while betraying throughout the date of its composition, and falling in every respect short of the original, yet catches some measure of its glamour and charm, and has received deserved, if somewhat qualified, praise at the hands of Jonson’s critics.  The chief faults of the piece are the writer’s anxiety to marry every good character and convert every bad one, and the manner in which the dramatic climax by which Aeglamour and Earine should be brought together is frittered away.  The shepherdess is duly released from the hands of the lewd Lorel, but only to find that her lover has drowned himself.  The hermit is, of course, introduced to revive the Sad Shepherd and restore his wits, and so all ends happily.  The only original passage of any particular merit is the hunter’s dirge over the drowned Aeglamour, which is perhaps worth quoting[290]: 

    The chase is o’er, the hart is slain! 
    The gentlest hart that grac’d the plain;
    With breath of bugles sound his knell,
    Then lay him low in Death’s drear dell!

    Nor beauteous form, nor dappled hide,
    Nor branchy head will long abide;
    Nor fleetest foot that scuds the heath,
    Can ’scape the fleeter huntsman, Death.

    The hart is slain! his faithful deer,
    In spite of hounds or huntsman near,
    Despising Death, and all his train,
    Laments her hart untimely slain!

    The chase is o’er, the hart is slain! 
    The gentlest hart that grac’d the plain;
    Blow soft your bugles, sound his knell,
    Then lay him low in Death’s drear dell!