Into her mouth, too, is put the following picture of the bride which has some kinship with contemporary baroque in Italian architecture and painting, and also occasionally anticipates in a remarkable manner the diction of the following century.

    The holy Priest had joyn’d their hands, and now
    Night grew propitious to their Bridall vow,
    Majestick Juno, and young Hymen flies
    To light their Pines at faire Parthenia’s eyes;
    The little Graces amourously did skip,
    With the small Cupids, from each lip to lip;
    Venus her selfe was present, and untide
    Her virgine Zone;[309] when loe, on either side
    Stood as her handmaids, Chastity and Truth,
    With that immaculate guider of her youth
    Rose-colour’d Modestie:  These did undresse
    The beauteous maid, who now in readinesse,
    The Nuptiall tapers waving ’bout her head,
    Made poore her garments, and enrich’d her bed. (IV. i.)

So again we find single expressions which are striking, as when Parthenia bids Amphialus, sooner than appease her wrath, to hope

To charme the Genius of the world to peace; (V.)

or when, dying, she commends herself to her dead lover: 

                                 take my breath
    That flies to thee on the pale wings of death. (ib.)

And yet it would be scarcely unfair to describe these as for the most part the beauties of decay; they are as rich embroidery upon rotten cloth, and are achieved by careful elaboration of sensuous imagination, and the art of arresting the attention upon a commonplace thought by the use of some striking epithet or novel and daring turn of expression.  For the wider and more essential beauties of conception, character, and construction we look in vain in Glapthorne’s play.

Sidney’s Arcadia, however, though the most important, was not the only so-called pastoral romance which left dramatic progeny.  It has been customary to describe the Thracian Wonder, a play of uncertain authorship, as founded upon the story of Curan and Argentile in Warner’s Albion’s England, a metrical emporium of historical legend very popular at the close of the sixteenth century.  The narrative in question was later expanded into a separate work by one William Webster, and published in 1617.[310] That Collier should have given a quite erroneous abstract of Warner’s tale, and should then have proceeded to claim it as the source of the play in question, is perhaps no great matter for astonishment, nor need it particularly surprise us to find certain modern critics swallowing the whole fiction on Collier’s authority.  What is extraordinary is that a scholar of Dyce’s ability and learning should have been misled.  For it is quite evident that the Thracian Wonder is based, though hardly closely, on no less famous a work than Greene’s Menaphon.[311] This should of course have been apparent to critics