So far, intentionally in the case of the drama, and if not intentionally at least practically in that of the ballads, the appeal of the native pastoral impulse—­tradition it could hardly yet be called—­was to an audience little if at all removed from the actual condition of life depicted.  This ensured at least essential reality, for though in the one case there may be idealization in a romantic and in the other in a burlesque direction, either implies that familiarity with the actual world which appears to underlie all vital art.[79] It was not long, however, before the pastoral began to address itself to a more cultivated society, and in so doing sacrificed that wholesome corrective of a genuinely critical audience which is needed in the long run to keep any literary form from degeneration.  The impulse is still, however, found in all its freshness and genuineness in such a poem as the following fifteenth-century nativity carol, which, in its blending of piety and humorous rusticity, is strongly reminiscent of the dramatic productions we have just been reviewing: 

The shepherd upon a hill he sat,
He had on him his tabard and his hat,
His tar-box, his pipe, and his flagat,
His name was called Jolly, Jolly Wat! 
For he was a good herds-boy,
Ut hoy! 
For in his pipe he made so much joy. 
Can I not sing but hoy.

* * * * *

The shepherd on a hill he stood,
Round about him his sheep they yode,
He put his hand under his hood,
He saw a star as red as blood. 

                    Ut hoy! &c.

* * * * *

Now must I go there Christ was born,
Farewell!  I come again to-morn,
Dog, keep well my sheep fro the corn! 
And warn well Warroke when I blow my horn! 

                    Ut hoy! &c.[80]

So, again, in the delightful poem that has won for Robert Henryson the title of the first English pastoralist the warm blood of natural feeling yet runs full. Robene and Makyne stands on the threshold of the sixteenth century, a modest and pastoral counterpart of the Nut-Brown Maid, as evidence that there were poets of purely native inspiration capable of writing verses every whit as perfect in form as anything produced by the Italianizers of the next generation, and commonly far more genuine in feeling.  Even in the work of Surrey and Wyatt themselves we find poems which, were it not for the general tradition to which they belong, one would have no difficulty in regarding as a natural development and conventionalization of the native tendency.  Such is the Harpelus’ Complaint of ‘Tottel’s Miscellany.’  This was originally printed among the poems of uncertain authors, but when it re-appeared in England’s Helicon, in 1600, it was subscribed with Surrey’s name.  The ascription does not carry with it much authority, but is in no way inherently improbable.[81] The opening stanzas may be quoted as conveying a fair idea of the whole, which sustains its character of sprightly elegance for over a hundred lines, ending with the luckless Harpelus’ epitaph: