To the same or the following year belong the twelve eclogues by Edward Fairfax, the translater of Tasso’s Gerusalemme, which are now for the most part lost.  One, the fourth, was printed in 1737 from the original manuscript, another in 1883 from a later transcript in the Bodleian, while a third is preserved in a fragmentary state in the British Museum.[119] All three deal chiefly with contemporary affairs, the two former being concerned with the abuses of the church, while the last is a panegyric of the ‘present age,’ and especially of English maritime adventure.  This is certainly the most pleasing of the three, though the style is at times pretentious and over-charged with far-fetched allusions.  There are, however, fine passages, as for instance the lines on Drake: 

    And yet some say that from the Ocean maine,
    He will returne when Arthur comes againe.

More directly concerned with the political events of the day is the curious eclogue [Greek:  Da/phnis Polyste/phanos] by Sir George Buc, published in 1605, in praise of the Genest crown, the royal right by Apollo’s divine decree of a long line of English kings, who are passed in review by way of introduction to the praises of their latest representative.  The work was revised by an unknown hand for the accession of Charles, and republished under the title of The Great Plantagenet in 1635, as by ‘Geo. Buck, Gent.’  Sir George held the post of Master of the Revels from 1608 to 1622, and died the following year.

In 1607 appeared a poem ‘Mirrha the Mother of Adonis,’ by William Barksted, to which were appended three eclogues by Lewes Machin.[120] Of these, one describes the love of a shepherd and his nymph, while the other two treat the theme of Apollo and Hyacinth.  Composed in easy verse of no particular distinction these poems belong to that borderland between the idyllic and the salacious on which certain shepherd-poets loved to dally.

The years 1614 and 1615 saw the appearance of works of considerably greater interest from every point of view, among others from that of what I have described as pastoral freemasonry.  In the former year there appeared a small octavo volume entitled The Shepherd’s Pipe.  The chief contributor was William Browne of Tavistock, the first book of whose pastoral epic, Britannia’s Pastorals, had appeared the previous year.  Besides seven eclogues from his pen, the volume contained one by Christopher Brooke, one by Sir John Davies, and two by George Wither.  These last two were republished in 1615, with three additional pieces, in Wither’s collection entitled The Shepherd’s Hunting.  With the exception of one or two of Browne’s, these fourteen eclogues all deal with the personal relation of the friends who disguise themselves respectively, Browne as Willy, Wither as Roget (a name later exchanged for that of Philarete), Brooke as Cuddie, and Davies as Wernock.  Wither’s were written, as we learn