Shepherds with their oaten pipes were never quite at home in the English climate, which is ill suited to life in the open, to loose tunics, and bare limbs.[1] It is doubtful whether the pastoral would have become popular in England without the stimulus furnished by contemporary European literature.  Most influential of these contemporary influences was the “Diana Enamorada,” published about 1558, a Spanish pastoral romance written by Jorge de Montemayor, a Portuguese by birth, a Spaniard by adoption.  Although the English translation of the “Diana” did not appear until 1598[2] it was well known to Sidney, who translated parts of it, and imitated it in his “Arcadia” (1590), and to Greene, whose “Menaphon,” also an imitation of the “Diana,” had appeared in 1589, the year before “Rosalynde.”  Though it is entirely possible that Lodge may have imitated Greene, it is probable that he, like Greene, had read the “Diana,” for it is certain that he knew Spanish,[3] as well as French and Italian, and the “Diana” was already, it is said,[4] the most popular book in Europe.

[Footnote 1:  Steele, speaking of the pastoral (The Guardian, No. 30), says, “The difference of the climate is also to be considered, for what is proper in Arcadia, or even in Italy, might be quite absurd in a colder country.”]

[Footnote 2:  Though not published till 1598, Bartholomew Young’s translation of the “Diana” was made in 1583.]

[Footnote 3:  In the epistle To the Gentlemen Readers, prefixed to “A Margarite of America,” he tells us that he read the original of that story “in the Library of the Jesuits in Sanctum ... in the Spanish tongue.”]

[Footnote 4:  Jusserand, “The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare,” p. 236.]

Style:  Euphuistic. Nor was Lodge more original in his manner than in his matter.  His style is that of the euphuists.  John Lyly’s “Euphues, or the Anatomy of Wit” (1579), and its sequel “Euphues and His England” (1580), had set a fashion that was destined for the next two decades to enjoy a tremendous vogue.  Lyly’s was the first conspicuous example in English of the attempt to achieve an ornate and rather fantastic style.  The result became known as euphuism, and those who employed it as euphuists.  In its essential features it consists of three distinct mannerisms:  a balance of phrases, an elaborate system of alliteration, and a profusion of similes taken from fabulous natural history.  Regarding the euphuistic use of balance, Dr. Landmann says of Lyly’s prose:[1] “We have here the most elaborate antithesis not only of well balanced clauses, but also of words, often even of sentences....  Even when he uses a single sentence he opposes the words within the clause to each other.”

[Footnote 1:  In “Shakspere and Euphuism,” Transactions of the New Shakspere Society, 1880-1882.]