"Art thou still a king?" said the Angel, putting the old question, but without the word "fool."

"I am a fool,” said King Robert, "and no king."

"What wouldst thou, Robert?" returned the Angel, in a mild voice.

King Robert trembled from head to foot, and said, "Even what thou wouldst, O mighty and good stranger, whom I know not how to name,-hardly to look at!"

The stranger laid his hand on the shoulder of King Robert, who felt an inexpressible calm suddenly diffuse itself over his being. He knelt down, and clasped his hands to thank him.

"Not to me," interrupted the Angel, in a grave, but sweet voice; and kneeling down by the side of Robert, he said, as if in church, "Let us pray."

King Robert prayed, and the Angel prayed, and after a few moments, the king looked up, and the Angel was gone; and then the king knew that it was an Angel indeed.

And his own likeness returned to King Robert, but never an atom of his pride; and after a blessed reign, he died, disclosing this history to his weeping nobles, and requesting that it might be recorded in the Sicilian Annals.

King
Robact

CHAPTER VII.

ITALIAN AND ENGLISH PASTORAL.

TASSO'S ERMINIA AMONG THE SHEPHERDS, AND ODE ON THE GOLDEN AGE. GUARINI'S RETURN OF SPRING.-SHEPHERD'S VISION OF

THE HUNDRED MAIDENS IN
JONSON.

SPENSER.-SAD

SHEPHERD OF BEN

HE best pastoral

is often written

when the au

thor least in

tends it. A completer feeling of the country and ofa shepherd's life is given us in a single passage of the "Jerusalem Delivered," where Erminia

lagers, than in the whole "Aminta"-beautiful, too, as the latter is in many respects, and containing the divine ode on

the Golden Age, the crown of all pastoral aspiration. That, indeed, carries everything, even truth itself, before it; saving the truth of man's longing after a state of happiness compatible with his desires. The first line of it, the most beautiful of sighs, is familiar as a proverb in the lips of Italy, and of the lovers of Italy:

Ma sol perchè quel vano

Nome senza soggetto,

Quell' idolo d' errori, idol d' inganno,

Quel che dal volgo insano

Onor poscia fu detto,

Che di nostra natura il feo tiranno,

Non mischiava il suo affanno

Fra le liete dolcezze

De l'amoroso gregge;

Nè fu sua dura legge

Nota a quell' alme in libertate avvezze;

Ma legge aurea e felice,

Che natura scolpì,—s' ei piace, ei lice.

K

"O lovely age of gold!

Not that the rivers roll'd

With milk, or that the woods wept honey-dew;

Not that the ready ground

Produced without a wound,

Or the mild serpent had no tooth that slew;

Not that a cloudless blue

For ever was in sight,

Or that the heaven, which burns

And now is cold by turns,

Look'd out in glad and everlasting light ;

No, nor that even the insolent ships from far

Brought war to no new lands, nor riches worse than war :

"But solely that that vain

And breath-invented pain,

That idol of mistake, that worship'd cheat,

That Honour-since so call'd

By vulgar minds appall'd,

Play'd not the tyrant with our nature yet.

It had not come to fret

The sweet and happy fold

Of gentle human-kind;

Nor did its hard law bind

Souls nursed in freedom; but that law of gold,

That glad and golden law, all free, all fitted,

Which nature's own hand wrote-What pleases, is permitted."

Guarini, who wrote his "Pastor Fido" in emulation of the Aminta, undertook to show that these regrets were immoral, and agreeably to an Italian fashion, made at once a grave rebuke and a literal rhyming parody of the original, in an ode beginning with the same words, and repeating most of them! His version of "What pleases, is permitted," is "Take pleasure, if permitted!"-as if Tasso did not know all about that side of the question, and was not prepared to be quite as considerate in

his moral conduct and his discountenance of rakes and seducers as Guarini: whose poem, after all, incurred charges of licence and temptation, from which that of his prototype was free ;an old conventional story! All which Tasso did, was to put into the mouths of his shepherds, themselves an ideal people, a wish which is felt by the whole world-namely, that duty and inclination could be more reconciled to innocence than they are; and the world has shown that it agreed with his honest sighs, and not with the pick-thank common-places of his reprover; for it has treasured his beautiful ode in its memory, and forgotten its insulting echo.

Nevertheless, there are fine things in Guarini, and such as the world has consented to remember, though not of this allaffecting sort. One of these is the address to the woods, beginning

"Care selve beate,

E voi, solinghe e taciturni orrori,

Di riposo e di pace alberghi veri:"

an exordium, which somebody (was it Mrs. Katharine Phillips, the "matchless Orinda ?") has well translated :

Dear happy groves, and you, the dark retreat
Of silent horror, rest's eternal seat."

It expresses

We are sorry we cannot recollect any more. the wish, which so many have felt, to live in retirement, and be devoted to the beauties of nature. Another passage, more generally known, turns also upon a very general feeling of regret that of seeing spring-time reappear, unaccompanied with the joys we have lost. Guarini was safer in following his original into these sincere corners of the heart, than when he