'LIBRARY 
 
 I 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF 
 CALIFORNIA 
 
 SAN DIEGO
 
 AY 
 
 2-
 
 Columbia 
 STUDIES IN COMPARATIVE LITERATURE 
 
 IDYLLS OF FISHERMEN
 
 COLUMBIA 
 
 UNIVERSITY PRESS 
 
 SALES AGENTS 
 
 NEW YORK : 
 
 LEMCKE & BUECHNER 
 30-32 WEST 27TH STREET 
 
 LONDON : 
 
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 TORONTO : 
 
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 IDYLLS OF FISHERMEN 
 
 A HISTORY OF THE LITERARY SPECIES 
 
 BY 
 
 HENRY MARION HALL, PH.D. 
 
 York 
 
 THE COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS 
 1912 
 
 All rights reserved
 
 Copyright, 1912 
 By THE COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRES 
 
 Printed from type March, 1912 
 
 PRESS OF 
 
 THE NEW ERA PRINTING c 
 LANCASTER. PA.
 
 THIS monograph has been approved by the De- 
 partment of English and Comparative Literature in 
 Columbia University as a contribution to knowledge 
 worthy of publication. 
 
 A. H. THORNDIKE, 
 
 Secretary.
 
 TO MY MOTHER 
 
 FLORENCE HOWE HALL 
 
 THIS BOOK IS AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED
 
 PREFACE 
 
 Many of the works in foreign languages cited 
 in this book are familiar to scholars, but as the 
 plan of the work has been to render all quota- 
 tions in English, for the convenience of readers a 
 list of translations easily accessible in libraries 
 has been embodied in the Bibliography.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 I. ORIGINS OF THE PASTORAL OF FISHERS i 
 
 The origin of the English idyll of fishermen 
 in ancient Greek literature and the develop- 
 ment of the pastoral of fishers in Greek and in 
 classical Latin. 
 
 II. SANNAZARO AND His IMITATORS ON 
 
 THE CONTINENT 45 
 
 The immediate source of the fisher idyll of 
 the Renaissance in the " piscatory eclogues " 
 of Sannazaro, and the development of the 
 species in the pastoral literature of Italy, Spain 
 and France. 
 
 III. THE ENGLISH FISHER IDYLLS 96 
 
 The idyll of fishermen in England from the 
 earliest times to the final decay of the " new 
 style" of pastoral in the eighteenth century. 
 
 APPENDIX i gg 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY '201 
 
 CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF THE CHIEF ENG- 
 LISH PlSCATORIES 212 
 
 INDEX 214
 
 IDYLLS OF FISHERMEN 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 ORIGINS OF THE PASTORAL OF FISHERS 
 
 The origin of English fisher idylls, or "pisca- 
 tory eclogues," is to be found in the poetry of 
 ancient Greece, just as is that of shepherd song. 
 In a land of islets, sounds, and promontories, 
 many a youth drove his flock afield on hillsides 
 whence he could look down on the blue shield of 
 the sea, rimmed with white surf, seething and 
 thundering on rock-ribbed coasts, or tumbling in 
 lines of breakers along curving reaches of yellow 
 sand. Amid the waste of dunes a spot here and 
 there marked the hut of a fisher, while not far 
 away the solitary owners might be seen, tugging 
 at the oars or hauling their nets. When these 
 men in the fishing skiffs paused for a moment in 
 their labor and glanced towards the uplands, they 
 saw the white of sheep, dots on green pastures, 
 or heard perhaps the faint and distant music of 
 the pastoral pipes. By very necessity the herds- 
 man and the fisher were near neighbors, so it is 
 only natural that they should appear in verse as 
 companion figures. Thus there existed in the 
 beginning of country song an obvious relation- 
 ship between poetry dealing with rustics and that 
 concerned with fishermen.
 
 2 IDYLLS OF FISHERMEN 
 
 This relationship was obviously determined by 
 the accident of neighborhood, but limited by the 
 essential differences between the verdant fields 
 sacred to Pan and those barren, desolate expanses 
 owning the sway of Neptune. The gray of the 
 sea dims most ancient pictures of fishing life, and 
 in them, as a rule, we may look in vain for the 
 sunny warmth of Sicilian meadows where shep- 
 herds pipe and sing. It is noteworthy also that 
 the mood of piscatory poetry is usually serious 
 or melancholy, and in keeping with the surround- 
 ings. Even legends about the deities of fishers 
 share this quality. Proteus is almost an incar- 
 nation of the swift and awful changes of the 
 ocean, a lonely prophet voice of many waters. 
 So it is also with the stories of Arion cast over- 
 board by the sailors, of Ceyx and Haley one, of 
 Circe's frightful revenge on Scylla, and of many 
 more. 
 
 The essential difference between these two va- 
 rieties of verse is well illustrated in their begin- 
 nings. As soon as rustic song became literature 
 poets selected for their themes activities which 
 they deemed typical, but which at the same time 
 appeared appropriate for poetical expression 
 such, for instance, as the pasturing of herds rather 
 than the cleansing of folds or pens. The things 
 thus consciously chosen tended in time to be- 
 come fixed as pastoral conventions. Such selec- 
 tion with the resultant growth of conventions 
 characterizes also the work of those who describe 
 fishers. The men may fish, talk, sing or dream, 
 but the sordid details of their lives, the scaling
 
 ORIGINS OF THE PASTORAL OF FISHERS 3 
 
 or cleaning of fish and the like are purposely 
 omitted. The earliest sketches show these toil- 
 ers of the sea to be men of great age, dogged 
 patience, bitter poverty, yet of contentment with 
 their lot, and these characteristics after a while 
 become generally associated with the piscatory 
 poem. 
 
 These limitations and these conventions show 
 that the work embodying them deserves to be 
 classed as pastoral, in spite of the consideration 
 that the barren aspects of the life described lend 
 to early pieces about fishermen an appearance 
 of realism perhaps greater than that in related 
 poetry concerning shepherds. The body of an- 
 cient literature thus dealing with the neighbors 
 of the shepherd is not great, but it develops along 
 parallel lines with bucolics, and will be found 
 affected by nearly every change incident to pas- 
 toral evolution. The shepherds' " Golden Age," 
 however, was never considered a happy, care- free 
 time for fishermen. It is worth noting, too, that 
 whereas it was believed that Apollo had once 
 come down on earth to live as a shepherd, the 
 only corresponding fisher myth is that of Glaucus, 
 who was regarded as singularly lucky in that he 
 was transformed into an ocean deity, and so es- 
 caped from an existence of toil and misery. 
 
 Theocritus (c. 280 B. C.) is the creator of the 
 literary piscatory, as he is of the literary bucolic, 
 and the main object of this essay is to trace the 
 development of the class of poems, with related 
 pieces of prose, which are in a general way de- 
 scended from his fisher idyll. For such a study
 
 4 IDYLLS OF FISHERMEN 
 
 a brief account of the beginnings of the genre in 
 earlier Greek forms the logical introduction, since 
 fishermen are described by Homer, and figure in 
 epigrams, mimes and plays of great antiquity. 
 It is necessary, however, to omit examination of 
 miscellaneous material relating rather to fish-lore 
 than to the pursuits of men. Much of this is to 
 be found in Athenaeus' " Deipnosophists," a sort 
 of philosophers' feast, in which the qualities of 
 everything edible are discussed, with quotations 
 about fish from plays, histories, treatises and 
 various other kinds of literature. To this extra- 
 ordinary work we owe the preservation of many 
 fragments of the earliest mimes, but unfortu- 
 nately the interest of Athenaeus in food gives a 
 one-sided view to all his citations. 
 
 The history of the fisher eclogue may be con- 
 veniently divided into three parts, the first of 
 which includes consideration of the extant matter 
 in Greek and in classical Latin. After this pre- 
 liminary survey comes the work of the humanist 
 Sannazaro (ante 1503), who initiated the modern 
 variety. He contrived a variant on the manner 
 of Virgil's pastorals, shifting the scene from 
 Arcadia to the seashore, changing herdsmen into 
 fishers, and introducing relevant material from 
 Theocritus. These pieces were extensively imi- 
 tated in Italy, both in Latin and in the vernacular, 
 and the resultant body of poetry constitutes a 
 recognized literary species, closely related to con- 
 temporary bucolics. A discussion of these ma- 
 rine pastorals will be followed by an account of 
 the spread of the fisher motive to other literary
 
 ORIGINS OF THE PASTORAL OF FISHERS 5 
 
 forms, such as the sonnet, the romance, and the 
 drama. Finally, this second division of the treatise 
 must deal with the wider dissemination of the 
 Sannazarian " ecloga piscatoria," evidenced by 
 imitations in France and in Spain. The intro- 
 duction of the form into Elizabethan England, 
 with the story of the growth of the English fisher 
 idyll, forms the subject treated in the last portion 
 of the present work. 
 
 The earliest pictures of country life extant in 
 Greek are found in Homer's Iliad. On the mighty 
 shield of Achilles 1 the God of Fire wrought in 
 tin, and brass, and gold, the shapes of shepherds 
 playing on their pipes as they drive their flocks 
 to water, where warriors lie in wait to seize them ; 
 of broad pastures in a pleasant glade, all white 
 with browsing sheep ; of cottages, stalls and wat- 
 tled folds, and of herdsmen grazing their kine by 
 a murmuring river. Still more elaborate are 
 gravings of a great vineyard in busy vintage time, 
 of vast fallows where plows are drawn by plod- 
 ding cattle, and of a broad field of wheat through 
 which the harvesters mow their way, while 
 sheave-binders bind the sheaves, servants prepare 
 feast and sacrifice, and maids knead meal for the 
 hungry reapers. 
 
 Homer's fishermen are not drawn in such de- 
 tail, but the fact that they appear here and there 
 in epic similes is sufficient reminder of the famil- 
 iarity of the ancients with the hard life of those 
 who wrung a scant living from the ocean. The 
 
 1 Bryant's translation, Book 18, 541-606.
 
 O IDYLLS OF FISHERMEN 
 
 poet says, for instance, that Patroclus in battle 
 looked : 2 
 
 ..." as when an angler sits 
 
 Upon a jutting rock, and from the sea 
 
 Draws a huge fish with line and gleaming hook, 
 
 So did Patroclus, with his shining spear, 
 
 Draw forth the panting Trojan from his car 
 
 And shook him clear : he fell to earth and died." 
 
 Another illustration occurs in the Odyssey, where 
 Scylla seizes the companions of Ulysses : 
 
 " As when an angler on a jutting rock 
 Sits with his taper rod, and casts his bait 
 To snare the smaller fish, he sends the horn 
 Of a wild bull that guards his line afar 
 Into the water, and jerks out a fish, 
 And throws it gasping shoreward, so were they 
 Uplifted gasping to the rocks. . . ."* 
 
 Such glimpses in the Homeric poems give the 
 same picture of solitude, poverty, and patient 
 labor, and contrast sharply with the other scenes 
 from humble life. 
 
 " The Shield of Heracles," a heroic poem for- 
 merly attributed to Hesiod, but now conceded to 
 be by a later poet, presents in more ornate and 
 florid style the same kind of pictures as those 
 which appear on the buckler described in the 
 Iliad. Just as in Homer's poem the sea encircles 
 the entire shield, but it is described at some length, 
 with flights of screaming swans that " skimmed 
 the breasted surge," while in the waves " fishes 
 
 2 Bryant, 16, 510-515. 
 
 3 Bryant, 12, 300-306.
 
 ORIGINS OF THE PASTORAL OF FISHERS 7 
 
 were tossing in tumultuous leaps." In another 
 place : 
 
 "... there appeared 
 
 A sheltering haven from the untamed rage 
 Of ocean. It was wrought of tin refined, 
 And rounded by the chisel ; and it seemed 
 Like to the dashing wave ; and in the midst 
 Full many dolphins chased the fry, and show'd 
 As though they swam the waters, to and fro 
 Darting tumultuous. Two of silver scale 
 Panting above the wave, the fishes mute 
 Gorged, that beneath them shook their quivering 
 
 fins 
 
 In brass. But on the crag a fisher sate 
 Observant : in his grasp he held a net 
 Like one that, poising, rises to the throw." 4 
 
 The poem is very obviously an imitation of 
 Homer, and it seems likely that the poet bor- 
 rowed his picture of the fisher from the older 
 epic. Yet this marine view, with the haven and 
 the cliff is not, as in the Homeric work, chance 
 illustration, but is a careful elaboration of a suit- 
 able background for the solitary figure, just as 
 the fields in the ancient pastoral form an artistic 
 setting for the laborers. It is by far the most 
 complete illustration from fisher life extant be- 
 fore Theocritus. 
 
 From these and other fragments preserved by 
 Athenaeus it is safe to assume that much chance 
 illustration drawn from the activities of fishers 
 has been lost. The occasional occurrence of early 
 fisher epigrams, too, with the marked similarity 
 
 4 Tr. C. A, Elton, 422-9, 283-95.
 
 8 IDYLLS OF FISHERMEN 
 
 between these and the more numerous group 
 known to be the work of later imitators, suggests 
 the possibility that a considerable number may 
 have been composed. The most ancient are the 
 following, the first of which has been attributed 
 to Sappho, 5 and the second to Alcaeus : 
 
 " Meniscus, mourning for his only son, 
 The toil-experienced fisher, Pelagon, 
 Has placed upon his tomb a net and oar, 
 The badges of a painful life and poor." 
 
 " THE POOR FISHERMAN." 
 
 " The fisher Diotinus had at sea 
 And shore the same abode of poverty, 
 His trusty boat and when his days were spent, 
 Therein self-rowed, to ruthless Dis he went; 
 For that which did through life his woes beguile, 
 Supplied the old man with a funeral pile." 
 
 Now let us compare a typical bucolic epigram by 
 Theocritus, "For a Herdsman's Offering": 
 
 " Daphnis, the white-limbed Daphnis, that pipes 
 on his fair flute the pastoral strains, offered to Pan 
 these gifts his pierced reed-pipes, his crook, a jave- 
 lin keen, a fawn-skin, and the scrip wherein he was 
 wont on a time to carry the apples of Love." 
 
 Meniscus and Diotinus are aged, lonely, and mis- 
 erably poor. They are not " white-limbed," nor 
 do they play the flute nor "carry the apples of 
 Love." They are like all the other fishermen in 
 ancient Greek, whether we read of them in epi- 
 
 Tr. T. Fawkes, Epigram i. 
 
 8 E. W. Peter, " The Poets and Poetry of the Ancients."
 
 ORIGINS OF THE PASTORAL OF FISHERS 9 
 
 grams, in Aesop (560 B. C. ?), or in fragments 
 of lost treatises. 
 
 The relationship between primitive shepherd 
 song and the worship of rustic gods finds its ana- 
 logue in the connection between fishermen and 
 the worship of marine divinities. In many cities 
 offerings of fish, or even of eels, smoked on altars 
 in the temples. Apollo, whom countrymen hon- 
 ored as " Mouse-killer," was worshipped among 
 the Eleans under the title of " Fish-eater," and in 
 the fane of his sister goddess Diana at Pisa, there 
 was once a picture in which Neptune was repre- 
 sented as bringing a tunny to Jupiter in labor. In 
 another city the seasonal advent of tunnies was 
 celebrated by a religious festival called the 
 " Thunnaeum," in which fishermen sacrificed to 
 the sea-king the first fish caught. Mullets were 
 highly regarded for their edible qualities, for 
 being destroyers of the poisonous " sea-hare," and 
 as being sacred to Hecate, one of the trinity to 
 which Artemis belonged. For these reasons they 
 were always carried about during the celebration 
 of the Artemisia. Hecate was herself sometimes 
 regarded as a sea-goddess. At Corinth, the city 
 between two seas, festivals in honor of Neptune 
 led to the production of dithyrambic choruses 
 sung by celebrants dancing round an altar. One 
 piece, attributed to Arion, is a hymn addressed to 
 the ocean king, with shoals of nereids and fish 
 swarming around him in the waves. 
 
 The conception of sacred and mysterious fish 
 was very ancient and appears first in the myths 
 about Glaucus, once a fisherman of the " Golden
 
 10 IDYLLS OF FISHERMEN 
 
 Age." According to the usual version of the 
 story he one day caught in his net a large number 
 of fine fish. These he landed, and admired their 
 beauty as they lay gasping on the turf. All at 
 once they nibbled the herbage, became filled with 
 fresh life, and swam down the bank over the 
 beach to the water. The astonished Glaucus 
 plucked some of the strange grass and tasted it. 
 Instantly he was transformed into a sea-god, with 
 green hair and a scaly tail, and plunged into the 
 waves among the escaped prey. He remained in 
 the ocean, and became endowed with powers of 
 prophecy. At a later time he fell in love with 
 the nymph Scylla, whom Circe, out of jealousy, 
 changed into a sea-monster. Many slightly dif- 
 ferent versions of this story were rendered in 
 verse or prose in very early times, and at a later 
 period furnished subject matter for several 
 laments. 
 
 One other legend about a fisherman of the 
 Golden Age is given in a fragment of the lost 
 poem by Pancrates the Arcadian, "Works of 
 the Sea." The poet cites the superstition com- 
 mon among seamen that the pompilus (nautilus) 
 was a sacred fish, and tells a story to illustrate it. 
 Epopeus, an aged fisher on the island of Icarus 
 during the Golden Age, once threatened to punish 
 this fish. He was angling with his son one day, 
 and they had ill luck, landing nothing but pompili. 
 This had happened before, so he and his son in 
 a rage ate every one of their catch. Not long 
 afterwards a whale attacked their boat and de- 
 voured the old man in the presence of his son.
 
 ORIGINS OF THE PASTORAL OF FISHERS I I 
 
 Before leaving for the present this matter of 
 the sacred fish, it is worth noting that according 
 to one story Apollo learned prophecy from Glau- 
 cus. It is said, too, that near a certain grove 
 sacred to the sun-god people used to consult the 
 fish for oracles. It was necessary for the ques- 
 tioner to provide two wooden spits with meat on 
 them and to cast these into a certain eddy. Nu- 
 merous " finny herds," including the " prophetic 
 grayling" and small whales came to the bait, 
 while a prophet observed them. His declaration 
 varied with the size and number of the mysterious 
 swimmers. Much floating material of this sort 
 connected with stories of sea-gods, nereids, and 
 metamorphosis, doubtless familiar from very early 
 times, was eventually embodied in various treat- 
 ises, which contain more " unnatural natural his- 
 tory" than reliable data. 
 
 From fragments of ancient plays it is evident 
 that fishers were always among the familiar char- 
 acters on the stage, and that they were sometimes 
 protagonists. They figured in the earliest come- 
 dies about which anything is known, those by 
 Epicharmus (490 B. C.) founder of the "Old" 
 or " Dorian " comedy in Sicily. Some of these 
 pieces parodied mythology, while others held the 
 mirror up to everyday life. He was the first 
 playwright to ridicule the greedy parasite, and 
 the characters which he drew became stock per- 
 sonages in later drama. More lines remain from 
 his burlesque " Hebe's Marriage " and from "The 
 Muses," a recast of the same work, than from 
 any others. The Muses are not the traditional
 
 12 IDYLLS OF FISHERMEN 
 
 ones, but daughters of river-gods whose streams 
 abound in fish. Apparently they masquerade as 
 fishermen, perhaps as a chorus, equipped with 
 rods and nets, eager to capture food for the wed- 
 ding feast. The Sea King joins them: 
 
 " Neptune then arrives himself 
 Laden with most beauteous nets 
 In the boats of fair Phoenicia, 
 Then we all do spari catch 
 And scari too, that sacred fish 
 Whose very dung may not be thrown away." 
 
 His brother Jupiter shows great voracity, and 
 seizes most of the prizes caught, keeping some 
 for himsel f , but presenting others to Juno. Similar 
 broad extravagance characterizes " The Muses," 
 but the band of fishermen bears a more important 
 part in the action. It seems likely, also, that 
 fishers were drawn with realistic touches in sev- 
 eral plays on everyday life by Epicharmus. We 
 can form no definite conclusions from the mere 
 bits of dialogue, but in such pieces as " Land and 
 Sea," fishermen and countrymen probably figured 
 in burlesque by contrast of manners. 
 
 From Epicharmus Sophron apparently inher- 
 ited the stock figures for his Sicilian mimes, but 
 he is thought to have characterized them with 
 more subtile humor. Each piece was a single 
 scene, and " The Clown and the Fisherman " may 
 have presented in compact form, the same situa- 
 tion as did the earlier " Land and Sea." Little, 
 however, is left of either play besides descriptions 
 of fish and remarks on their habits. In another 
 of Sophron's mimes, " The Tunny Catcher," the
 
 ORIGINS OF THE PASTORAL OF FISHERS 13 
 
 characters were an aged fisher and his son 
 " Cothonias," a name said by Athenaeus to have 
 been suggested by the " cothon," a fish that loves 
 to bathe in mud. The single vestige remains a 
 puzzle : 
 
 " But if your stomach happens to have swallowed 
 a shrimp." 
 
 To reconstruct these interludes is, of course, im- 
 possible, but it is considered probable that they 
 resembled, in witty, realistic parry and thrust of 
 dialogue, the pieces by a successor, Herondas, 
 eight of which have recently been recovered. It 
 is safe to assume, too, that fishers were commonly 
 presented in mimes. The influence of Sophron 
 on the poems of Theocritus is thought to have 
 been considerable, and it should be noted that the 
 conversation in pieces like " The Tunny Catcher " 
 may well have formed precedent for that in the 
 Theocritean idyll about the two old fishermen. 
 
 Before turning to that poem it may be well to 
 add a word about the piscatory element in other 
 plays. Plato may have ridiculed the legend of 
 Sappho's vain love for the Lesbian fisherman in 
 his comedy of " Phaon," and he seems to have 
 introduced fishers also in his " Europa " and 
 " Holidays." Antiphanis, a prolific playwright 
 of " Middle Comedy," produced a drama entitled 
 " The Female Fisher," of which more is known 
 than of any other play of the class under consid- 
 eration. The most considerable fragment runs 
 as follows:
 
 14 IDYLLS OF FISHERMEN 
 
 " Give me some cuttle-fish. O Hercules ! 
 They've dirtied every place with ink; here, take 
 
 them 
 
 And throw them back again into the sea, 
 To wash them clean : or else they'll say, O Dorion, 
 That you have caught some rotten cuttle-fish : 
 And put this cray-fish back beside the sprats. 
 He's a fine fish, by Jove. O mighty Jove, 
 
 you Callimedon, who now will eat you? 
 No one who's not prepared to pay his share. 
 I've giv'n you your place here on the right, 
 You mullets, food for great Callisthenes; 
 Who eats his patrimony in one dish, 
 
 Next comes the mighty conger from Sinope, 
 With his stout spines: the first who comes shall 
 
 have 
 
 For Misgolas has no great love for such. 
 But here's a citharus, and if he sees him 
 He never will keep off his hands from him; 
 For he, indeed, does secretly adhere 
 As close as wax to all the harp-players. 
 
 1 ought to send this best of fish, this tench, 
 Still all alive and leaping in the dish, 
 
 To the fair Pythionica, he's so fine : 
 But still she will not taste him, as her heart 
 Is wholly set on cured fish, here I place 
 These thin anchovies and this dainty turtle 
 Apart for Theano, to counterbalance her." 
 
 Apparently the speaker (the "Female Fisher") 
 and Dorion are taking their catch from a boat to 
 display it on a stall for sale. In citing these lines 
 Athenaeus remarks: 
 
 "And it is a very clever way in which An- 
 tiphanis thus jested upon Misgolas, as devoting 
 all his attention to beautiful harp-players and
 
 ORIGINS OF THE PASTORAL OF FISHERS 15 
 
 lyre-players," adding that Pythionica is spoken 
 of as fond of cured fish because she had for 
 lovers the sons of Chaerephilus, the seller of salt 
 fish. 
 
 The humor in this play is much like that in the 
 mimes by Herondas, and the lines extant give a 
 clue to the probable nature of fisher drama. Here 
 again, however, the interest of Athenaeus in food 
 leads to his citing a long list of fish. He speaks 
 enthusiastically about a dialogue concerning the 
 actual pursuits of fishermen in a play by An- 
 tiphanis called " The Shrimp," but instead of 
 quoting it he gives a large number of passages 
 concerning the greed of fish-mongers. In one 
 place, to be sure, he pictures the death of some 
 fishermen in a storm, but only to show the result- 
 ant rise in the price of sea-food at the city stalls. 
 From other bits it appears that Archippus' " The 
 Fishes and the Athenians " satirized various peo- 
 ple under the names of fish spelled in the same 
 way as their own, and a vase-painting represent- 
 ing men astride dolphins is thought to have been 
 suggested by this comedy. A lost play by a con- 
 temporary, Diphylus, is believed to have been 
 imitated in the Roman Plautus' " Rudens," with 
 its idyllic pictures of fishing life. 
 
 From these older plays fishermen were taken 
 into " New Comedy," notably into the work of 
 the great Menander. In the " Carthaginian " a 
 fisher says : 
 
 " I offered Boreas much frankincense 
 And yet I did not catch one single fish, so I must 
 Now cook lentils for my supper."
 
 1 6 IDYLLS OF FISHERMEN 
 
 A few lines from "Purple" ("The Purple 
 Fish?") also mention actual fishing: 
 
 " But I, as being a skillful fisherman, 
 Have carefully devised all sorts of arts 
 To catch those vile paguri, enemies 
 To all the gods and all the little fishes. 
 And shall I not without delay beguile 
 An old buglossus? That would be well done." 
 
 Menander 1 gave the title "The Fisherman" to 
 another drama in which characters of various 
 sorts besides fishers were introduced. Thus we 
 find the speeches of a band of exiles from Hera- 
 clea, who give a ridiculous description of Dion- 
 ysus, the gluttonous tyrant of their city. Other 
 lines, possibly spoken by merchants, enumerate 
 various articles of merchandise brought to port 
 by a ship. The only mention of the sea is this : 
 
 " And the disturbed and muddy sea which breeds 
 The largest tunnies." 
 
 Theocritus must have known many works in 
 which fishers were described, but he needed no 
 suggestion for the composition of his idyll about 
 the fisherman's dream beyond the tender remi- 
 niscence with which he looked back on the scenes 
 of his youth in Sicily. We see the waves sparkling 
 beneath the moon when the poet makes forsaken 
 Simaetha cry: 
 
 " Lo, silent is the deep, and silent the winds, but 
 never silent the torment in my breast." 
 
 1 Pollux (Onomastic. 50, 10, c. 12) cites Menander's play 
 by name, and says that in it a fisher came upon the stage 
 equipped for fishing.
 
 ORIGINS OF THE PASTORAL OF FISHERS 1 7 
 
 In the song of Lycidas the sea is as bright as the 
 singer's mood, and as calm : 
 
 "The halcyons will lull the waves, and lull the 
 deep, and the east, that stirs the sea-weed on the 
 farthest shores, the halcyons that are dearest to the 
 green-haired mermaids of all the birds that take 
 their prey from the salt sea." 
 
 The miserable cyclops Polyphemus : 
 
 " sat by the sea-weed of the beach from the dawn- 
 ing of day," or he would sing to his cruel love . . . 
 " sitting on the crest of the tall cliff, and looking to 
 the deep," and beseech her to " leave the gray sea 
 to roll against the land." 
 
 In another place the giant's dog : 
 
 "barks as he looks into the brine, and now the 
 beautiful waves that softly plash reveal him as he 
 runs upon the shore." 
 
 In another scene Menalcas, meeting Daphnis on 
 a pasture overlooking the ocean, says : 
 
 " Nay, but beneath this rock will I sing, with thee 
 in mine arms, and watch our flocks feeding together, 
 and before us the Sicilian sea." 
 
 The Argo's crew, coming to an island, " landed on 
 the deep seashore and a sea-bank sheltered from the 
 wind, they strewed their beds, and their hands were 
 busy with firewood." 
 
 Even in his familiar comparisons Theocritus 
 thinks of the sea : 
 
 " it is as light labour to count the waves upon the 
 beach, as many as wind and gray-sea tide roll upon
 
 1 8 IDYLLS OF FISHERMEN 
 
 the shore ... as to win favour from a man that is 
 smitten with the greed of gain." 
 
 Fishermen were as familiar to the Sicilian poet 
 as the waters by which they lived, and we catch 
 glimpses of them in several of the idylls besides 
 the one in which they are the only personages. 
 A love-sick goatherd, singing in vain before the 
 cave of Amaryllis, turns suddenly towards the 
 cliffs, uttering this threat : 
 
 " I will cast off my coat of skins, and into yonder 
 waves will I spring, where the fisher Olpis watches 
 for the tunny shoals, and even if I die not, surely 
 thy pleasure will have been done." 
 
 Elsewhere a reward for singing is mentioned 
 thus: 
 
 "To the other I gave a goodly spiral shell, the 
 meat that filled it once I had eaten after stalking 
 the fish on the Icarian rocks (I cut it into five 
 shares for five of us), and Menalcas blew a blast on 
 the shell." 
 
 This is a reminder that shepherds 63 occasionally 
 went fishing, as they are mentioned as doing in 
 most famous pastorals of later times. The most 
 graphic description of a fisher in the bucolic 
 pieces is one of the carvings on an ivy bowl. The 
 designs present contrasting pictures of primitive 
 life, of the same sort as those graven on the heroic 
 shields two swains trying to win the favor of a 
 pretty maiden, and : 
 
 " beyond these an ancient fisherman and a rock 
 are fashioned, a rugged rock, whereon with might 
 
 68 It is interesting to note that Theocritus speaks of him- 
 self as the fisherman who secured the spiral shell.
 
 ORIGINS OF THE PASTORAL OF FISHERS 19 
 
 and main the old man drags a net for his cast, as 
 one that labours stoutly. Thou wouldst say that he 
 is fishing with all the might of his limbs, so big 
 the sinews swell all about his neck, grey-haired 
 though he be, but his strength is as the strength of 
 youth. Now divided but a little space from the sea- 
 worn old man is a vine-yard." 
 
 It has been thought that the picture of the old 
 man is imitated from the one already cited from 
 "The Shield of Heracles," and it is likely that 
 Theocritus is here softening the Homeric buckler 
 motive to suit idyllic life. At any rate one sees 
 at a glance that these fishermen differ in no re- 
 spect from those mentioned in more ancient writ- 
 ings, but we think of them as old, patient, half- 
 starved through dint of toil by day or night, " sea- 
 worn." Their horny hands can better grasp a 
 trident than hold the delicate pastoral reeds. 
 They play no tunes, they dance no dances, and 
 they sing no songs, unless perhaps some rowing 
 chant, as they tug at the oars when homeward 
 bound. 
 
 The twenty-first idyll gives a more studied, 
 elaborate portrayal of their hard lot : 
 
 " Tis Poverty alone, Diophantus, that awakens the 
 arts ; Poverty, the very teacher of labour. Nay, not 
 even sleep is permitted, by weary cares, to men that 
 live by toil, and if, for a little while, one close his 
 eyes in the night, cares throng about him and sud- 
 denly disquiet his slumber. 
 
 Two fishers, on a time, two old men, together lay 
 and slept they had strown the dry sea-moss for a 
 bed in their wattled cabin, and there they lay against 
 the leafy wall. Beside them were strewn the in-
 
 20 IDYLLS OF FISHERMEN 
 
 struments of their toilsome hands, the fishing creels 
 the rods of reed, the hooks, the sails, bedraggled 
 with sea-spoil, the lines, the weels, the lobster pots 
 woven of rushes, the seines, two oars, and an old 
 coble upon props. Beneath their heads was a scanty 
 matting, their clothes, their sailor's caps. Here was 
 all their toil, here all their wealth. The threshold 
 had never a door, nor a watch-dog; all things, all, 
 to them seemed superfluity, for Poverty was their 
 sentinel. They had no neighbor by them, but ever 
 against their narrow cabin floated up the sea. 
 
 The chariot of the moon had not yet reached the 
 mid-point of her course, but their familiar toil 
 awakened the fishermen ; from their eyelids they cast 
 out slumber, and roused their souls with speech. 
 
 ASPHALION. They lie all, my friend, who say that 
 the nights wane short in summer, when Zeus brings 
 the long days. Already have I seen ten thousand 
 dreams and the dawn is not yet. Am I wrong, what 
 ails them, the nights are surely long? 
 
 THE FRIEND. Asphalion, thou blamest the beau- 
 tiful summer. It is not that the season hath wil- 
 fully passed his natural course, but care, breaking 
 thy sleep, makes night seem long to thee. 
 
 ASPHALION. Didst ever learn to interpret 
 dreams? for good dreams have I beheld. I would 
 not leave thee to go without thy share in my vision ; 
 even as we go shares in the fish we catch, so share 
 all my dreams. Sure, thou art not to be surpassed 
 in wisdom; and he is the best interpreter of dreams 
 that hath wisdom for his teacher. Moreover, we 
 have time to idle in, for what could a man find to do 
 lying on a leafy bed beside th; waves and slumber- 
 ing not? Nay the ass is among the thorns, the lan- 
 tern in the town hall, for, they say, it is always 
 sleepless.
 
 ORIGINS OF THE PASTORAL OF FISHERS 21 
 
 THE FRIEND. Tell me then, the vision of the 
 night; nay tell all to thy friend. 
 
 ASPHALION. As I was sleeping late, amid the 
 labours of the salt sea (and truly not too well-fed, 
 for we supped early if thou dost remember, and did 
 not overtax our bellies), I saw myself busy on a 
 rock, and there I sat and watched the fishes, and 
 kept spinning the bait with the rods. And one of 
 the fish nibbled, a fat one, for in sleep dogs dream 
 of bread, and of fish dream I. Well he was tightly 
 hooked, and the blood was running, and the rod I 
 grasped was bent with the struggle. So with both 
 hands I strained and had a sore tussle for the 
 monster. How was I ever to land so big a fish with 
 hooks all too slim? Then just to remind him he 
 was hooked, I gently pricked him, pricked, and 
 slackened, and as he did not run, I took in line. My 
 toil was ended with the sight of my prize; I drew 
 up a monstrous fish, lo you a fish all plated thick 
 with gold ! Then fear took hold of me lest he might 
 be some fish beloved of Posidon, or perchance some 
 jewel of the sea-grey Amphitrite. Gently I un- 
 hooked him, lest ever the hooks should retain some 
 of the gold of his mouth. Then I dragged him on 
 shore with the ropes, and swore that never again 
 would I set foot on sea, but abide on land, and lord 
 it over the gold. 
 
 This was what wakened me, but for the rest, set 
 thy mind to it, my friend, for I am in dismay about 
 the oath I swore. 
 
 THE FRIEND. Nay, never fear, thou art no more 
 sworn than thou hast found the golden fish of thy 
 vision ; dreams are but lies. But if thou wilt search 
 these waters, wide awake, and not asleep, there is 
 some hope in thy slumbers ; seek the fish of flesh, 
 lest thou die of famine with all thy dreams of 
 gold ! "
 
 22 IDYLLS OF FISHERMEN 
 
 The authenticity of this piece has been called 
 in question, 7 but it possesses the subtile charm of 
 a picture drawn from life, and is worthy of com- 
 parison with any other Theocritean poems which 
 paint sunnier phases of idyllic existence. It is, 
 moreover, only an elaborate rendering of the 
 same sort of illustration that has been cited from 
 bucolic idylls, and forms with these shorter 
 glimpses of fishermen, precedent for a long line 
 of piscatory pastorals by later writers. Through- 
 out the existence of the species, too, occasional 
 eclogues were composed with a view to repro- 
 ducing the realistic effects that characterize the 
 story of Asphalion and his friend. This realism, 
 with the fact that the two characters are suffi- 
 ciently different as to afford the necessary dra- 
 matic contrast, and that they chat, but do not 
 sing, has been called evidence of mimic origin. 
 That some little play may have embodied a sim- 
 ilar story of credulity in a miraculous dream is 
 likely enough, but the descriptive side of the idyll 
 in its present form and the distinctly serious, 
 moralizing tone are foreign to the mime. 
 
 Asphalion's fear that his catch might be sacred 
 to some sea-god is born of the same superstition 
 to which reference has already been made. It 
 might t>e added that a poet whom Theocritus 
 probably knew at Alexandria, Callimachus, calls 
 the " chrysophrys " sacred in his " Galatea " : 
 
 " Or shall I rather say the gold-browed fish 
 That sacred fish. . . ." 
 
 7 R. J. Cholmel'ey, " The Idylls of Theocritus Edited with 
 Introd. and Notes."
 
 ORIGINS OF THE PASTORAL OF FISHERS 23 
 
 In his epigrams the same writer says the perch 
 is loved by the gods, while a fragment by Theo- 
 critus, part of a panegyric on Berenice, mother 
 of his patron, Ptolemy Philadelphus, mentions a 
 silver fish: 
 
 "And if any man that hath his livelihood from 
 the salt sea, and whose nets serve him for ploughs, 
 prays for wealth, and luck in fishing, let him sacri- 
 fice at midnight, to this goddess, the sacred fish that 
 men call ' silver-white/ for that it is brightest of 
 sheen of all, then let the fisher set his nets, and he 
 shall draw them full from the sea." 
 
 Most of these allusions to sacred fish may be ex- 
 plained by very ancient legends. 7a Thus the dol- 
 phins were loved by Neptune because they helped 
 him to find Amphitrite, when she had fled from 
 him. Again, the nautilus was once a sailor but 
 had been transformed by Apollo, who had become 
 furious with him because he had taken on his 
 ship Ocyrhoe, a girl whom the god loved. In 
 like manner, all the other sacred fish might be 
 explained by folk-lore. 
 
 The Greek poems most closely related to the 
 Theocritean fisher idyll are certain epigrams by 
 a younger contemporary, Leonidas of Tarentum, 
 who is thought to have known Theocritus on the 
 island of Cos. His three fisher epigrams resem- 
 ble the idyll in vocabulary and in several other 
 important particulars. The first one introduces 
 the fisher Diophantus, by which name Theocritus 
 addresses the friend for whom he composed his 
 piscatory poem : 
 
 7a Cf. the fisher in The Arabian Nights, Book I. His 
 songs are prayers like those in Greek epigram.
 
 24 IDYLLS OF FISHERMEN 
 
 " A well curved anchor, and long spears, a fishing 
 line of horse-hair, large baskets for holding fish, 
 with a weel cunningly wrought for the finny prey, 
 impliments of fishers who roam the sea, a rugged 
 trident, spear of Posidon, and a pair of oars from 
 light fishing-skiffs all these the fisherman Dio- 
 phantus set up to the king of his craft, as custom 
 is, the relics of his ancient calling." 
 
 The list of implements is very much the same as 
 that given of the paraphernalia in the cabin of 
 Asphalion, and is enumerated in about the same 
 order. A similar list and a wattled cabin are 
 found in the second fisher epigram : 
 
 " Theris the aged fisherman, whose skill 
 Taught him to live and many a basket fill 
 With fishes, (for their plundering foe was he, 
 And than the sea-fowl oftener tost at sea,) 
 Theris, whose few-oared boat, and seine, and 
 
 hooks, 
 
 Could win the fishes from their secret nooks, 
 Yet, not Arcturus, nor the blasts that blow 
 Down-rushing, swept this aged man below: 
 But, like a lamp long burning, and whose light 
 Flickers, self-spent, and is extinguished quite, 
 In a rush hut he died: to him this grave 
 (No wife no child, he had) his brother fishers 
 
 gave." 
 
 The third of this group 8 pictures a more violent 
 death, and may be paraphrased as follows : 
 
 " Parmis the far-famed fisher, best reaper of the 
 ocean strand, master of all the wiles of labrus, 
 scarus and the bold bait-snapping perch, with all the 
 
 8 A. Pal. VI. 4 ; VII. 295 ; VII. 504.
 
 ORIGINS OF THE PASTORAL OF FISHERS 25 
 
 caves and rocks at the bottom of the sea, as he 
 caught his prey by the reefs of the dark blue deep, 
 grew sad, and pined and prayed for death from the 
 waves. Then destruction darted upon him in a 
 whirl-wind, striking him on the neck, while lines and 
 rod, and anchors were whirled away, for the thread 
 of his life was spun, and a fisherman heaped this 
 mound for the dead." 
 
 The realism in these poems and the elaborate de- 
 tailed treatment mark them as belonging to the 
 same class as the Theocritean idyll of the two old 
 fishers, while occasional extant examples of later 
 imitations indicate that many such pieces were 
 undoubtedly composed. The conventions of all 
 are essentially the same, and show that the fisher 
 epigram constituted a class by itself. 
 
 Bion and Moschus, more famous disciples of 
 Theocritus, wrote no fisher poem. Bion's only 
 picture of the ocean is a fragment of an idyll 
 imitated probably from Theocritus' complaint of 
 Polyphemus to Galatea, while the studied pretti- 
 ness of a description by Moschus, of Europa 
 crossing the deep on the bull's back marks it as 
 the illustration of a mythological "genre-pic- 
 ture." Such productions were typical of the arti- 
 ficial side of Alexandrian letters, and are said in 
 some cases to have been inspired by wall-paint- 
 ings. 9 In marked contrast with such marines 
 stands a single poem in which Moschus pictures 
 the life of fishers. 
 
 9 At Herculaneum is a wall painting of fishers. Philo- 
 stratus the Rhetorician describes a painting representing a 
 lively fishing scene. We even find an old fisher seated on 
 a rock with a rod in hand stamped on a coin from old 
 Crateia.
 
 26 IDYLLS OF FISHERMEN 
 
 " When the wind on the grey salt sea blows softly, 
 then my weary spirits rise, and the land no longer 
 pleases me, and far more doth the calm allure me. 
 But when the hoary deep is roaring, and the sea is 
 broken up into foam, and the waves rage high, then 
 lift I mine eyes unto the earth, and the trees, and 
 fly the sea, and the land is welcome, and the shady 
 wood well pleasing in my sight, where even if the 
 wind blow high, the pine tree sings her song. 
 Surely an evil life leads the fisherman, whose home 
 is his ship and his labours are in the sea, and fishes 
 thereof are his wandering spoil. Nay, sweet to me 
 is sleep beneath the broad-leaved plane-tree; let me 
 love to listen to the murmur of the brook hard by, 
 soothing, not troubling, the husbandman with it=> 
 sound." 
 
 The poet is repelled by the wilder aspects of the 
 ocean, and he thinks with a shudder how hard is 
 the lot of fishermen compared with that of the 
 farmer, who need not fear the storm. Moschus 
 knew no more about fishing than he did about 
 raising sheep, and his glimpse of marine life is 
 as far removed from that pictured by Theocritus 
 as his bucolics are different in spirit from those 
 by his great predecessor. 
 
 More characteristic of the Alexandrian period 
 are epigrams speaking prettily of Venus in her 
 character of wave-born goddess, of nautilus 
 spreading tiny sails to the wind, and the like. 9a 
 Even the poems on Glaucus share the artificiality 
 of other mythological pieces, if we may judge 
 from fragments such as this by the poetess 
 Hedyle: 10 
 
 " See epigrams of Callimachus. 
 M Athenaeus, VII.
 
 ORIGINS OF THE PASTORAL OF FISHERS 27 
 
 " Bearing a gift of love, a mazy shell, 
 Fresh from the Erythrean rock, and with it too 
 The offspring, yet unfledged, of Alcyon, 
 To win the obdurate maid. He gave in vain. 
 Even the lone Siren on the neighboring isle 
 Pitied the lover's tears. For as it chanced, 
 He swam towards the shore which she did haunt, 
 Nigh to th' unquiet caves of Aetna." 
 
 Glaucus here comes to the cave of his beloved 
 Scylla, proffers gifts, and being rebuffed, utters 
 a complaint. The poem is thus a chance ante- 
 cedent of fisher laments in eclogues by the hu- 
 manists. Hedyle's son, Hedylus, is said to have 
 written a similar piece, in which the fisher Glau- 
 cus strove to woo the nymph Melicerta, but being 
 rejected, leaped into the waves and became a god. 
 All these stories belong to the literature of meta- 
 morphosis, rather than to that of the fisher pas- 
 toral, and find their most familiar expression in 
 Ovid. 
 
 Between the days of Theocritus and those of 
 Sannazaro fisher eclogues do not seem to have 
 been composed, but the motive appears here and 
 there in other forms of literature with which the 
 famous humanist may well have been more or 
 less familiar. Of these the epistles of Alciphron 
 (iSoA.D. ?) affect to be intimate correspondence 
 between the stock characters of the mime para- 
 sites, courtesans, shepherds, fishers, flirtatious 
 wives and the rest. The letters give tantalizing 
 glimpses of unfinished romance, so that when we 
 read them we see as in a kaleidoscope, the shift- 
 ing, many-colored life in decadent Athens.
 
 28 IDYLLS OF FISHERMEN 
 
 Whether or not of actual mimic origin, they pic- 
 ture what was always to be seen on the stage, and 
 in the mimes. 
 
 It is therefore reasonable to suppose that the 
 fisher letters may help us to understand the prob- 
 able nature of the mime of fisher-folk. This 
 seems the more plausible because the epistles from 
 fishermen fall naturally into two groups, one of 
 which presents matters akin to those in the recov- 
 ered mimes, while the other group is perhaps 
 more closely related to the Theocritean idyll. 
 To the first class belong the missives dealing with 
 the motives of love or jealousy. One fisherman 
 writes to his wife, praising sea life as more desir- 
 able than that ashore, after which he upbraids her 
 for sneaking away so often to Bacchanalian revels 
 at Athens. A companion piece is a furious note 
 to a fisher from his spouse, accusing him of flirt- 
 ing with a young courtesan, and threatening to 
 return to her father's care. One young fellow, 
 having met ill luck, asks his sweetheart whether 
 he had not better join a crew of prosperous pi- 
 rates. Another youth warns his comrade against 
 wasting money on a singing-girl, but receives a 
 flippant reply, scorning the good counsel, and 
 declaring passionate love for the damsel. Again, 
 a fisher-maiden writes to tell her mother that she 
 is so desperately in love with a handsome pilot 
 that she must marry him or leap from the rocks 
 of Piraeus, as Sappho did from the Leucadian 
 cliffs. Her mother sends an irate answer, saying 
 that the girl " needs a dose of hellebore," and that 
 if her father hears of the nonsense he will throw
 
 ORIGINS OF THE PASTORAL OF FISHERS 29 
 
 her to the fishes. The stories thus glanced at are 
 obviously like those represented in plays, and are 
 the earliest pieces extant in which fishers are rep- 
 resented as being in love, another reason for as- 
 suming that the epistles are of mimic suggestion. 
 
 Besides these a few other letters, notable for 
 satirizing conditions in the city should be classed 
 with the mimic epistles. In one a fisher urges 
 a notorious parasite to use his influence to bring 
 him rich customers, and accuses officers of the 
 market of extorting blackmail. Another expresses 
 fear of impressment in the Athenian navy, be- 
 cause the city is preparing for war. A very lively 
 missive describes a crowd of effeminate youths 
 with frisky dancing-girls, whom a fisherman is 
 hired to take for a sail, and from whom he 
 receives handsome pay. The last of this lot at- 
 tacks usurers. A fisher has pawned his skiff for 
 money with which to have his seines repaired, but 
 the loan-shark duns him until he is forced to sell 
 a gold chain which he is having made for his wife. 
 
 The second group of epistles has to do with 
 the actual pursuits of fishers, and here Alciphron 
 borrowed hints from Theocritus, just as he did 
 in his shepherd and vintage pictures. Presum- 
 ably he knew the city better than the country. In 
 one letter a fisherman tells how he, with several 
 companions, storm-bound for three days on a 
 desolate shore, took refuge in a miserable cabin. 
 Weary and hungry they kept from freezing by a 
 drift-wood fire, but after the tempest they ven- 
 tured out in a crazy skiff, and caught such num- 
 bers of fish that the corks of their net were pulled
 
 3O IDYLLS OF FISHERMEN 
 
 under. Selling the largest of their booty, they 
 had small fry left sufficient for their wives and 
 children. The gray coast, the hut, the old boat, 
 the fishing tackle, the fact that the men are old, 
 the hunger and misery are all very much as we 
 have seen them in Theocritus. None of the re- 
 maining letters shows such striking resemblances 
 with the idyll, but all tell of poverty and hard- 
 ship. One man complains of a bad master who 
 makes him fish all day and all night; another 
 writes to his wife to propose giving up his labor- 
 ious craft and training their children to become 
 husbandmen; another accuses a rich fisher of 
 luring away his assistants by high wages, and 
 another commends a recent exchange of gifts a 
 sea-sparrow, mullets and thirty-five purple fish 
 for a pair of oars. Three epistles concern a tat- 
 tered net which a surly old fellow has abandoned, 
 but which he refuses to give to a poor acquaint- 
 ance. A humorous note relates that a fisher, 
 whose business it is to report the presence of fish 
 to others, finds a place where the water is dark 
 with tunnies. Fishers cast a great net, but draw 
 up only a rotting camel. The last letter of this 
 group describes an approaching storm, and rec- 
 ommends an attempt to bury the bodies that will 
 be washed ashore along the Sicilian beaches. 
 
 In the letters about actual fishing occasional 
 descriptive touches recall the idyllic life as we see 
 it in the poems of Theocritus, and such indebted- 
 ness as these suggest seems the more probable 
 because Alciphron's style is usually rather terse 
 and plain. The shepherd epistles and those by
 
 ORIGINS OF THE PASTORAL OF FISHERS 31 
 
 fishers alike retain many of the pastoral conven- 
 tions, and even the amoebean construction is not 
 entirely lost in sequences of short notes, consist- 
 ing of questions and answers. It is possibly a 
 fair criticism to say that the letters combine in 
 prose, elements of mimic origin with elements 
 due to the influence of the earlier pastoral. 
 
 In Greek later than the work of Alciphron but 
 few compositions have any intimate connection 
 with the Theocritean pastoral of fishers, though 
 the conventions emphasized by Leonidas linger 
 on in later epigrams. Amid sea pictures the gods 
 of fishermen chat confidentially in Lucian's " Dia- 
 logues of the Sea Gods," but only to give witty 
 expression to the author's skepticism towards 
 mythology. Their imitations of earlier poets and 
 their amoebean form give them a place beside 
 the eclogue, and the dialogues may 'be said to 
 form connecting links between the mythological 
 idyll and the humanistic eclogue of marine myth- 
 ology, often considered as one species by Italian 
 poets. Lucian's play, " The Fisherman," has no 
 relationship with the mimes or idylls, but takes 
 its title from a scene in which the poet sits on a 
 parapet of the Acropolis, equipped with the rod 
 of a Piraean fisherman. His bait of gold and 
 figs attracts a swarm of brilliantly colored fish, 
 which he catches : " Salmo Cynicus," " Flat Sole 
 Plateship," and other philosophers clad in scales. 
 
 Bearing somewhat the same relationship to 
 eclogues of fishermen that Virgil's Georgics do 
 to those of shepherds, were the Greek verse 
 treatises on fish and fishing. No fewer than six
 
 32 IDYLLS OF FISHERMEN 
 
 didactic epics of the sort were composed, but 
 only that by Oppian (211-217 A. D.) is extant 
 in complete form. It is written in hexameter, 
 and combines material based on observation with 
 much extraordinary fish-lore gathered from float- 
 ing material. In the last part of the treatise the 
 accounts given of the methods of capturing fish 
 by men on various coasts lend a few pictures akin 
 to independent idylls. Most of the poem, how- 
 ever, is like Pliny's Natural History put into 
 verse. The poems as a whole have little relation- 
 ship with the piscatory eclogue other than that 
 implied in the fact that they are written in verse 
 and tell much about the practices of fishers. 
 
 More important are the later Greek epigrams, 
 mention of which has already been made, and a 
 few examples of which will serve to show how 
 little these pieces differ from their ancient models. 
 The first is by Maecius Quintus, of Smyrna (380 
 A. D.?), an epic poet: 
 
 " To thee Priapus, that dost delight in the sunken 
 reefs, worn down by the waves of Nessis on the 
 sea-coast, and in the overhanging cliffs, has Paris, 
 the fisherman, hung up a crab, with its oyster-like 
 shell, killed by the cleverly catching rod; the flesh 
 he roasted over a fire and happily crunched with his 
 teeth, half-eaten by age, but the shell has he given 
 to thee. Wherefore do thou give him, not abund- 
 ance, but the power to successfully catch with his 
 fishing-line fish to quiet the pangs of hunger. 
 
 Another is by the " Prefect of Egypt " : 
 
 " The aged Cinyras, on ceasing to labour, has 
 offered up to the nymphs these nets worn by the con-
 
 ORIGINS OF THE PASTORAL OF FISHERS 33 
 
 tinued catching of fish. For no longer was he able, 
 with a trembling hand to cast the circular busom of 
 the open net. If there be the offering of a small 
 present, this, ye nymphs, is no blame (to me) ; since 
 the whole life of Cinyras is this." 
 
 One by Serapion of Alexandria was suggested by 
 a bone : 
 
 " This is the bone of a hardworking man. Surely 
 thou wert either a seafaring trafficker, or a fisher- 
 man in a blind wave. Say to mortals, that, while 
 we are urging onwards to other hopes, on such a 
 hope as this are we broken up." 
 
 The last two that will be cited were written as 
 late as the middle (540 A. D. ?) of the sixth cen- 
 tury, under Justinian. The first is by Paulus 
 " Silentuarius," or the " privy counselor," who 
 sent epigrams from the court at Constantinople 
 to the author of the second, Agathias, anthologist 
 and historian, who used to send in reply epigrams 
 from his country house on the Bosphorus : 
 
 "The old Amyntichus bound a net with lead at 
 its extremity round a trident, after ceasing from his 
 toils in the sea, and said to the deity, while 
 shedding tears from his eye-lids, like the swell of 
 the sea " Thou knowest, O blessed power, that I 
 am past work. But limb-wasting poverty, from 
 which there is no escape, is young even at the 
 threshold of old age. Nourish still the gasping old 
 man, but from the land, as thou choosest, O ruler 
 of the land and sea." 
 
 The quotation from Agathias is the only fisher 
 epigram to use a love motive : 
 
 4
 
 34 IDYLLS OF FISHERMEN 
 
 " A fisherman was employed in catching fish. 
 Him did a damsel of property see, and was affected 
 in her heart with desire, and made him the partner 
 of her bed. But he, after a life of poverty, took on 
 himself the swell of all kinds of high bearing. And 
 Fortune with a smile was standing by, and said to 
 Venus, " This is not your contest, but mine." 11 
 
 Some of the poems just cited may have been 
 composed a thousand years after those first quoted 
 in this book, yet in them we find emphasized the 
 same old conventions, and the last fishermen in 
 ancient Greek poetry are like the first, aged, sea- 
 worn, poor and patient. This is just what might 
 be expected, because real fishers differed little 
 from age to age, and it was not until the times of 
 later humanism that new conventions were con- 
 trived for idylls in which they figured. 
 
 A passage by Nonnus (fifth century A. D.) in 
 that extraordinary hexameter poem of mythol- 
 ogy, the " Dionysiaca," depicts with much vigor a 
 set of companion figures like those carved on the 
 shield of Achilles, or perhaps like those of some 
 mural painting. Bacchus, on his way to the land 
 of Cadmus, is represented as gazing with admira- 
 tion on Tyre and the sea-shore near by. Side 
 by side he sees the neatherd and the goatherd, 
 with their grazing beasts ; he listens with delight 
 to the shrill music of the pastoral pipes and to 
 the songs and shouts of fishermen, busy by their 
 skiffs or dragging nets to land. In one place a 
 dryad's voice sounds from an oak in a wood that 
 
 11 The Greek Anthology as selected for the use of West- 
 minster, Eton and other public schools-. Also Edwards' 
 slection>, 7761, 784, 556, 797. Eton, 70.
 
 ORIGINS OF THE PASTORAL OF FISHERS 35 
 
 overhangs the surf, and below a nereid is wan- 
 toning. Ceres speaks to Neptune, herds bellow, 
 sailors talk with wood-cutters, and the rattle of 
 rigging mingles with the murmur of forest leaves. 
 (Dion. 40, 3 2 7-336.) 
 
 Fishers appear also in the romances, the last 
 prose in which the genius of ancient Greece shines 
 conspicuously. In the famous pastoral " Daphnis 
 and Chloe," lla for instance, a picture of fishermen 
 is prettily introduced, and in a manner to illus- 
 trate the old contrast between the idyllic life of 
 shepherds and that of their neighbors, the fisher 
 folk. Daphnis sat with Chloe on a hill near the 
 sea: 
 
 " While they were at their meal, which, however, 
 consisted more of kisses than of food, a fishing 
 boat was seen proceeding along the coast. There 
 was no wind stirring; a perfect calm prevailed; so 
 having taken to their oars the crew were rowing 
 vigorously, their object being to carry some newly- 
 caught fish to a rich man in the city. They dipped 
 their oars, doing what sailors usually do to beguile 
 their toil. The boatswain sung a sea-song, and the 
 rest joined in chorus at stated intervals. When they 
 were in the open sea, the sound was lost, their voices 
 being dispersed into the air, but when running under 
 a headland they came into any hollow and crescent 
 shaped bay, the sound became much louder, and 
 the song of the boatswain was distinctly heard on 
 shore. A deep valley here sloped down from the 
 plain above, which received into it the sound, as into 
 an instrument of music, and repeated with the most 
 perfect imitation every note which was uttered. 
 There could be heard the distinction between the 
 
 Ua By Longus.
 
 36 IDYLLS OF FISHERMEN 
 
 dash of the oars, and the voices of the sailors; and 
 a very pleasing sound it was; beginning on the sea, 
 the duration of its echo upon shore was proportioned 
 to its greater lateness in commencing. 
 
 Daphnis, understanding the nature of the echo, 
 turned his attention solely to the sea, and was de- 
 lighted with viewing the boat as it glided by the 
 shore quicker than a bird could fly. At the same 
 time he endeavored to store up some of these 
 strains in his memory, that he might play them on 
 his pipe. Chloe, who had never, till now, heard 
 what is called an echo, turned first to the sea and 
 listened to the boatmen, as they sang, and then 
 looked round to the woods. . . ," ia 
 
 In another romance, " The Loves of Clitophon and 
 Leucippe," by Achilles Tatius, 13 a crew of purple 
 fishers in their boat figure in one of the many 
 adventures with pirates so characteristic of these 
 stories. 
 
 More significant than such chance illustration 
 is a passage in the " Ethiopian History of Thea- 
 genes and Chariclea," 14 by Heliodorus. This is a 
 considerable interlude about fisher- folk intro- 
 duced as a complement to analogous bucolic inter- 
 ludes, and carefully elaborated into a picture of 
 quiet life contrasting sharply with the wild and 
 disconnected episodes that precede and follow it. 
 The narrator, Calasiris, tells how his ship anchored 
 near Zacynthus after a stormy and perilous voy- 
 age. Rowing ashore he trudged along the beach 
 until he came upon a hut before which sat an 
 
 12 Bk. 3, pp. 50. Tr., Bohn's Libraries. 
 
 18 Bk. 5, pp. 441. Bohn's Lib. 
 
 14 Bk. 5, pp. 138-142. Tr. Bohn's Libraries.
 
 ORIGINS OF THE PASTORAL OF FISHERS 37 
 
 aged fisher, mending a tattered seine. An amus- 
 ing dialogue ensued, the traveler asking several 
 times for lodging, and the old man replying that 
 the net was torn on a promontory while his son 
 had charge of their fishing boat. Seeing at length 
 that the fellow was deaf, Creon shouted his ques- 
 tion in his ear and this time was understood. 
 Tyrrhenus, for so the deaf man was called, re- 
 ceived Calasiris and his two wards into his cabin, 
 where for some days they lived happily with the 
 fisherman's family, all eating at one rude table 
 and going fishing with the host, who proved, of 
 course, a master-hand at the craft. 
 
 At length one day Tyrrhenus took his guest to 
 a remote bay, where after swearing by Neptune 
 and all the sea-gods that he loved him well, he dis- 
 closed the fact that a pirate was then holding his 
 vessel in hiding behind a nearby cape, and sending 
 out spies every little while to learn when the voy- 
 agers would set sail. Tyrrhenus had sold them 
 fish and had thus learned their plan to seize 
 the beautiful Chariclea. Thus warned, Calasiris 
 embarked on another ship, in which he escaped 
 by night. 
 
 The ghost of Ulysses having appeared to Cala- 
 siris in a dream, and reproached him for not 
 sacrificing to him, as guardian spirit of those 
 coasts, the fisherman now hurried to make pro- 
 pitiatory offerings on the rocks by the sea, and 
 thus assisted, the fugitives were enabled to reach 
 Crete in safety. 
 
 This prose idyll, complete in itself, is the most 
 elaborate picture of the kind in ancient Greek.
 
 3 IDYLLS OF FISHERMEN 
 
 The influence of Theocritus is strongly suggested 
 by imagery incidental to description of the cabin, 
 the tackle, and the boat, as well as by the delinea- 
 tion of the character of Tyrrhenus, aged, sea- 
 worn, superstitious, wretchedly poor, yet content 
 with his lot, and hospitable to the stranger. Thus 
 in these comparatively late romances we again 
 find the fisher and the shepherd both living the 
 idyllic life. Moreover, the sort of existence led 
 by Tyrrhenus bears the same relationship to that 
 led by Daphnis and Chloe as the Homeric fishers 
 do to Homeric swains, and it has been pointed 
 out that this relationship apparently remains iden- 
 tical wherever the two motives occur in the same 
 literary form, whether in comedies, mimes, epi- 
 grams, epistles or romances. It should be added 
 that although so much of ancient Greek poetry 
 has been lost, the relationship under discussion, 
 together with the relative importance of the fisher 
 and of the swain in pastoral, is shown clearly 
 enough by the extant pieces which have already 
 been mentioned. 
 
 It has been shown that piscatory conventions 
 originated and became fixed in the same manner 
 as did those in bucolic poems. The fisher idyll 
 about the marvelous dream was perhaps inspired 
 by the poet's reminiscent sense of contrast be- 
 tween a highly complex city life and that along 
 the desolate sea-shore, just as the bucolics spring 
 from an analogous sense of difference between 
 the same complex existence and that of sunny 
 Sicily. Obviously, too, the contrast between the 
 occasional fishermen whom Theocritus introduces
 
 ORIGINS OF THE PASTORAL OF FISHERS 39 
 
 and his herdsmen or shepherds, is only that inevi- 
 table on a broad canvas painted from life. The 
 minute detail with which the poet enumerates the 
 implements and tackle in Asphalion's hut, or fol- 
 lows each step in the playing of the mysterious 
 fish, is the result of actual observation. Had 
 Virgil imitated this realistic idyll 15 any number 
 of imitators might have essayed composing sim- 
 ilar pieces, but as it was, the modern fisher eclogue 
 originated in a blending of Theocritean with Vir- 
 gilian concepts and conventions, which enjoyed a 
 certain vogue among the humanists of the six- 
 teenth century in Italy. 
 
 THE FISHER IN CLASSICAL LATIN 
 
 Descriptions of fishermen are found in Roman 
 adaptations of Greek dramas and elsewhere, but 
 the extant examples have little connection with 
 one another, and would hardly merit citing but 
 for the importance in the eyes of the humanists 
 of precedent in classical Latin. In a play by 
 Plautus (254-184 B. C.) "Rudens," or "The 
 Shipwreck," thought to be a Latin rendering of 
 some lost work of the Greek Diphylus, two slaves 
 go fishing at night (Act 4, scene 3), and one of 
 them pulls up a wallet in his net. This night 
 scene with the garrulous chatter of the poor 
 fishermen about the ownership of the strange 
 catch, may have been suggested by the story of 
 
 15 Moretum, a realistic account of a poor man making 
 a salad (sometimes attributed to Virgil), resembles the 
 fisher idyll in some respects. A similar Pseudo-Virgilian 
 piece is " Copa."
 
 40 IDYLLS OF FISHERMEN 
 
 Asphalion. This is made more likely by another 
 passage in which Plautus introduces a band of 
 fishermen tramping along the beach towards the 
 temple of Venus (Act 2, scene i), chatting as 
 they go. One describes their experiences, tell- 
 ing of their struggles with nets or rods in 
 freezing water "this is all their sport this 
 all their exercise." Their days and nights are 
 spent in trapping lobsters and crabs, or in tearing 
 oysters from the rocks. Many a day they must 
 go home empty-handed, " soused and pickled," so 
 that life on the rough sea is a sorry, hopeless 
 affair at best. Unless they secure fish they must 
 go supperless. Talking thus they enter the sa- 
 cred fane in order to perform sacrifice to the 
 goddess, that they may secure her favor and so 
 have good luck in fishing. Trachalio, meeting 
 them there, calls them (Act 2, scene 2), "sea- 
 thieves," and a "starved generation." Striking 
 verbal resemblances make it likely that the play- 
 wright imitated this interlude from the picture 
 of fishing life given by Theocritus in his twenty- 
 first idyll. A similar illustration occurs in 
 Seneca's " Hercules Furens," where 16 a chorus of 
 Thebans describes dawn, with the commencement 
 of the labors of man, and the sounds of animals 
 and birds. They speak of the shepherd, of the 
 mariner setting sail, and then : 
 
 " Then another man, a fisherman resting on the 
 wave-indented rock, is engaged either in baiting 
 afresh his unsuccessful hook, or, all anxiety, beholds 
 in mental prospect the reward of his patience already 
 grasped in his right hand." 
 
 "Act I., 154-158.
 
 ORIGINS OF THE PASTORAL OF FISHERS 41 
 
 In Latin mimes fishermen were characters, as 
 in the Greek. Decimus Laberius, for instance, 
 wrote one called, presumably from the principal 
 character, " Piscator." This is said to have been 
 one of many imitations of Sophron, but unfor- 
 tunately the Latin fragments are as few in num- 
 ber as the Greek. Of another play by Laberius, 
 " The Crab," there remains but part of one line. 
 The longer remnants of two fisher farces, " The 
 Fishermen," and " The Sea-shell," by the comic 
 poet Pomponius Bononiens are almost as unsatis- 
 factory. 
 
 Turning now to poetry, we find that Virgil does 
 not even mention fishermen in his pastorals. His 
 only allusions to fishers are a few lines in his 
 first " Georgic," 17 incidental to an account of the 
 primitive arts of man, and an account of the 
 fisher Menaetes, in the Aeneid. The first of 
 these passages pictures one man dragging his net 
 through a broad stream, another putting out into 
 the deep sea with seines, and a third busy with 
 hook and line. Menaetes is one of the victims to 
 the fury of Turnus in battle. The youth had 
 gone into the war unwillingly, preferring his 
 quiet life on the shores of Lake Lerna, where he 
 had lived in a humble cabin. The neighboring 
 waters supplied him with plenty of fish, so that 
 he remained content, happily ignorant of the ways 
 of the grasping rich, for his father was very poor, 
 and hired the land which he tilled. The lines 
 about this unfortunate fisherman were probably 
 
 17 L. 142 fol.
 
 42 IDYLLS OF FISHERMEN 
 
 imitated by Ovid (Met. 3, 582-591). Pentheus 
 of Thebes, furious at Bacchus, whom he wishes 
 to destroy, demands the god's name and receives 
 this reply: 
 
 " My name, said he, is Acaetes, my country 
 Maeonia: my parents of humble stock. My father 
 left me no fields for rough bullocks to cultivate, nor 
 any wool-bearing flocks, nor any herds. He too, 
 was poor; and it was his practice with a rod of 
 reed, and line and hook, to catch the leaping fish. 
 When he gave up the pursuit, he said to me, " Re- 
 ceive the wealth I own, and cling to it, successor to 
 my endeavors," and dying, he left me naught except 
 the waters this alone may I call my patrimony." 
 
 Mention has been made of the story of Glaucus 
 in Greek literature. A fragment on this myth 18 
 has been attributed to Aeschylus (by Athenaeus, 
 Strabo, and Pausanias) and longer passages are 
 extant from poems by Alexander of Aetolia and 
 by others. Of the Romans Cicero is said by 
 Plutarch to have composed a poem on the fisher- 
 man Glaucus, but by far the best picture of the 
 sort is to be found in Ovid's Glaucus and Scylla, 18a 
 some lines of which are probably reminiscent of 
 the Greek fisher idylls. 
 
 Another isolated example of the same sort is 
 given in Lucan's 19 "Pharsalia" (V. 511-560). 
 
 18 Met. 13, 921-955. To Ovid, too, has often been 
 attributed an incomplete verse treatise on fishing, the 
 " Halieutica." 
 
 18a Fragments of two pieces about Glaucus are attributed 
 to Aeschylus. One may be part of a marine satyr drama. 
 
 19 A poem on the war between Caesar and Pompey. 
 Lucan died 65 A. D.
 
 ORIGINS OF THE PASTORAL OF FISHERS 43 
 
 A dialogue between Caesar and an old fisher is 
 notable as giving a minute description of an old 
 cabin, the boat, and other equipment evidently 
 taken from Theocritus, and deliberately sketched 
 as background for the conversation. The pas- 
 sage thus constitutes a piscatory idyll inserted in 
 a longer work. 
 
 The only fisher poem of any length in classical 
 Latin is the " Mosella," one of the " idyllia " of 
 Ausonius (387 A. D. ?), a piece in hexameter, 
 and 843 lines long. Vivid pictures of the scenery 
 along the banks of the river Mosella (Meuse) 
 are followed by the enumeration and characteri- 
 zation of all the fish that swam its waters, ren- 
 dered after the manner of the didactic epic. A 
 considerable portion of the piece is devoted to a 
 very lively description of the fishermen of the 
 Meuse, made from actual observation. There are 
 men in boats dragging nets in midstream, men 
 watching the corks of little nets in shallower 
 water, men perched on the banks or on rocks, 
 armed with rods of cane, watching the floats 
 bobbing on the water, or jerking in the prey. 
 One boy has the ill fortune to lose the largest of 
 his catch, which manages to flap its way back 
 into the river, whereupon he leaps in after it, 
 " like Glaucus," trying to recapture it by swim- 
 ming. This poem was a favorite with the English- 
 man, Izaak Walton, who quotes from it in " The 
 Compleat Angler," and it was among the pieces 
 which Sannazaro, the first of the humanist writers 
 of fisher eclogues, is known to have studied. If 
 it had any influence on the piscatory pastoral,
 
 44 IDYLLS OF FISHERMEN 
 
 however, it was limited to the furnishing of 
 fisher lore, and that was always to be found in 
 Pliny. 
 
 From such quotations as have been given thus 
 far, it may readily be seen that the fisher poems 
 extant in ancient Greek and Latin are not of suffi- 
 cient importance to be classed as a distinct lit- 
 erary species. They constitute merely a special 
 branch of the pastoral, which failed to attain any 
 considerable proportions during classical times, 
 and which humanists of the early renaissance 
 ignored, just as Virgil had done. It remained 
 for a later poet, Giacopo Sannazaro, to take ad- 
 vantage of the neglect into which the fisher con- 
 vention had fallen, and to compose in the learned 
 tongue the first set of what he called "piscatory 
 eclogues."
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 SANNAZARO AND His IMITATORS ON THE 
 CONTINENT 
 
 Sannazaro, or as his fellow humanists called 
 him, Actius Sincerus, was born of parents of 
 Spanish descent at Naples in 1458. For some 
 years he lived with his mother in San Cipriano, 
 whence he returned to his native city while still 
 a youth. He fell in love with the beautiful Car- 
 mosina Boni facia, but proved almost as shy and 
 unsuccessful a lover as had Dante, and finally in 
 despair wandered away into France. When he 
 came back Carmosina had died. His bitter grief 
 found expression in the last pages of his famous 
 pastoral romance, and also in the Latin eclogues 
 which he composed at a later date. He soon be- 
 came a distinguished member of the "Academia 
 Pontana," a society of scholars who met at the 
 house of his friend Pontano. Some of his Latin 
 verses gained favor for him at the court of Fred- 
 erick of Aragon, with whom he went into exile 
 in France. He returned to Naples in 1503, after 
 the death of his lord, and seems to have then 
 lived at the home of Cassandra Marchesia, his 
 friend and platonic love. 
 
 It is likely that some of the fisher eclogues were 
 
 among his early productions. The Arcadia is 
 
 thought to have been composed in its original 
 
 form when the poet was only twenty-three, and 
 
 45
 
 46 IDYLLS OF FISHERMEN 
 
 Sannazaro himself alludes to it as his first work, 
 adding that the piscatories were written not long 
 afterwards, and with the same youthful zeal : 
 
 "Nor less did my enthusiasm drive me, too, 
 among the band of fishermen to cast my lines in the 
 watery bays and to enclose in empty lobster-pots 
 deceptive bait, and to tempt with the hook the herds 
 that wander through the waves, since I was the 
 first to go down to the salt waves, daring to render 
 in words sounds yet untried." 1 
 
 Having made this claim to the invention of fisher 
 verse, he mentions his elegies, epigrams, wars and 
 exile as of later date. Finally, that he had com- 
 pleted at least some of the eclogues before leaving 
 his country is made plain by some lines in " De 
 Hortis Hesperidum," 2 a poem by his friend Pon- 
 tano. The learned humanist laments the exile of 
 Sannazaro and alludes to his fame as the author 
 of piscatory idylls. 
 
 That Sannazaro should have composed these 
 pastorals of the seashore is not extraordinary. 
 He was very fond of his Villa Mergellina, perched 
 on cliffs overlooking the Bay of Naples, and could 
 watch fishermen at any time, as they drew their 
 nets and sang their songs. Within sight of the 
 blue Mediterranean, too, he first met Carmosina, 
 and walked with her along the shores, so it is not 
 unnatural that he should make her a fisher girl 
 in his eclogues, and himself a fisherman. Like 
 a true humanist, however, he disregarded the na- 
 tive madrigals of the coast, turning for his models 
 
 1 Bk. 3, elegy 2, 53-582. 
 3 Bk. 2.
 
 SANNAZARO AND HIS IMITATORS 47 
 
 to Theocritus and Virgil. The Greek idylls fur- 
 nished him occasional illustration, but his greater 
 indebtedness to the Mantuan is so obvious that 
 an early biographer says of it: 
 
 " Never did he turn his eyes from the greatness of 
 Vergil, whom he admired so much that every year 
 in solemn feast with his friends he celebrated the 
 birthday of the great Roman." 
 
 This adoration of Virgil accounts for the gen- 
 eral plan of the fisher eclogues, which was to 
 imitate the famous bucolics in marine coloring, 
 if I may use the term. Hence in the humanist's 
 poems Arcadian pastures rise into the bold out- 
 line of the fairest coast in the world, the usual 
 inland quiet is troubled by the murmur of tides, 
 or by the tramp of surf along sounding beaches, 
 while the melody of the lark or of the nightingale 
 is changed to the hoarse cries of divers or of 
 halcyons. By a similar analogy swains are trans- 
 formed into fishermen, and rustic gods into ocean 
 gods. In place of Pan, guardian of flocks and 
 herds, father of country song, we find dark-green 
 Proteus, shepherd of the sea-calves, skilled in 
 song and prophecy. The " Carpathian wizard's 
 hook" is wielded to prod throngs of drowsy seals, 
 while in his webby clutch the reed pipe becomes 
 a conch, the deep notes of which are echoed " by 
 scaly Triton's winding shell." The oracles of 
 Apollo yield to " old sooth-saying Glaucus' spell," 
 every nymph turns nereid, and all the other divin- 
 ities of the land become the corresponding divin- 
 ities of the sea. 
 
 Such protean metamorphosis is not only applied 
 to the general conception of the piscatory ec-
 
 4 IDYLLS OF FISHERMEN 
 
 logues, each of which is the marine equivalent 
 for some one of Virgil's, but extends to the entire 
 detail and imagery. A few examples will make 
 this clear. In his lament for Daphnis 8 Virgil 
 pictures grief so general that no cattle would 
 drink or eat, while woody hills reechoed the 
 sounds of mourning until even Libyan lions roared 
 in sympathy. Sannazaro says 4 that sorrow for 
 the death of the fisher girl Phyllis was so great 
 that no dolphin would leap or play, and that 
 rocky shores rang with the sympathetic plaints of 
 ravens, coots, and gulls. The sorrow of the 
 nymphs and Apollo for the dead shepherd finds 
 a counterpart in the fisher's appeal to the nereids 
 and Glaucus. Lycidas longs to have Glaucus 
 " give him some of his magic grass " that he may 
 become a sea-god and so leave the hated land. 
 Even Virgil's deification of Daphnis as guardian 
 of shepherds is imitated in the deification of 
 Phyllis: 
 
 " But them, whether thou dwellest happy in heaven 
 above or now among the Elysian shades and the 
 awful bands of Lethe dost follow fish through the 
 stagnant streams ; or dost gather eternal flowers in 
 thy beautiful hand narcissus, and crocus, and long- 
 lived amaranth, and dost mingle delicate seaweed 
 with pale violet, look upon us and come propitious. 
 Henceforth shalt thou ever be guardian spirit of the 
 waters ever friendly to fishermen." 5 
 
 8 EC. V. 4 Ec. I. 
 
 5 Mr. J. H. Hanford ("The Pastoral Elegy and Milton's 
 Lycidas" Mod. Lang. Assn. of Am., Sept., 1910) shows 
 that Milton probably imitated this passage in the lines 
 where the singing shepherd bids the spirit of Lycidas 
 " look homeward " and later when he invokes Lycidas as 
 " Genius of the shore."
 
 SANNAZARO AND HIS IMITATORS 49 
 
 Again, the shepherds build altars to Daphnis and 
 Apollo, but the fishers raise them to Phyllis and 
 the sea-gods, while the bucolic offerings cups of 
 milk with bowls of oil, are replaced in Sanna- 
 zaro's poem by " garlands of oysters " with shaggy 
 "sea-calves." Lastly, Virgil's Menalcas praises 
 his friend's song as " sweet as rest beneath the 
 shadow of trees," or as "quenching one's thirst 
 at a crystal brook," whereas the fisher compli- 
 ments the strains of Lycidas as " sweeter than 
 the lamentations of halcyon, or than the com- 
 plaints of swans, heard in the grass beside sweet 
 streams." 
 
 In spite of the closeness of this parallel, San- 
 nazaro rejects in some details the example of 
 Virgil to follow that set in the idyll of Theocritus 
 which the Roman was himself imitating. 6 For 
 instance, the Greek shepherd is induced to sing 
 by the offer of a carved ivy bowl, and of the privi- 
 lege of milking a goat, things which he claims 
 with childish eagerness the moment his song is 
 finished. The fisher, like his Theocritean proto- 
 type, offers his comrade gifts, as an inducement 
 to sing : 
 
 " Moss of the dark blue sea, purple-fish sought 
 through the deep, with coral torn from the very 
 lowest rocks." 
 
 One Greek swain and one fisherman render their 
 respective laments entire, while in Virgil both 
 characters render different parts of the complaint, 
 after which they perfunctorily exchange a pipe 
 
 "Id. i. 
 5
 
 50 IDYLLS OF FISHERMEN 
 
 for a sheep-hook. The Greek goatherd's enthu- 
 siastic wish : 
 
 " Filled may thy fair mouth be with honey, 
 Thyrsis, and filled with the honey-comb; and the 
 sweet dried fig mayst thou eat of Aegilus "- 
 
 is adapted to piscatory conventions in Sannazaro's : 
 
 " Mayst thou ever have from the Megarian reefs 
 nearby, an abundant supply of shellfish, and may 
 Mergellina bear thee oysters, and the rocky cliffs, 
 sea-urchins." 
 
 Other touches, such as fishing in a skiff by night, 
 " watching for the tunny shoals," and mention of 
 a smoky cabin, weels, nets, bait, hooks and fishing 
 baskets plaited of withes, are probably borrowed 
 from the Greek poet. 
 
 All the other fisher idylls of Sannazaro furnish 
 similar examples of imitation. Virgil's shep- 
 herd boasts to Alexis 7 of his thousand lambs, 
 grazing on Sicilian pastures, which finds an echo 
 in a fisherman's boast of a thousand oysters on 
 the hanging cliffs of Misenum. 8 The same rustic 
 vaunts his oaten pipe given him by Damoetas, as 
 to his successor in pastoral song, which the fisher 
 matches with the boast of wool, dyed with the 
 juice of the purple-fish, and softer than sea- 
 foam "this the shepherd Melisaeus himself 
 once gave me, when by chance the old man from 
 a rock heard me singing, and he said : Boy, this 
 is the reward for your lay, since you are the very 
 first to sing upon the seashore." 
 
 7 EC. 2. 
 
 8 P. EC. 2.
 
 SANNAZARO AND HIS IMITATORS 51 
 
 As Melisaeus is a poetical name for his master 
 Pontano, Sannazaro here turns the Virgilian con- 
 vention into a compliment to himself for the in- 
 vention of fisher eclogues. Where almost every 
 line in the piscatories is an imitation, it would be 
 tedious to cite more parallels. Even the lists of 
 trees and shrubs in Virgil become lists of fish in 
 Sannazaro, and the pastoral refrain " Begin with 
 me, my pipe, the pastoral strain" finds an awk- 
 ward equivalent in Sannazaro's " Thrust thy dark 
 green face forth from the wave, O Triton." 9 
 
 Like most other Latin eclogues of the renais- 
 sance, these fisher pieces form an elaborate alle- 
 gory, notable for obscure and puzzling allusions. 
 Nevertheless it is not difficult to recognize some 
 of the persons and events thus veiled from the 
 casual reader. As has been stated, the first eclogue, 
 a lament by the fisher Lycidas for the death of 
 the fisher maiden Phyllis is the marine equivalent 
 of Virgil's lament for the death of the mythical 
 Daphnis. At the same time this fisher poem 
 bears a strong resemblance to the last eclogue in 
 the Arcadia, and the Phyllis of both poems is 
 undoubtedly the fair Carmosina. This is asserted 
 by a very early biographer, 10 and accounts for 
 the marked pathos characterizing the fisherman's 
 song. Lycidas is Sannazaro, and Mycon, his 
 sympathizing comrade, Basilius Zanchius. 11 Cer- 
 
 9 EC. 5. 
 
 10 Vita by Vulpius, pp. 34, early eds. 
 
 11 Cf . this epigram for Sannazaro's tomb by Zanchius : 
 " These weels, these fishing lines, oh Syncerus, the fisher 
 Mycon dedicated to thy tomb with his feeble art." A 
 partial! key to the eclogues is to be found in the epigrams 
 and elegies by Sannazaro, and by others written about 
 him.
 
 52 IDYLLS OF FISHERMEN 
 
 tain rivals of the poet's are alluded to in Mycon's 
 speech of comfort: 
 
 " O Lycidas, Lycidas ; dost them not deem that 
 happened more fortunately for her than if she had 
 entered the smoky cave of Lycota, or had entered 
 the hut of the hairy Amyntas? And now, were she 
 alive, she would be seeking vile bait for her hook, 
 or would be mending torn fishing weels with pliant 
 withes." 
 
 Another very bitter passage tallies exactly with 
 the facts known of this affair. The poet speaks, 
 as in the Arcadia, of the very early age at which 
 he fell in love, of his hope of marrying Carmo- 
 sina and of spending all his days with her, and 
 of his lasting sadness. Thus the poem combines 
 imitation of the Virgilian bucolic with occasional 
 borrowings from Theocritus, and the type of 
 fisher eclogue thus contrived veils the story of 
 the author's sorrows. 
 
 These three elements characterize all the other 
 eclogues. The complaint of the fisher Lycon at 
 the indifference of Galatea is a studied effort to 
 render by marine analogy Virgil's shepherd's 
 complaint at the cruelty of Alexis. Owing to the 
 fact that this piece was considerably altered be- 
 fore publication, its meaning is somewhat ob- 
 scure, 12 but Lycon is certainly Sannazaro, and the 
 nymph is probably Carmosina. " Beautiful Hyale," 
 who " praises " the fisher's song " Hyale who is 
 descended from distinguished Spanish ancestors 
 
 u Julius Scaliger had an early copy in which were many 
 things later changed by Sannazaro. These were strictures 
 on Pope Clement for slowness in rewarding the poet. 
 (Vulpius, Vita, pp. 45.)
 
 SANNAZARO AND HIS IMITATORS 53 
 
 and whom so many lands and shores obey," is 
 Joan of Aragon, wife to Ferdinand, King of 
 Naples and son of Alfonsus. 13 The passage re- 
 calls Sannazaro's place at the Neapolitan court, 
 and " the haughty Amaryllis," the " dark Menal- 
 cas," and the nymphs who favored the poet 
 "Praxinoe," the "daughter of Polybata," and 
 the " wife of rich Amyntas " are to be considered 
 appellations meant to disguise noble persons 
 of his acquaintance. Melisaeus, as we have seen, 
 is Pontano, who finds Sannazaro on the shore 
 near the city singing the praises of Mergellina, 
 and Lyda, who is " spiteful " because the garlands 
 she sent Sannazaro had no effect on his heart, is 
 a pretty girl to whom he paid poetical compli- 
 ments. 14 
 
 All the allusions to his life in these first eclogues 
 indicate that they were composed before Sanna- 
 zaro went into exile, but the remaining pieces 
 were probably written at later periods. This is 
 shown by various passages. The fisher Chromis, 
 in the third pastoral, a song contest, speaks about 
 the wanderings of Sannazaro's exiled prince with 
 his followers, and lolas relates the return of 
 Lycabas (the poet) to the Lucrine Lake, with 
 his account of the barbarous peoples in other 
 lands. As the poem was among those brought 
 back to Naples by Sannazaro in 1503, the lines on 
 his return are either an anticipation, or a later 
 interpolation. 
 
 The singing match itself is modeled song for 
 song on that in Virgil's seventh bucolic, but the 
 
 13 Ed. 1782, pp. 201. 
 
 14 See bk. I., epigram 45.
 
 54 IDYLLS OF FISHERMEN 
 
 introduction and conclusion are notable for un- 
 usually direct borrowings from Theocritus. The 
 first lines include an imitation of the Greek fisher 
 idyll : 
 
 "CELADON. Tell me (for at Baulae, if Aegon re- 
 ported the truth, storms, O Mopsus, held you dur- 
 ing twelve days) what thou, what Chromis and 
 what thy friend Tolas played in deserted caverns 
 while the south wind swept the sea, and the waves 
 moaned outside? 
 
 MOPSUS. What could our Muses accomplish in 
 such enforced idleness, O Celadon ? Then we could 
 not with impunity stalk shellfish on the 15 rocks nor 
 the light-footed paguri. The rocks now propped 
 up our frail skiff on dry land, and wide-meshed 
 seines hung on the long oars. Beside us were 
 strewn the instruments of our craft, the light fish- 
 ing creels, the rods of reed, the hooks, and lobster- 
 pots woven of rushes." 
 
 Here we find almost word for word the list of 
 implements given in the picture of the cabin of 
 the Greek fisher Asphalion and his friend. One 
 of the prizes, too, is taken from Theocritus : 
 
 " So far, O Celadon, under the resounding cliff 
 I remember they contended in varied song, laughing 
 at the rough murmurs of the windy deep. And 
 then, too, they carried off praise with prizes worthy 
 their singing, ones that Triton could not scorn. 
 One of them gained a spiral shell that I, naked, 
 captured under the swirling tide of Circejo, a shell 
 stained with purple: the other received curving 
 branches of knotty coral." 
 
 16 The stalking of shellfish is taken from Th. id. 9.
 
 SANNAZARO AND HIS IMITATORS 55 
 
 The setting of this pastoral is almost identical 
 with that of the storm-bound fishers whom Alci- 
 phron pictures, but the influence of Theocritus is 
 traceable in much of the imagery, the cave, rocks, 
 " twigs and rushes best for plaiting weels," " light 
 hooks," nets, etc. There can be no doubt that 
 the realism and local color distinguishing this 
 poem from the rest are due to a deliberate at- 
 tempt to harmonize the realism of the Greek 
 fisher idyll with the construction of the Virgilian 
 song contest. It is a sort of kindly correction of 
 Theocritus, showing how that kind of thing ought 
 to have been done. 
 
 Many of the pictures of fisher life in these 
 pieces may be traced to a source in Theocritus, 
 but one of the pastorals, " Proteus," illustrates 
 the fact that Sannazaro considered poetry dealing 
 specifically with the gods of fishers as " pisca- 
 tory," and that for such he found ample prece- 
 dent in Virgil. The fourth georgic, for instance, 
 includes a passage really equivalent to a marine 
 eclogue, even beginning with description appro- 
 priate for the introduction to such an interlude: 
 
 " T'was noon ; the sultry Dog-star from the sky 
 Scorch'd Indian swains ; the rivel'd grass was dry : 
 The sun with flaming arrows pierced the flood, 
 And, darting to the bottom, bak'd the mud, 
 When weary Proteus, from the briny waves, 
 Retir'd for shelter to his wonted caves. 
 His finny flock about their shepherd play, 
 And, rolling round him, spirt the bitter sea. 
 Unwieldily they wallow first in ooze, 
 Then in the shady covert seek repose. 
 Himself, their herdsman, on the middle mount,
 
 5 IDYLLS OF FISHERMEN 
 
 Takes of his mustered flocks a just account. 
 So, seated on a rock, a shepherd's groom 
 Surveys his ev'ning flock returning home, 
 When lowing calves and bleating lambs from far 
 Provoke the prowling wolf to nightly war." 16 
 
 Aristaeus, who had caused the death of Euridice, 
 binds Proteus in his sleep, in order to force him 
 to unfold the future. The god changes himself 
 into wild beasts, into fire and into water, but all 
 is in vain, and at length he resumes his proper 
 shape, and with green and flashing eyes demands 
 the cause of this violence. A dialogue ensues, 
 and Proteus declares that the fates will punish 
 the youth for his wicked attack on Eurydice. 
 He repeats the whole story of the affair, ending 
 with the death of Orpheus, after which the poet 
 remarks : 
 
 " This answer Proteus gave; nor -more he said, 
 But in the billows plung'd his hoary head; 
 And, where he leap'd, the waves in circles widely 
 spread." 17 
 
 For such visualization of the powers of ocean 
 and for emphasis on marine scenery Sannazaro 
 had before him not only the example of Virgil 
 and the Greeks, but also that of his master Pon- 
 tano, whose works he edited with lavish praise. 
 Pontano loved to picture Galatea, teazing shaggy 
 Polyphemus from the waves, or green-haired gods 
 with bands of nereids and tritons in full chorus, 
 and his poetry teems with pictures of the same 
 
 14 G. 4. Dryden, 615-630. 
 
 17 765-767. Cf. " Proteus was a herdsman and of seals 
 though he was a god." Theocritus, 27.
 
 SANNAZARO AND HIS IMITATORS 57 
 
 sea and the same coasts that Sannazaro made the 
 themes of his song. His influence on the pisca- 
 tory eclogues has been phrased in general terms, 
 but the intimate connection between one of his 
 poems and Sannazaro's " Proteus " has not been 
 noticed. Pontano's eclogue " Lepidina cuius Pom- 
 pae Septem," the first combination of pastoral 
 with the epithalamium, presents the shepherd 
 Macron, who sits with his bride Lepidina, and 
 chats about their recent courtship in that very 
 spot near the shore. 18 Before them pass seven 
 bands, or " Pompae," with song and dance. First 
 trip shepherds and shepherdesses, chanting alter- 
 nately, and behind them nereids and throngs of 
 tritons. Then Triton rises from the billows and 
 sings elaborate praises of the bride, and of the 
 coasts near Naples, while sirens with a hundred 
 nymphs bear golden gifts, and three hundred 
 other sea-gods bring more. On these proces- 
 sions the couple (Pontano and his bride) make 
 enthusiastic comment, and the whole poem thus 
 has many of the characteristics of the later 
 masques of sea-gods, since the dancers and singers 
 are merely noble guests at Pontano's villa by 
 the sea. 
 
 Sannazaro declared this piece " equal to Virgil," 
 and he probably took from it the idea of making 
 Proteus predict the mystery of the Incarnation in 
 his epic, " De Partu Virginis," in which, too, 
 nereids and other ocean divinities figure with sin- 
 gular prominence. A more obvious relationship, 
 however, connects Pontano's idyll with his dis- 
 
 18 Ecloga " Lepidin-us Cuius Pompae Septem."
 
 5 IDYLLS OF FISHERMEN 
 
 ciple's " Proteus," a pastoral dedicated to Ferdi- 
 nand of Aragon, Duke of Calabria and son of 
 Frederick, King of Naples, with whom the poet 
 was an exile. One purpose of both eclogues is 
 to eulogize Italy, the Bay of Naples and the coast, 
 in both the deities and general marine convention 
 are the same, and in both the panegyric is sung 
 by a sea-god. As usual, nevertheless, Sannazaro 
 is following a more definite model in Virgil, here 
 the fourth pastoral, the famous " Pollio," once 
 regarded as a messianic prophecy. Virgil's pre- 
 diction of a return of the Golden Age with peace 
 and happiness for Italy, after the birth of a won- 
 derful boy, with its mood of patriotism, is closely 
 paralleled by the humanist, who extols the youth- 
 ful prince, and prohesies his safe return, with 
 power over all the land, in an era of peace and 
 glory for Italy. Incidentally he repeats his claim 
 to the invention of fisher poetry, in these lines 
 addressed to his lord : 
 
 " Now do not despise the Muse of the Seashore ; 
 whom for thee, after her sojourn in forests or in 
 bristling groves of Bacchus, I was the first to lead 
 down to the salt sea waves, if that is anything to 
 boast, daring in my untried fishing skiff to attempt 
 perils yet untried." 
 
 The second part of the eclogue is a variant on 
 the song of Silenus in Virgil's sixth pastoral, 
 which relates how two youths seized the god and 
 forced him to sing them a mythological account 
 of the universe, with special emphasis on Italian 
 legends. Sannazaro's Proteus, amid a crowd of 
 tritons, chants by night a more elaborate song,
 
 SANNAZARO AND HIS IMITATORS 59 
 
 mentioning many events or places made famous 
 by the Aeneid Italian and Sicilian shores, the 
 Cumaean sibyll, the caverns through which 
 Aeneas passed to the under-world, with an enu- 
 meration of the Roman kings and wars. Finally, 
 he eulogizes Virgil and Pontano, and pities the 
 sad fate of Sannazaro himself, still in exile with 
 his prince. Thus the sea-god's song combines 
 the themes of two of Virgil's eclogues, and 
 Virgil's chief contribution to the pastoral, the 
 panegyric, finds a marine equivalent in the work 
 of his humanist disciple. 
 
 The last fisher pastoral, " Herpylis Pharma- 
 ceutria," was dedicated to Cassandra Marchesia, 
 Sannazaro's platonic love, and begins with her 
 praises and with the statement that the piece was 
 undertaken at her command. 19 This passage is 
 an imitation of the introductory eulogy of Pollio 
 in Virgil's " Pharmaceutria," and in construction 
 the humanist follows Virgil in a general way 
 throughout. Yet though modeled in form and 
 externals on the Latin bucolic, Sannazaro's poem, 
 unlike all his others, is clearly the piscatory adap- 
 tation of an idyll of Theocritus forsaken Si- 
 maetha's wild incantations performed to win back 
 her lover, 20 itself the inspiration of Virgil's love- 
 charm. Apparently in this single case Sanna- 
 zaro appreciated the superior fire and passion in 
 the Greek, and realized that the Latin imitation 
 was undertaken simply as a poetical exercise. 
 
 Unlike Virgil, Sannazaro follows the example 
 
 19 If the statement is true the piece may have been done 
 after 1503. 
 
 20 Idyll 2.
 
 60 IDYLLS OF FISHERMEN 
 
 of Theocritus in picturing the condition of the 
 afflicted girl as she comes down to the sea by 
 night. A few passages will show the general 
 nature of the imitations. The Greek damsel ex- 
 claims : 
 
 " I against Delphis am burning this laurel ; and 
 even as it crackles loudly when it has caught the 
 flame, and suddenly is burned up, and we see not 
 even the dust thereof, lo, even thus may the flesh 
 of Delphis waste in the burning ! " 
 
 The fisher girl shouts : 
 
 " Pluck white worm-wood from the field hardby. 
 By these magic rites shall I strive to burn his very 
 flesh who has left me wretched, and destroyed my 
 peace of mind . . . this dry seaweed first, scourings 
 of the swelling ocean, is strewn and is suddenly 
 burned up: lo, even thus, Maeon, mayst thou be 
 consumed even to the marrow." 
 
 The Greek " Scatter the grain, and cry the 
 while, 'Tis the bones of Delphis I am scattering," 
 has its marine equivalent in the Latin : 
 
 "Thrice, Clearista, thrice burn together sea-moss 
 with this crab without a pincer, and cry the while 
 Tis the entrails of Maeon I am burning." 
 
 Sannazaro does not mention the burying of the 
 lover's raiment, as does Virgil, but instead at- 
 tempts a fisher adaptation of Theocritus' use of 
 the magic wheel to make the guilty man "turn 
 and turn " about Simaetha's door. The fisher 
 sorceress calls on the " fierce trigon " fish to sting 
 Maeon to the heart, and bids another sea creature
 
 SANNAZARO AND HIS IMITATORS 6 1 
 
 which can stop sailing ships, to cramp his cruel 
 limbs. Again, the Greek maiden's " Lo, I will 
 crush an eft, and a venomous draught tomorrow 
 I will bring thee ! " becomes in Sannazaro's pas- 
 toral, " Crush together the liver and spume of a 
 black torpedoe-fish, and this venomous draught 
 tomorrow I will send him. May he drink it, and 
 may his pallid limbs grow numb ! " 
 
 The meaning of the piece is a little obscure, but 
 the fisher seems to be Sannazaro. He tells how 
 he and " Galatea " once sat below a cliff looking 
 out over the Bay of Naples, and of how he after- 
 wards left Italy because she did not love him " I 
 myself on account of thee forsook my comrades 
 and my fishing skiff. . . ." These lines and 
 others descriptive of his later exile in France 
 have some of the pathos of the earlier elegy, but 
 the conceits in the poem are very extravagant. 
 Speaking of a poplar tree near which he first saw 
 Galatea he declares : 
 
 " I embrace this again and again, and imprint my 
 kisses on the bark. Often I search for thy very 
 foot-prints and if I find any, I adorn them with 
 flowers." 
 
 Besides this he boasts that he would not hesitate 
 to swim a race against tunnies or dolphins, " with 
 Galatea as judge." Thus a fantastic love com- 
 plaint ends an eclogue which had begun with imi- 
 tation of the incantations described by Theocritus. 
 It is known that Sannazaro completed ten 
 fisher idylls, presumably imitating all of Virgil's, 
 but that after his return from France only the 
 five already mentioned, with part of a sixth, re-
 
 62 IDYLLS OF FISHERMEN 
 
 mained in his writing-case, the rest having been 
 lost or stolen through the carelessness of his 
 friends. 21 The fragment pictures two rival bands 
 of fishers meeting at the temple of Venus on the 
 Lucrine Lake, where their champions, " both 
 skillful sailors in the narrow seas, and both cun- 
 ning fishermen, one in casting hooks, but the 
 other in spreading nets in the ocean, 22 are to hold 
 a trial of skill in song. Of the actual match only 
 a part remains, in which Zephyraeus calls on the 
 muses of fishers, complains of the cruelty of 
 Phoebe and Chloris, and then turns to magic 
 charms for relief : 
 
 " Go, Goddesses of the sea, summon now for my 
 madness other juices, other herbs of Melampos . . . 
 I have not shunned magic verses, the names of 
 things unknown, and the unlike gods, Erebus and 
 Chaos. Nay more, I have learned to whirl the 
 mystic wheel with thread, by which I have drawn 
 my share of sea-urchins from the shore, moss from 
 the reefs, water from the waves." 
 
 At this point the eclogue stops, but even the rem- 
 nant has interest as part of an incantation per- 
 formed by a man who has been snubbed by two 
 girls, the refrain in the poem : 
 
 " Give forth with me, at length thy song, my 
 hollow shell," is the logical piscatory adaptation 
 of the analogous refrain addressed to the reed 
 pipe in earlier pastoral. 
 
 Sufficient has been said about these fisher 
 poems to show that they may justly be character- 
 
 21 Ace. Paulus Manutius in Vulpius, Vita, pp. 28. 
 33 Cf. Virgil, 7, herdsman and shepherd.
 
 SANNAZARO AND HIS IMITATORS 63 
 
 ized as Virgilian pastorals 23 in form, but pastorals 
 given a marine coloring. This becomes obvious 
 the moment one places a few lines of Sannazaro's 
 hexameter beside the corresponding lines in his 
 model. In this book there is space only to men- 
 tion the more striking resemblances, but a com- 
 parison of the original texts reveals metrical and 
 verbal imitations which show that the humanist 
 was very successful in catching the manner of 
 his model. 
 
 Nevertheless some differences are marked. 
 With all his skill as a Latinist, Sannazaro could 
 not avoid a more ornate, elaborate style of com- 
 position than that which Virgil perfected. Occa- 
 sional extravagant conceits, and the undertone of 
 disappointed love suggest the legacy of Petrarch, 
 while bitter reflections on exile, with eulogy of 
 the shores near the poet's home, recall a trait 
 of Dante's. 
 
 The chief defect that has been pointed out in 
 these pastorals lies in the characterization of the 
 fishermen, who have been termed merely shep- 
 herds in disguise. That there should be some 
 ground for such a criticism is the inevitable result 
 of Sannazaro's method. He chose to make his 
 characters sing just the types of song which he 
 found in Virgil, and to borrow many touches de- 
 scriptive of the activities of fishermen from Theo- 
 critus. This was only natural in so enthusiastic 
 a humanist, but though he culled from the classics 
 the specific terms in which to frame his marine 
 sketches, it is evident that he selected what fitted 
 
 23 Aside from the imitation of Th,
 
 64 IDYLLS OF FISHERMEN 
 
 with a reasonable degree of accuracy the things 
 he could see from his Villa Mergellina at any 
 time. Fishers hauling seines by torch-light, trapped 
 on a barren coast by tempests, or gathering moss, 
 oysters and sea-urchins must have been common- 
 place sights to the Neapolitan poet. Even in the 
 matter of making his men sing he had precedent 
 near at hand in the native madrigals of the coast. 
 Moreover, his characters keep up a show of fish- 
 ing at least as convincing as that which contem- 
 porary shepherds do of tending sheep, so that to 
 criticize their artificiality is to ignore the spirit 
 of renaissance pastoral, in which this quality is 
 almost universal. 
 
 Although Sannazaro's claim that he was the 
 first to write fisher poems can not have been in- 
 genuous, it was echoed by the most learned schol- 
 ars of the day, and it would require many pages 
 to print the eulogies in prose or verse which 
 greeted the " new style." If the humanists real- 
 ized the poet's indebtedness to Theocritus they 
 did not mention it, and even such men as Erasmus, 
 who regretted the liberties which Sannazaro had 
 taken with the pastoral, admired the classic cor- 
 rectness of his Latin. Ariosto 24 declared the 
 eclogues a new literary species, and it is note- 
 worthy that a considerable number of panegyrics 
 took the form of fisher epigrams. All this admi- 
 ration is easy to understand, because it was mainly 
 due to the fact that Sannazaro had succeeded in 
 composing very close imitations of Virgil, the 
 idol of humanism. At the same time he was 
 
 M Orland. Fur. Cant., 46, st. 1 7.
 
 SANNAZARO AND HIS IMITATORS 65 
 
 given credit for originality in making fishers his 
 characters, and the beautiful coast of Italy the 
 scene for their activities. 
 
 With the publication at Naples of these eclogues 
 in 1526 the " new style " became a recognized lit- 
 erary type. By the close of the century ten edi- 
 tions of Sannazaro's pieces had been issued and 
 numerous imitations had appeared, at first in 
 Latin, then in the vernacular, then in special dia- 
 lects. The convention spread also to other forms 
 of literature, such as the romance, the drama, 
 and the sonnet, and to other European countries, 
 notably Spain, France, and England. The English 
 branch grew from direct imitation of Sannazaro, 
 and not from the Italian poems, so that only a 
 brief account of the continental pastoral need be 
 given here. 
 
 Turning first to imitations in the learned tongue, 
 we find that these began with an allegorical ec- 
 logue 25 by Sannazaro's friend Johannes (Gio- 
 vanni) Cotta of Verona, in which a victory over 
 the French in 1503 was celebrated. The patriotic 
 and eulogistic cast of this poem mark it as akin 
 to Sannazaro's panegyric, 26 but the fact that the 
 author introduces two shepherds conversing with 
 a single fisher suggests that Cotta aimed to com- 
 bine the bucolic motive with the piscatory. This 
 tendency to effect a combination of the old style 
 with the new appears also here and there among 
 Latin poems that were written after the publica- 
 tion of Sannazaro's eclogues gave fisher pastoral 
 
 23 Cotta died 1610, so the eclogue was composed before 
 that date. 
 29 EC. 4. 
 6
 
 66 IDYLLS OF FISHERMEN 
 
 a definite standing. A piece by M. Hieronymus 
 Vida, for example, pictures a shepherd near the 
 sea singing a song about Arion's dolphin ride, 
 Proteus pasturing his seals, Glaucus, Amphitrite, 
 Galatea and other sea divinities. This sort of 
 compromise was aimed, 27 apparently, to show 
 that Sannazaro's marine imagery was not incon- 
 sistent with the older form of pastoral verse. 
 These rustics were evidently those : 
 
 "... whose precious charge 
 
 Nibbled their fill at ocean's very marge, 
 
 Whose mellow reeds are touched with sounds forlorn 
 
 By the dim echoes of old Triton's horn." 
 
 Such pieces embodied a mild correction of San- 
 nazaro, reminding one of the traditional mixture 
 of characters in classic pastoral, rather than being 
 unconditional endorsement of the " new style." 
 
 Fisher eclogues, however, became more and 
 more common, and after a time Casal Monfer- 
 rato established an " Academy of Argonauts," in 
 emulation of the "pastoral academy," and the 
 members wrote of the sea, just as their rivals did 
 of the fields. In addition to fisher eclogues, 
 which by the middle of the century had attained 
 a marked vogue, these poets tried variants, among 
 them " nautical eclogues," in which the activities 
 traditional for the pastoral were transferred to 
 the decks of ships, where sailors wailed love com- 
 plaints, held song contests, or performed incanta- 
 tions by the light of the moon. 28 Other poets of 
 
 27 Another piece of the sort is by Johannes Baptista 
 Amaltheus. 
 
 28 Ferrante Bagno, ec. 2.
 
 SANNAZARO AND HIS IMITATORS 67 
 
 the Academy devoted themselves to " dialogues 
 on nautical art/' 29 and to longer didactic pieces 
 about navigation termed " nautica." In most of 
 these eclogues the conventions are very much the 
 same as in Sannazaro's pastorals, and the distinc- 
 tion between strictly " nautical " and " piscatory " 
 idylls is rendered a little hazy by the fact that 
 even on vessels fishers are sometimes the singers. 
 Of the more direct imitations of Sannazaro 
 practically all are allegories, and a large number 
 consist of panegyrics and elegies. Some eulogize 
 famous men, 30 or Venice and the adjacent coasts, 31 
 and it is probable that the church regarded the 
 new pastorals with favor, partly because Sanna- 
 zaro and his followers carefully avoided stric- 
 tures on religious abuses of the sort emphasized 
 by Mantuan, and partly because fishing had always 
 been held a particularly honorable craft because 
 of those whom Christ once made " fishers of 
 men." At any rate, a great many 32 fisher ec- 
 logues were written by churchmen, dedicated to 
 the Pope, or devoted to lavish praise of the 
 church, the Pope and the prelacy in general. 
 These pieces bear a dreary family resemblance, 
 and when the vernacular poems grew popular 
 they gradually became less common. The most 
 successful of all these Latin works, thirteen 
 fisher eclogues by the Jesuit Nicolaus Gianneta- 
 sius (Parthenius) were published at Venice in 
 
 29 G. I. Bottazo, 1547, and G. Antonio Taigeto. 
 80 E. Carrara, Poesia Pastorale, fasc. 40. 
 
 31 G. M. Verdizotti, Rome, 1566. Lorenzo Gambara, 
 Rome c. 1561. Goina, c. 1550. 
 
 32 Thus, like the contemporaneous bucolic, the piscatory 
 exemplifies the combination of the classic forms with 
 allegory concerned with Christianity.
 
 68 IDYLLS OF FISHERMEN 
 
 1685, one hundred years after the humanistic 
 variety had ceased to be of common production. 33 
 They are the closest of all imitations of Sanna- 
 zaro, Virgil, and Theocritus, in some places being 
 mere centos of translated passages. He describes 
 an ivy bowl, for instance, on which is carved an 
 ancient fisherman with a net, and the lines giving 
 the picture are taken almost word for word from 
 Theocritus. 34 Again, his lament of Mopsus for 
 the death of Thyrsis is copied deliberately from 
 Sannazaro's " Phyllis," even to the deification of 
 the departed. The persistence of the recognized 
 characteristics of the Sannazarian form is well 
 illustrated by these poems, and the fact that such 
 work was still enjoyed by learned readers is indi- 
 cated by the numerous editions through which 
 Parthenius' pastorals passed. Evidently, too, they 
 led to a revival of interest in Sannazaro, whose 
 idylls were republished in i689, 35 and thereafter 
 at frequent intervals until 1823, when they were 
 translated into Italian by Biondi. 
 
 ITALIAN ECLOGUES 
 
 The introduction of fisher eclogues in the ver- 
 nacular, like the other steps in the development 
 of the species, followed after an interval the 
 composition of Italian bucolics. The Marchioness 
 of Pescara suggested 38 to Bernardo Tasso the 
 idea of "doing in the vulgar tongue what old 
 
 88 The eclogues of Parthenius were pub. in 1685, 1686, 
 1689, 1692, 1696, 1710-14, 1722. 
 84 Idyll i. 
 
 35 After a lapse of 89 years. 
 86 E. Carrara), pp. 393-4.
 
 SANNAZARO AND HIS IMITATORS 69 
 
 Sannazar had done in Latin," and he accordingly 
 inserted in book two of his " Amori," 37 the first 
 Italian imitation of Sannazaro published. In this 
 piece Crocale, a nymph of royal blood, born near 
 the sea, bewails the death of her fisher husband, 
 Davalo. Her lament on the rocky coast and many 
 of the details, such as invocation of the nereids 
 with touches of marine description, recall San- 
 nazaro's " Phyllis," but the second part of the 
 poem is in a class by itself. " Beautiful Galatea " 
 rises from the waves, embraces Crocale and begs 
 her to lay aside her grief and marry Nereus, who 
 wishes to make her queen of the ocean fields, of 
 the green-haired gods and the scaly herds. As 
 Crocale, Davalo and Galatea are poetical names 
 for real persons, the idyll is as much a cryptogram 
 as its Sannazarian model. This allusive element 
 is less noticeable in most vernacular pastorals, 
 but the elaboration initiated by Tasso's experi- 
 ment, which is much longer than any of the Latin 
 eclogues, continues to characterize the Italian 
 fisher poems. 
 
 The latter, as a rule, follow more closely than 
 Tasso the form of Sannazaro's pieces, and like 
 them avoid the themes of religious controversy 
 or political satire. Those few not based on a 
 definite model by Sannazaro render in marine 
 imagery pastorals of Virgil of which no Sanna- 
 zarian imitation is extant, or else attempt a real- 
 istic treatment suggestive of Theocritus. The 
 typical meter for Italian fisher idylls, as for con- 
 temporary bucolics, is terza rima. 
 
 :7 Venice, 1534.
 
 7O IDYLLS OF FISHERMEN 
 
 The eclogues by the Neapolitan Bernardino 
 Rota, probably composed a year before the pub- 
 lication of Tasso's marine, though not printed 
 till much later, 38 are said to be the first pisca- 
 tories in the Etruscan dialect, and are declared by 
 Tiraboschi 39 to be the best of their kind. Like 
 Crocale's complaint they are imitations of Sanna- 
 zaro, and it has been suggested 40 that Rota, like 
 Tasso, undertook their composition at the sugges- 
 tion of the Marchioness of Pescara. They exem- 
 plify better than Tasso's poem the characteristics 
 of the Italian fisher eclogue, and differ little in 
 essentials from imitations made two centuries 
 later. 
 
 In renaissance pastoral fishermen are an amor- 
 ous lot, and Rota's are no exception to the rule, 
 for twelve of his fourteen marines deal with love 
 motives. His love-sick fishers wail complaints 
 along barren beaches, or hold song contests be- 
 fore judges, or prepare incantations to win back 
 their fickle nymphs all much as in Sannazaro. 
 What distinguishes these and most other Italian 
 pieces of the sort from the Latin is not the sub- 
 ject matter or the form, but rather the method of 
 presentation, which is much freer and more fan- 
 ciful than in the humanistic works. When fisher- 
 men sing the charms of their sweethearts nereids 
 chant like enthusiastic praises from the sea; 
 Proteus appears driving his herds, while Tethys 
 and Arnphitrite scatter pearls and corals on the 
 waters. In the love complaints we find one 
 
 88 Naples, 1560 and 1572. 
 
 39 Storia Delai Litterat. Ital. I, ch. 30. 
 
 40 E, Carrara, pp. 393-394-
 
 SANNAZARO AND HIS IMITATORS 7 1 
 
 neglected fisher exulting because the gods have 
 punished his nymph by turning her into a white 
 stone; another finds himself mocked by an echo 
 lurking among the rocks along shore; another 
 serenades a sleeping girl, and still another is loud 
 in his abuse of his would-be mother-in-law. 
 Every where we find a singular mixture of modern 
 life with ancient fable. Rota gives, for instance, 
 a realistic description of two weary fishermen, 
 but before he has done with them they find 
 stretched in the seaweed at high water mark, a 
 scaly triton, fast asleep, with his spiral shell lying 
 at his side. One awkwardly attempts to sound 
 the horn, whereupon the owner starts up, takes 
 the shell and plays sweetly for them. Such 
 themes contrast sharply with that of a single 
 idyll in which two rude fellows chaff each other 
 in vigorous fashion until interrupted by a com- 
 rade. This is imitated from the rough banter 
 between Menalcas and Damoetas in Virgil, 41 and 
 is a fairly successful attempt to employ a tradi- 
 tional device to paint a coarse picture of modern 
 fishermen. 
 
 Most of these poems are only variants on San- 
 nazarian models, but they possess a freshness and 
 charm superior to those in the Latin. This is due 
 in part to Rota's exuberant fancy, but more to 
 the fact that his descriptions of persons and 
 scenery are comparatively original, while Sanna- 
 zaro's are in most cases carefully studied marine 
 equivalents for corresponding passages in Virgil. 
 This comparative freedom of presentation be- 
 
 41 EC. 3.
 
 72 IDYLLS OF FISHERMEN 
 
 comes a permanent feature in the Italian pisca- 
 tories, which oddly enough, with whimsical 
 changeability, continue to place in juxtaposition, 
 vivid if conventional imagery, with a use of 
 pathetic fallacy far more extravagant than any- 
 thing in Sannazaro. Thus the shores and seas 
 are real enough, yet when lovers sing, fishes fre- 
 quently pop their heads from the waves, listen- 
 ing in ecstacy to the pleasing sounds, or lose their 
 heads and swim eagerly ashore. Rota composed 
 piscatory poems and bucolics side by side, and as 
 the new style spread, most sets of eclogues, 
 whether in Latin or Italian, included a few 
 written in the new manner. 
 
 In contemporary pastorals of shepherds, as a 
 rule, pathetic fallacies are as noticeable as in 
 those about fishers, and the oddities of the new 
 species develop in emulation of and parallel to 
 those familiar in the old. Lists of flowers are 
 matched by lists of fish, the power of love evi- 
 denced by examples drawn from the ways of 
 birds and animals in Tasso's Amyntas is shown 
 with what may be termed marine flourishes by 
 illustrations drawn from the lives of fishes or of 
 seals in Ongaro's Alceo. This is the Sanna- 
 zarian method. His Arcadia gave tremendous 
 impetus to the popularity of the regular pastoral 
 and his piscatories in like manner led the way 
 to the " new " idea in pastorialism. 
 
 Not long after Rota composed his eclogues the 
 fisher motive invaded another field of the pas- 
 toral. Sannazaro was responsible for the intro- 
 duction of the piscatory convention, and as his
 
 SANNAZARO AND HIS IMITATORS 73 
 
 Arcadia won great popularity, it was inevitable 
 that some zealous imitator should write a romance 
 of the seashore where fishermen should be the 
 characters. This is exactly what happened, and 
 in the work of Matteo Sammartino we find rather 
 an ingenious combination of the new manner with 
 the old, the prose and interspersed eclogues deal- 
 ing wholly with fishers and an idealized fisher 
 life. 42 In similar vein Giulio Cesare Capaccio 
 wrote a romance of which the prose celebrates 
 Sannazaro's Villa Mergellina with the nearby 
 coasts, while the eclogues are vernacular imita- 
 tions of Sannazaro's Latin pastorals. Other ma- 
 rine Arcadias followed, and the species lingered 
 on as late as the middle of the eighteenth century. 43 
 With the exception of romances most of the 
 fisher pastorals thus far mentioned were pub- 
 lished at Naples. From that city the idea spread 
 to Venice, where was published about 1550 an 
 anonymous poem, " Pescatoria Amorosa," a sere- 
 nade sung by fishermen, and notable for a certain 
 lyric grace, 44 though soiled by a vicious double 
 meaning. The same year the Venetian Andrea 
 Calmo published his "Rime Pescatorie," 45 in 
 which the classic types of song are preserved but 
 an effort is made to gain realism of presentation 
 by reproducing the rude diction of actual Vene- 
 tian fishermen, an attempt almost analogous to 
 
 42 Venice, 1540 and 1566. 
 
 48 Parini composed one some time before 1759. It has 
 been lost. 
 
 ** See W. W. Gregg, pp. 3 , \. 
 
 45 " Le Bizarre, Faconde et Ingeniose Rime Pescatorie " 
 repub. 1557, 1576, 1582.
 
 74 IDYLLS OF FISHERMEN 
 
 that made by Spenser in some parts of the Shep- 
 herds Calendar. 46 Of all the piscatories printed 
 at Venice, however, the four among the " Egloghe 
 Miste" (1590) by Bernardino Baldi, Bishop of 
 Guastalla, are the most interesting, on account of 
 the sly humor with which the poet evidently re- 
 garded the occasional extravagance of the con- 
 vention. 
 
 This mood is perhaps most pronounced in a 
 complaint by a wretched fisher, who sits shivering 
 in the boughs of a tree before the cabin where 
 cruel Tibrina lies sleeping on a winter's night. 
 The song is extremely elaborate, but follows the 
 form of Sannazaro's Galatea, in invocation, at- 
 tempts to excite jealousy, offer of piscatory gifts 
 and the usual threat of suicide. The classic 
 touches in this serenade border on the burlesque, 
 the lover declaring with poor old Polyphemus : 
 
 " I am not deformed nor ugly if the tranquil sea 
 where I go fishing tells the truth. If my chin is 
 bearded and my eyebrows are shaggy these things 
 ornament men." 
 
 Another typical illustration of Baldi's manner is 
 the fisher's sobbing reference to his tender recol- 
 lections of how Tibrina looked in swaddling 
 clothes. Equally absurd are the remarks about 
 the power of love among the fish incidental to a 
 confidential chat between two fishermen, and the 
 detailed advice with which one fellow shows the 
 other that he must use the craft of the angler to 
 catch the heart of his indifferent mistress. 
 
 One of these eclogues, "Alceo," was very 
 
 46 Analogous also to a movement in contemporary 
 bucolics.
 
 SANNAZARO AND HIS IMITATORS 75 
 
 likely composed for dramatic rendering. 47 A 
 young fisher, Cebisto, finds old Alceo vainly striv- 
 ing to row ashore against wind and waves. He 
 yells to the oarsman to cast a line ashore, but it 
 is some time before the deaf old fellow under- 
 stands, and is hauled to safety. It is pouring 
 rain and the two carry Alceo's basket of fish to 
 the shelter of a cave. There Alceo asks whose 
 name he sees carved on the rocks, whereupon 
 Cebisto says that Tratilo has cut the name of his 
 love on a thousand rocks but there is a different 
 name on every one. While they talk an eel slips 
 from the basket and for some time they struggle 
 to recapture it, which one of them succeeds in 
 doing by holding dry leaves in his palms. After 
 this episode Cebisto coaxes Alceo to tell what he 
 knows about fish, and the garrulous old man, 
 easily flattered, repeats a string of stories con- 
 cerning marvelous sea-creatures. He goes on 
 and on, encouraged by his auditor's admiring 
 comment, but at length says he could keep it up 
 a whole month, but must go to the city to change 
 his fish for gold. The form of this piece, with 
 the dramatic episodes, apt contrast of character, 
 exclusively conversational rendering, and unusual 
 length, indicates that it may be an " ecloghe rap- 
 presentativa," perhaps intended to satirize in dra- 
 matic presentation some of the favorite bits of 
 fish lore found in Italian eclogues. 48 
 
 47 The other piece is a conventional allegorical eulogy 
 for Ferrante, lately dead. It is imitated from Santiazaro's 
 Phyllis. A touch from Theocritus is " Poverty which 
 never sleeps and never concedes a full rest." 
 
 48 The old 1 man insists on the truth of all his statements, 
 and the youth declares that he believes them all.
 
 76 IDYLLS OF FISHERMEN 
 
 THE FISHER DRAMA 
 
 Meanwhile the fisher conventions made their 
 way into the drama in exactly the same manner 
 as earlier into romance. Tasso's pastoral play 
 "Amyntas" met with extraordinary success and 
 among numerous imitations adaptations to the 
 "new style" soon found a place. It is interest- 
 ing to note that Tasso himself thought favorably 
 of the piscatory idea, and at one time intended 
 to compose a drama of fishers as a companion 
 piece with his Amyntas, a scheme suggested by 
 Signer Alessandro d'Este, who between 1580 and 
 1582 wrote, reminding him of the triumph of his 
 pastoral, and urging that he should try his hand 
 at a maritime or fisher play. The poet replied in 
 this sonnet : 
 
 " O child of high talent, in the midst of the waves 
 was born the goddess who is honored by Paphos 
 and Cnidos, as is known to fame, by old report, and 
 she still loves the sea and its shores. Not only 
 among rough trunks and green leaves does she make 
 a sweet nest, but in the cavernous reef and on salty 
 bank, with her little boy, sometimes she hides her- 
 self. Then the fugitive Cyclops Galatea calls forth 
 from a high rock in the waters. The seals and the 
 whales are consumed with love, and if when I cele- 
 brated with bold song the shady woods, and the song 
 was liked let it be liked if I shall exalt the sunny 
 sands." 
 
 A little later Tasso wrote a second sonnet, in 
 which he relinquished the idea : 
 
 " O holy son, born of great leaders, little boy 
 Alessandro, in vain dost thou desire me to sing of
 
 SANNAZARO AND HIS IMITATORS 77 
 
 rough man who raves and loves, and dost wish 
 that my song may accompany thy sports, either 
 along a pretty river, or yet beside the lively founts 
 and under the green branches, or yet among reefs 
 and waves and nets and hooks, grieving for love, 
 sighing and weeping. It seems that I (who many 
 years ago wrote plays), can not now write so far 
 from the woods and the shores. Place me (it is 
 time) where the green top of the thick wood is 
 moved murmuring, and the placid sea stirs beneath 
 the summer breeze." 
 
 But though Tasso gave up the idea it occurred 
 to the young Antonio Ongaro at just that time, 
 for in the summer of 1581, at Rome, was played 
 his "Alceo," of which the plot is taken directly 
 from the Amyntas, but in which the scene is 
 changed to the seashore. Trie imitation is so 
 obvious that the piece has been aptly termed 
 "Amyntas soaked." Almost every passage in 
 Tasso's drama is paralleled by its marine equiva- 
 lent Venus dons the dress of a fisher maiden 
 and determines to humble the cold Eurilla, who 
 scorns the fisher Alceo. The latter is aided and 
 comforted by the fisher Timeta, while Alcippe 
 strives in vain to soften the heart of Eurilla. 
 Tasso's lustful satyr, lurking near the pool to 
 seize the shepherdess, becomes in Ongaro's play 
 an equally lustful triton, hiding in a harbor to 
 catch the fisher girl with her nets. 49 Of course 
 his wicked attempt is frustrated by the valor of 
 Alceo. Even the Golden Age chorus in Amyntas 
 
 49 He utters a complaint like that in Sannazaro's Galatea, 
 and says, like Polyphemus " When I look into the quiet 
 sea, I do not think I am a monster."
 
 78 IDYLLS OF FISHERMEN 
 
 finds an echo in a chorus of fisher folk, praising 
 life by the sea. Of course at the end Alceo takes 
 the same leap as does the hero of the pastoral 
 drama, only the fisher leaps to the sea, and jumps 
 twice before the heart of his mistress is softened 
 by his devotion. 50 
 
 Another evidence of the vogue of the fisher 
 convention 51 is found in the sonnet. Those by 
 Tasso already cited may have suggested the idea 
 of composing piscatory sonnets to others, for in 
 the next century occasional pieces of the sort 
 made their appearance. Of these the following, 
 by A. Marchetti, is a typical example: 
 
 " Nice, now that the star of love is rising from the 
 orient, and with disheveled hair shines with pure 
 and divine beauty, the messenger of a new, clear 
 dawn take the nets, and in this little boat, come 
 and fish for ragui and soles and ombrine. Of them 
 in the quiet neighboring waters we will make an 
 abundant and beautiful catch. Come, do not fear 
 that suddenly the calm of the sea be disturbed, as 
 often is wont to happen, by the tempest or wind ; 
 because thy sweet looks, thy words will make the 
 sky smile and every element, and clearer than ever 
 will the sun be born." 
 
 Thus fisher pastorals of many kinds became 
 common in Italy after the publication of Sanna- 
 zaro's poems. During the next century they were 
 not so frequently composed, but the genre lh> 
 
 60 Ace. Angela Solerti similar imitations of Amyntas were 
 common for more than a century. One is a " Favola 
 Pescatoria," Venice, 1612. Battista (Giovanni) Ruffino. 
 
 51 Another set of Itailia-n piscatory eclogues imitated 
 from Sannazaro by S. Berardino were published ait Naples 
 in 1560, " L'egloghe Pescatorie."
 
 SANNAZARO AND HIS IMITATORS 79 
 
 gered on, and so late as the middle of the eight- 
 eenth century we find in the works of Parini 52 
 evidence of the persistence of the seaside pas- 
 toral. He wrote a fisher romance, in imitation 
 of the Arcadia, bucolic eclogues, piscatory ec- 
 logues, and the following sonnet: 
 
 " I am dying at last, O cruel Eumolpi, on these 
 wet nets in the boat where thou seest me lying; but 
 I will not accuse thee of still grudging me a cold 
 sigh. O scaly herds, no longer fear the blows of 
 my trident ; at last is departing for other shores he 
 who with every net was wont to draw from the 
 waves a full load of tenie and polypi. Take, o my 
 companions, my rods (Ah a thousand times be it 
 given to you to see their tops bent!) or my nets. 
 Only this little boat shall come with me, to cross, 
 black Styx, thy whirl-pools, when Charon will deny 
 a passage to so unhappy a wretch." 
 
 This piece differs in no essentials from those 
 composed a hundred years earlier, and the same 
 thing is presumably true of his romance, 53 and 
 certainly true of the three fisher eclogues among 
 his pastorals. Two of the latter are love com- 
 plaints bearing exactly the same relationship to 
 Sannazaro's work 54 as do the eclogues of Rota, 
 written nearly two centuries earlier, except that 
 like the pieces produced in the late sixteenth cen- 
 tury they display a humor that marks a reaction 
 against pastoral affectations. This tendency is 
 most pronounced in the last idyll, one of rude 
 
 52 Poesie, Firenze, 1889. 
 
 63 Composed before 1759 now lost. 
 
 54 " Galatea."
 
 80 IDYLLS OF FISHERMEN 
 
 banter imitated 55 from Virgil. One fisher is ac- 
 cused of singing as sweetly as a scratching file, 
 so that a band of frogs fled in dismay. He re- 
 plies that the sea-goddesses burst with laughter 
 when his rival sang. In the contest that follows 
 these insults Nilalga declares that his fisher girl 
 has golden hair the gold with which the salpi 
 sparkles, and the shining eye of the gold-fish. 
 One day she kissed him, whereupon the fishes 
 along the shores " swam to and fro full of envy." 
 A good example of Parini's manner is furnished 
 by the designs which he describes on a bowl, 56 in 
 which 
 
 " is cut a fisherman, who standing on a high reef 
 is preying on the frisking schools with rod and 
 hook. Near him are three laughing children, who 
 gather the prey on the beach, and then play among 
 themselves. And here is one who, intrepid and 
 daring, a companion clutches by the hair because 
 he has stolen a fish. Here four young girls are 
 washing their pretty, white feet in the shade of a 
 clump of bushes. They are sitting on the soft, green 
 grass, and with their skirts lifted higher than their 
 knees, show their pure and alabaster legs. Then a 
 troop of tritons is laughing at the unwary and in- 
 expert four from behind a rock." 
 
 So much for late survivals of the orthodox pis- 
 catory conventions. Examples of Italian fisher 
 poetry of later periods, such for instance, as Li 
 Piscaturi, 57 by the Sicilian Giovanni Meli, are 
 little influenced by the Sannazarian manner, and 
 
 K Ec. 3. 
 
 66 From Theocritus, or from the imitation by Parthenius. 
 
 w See Opere di Giovanni Meli. Palermo, 1838.
 
 SANNAZARO AND HIS IMITATORS 8 1 
 
 are rendered in various free and vigorous lyric 
 forms. 
 
 THE SPREAD OF THE FISHER PASTORAL TO SPAIN 
 AND FRANCE 
 
 The well-known subjection of Spanish literature, 
 particularly of the pastoral, to Italian models 58 
 during the first part of the sixteenth century was 
 probably due as much as anything to the simi- 
 larity of the languages, which facilitated the 
 transference of Italian verse forms into Spanish, 
 and the introduction of such forms was the more 
 natural in that the native pastoralism of popular 
 tradition formed precedent for the poets. In 
 Spain as in Italy, successful imitation of the 
 classics by those who attempted the more strictly 
 Virgilian form of pastoral, or renaissance vari- 
 ants of that form, preceded the composition of 
 fisher eclogues. Thus, to be exact, we find that 
 Spanish imitations of Sannazaro's Arcadia and 
 of the poems in that romance led the way to imi- 
 tation of Sannazaro's piscatory idylls. 
 
 Precedent for imitations of these pieces had 
 existed from the very earliest times in the native 
 fisher songs along the coasts of the Galaico- 
 
 88 The earliest evidence is found in the eclogues by 
 Garcilaso de la Vega, comp. 1526? pub. 1543. These are 
 based on eclogues in the Arcadia. Other imitations of 
 Italian models are by Boscan, Mendoza, Cervantes, Lope 
 de Vega, Pedro de Encinas and many more. The Arcadia 
 was first imitated by the Portuguese Bernardim Ribeiro 
 (1475-1524) in his " Menina e Moca." A Spanish trans- 
 lation of the Arcadia appeared in 1561. Jorge de Monte- 
 mor's Diana (1561) is influenced by Sannazaro's romance 
 also.
 
 82 IDYLLS OF FISHERMEN 
 
 Portuguese region, so that just as rural Galicia 
 is thought to have left its stamp on the exotic 
 bucolics, the lyrics of the shore may have affected 
 the analogous renaissance piscatories. At any 
 rate such lyrics are of common occurrence in col- 
 lections of old songs, 59 in " villanescas de mar," 
 and in " vers de ledino." These constitute a spe- 
 cies by themselves, perhaps akin in origin to other 
 native lyrics of fisher folk among the romance 
 peoples. They are usually songs with refrains, 
 mere snatches of melody suited to the rough toils 
 of fishermen, and giving the effect of having been 
 composed to the swing of the oar. There is a 
 sad note in most of these pieces, and in many 
 cases the same suggestion of unrequited love, 
 which forms the favorite theme of the fisher 
 pastoral in Italy. 
 
 It is not surprising, then, that the first imitation 
 of Sannazaro's Latin eclogues in Spain should be 
 found in the work of a Portuguese, Louis de 
 Camoes, whose experiment in the genre, the 
 " Song Contest," may have been composed as 
 early as 1546. In the introductory lines express- 
 ing a determination to repeat the contest that 
 once arose between the singers of the pastures 
 and of the seashore, the poet declares that he will 
 sing in a way once followed on another shore by 
 "a man beloved by the Muses Sincerus the 
 fisherman," but that he will " enter the domain 
 of the new style true to Virgil, without devia- 
 tion." Accordingly he tells how the shepherd 
 
 68 Martin Codax, in particular, seems to have dedicated 
 himself to this sort of poetry. Juan Zarro wrote pieces very 
 like modern " barcarolas." See bib. " Pelayo."
 
 SANNAZARO AND HIS IMITATORS 83 
 
 Agrario, in a sad reverie, left his flock and wan- 
 dered to the coast, where in a cavern he heard the 
 fisher boy Alicuto singing about Lemnoria. The 
 charm of the fisher song filled the rustic with 
 admiration, and a conversation ensued, ending 
 with an agreement to hold a contest. This match 
 took place before throngs of shepherds and 
 fishers, 60 and the alternate strains place side by 
 side the new manner in pastoral with the old, all 
 Alicuto's words being deliberate imitation of the 
 songs in Sannazaro's contest between fishers, 
 while Agrario's utterances are imitated from the 
 corresponding trial of skill between swains in the 
 Virgilian eclogue which Sannazaro rendered ma- 
 rine. 61 Thus the piece is based both on Virgil 
 and on Sannazaro. At the same time Camoes' 
 employment of pathetic fallacy shows that he was 
 influenced by the fantastic conceits of Italian 
 fisher pastoral, and so we find that when his Ali- 
 cuto sings, fish pop their heads out of the water 
 in ecstasy, while dolphins race madly along shore. 
 In spite of its artificiality this poem has a color 
 and freshness which show that even in adapting 
 at once two rival forms, Camoes was too much 
 of a poet to produce a stilted rendering. He was 
 equally successful in his complaint of the fisher 
 Sereno to Galatea, " The Scorned Fisherman," a 
 piece imitated from Sannazaro alone. 62 The elabo- 
 ration of both these fisher pastorals is greater 
 than that in most contemporary Italian eclogues. 
 Cam5es termed fisher pastoral " the new style," 
 
 60 Cf. Samr*. fragmentum. 
 
 61 P. ec. 3. 
 
 62 EC. 2, "Galatea."
 
 84 IDYLLS OF FISHERMEN 
 
 and his example may have suggested to Diogo 
 Bernardes the idea of attempting further imita- 
 tion. Two of his eclogues, " The Fisher's Woo- 
 ing " and " The Fisher's Lament," published in 
 I596 63 are so like poems by Camoes that they are 
 sometimes printed with his works, and at the same 
 time they are modeled on the pastorals of Sanna- 
 zaro. The first of these idylls is another imita- 
 tion of the humanist's oft-imitated " Galatea," 
 and the second is merely a variant on the same 
 theme, though it attempts the realistic detail of 
 Theocritus. Thus the fisher Meliso's plaint is 
 wailed to the moon-lit sea, and near him lie his 
 old fishing boat, with the sails, spars, seines and 
 tackle under shelter on the beach. One touch 
 suggests the myth of Arion. The singer tells 
 how he once sat in his skiff moaning a complaint 
 to his cruel Lilia, when emotion overcame him, 
 so that he fell senseless into the waves. Luckily 
 a soft-hearted dolphin, moved by his sweet voice, 
 bore him back to his boat in safety. 
 
 Of somewhat later composition than these pas- 
 torals is Calderon's " El Golfo de Las Sirenas," 
 which he styles an " Ecloga Piscatoria." The 
 passages on fisher life recall the conventions char- 
 acterizing many idylls already considered, but the 
 piece is rather a short play than an eclogue, and 
 is an isolated example of the occurrence of the 
 motive in early Spanish drama. A few words 
 will suffice to give an idea of the plot. In the 
 spring a gallant fisher, Silenus, a boorish fisher, 
 
 83 One was printed in Bernardes' " Olyma " as " Galatea," 
 ec. 2. The other was printed as " Lilia" ec. pise. 13. (See 
 Storck's Ger. tr., pp. 423 fol.)
 
 SANNAZARO AND HIS IMITATORS 85 
 
 Alfaeus, and two village maidens, Astrea and 
 Celpha, chance to meet. It is proposed that they 
 ascend the mountains, with music-girls and vil- 
 lage choruses, to celebrate the season with its 
 deities, but Alfaeus reminds them that Scylla, re- 
 jected by Neptune for Amphitrite, has retreated 
 to the hills, where she remains unrelentingly bitter 
 against all seafolk, whether gods or men, and that 
 to see her is fatal. Nearby amid the reefs lurks 
 Charybdis, daughter of the sea god Aglaucus and 
 of a siren. She hates sea-farers because Aglau- 
 cus spurns her mother, and her voice leads sailors 
 to destruction. Fisher- folk have an understand- 
 ing with these grim deities, and must not worship 
 others lest vengeance come upon them. As they 
 talk a wreck is sighted and the cries of Ulysses 
 and his crew rend the air. Scylla and Charybdis 
 call down destruction upon them, but nevertheless 
 Ulysses with two servants is saved. Scylla now 
 disputes with Charybdis as to which of the two 
 is more baneful, Scylla who kills by the eye, or 
 Charybdis who kills by the hearing. The debate 
 is very subtle and clever, the poet here defining 
 the esthetics of the eye and of the ear. To settle 
 the difficulty they agree to try their power on 
 Ulysses, who is to be the exclusive victim of the 
 winner. In the contest now one, now the other, 
 seems to be winning, and the Greek is filled with 
 conflicting emotions, but he is rescued by his fol- 
 lowers, who lead to him Celpha and Alfaeus, by 
 whom he is warned of his danger just in time. 
 He procures a skiff, in which he embarks with 
 the fisher as an unwilling pilot. The enraged
 
 86 IDYLLS OF FISHERMEN 
 
 gods rouse earthquakes, while Sirens strive to 
 attack Ulysses, but the wily prince escapes. The 
 reefs Scylla and Charybdis are thrown up by the 
 convulsion. Ulysses casts Alfaeus into the sea, 
 where he is swallowed by a monstrous fish which 
 later disgorges him on the shore. The fisherman 
 now hears within a hollow mountain the voices 
 of maidens, beseeching him to free them from the 
 dungeon in which they are imprisoned by Scylla 
 under the care of a savage. He refuses his aid, 
 but the hideous guardian appears, and begins to 
 prate " old wives' " tales to him, and on his scorn- 
 ing these the savage conveniently dies. " He that 
 listens not to a savage doth kill him." Among 
 those thus rescued is Celpha, whose gratitude to 
 the fisher makes them forget their former dislike 
 for each other. 
 
 The play has little in common with Italian 
 dramas like Ongaro's Alceo except fishermen as 
 characters, and even they are not nearly so im- 
 portant as the powers symbolized, with the alle- 
 gorical treatment of their employment against 
 Ulysses. In spite of Calderon's calling the work 
 a piscatory eclogue, then, it has little connection 
 with the Sannazarian species so far as structure is 
 concerned. The case is different with the Spanish 
 eclogues by Camoes and Bernardes. These re- 
 semble the Italian imitations of Sannazaro in 
 their ornate and lengthy treatment, but differ 
 from them in the retention of more numerous 
 specific touches suggestive of their common mod- 
 els. Such poems seem to have been only of spo- 
 radic occurrence in Spain, and do not indicate
 
 SANNAZARO AND HIS IMITATORS 87 
 
 that the foreign fisher idyll ever gained much of 
 a foothold in the peninsula. They illustrate, how- 
 ever, the wide dissemination of the fisher pastoral 
 that followed Sannazaro's work. 
 
 THE PISCATORY IN FRANCE 
 
 The fisher eclogue made its way into French 
 literature in the same manner as into Spanish, 
 following imitation 64 of other Italian pastoral 
 forms after a short interval of time. At a time 
 when the Pleiade group of poets in France was 
 urging the exaltation of the vernacular through 
 imitation of the classics, it was inevitable that 
 Sannazaro's idylls should meet with approval, 
 because of his remarkable success as a Latinist. 
 The stamp of official approval, in fact, was em- 
 phatically given to his eclogues in the famous 
 manifesto of the Pleiade, " La Defense et Illus- 
 tration de la Langue Francaise." Du Bellay rec- 
 ommended the composition of pleasant rustic 
 eclogues after the example of Theocritus or 
 Virgil, and of marine eclogues after the example 
 of Sannazaro. 
 
 The first to follow this dictum concerning ma- 
 rines was another distinguished member of the 
 Pleiade group of poets, Remy Belleau, whose 
 " Bergerie " owes much to Sannazaro's Arcadia. 
 
 64 Thus Margaret of Navarre made a French transla- 
 tion of Sannazaro's " Salices," 1543: " L'Histoire des 
 Satyres et Nymphes de Diane." In 1544 Giovanni Martin 
 translated the Arcadia. Du Bellay himself translated and 
 imitated parts of the Arcadia. His " Jeux Rustiques " 
 owes much to Arcadia, and to Sannazaro's P. Ecs. and to 
 his Latin epigrams.
 
 88 IDYLLS OF FISHERMEN 
 
 This indebtedness is traceable in the general plan 
 of the French work, made up as it is of prose 
 passages and of eclogues, 05 and in occasional spe- 
 cific imitations. 60 The story of Sannazaro's first 
 exile in France, of his return to Italy and of the 
 death of Carmosina is veiled by the idealized pic- 
 tures of shepherd life in the Arcadia. The" Ber- 
 gerie," on the other hand, is rather an eulogy of 
 sixteenth century France, and is aimed especially 
 to describe the charm of country life during the 
 various seasons. 
 
 In one part of the work, the " Seconde Jour- 
 nee," fisher eclogues figure as a literary "tour 
 de force," intended to show how gracefully that 
 sort of thing could be handled in French. Each 
 poem is preceded by an appropriate prose intro- 
 duction, the first of which represents a party 
 strolling through a formal garden, where they 
 heard the voice of a fisher on the banks of the 
 river Marne. As they drew nearer they saw the 
 singer, a handsome youth, fishing with hook and 
 line. He had stationed himself below an over- 
 hanging rock on purpose to wail "complaints to 
 the wind and waves," while his skiff with the 
 tackle lay nearby on the sands. Belleau does not 
 explain how a towering cliff and " rough billows " 
 happened to be found at the foot of the trim gar- 
 den, among the willows, but they were evidently 
 needed as a background for what followed. The 
 
 88 And other lyrics not modeled on formal eclogues, like 
 the beautiful lyric " Avril." 
 
 98 As in Belleau's " Winter," where borrowings from 
 Arcadia prose 9 and prose 10 are found. Part one of 
 "Bergerie" pub. 1565. Part two and the p. ecs. 1572.
 
 SANNAZARO AND HIS IMITATORS 89 
 
 fisherman was in love, and as soon as he saw the 
 newcomers " he began to sing aloud as if he had 
 sworn to please us." His first words are an 
 apostrophe to Poverty, probably borrowed from 
 the induction to the Theocritean fisher idyll. 
 After this he tells how love has come in the 
 guise of a fisherman and " baited his hook with 
 Catin's eyes " which the singer has swallowed and 
 so been caught. His complaint to this damsel is 
 merely a French rendering of the analogous one 
 in Sannazaro, but curiously enough, he is stated 
 to have sung it " till night," and yet the audience 
 did not grow impatient. On the contrary Bel- 
 leau says : 
 
 " I promise you this gentle fisher gave us so much 
 pleasure, and recited his passionate eclogue with 
 such good grace that he made us forget our talk 
 ... he told us that he had once been on the sea 
 and that an old Sicilian mariner had taught him 
 the complaint, with an infinite number of others 
 that we made him tell us." 
 
 One of these, " The Fisherman," dedicated to 
 "Lord Antoine de Baif," is a French imitation 
 of Sannazaro's song contest, 67 composed with 
 many realistic touches, 68 such as a cavern for a 
 background, skiffs, tackle left lying in confusion, 
 and fishermen all along the beach drawing fish 
 from their hooks. Having rendered this piece 
 the youth handed to his listeners a paper on which 
 were traced "Larmes Sur Le Trespas De Mon- 
 seigneur Rene de Lorraine, Marquis d'Elbeuf." 
 
 "Ec. 3. 
 
 68 As in Sann. and Tbeoc.
 
 90 IDYLLS OF FISHERMEN 
 
 This proves to be an elegiac eclogue in which 
 three fishers lament the death of the marquis, and 
 extol his virtues, and his victories in naval battles 
 on many seas, all of it modeled on Sannazaro. 69 
 
 The fisher is so obliging as to sing also lines 
 on the " Tombeau de Madame Loyse de Rieux 
 Marquise d'Elbeuf," a marine elegy in which the 
 poet calls on the Nereids, who wept when Thetis 
 mourned the death of Achilles, to weep for the 
 French Marquise. In the course of the eulogy 
 Belleau invokes Palemon, Glaucus, Panope and 
 many other divinities of ocean. In another piece 
 a shepherd who has lost his way by night peeps 
 through the window of a cabin where he sees an 
 old woman performing incantations and trans- 
 fixing a waxen image, to win back " him who put 
 her in such frenzy." 
 
 Lastly Belleau's fisherman proves that he is 
 weather-wise by two songs, one on the celestial 
 appearances of the sun, and the other on those 
 of the moon, " astronomical eclogues," like some 
 of the " idyllia " of Ausonius, only much shorter, 
 and perhaps meant as French adaptations of a 
 leading motive in Virgil's first Georgic. Thus 
 the French poet makes a single fisherman render 
 in French the themes of all Sannazaro's pisca- 
 tories, singing a contest, a love complaint, an 
 elegy, and a " pharmaceutria." The eclogues are 
 graceful imitations, but rather more artificial than 
 most earlier examples of the kind. The neat 
 garden, the wall, and the willows along the stream 
 are difficult to harmonize with the songs sung by 
 
 M Ec. i.
 
 SANNAZARO AND HIS IMITATORS 91 
 
 the Sannazarian fisher. He poses with marked 
 assurance, and his knowledge of astronomy, with 
 the approving comment of the fashionable au- 
 dience, listening with delight to all his songs, 
 make a mixture that it is impossible to match 
 elsewhere in the development of the new pastoral. 
 It is only fair to this angler, however, to say that 
 he is scarcely more courtly and polite than Bel- 
 leau's shepherds. His artificiality is simply that 
 of the pastoralism of France at this period, and 
 whatever he does he hooks no dark fish to match 
 the sooty fleeces worn by the mourning sheep in 
 the eclogues of Marot. 
 
 One year after the publication of the " Ber- 
 gerie" appeared what Estienne Jodelle called 
 " Les Pescheries, Bergeries et Eglogues de Chasse 
 de Claude Binet." 70 Of these the only fisher ec- 
 logue proves to be a short piece in the Sanna- 
 zarian manner, giving the prayer of a fisher to 
 Neptune, king of the sea. It is likely that Binet's 
 experiment was suggested by Belleau's pastoral, 
 but the only considerable work inspired by the 
 " Bergerie " is " Les Pescheries," by Christophe de 
 Gamon (1598). The eclogues and monologues 
 of which this consists include many passages imi- 
 tated from Theocritus, Sannazaro and Belleau, 
 but the fisher element consists for the most part 
 in ornate and minute description of actual angling, 
 something for which we search in vain among 
 the classic examples of the species. " Les Pesch- 
 eries" fairly bristles with Ronsardian epithets 
 
 70 Jodelle ed. 1670 ("La Pleiade Fr." Lemerre, pp. 
 334 a poem on Binet). For Binet see " Quelques Autres 
 diverses Poesies de Cl. Binet," Paris, 1573.
 
 92 IDYLLS OF FISHERMEN 
 
 and effects, and may almost be called a fisher 
 corruption of Ronsard. 
 
 Another evidence of the occasional occurrence 
 of fisher pastorals in the latter part of the six- 
 teenth century in France is a translation of 
 Ongaro's "Alceo," 71 and a second version ap- 
 peared in the seventeenth century. All these 
 French pieces, however, were of scarcely more 
 than casual importance in the imitation of the 
 classics urged by the Pleiade, and were probably 
 unknown to the English eclogue writers, whose 
 works were not influenced by them. Like the 
 Spanish, Italian and at a later date, German imi- 
 tations of Sannazaro, they serve simply to illus- 
 trate the wide diffusion of the " new style " in 
 renaissance Europe. 
 
 It is worthy of mention, too, that fishing ap- 
 pears an occasional occupation of shepherds in 
 nearly all the most famous pastorals from the 
 time of Theocritus to that of Queen Elizabeth. 
 In most cases we are reminded of the gentle craft 
 by mere casual allusion, and it would be easy to 
 cite many passages similar to one that is to be 
 found in Bonarelli's drama Filli Di Sciro, when 
 old Melisso, suspecting a plot against his supposed 
 daughter Cloris, says to her : 
 
 " I with my Hooks and Nets, will towards the Sea, 
 Direct my steps, pretending there to fish, 
 And so shall spie which way the Thracians tend." 72 
 
 n By Roland Brisset, Paris, 1596. Another by Claude 
 le Villain, Paris, 1602. 
 
 72 Act L, Scene 2. Translation by J. S. (Jonathan 
 Sidnam). London, 1655.
 
 SANNAZARO AND HIS IMITATORS 93 
 
 Discussion of such scattered bits would not be 
 at all worth while, but at least one pastoral is to 
 be found illustrating an actual blending of the 
 piscatory with the bucolic motive, and this is one 
 of Alexander Hardie's early dramatic idylls, 
 Alcee, published at Paris in 1624. This work 
 has been considered 73 as in no essential different 
 from the author's pastoral Corine, and as of 
 purely Italian inspiration, one more example of 
 the persistence of the form rendered popular by 
 Tasso's Amyntas. It is true, nevertheless, that 
 it belongs in part to the line of successors to the 
 idyll of the two old fishermen by Theocritus, 
 while the title suggests the possible influence of 
 Ongaro's Alceo. Phedime, Hardie's old fisher, 
 lives a life of harsh and fruitless labor on the sea. 
 He owns nothing but his hut, his skiff, and nets, 
 and his only comforts are his daughter Alcee and 
 Democle, an adopted son, whom he found in a 
 cradle cast ashore by the waves. This side of 
 the picture is typical of the piscatory genre, but 
 the plot varies little from those of the Italian pas- 
 toral plays. 
 
 Democle assists Phedime with the nets and 
 oars; in good time the young couple fall in love, 
 and eventually are betrothed. Then the rich 
 shepherd Dorylas offers Phedime enough money 
 to enable him to give up his toilsome life in re- 
 turn for the hand of Alcee. A witch tries magic 
 against the girl, there is an elopement which fails, 
 the young fisher is saved from leaping from a 
 
 73 La Pastoral Dramatique en France. Jules Marsan. 
 Paris, 1905.
 
 94 IDYLLS OF FISHERMEN 
 
 rock by an echo and Cupid, and finally, just when 
 he faces banishment, the wealthy Lygdame recog- 
 nizes him as his son. The churlish fisher, of 
 course, now allows Alcee to marry as she wishes, 
 a conclusion which, with the naive simplicity with 
 which the play presents the growth of love in 
 the hearts of the girl and boy, harks back to 
 Daphnis and Chloe. 
 
 It may safely be assumed that in France, as in 
 Italy, the occupation of fishers was considered 
 as specially sanctioned by holy writ, and some few 
 pictures were probably inspired by this feeling. 
 Thus in Saint-Amant's epic Moyse Sauve 74 we 
 find in the dialogue of the fishermen a sort of 
 sacred piscatory eclogue, and the same thing is 
 true of Jean Michel's Mystere 75 de la Passion, in 
 which the biblical fishers, St. Andrew and St. 
 Peter, figure in a fishing scene. We shall find 
 this same sort of scene, evidently based on the 
 Bible, of considerable influence in England at a 
 later date. 
 
 In " La Plainte du Pecheur " 76 (headed Fenes- 
 tra vascia Naples) we find an isolated example 
 of a French fisher poem based directly on imita- 
 tion of the characteristics of the Italian piscatory 
 eclogue of extravagant lament. As a rule, how- 
 ever, later illustrations of fisher poetry in France 
 have apparently little if any connection with the 
 
 74 1653. 
 
 75 Mystere de la Passion avec les additions et corrections 
 de Maistre Jean Michel. Late fifteenth century (an elabor- 
 ation of a work done by Arnoul Greban ante 1456). 
 
 76 See A. Brizeus, " Les Ternaires," Livre Lyrique. 
 Paris, 1841.
 
 SANNAZARO AND HIS IMITATORS 95 
 
 species as it was written in the time of the 
 Pleiade. Thus the Jesuit Jacob Vanieri 77 gives 
 a vivid picture of fishing with the rod in the fif- 
 teenth book of his Praedium Rusticum, a treatise 
 on fish, and another somewhat similar illustration 
 is to be found in Franciscus Champion's " Stag- 
 na," 78 a poem in Latin hexameter on fish ponds and 
 fish. Idyllic pictures of fishers are to be observed 
 here and there, notably in Jacques De Lille's 79 
 L'Homme des Champs." The poem shows obvi- 
 ous traces of the influence of Thomson's " Sea- 
 sons," and among the long list of figures de- 
 scribed it is not surprising to find an angler, rod 
 in hand, motionless and silent under the cool 
 willows which overhang the stream in which he 
 is fishing. 
 
 The piscatory motive is even used as subject 
 for debate 80 in the Disputatio de Piscatura Haren- 
 gorum in Roslagia: respondente Nils Humbli, 
 and in one of the Colloquia familiaria 81 by the 
 Dutch scholar, Desiderius Erasmus (1531). 
 
 Another sporadic example of the recurrence of 
 the piscatory motive is seen in the longing for the 
 simple life of a deep-sea fisher expressed in La- 
 mennais' Une Voix de Prison. 82 Finally a single 
 eclogue by Jacques de Fonteny, " Tolas," recalls 
 by its title and general tone the piscatories of 
 Sannazaro. 
 
 T7 Tolossae, 1730, and many later editions. 
 
 78 See treatise by A. Campaux. 
 
 79 Jacques DeLille, Oeuvres, Paris, 1824. 
 
 80 By N. Frondius, Upsal, 1745. 
 
 81 Venatio. See Colloquia familiaria, Leipsig, 1713. 
 82 Lamennais, Oeuvres, Paris, 1844.
 
 CHAPTER III 
 THE ENGLISH FISHER IDYLLS 
 
 Long before exotic pastoralism blossomed in 
 renaissance England, native tradition not uncon- 
 nected with that on the continent existed in the 
 shepherd plays of the Nativity, and in such bal- 
 lads as treated the story of the wandering knight 
 who made love to the shepherdess, a motive com- 
 mon at an early date, and twice used by Chaucer. 
 This native tradition, too, was not without points 
 of contact with the later literary species in 
 England. 
 
 The case was otherwise with piscatory poetry. 
 English literature previous to the Elizabethan 
 period included no variety of poetry or prose 
 devoted particularly to fisher-folk, and furnished 
 no tradition of indigenous lyrics sung by fishers, 
 though of course some slight precedent for the 
 introduction of the piscatory pastoral existed 
 from very remote times. 
 
 In England, as on the continent, imitation of 
 Sannazaro began with neo-Latin pieces, from 
 which it afterwards passed into the vernacular, 
 and though these earlier verses have been for- 
 gotten, they can not reasonably be neglected in a 
 history of the pastoral of the seashore. Two 
 eclogues by Giles Fletcher the elder, probably 
 composed before his graduation from Cambridge 
 96
 
 THE ENGLISH FISHER IDYLLS 97 
 
 in 1569, combine imitation of Virgil 1 with the 
 introduction of Sannazarian names, and other 
 touches suggestive of Sannazaro's poems, and 
 with marked emphasis on fishing. In one piece 
 the shepherd Aegon goes angling, and chances to 
 hear along a river's banks the shouted incanta- 
 tions of forsaken Telethusa. The other pastoral 
 describes a stream near the cot of Thestylus, a 
 swain whose poverty often forces him to rely on 
 his rod for food. This is followed by a picture 
 of the man, sitting at the water's edge, with his 
 dog crouching beside him, and holding in his 
 hand a rod of cane, to the nodding tip of which 
 is attached a line, equipped with hooks and a 
 cork. Having cast he is watching the float, bob- 
 bing on the water, when a friend comes along and 
 they fall into a conversation, dealing allegorically 
 with the tyranny of a noble, once cruel to shep- 
 herds (churchmen and poets), whose tomb now 
 lies covered by brambles. The scene described 
 is exactly like that which the poet often saw in 
 his native Kent, and in view of the facts that 
 Fletcher's son Phineas admired these eclogues 
 and wrote Latin piscatories, perhaps in emula- 
 tion, it is fair to class them as connecting links 
 between the Sannazarian pastoral and the English 
 imitations. 
 
 Not very long after Fletcher wrote these idylls, 
 masques of sea-gods were introduced in court 
 pageantry, and the presentation of such shows 
 
 1 The influence of Mamtuan is also noticeable in these, 
 and in another, " Myrtilus," in which that swain bewails 
 the " general neglect of shepherd life." Myrtilus is the 
 poet, and " Celadon " (cf. Sannaza/ro) is a friend. 
 
 8
 
 98 IDYLLS OF FISHERMEN 
 
 evidently paved the way for the later fisher play, 
 just as masques of shepherds did for the better 
 known pastoral drama. Almost the earliest of 
 the sort extant are among " The Princely Pleas- 
 ures at Kenilworth Castle," 2 given for the enter- 
 tainment of Queen Elizabeth in 1575, one of 
 which, " The deliverie of the Lady of the Lake," 
 may be cited as a typical marine masque: 
 
 " Tryton, in likenesse of a mermaide, came 
 towards the Queene's Majestic as she passed 
 over the bridge, returning from hunting: and to 
 her declared, that Neptune had sent him to her 
 Highnes, to declare the woeful distresse wherein 
 the poore Ladie of the Lake did remaine, the 
 cause whereof was this. Sir Bruse sauns pitie, 
 in revenge of his cosen Merlyne the prophet, 
 whom for his inordinate lust she had inclosed in 
 a rocke, did continuallie pursue the Ladie of the 
 Lake; and had (long sithens) surprized her, but 
 that Neptune, pitying her distresse, had envyroned 
 her with waves. Whereupon she was enforced 
 to live alwaies in that Poole, and was thereby 
 called the Lady of the Lake. Furthermore affirm- 
 ing, that by Merlynes prophecie, it seemed she 
 coulde never be delivered but by the presence of 
 a better maide than herselfe. Wherefore Nep- 
 tune had sent him right humbly to beseech her 
 Majestie, that she would no more but shew her- 
 selfe, and it should be sufficient to make Sir 
 Bruse withdrawe his forces. Furthermore com- 
 manding both the waves to be calme, and the 
 
 2 EarEer in the year, at Killingworth castle, a very 
 similar masque was presented. The Queen rode on a 
 " Mermaid " eighteen' feet long.
 
 THE ENGLISH FISHER IDYLLS 99 
 
 fishes to give their attendance, and this he ex- 
 pressed in verse as followeth . . ." (here come 
 twenty lines of verse), and after this introduc- 
 tion, "The Speech of Tryton to the Queene's 
 Majestic." Having delivered his speech " Here- 
 with Triton sounded his trompe, and spake to 
 the Winds, Waters, and Fishe as followeth," the 
 second address concluding this portion of the 
 pageant. The Queen then went further on the 
 bridge. The Lady of the Lake with two nymphs 
 advanced on " heaps of bulrushes," and repeated 
 some verses in thanks, after which " Protheus " 
 appeared, sitting on a dolphin's back " and the 
 dolphin was conveyed upon a boate, so that the 
 owers seemed to be his fynnes. Within the 
 which dolphin a consort of musicke was secretly 
 placed, the which sounded; and Protheus, clear- 
 ing his voyce sang this song of congratulation, 
 as well in the behalf e of all the Nimphes and 
 Gods of the Sea." This is followed by another 
 song, eulogizing the Queen, and then " Proteus 
 told the Queene's Majesty a pleasant tale of his 
 deliverie, and the fishes which he had in charge." 
 Such is a marine pageant, in this case a curious 
 blending of the story of Merlin, in Sir Thomas 
 Mallory's book, with the heathen gods of the 
 ocean. Several similar pieces were performed 
 at Kenilworth during the Queen's stay, and later 
 this sort of masque seems to have been recog- 
 nized as legitimate material for occasional pres- 
 entation by itself. 3 In one piece Nereus sings 
 
 3 For such masques see John Nichols' Progresses, etc. t 
 of Queene Elizabeth, and of King James I,
 
 100 IDYLLS OF FISHERMEN 
 
 strains which are answered by Echo, after which 
 Faunus and the other rustic gods present fall to 
 fighting with their green-haired neighbors.* An- 
 other masque included as one of the properties 
 the figure of " Nereus holding out a golden fish 
 in a net," with the motto " Industria." 5 Still 
 more definite indication of the conventional rela- 
 tionship of the ocean divinities with those who 
 owned their sway, is found in Anthony Munday's 
 " Chrysanaleia, or The Golden Fishing," 6 a 
 masque which presented the usual sea-gods to- 
 gether with a boat full of fishers busy drawing 
 their nets. 
 
 Such masques, we are told, were given in the 
 Italian style, and it is not surprising, therefore, 
 to find among the entertainments for Queen 
 Elizabeth at Cowdray (Wednesday, Aug. 19, 
 1591), a fisher eclogue, which though in prose, 
 bears all the earmarks of the species. Her 
 Majesty was led to a pond where she heard an 
 angler uttering a soliloquy on the deceptive baits 
 by which city merchants decoyed the simple, on 
 his own ill luck, and on the obvious presence of 
 something "over beautiful," which like sunlight 
 prevented the finny prey from coming to his 
 hooks. Immediately afterwards he caught sight 
 of the Queen, and of a fisher who was drawing 
 his seine towards her. A dialogue ensued be- 
 tween the two fishers, the angler asking jocosely 
 whether the other had caught any girls, as he 
 well might have done, since Venus was wave- 
 
 4 Vol. 3, pp. 1109 (year 1591). 
 
 5 Vol. 2 (James), 1610, pp. 348. 
 "Vol. 3, James, pp. 195 (year 1616).
 
 THE ENGLISH FISHER IDYLLS IOI 
 
 born. After this banter he made a speech to the 
 Queen, declaring the humble honesty of his trade, 
 and concluding by laying at her feet " all the 
 fish of the pond," in the net. This eclogue con- 
 tains frequent puns, such as play on the words 
 " carp " and " carpers," and other traits sug- 
 gestive of the euphuism fashionable at the time, 
 evidenced by balanced and antithetical sentences, 
 with allusions to "natural history" of the sort 
 so familiar in Lyly's works. In spite of these 
 touches, however, the spirit of the piece 7 is iden- 
 tical with that of the conventional fisher pane- 
 gyrics already considered. 
 
 Similar use of sea mythology appears also in 
 pastoral plays. In Lyly's " Galatea," for instance, 
 Neptune rouses a flood, and comes near being 
 propitiated by the offer of a maiden to be de- 
 voured by one of his sea-monsters. Again, in 
 "Love's Metamorphosis" (i 588-9), 8 Lyly rep- 
 resents a husbandman, Erisichthon, as being pun- 
 
 T For an account of the entertainments at Killingworth 
 see Nichols, Vol. I., pp. 457. Similar marine masques 
 are found on pp. 119 (year 1591), pp. 120 (year 1591), 
 PP- 309 (year 1594), pp. 366 (year 1594), and under 
 James, Vol. 3 (James), pp. 618. Entertainment of the 
 Princess at Heidelberg. See also Vol. 4 (James), " The 
 Tryumphs of Peace" (1620). For other marine masques 
 see Beaumont and Fletcher's " Maid's Tragedy," and 
 " The False One " ; Ben Jonsoni, " Neptune's Triumph," 
 1624, and "The Fortunate Isles," 1626. 
 
 8 1 581, "A Shadow of Sannazar " is recorded on the 
 Stationers' register. What this was has not been dis- 
 covered. Several eclogues are offshoots of the same 
 motive Giles Fletcher translated Lucian's dialogue be- 
 tween two sea^-nymphs, Doris aind Galatea, concerning 
 Polyphemus. At about the same time (1588) appeared 
 an anonymous translation of Theocritus' idyll of Poly- 
 phemus and Galatea with five others, etc.
 
 102 IDYLLS OF FISHERMEN 
 
 ished for a crime by consuming hunger, which 
 he can not satisfy. At length he is so hard 
 pressed for money that he sells his daughter, 
 Protea, to a merchant. The latter is about to 
 set sail when the girl prays to Neptune, whose 
 paramour she has been, and in the nick of time 
 the god changes her into an old fisherman. In 
 this form, after some adventures she returns to 
 Arcadia, where she finds Petulius, her lover, 
 being courted by a mermaid, with a looking-glass 
 in her hands, coquetting in the waves near shore. 
 Changing into the ghost of Ulysses, she warns 
 the youth to avoid the " syren," and eventually 
 Ceres ends all happily by abolishing the plague 
 of hunger. 9 
 
 Such association of the fisher with the con- 
 ventions of marine mythology is well illustrated 
 by Spenser's " Faerie Queene." 10 In one pas- 
 sage Guyon, rowed over sea by a boatman, 11 
 encounters all the most frightful monsters of the 
 deep which Neptune can summon against him. 
 In another place the poet describes the sea-king 
 watching the mother of the slain Marinell has- 
 tening to the place where her son's body lies on 
 the strand: 12 
 
 " Great Neptune stoode amazed at their sight 
 Whiles on his broad rownd backe they softly slid, 
 
 "It is interesting to remark that while staying with 
 Drummond of Hawthornden Ben Jonson contemplated 
 writing a piscatory drama/ in which the characters were 
 to have been Scotch fishers on the shores of a Scotch 
 lake. 
 
 10 Bks. 1-3, comp. 1579-89, 3-6, 80^-95. 
 
 11 Bk. 2, canto 4. 
 
 " Bk. 3, canto 7, st. 27.
 
 THE ENGLISH FISHER IDYLLS 103 
 
 And eke him selfe mournd at their mournful 
 
 plight, 
 
 Yet wist not what their wailing ment; yet did, 
 For great compassion of their sorrow bid 
 His mighty waters to them buxome bee: 
 Eft soones the roaring billowes still abid, 
 And all the griesly Monsters of the See 
 Stood gaping at their gate, and wondred them to 
 
 see. 
 
 A teem of Dolphins raunged in aray 
 Drew the smooth charett of sad Cymoent : 
 They were all taught by Triton to obay 
 To the long raynes at her commandement : 
 As swift as swallowes on the waves they went, 
 That their brode flaggy finnes no some did reare, 
 Ne bubling rowndell they behinde them sent. 
 The rest, of other fishes drawen were, 
 Which with their finny oar the swelling sea did 
 sheare." 
 
 These passages and many similar ones in the 
 poem bear an obvious relationship in imagery to 
 the masques of sea-gods, and exemplify Spenser's 
 evident fondness for such description. Without 
 attempting to go into any of these in detail a 
 word more should be said here concerning the 
 story of Marinell. Fair Florimell, who loves 
 the unfortunate youth, flees from a monster : 
 
 "It fortuned (high God did so ordaine) 
 As shee arrived on the roaring shore, 
 In minde to leape into the mighty maine, 
 A little bot lay hoving her before, 
 In which there slept a fisher old and pore, 
 The whiles his nets were drying on the sand. 
 Into the same shee lept and with the ore
 
 104 IDYLLS OF FISHERMEN 
 
 Did thrust the shallop from the floting strand : 
 So safety fownd at sea which she fownd not at 
 land." 
 
 In this skiff she drifted for hours while the weary 
 fisher slept : 
 
 " For being fled into the fishers bote 
 For refuge from the Monsters cruelty, 
 Long so she on the mighty maine did flote, 
 And with the tide drove forward carelessly ; 
 For th'ayre was milde and cleared was the skie, 
 And all his windes Dan Aeolus did keepe 
 From stirring up their stormy enmity, 
 As pittying the while the fisher did securely 
 sleepe." 
 
 At length he awoke, and was astounded to find 
 his boat adrift and the beautiful maiden sit- 
 ting in it : 
 
 " He marveild more, and thought he yet did dreame 
 Not well awakte; or that some extasye 
 Assoted had his sence, or dazed was his eye." 
 
 When at length he became convinced that she 
 was not a vision he : 
 
 ..." felt in his old corage new delight 
 To gin awake, and stir his frosen spright: 
 Tho rudely askte her, how she thither came ? 
 'Ah! (sayd she) father, I note read aright 
 What hard misfortune brought me to this same 
 Yet am I glad that here I now in safety ame. 
 
 ' But thou, good man, sith far in sea we bee, 
 And the great waters gin apace to swell, 
 That now no more we can the mayn-land see, 
 Have care, I pray, to guide the cock-bote well,
 
 THE ENGLISH FISHER IDYLLS 105 
 
 Least worse on sea then us on land befell.' 
 Thereat th'old man did nought but fondly grin, 
 And saide his boat the way could wisely tell; 
 But his deceiptful eyes did never lin 
 To looke on her faire face and marke her snowy 
 skin." 
 
 Here we have a piscatory eclogue 13 interpolated 
 in the epic, a companion picture with the story 
 of Calidore and Pastorell, which forms a pastoral 
 interlude. 15 It is noteworthy that Spenser did 
 not idealize his fisher, who is painted in earthy 
 colors appropriate to his surroundings. The 
 " wandring bote," foul with scales and slime, is 
 called a " filthy nest," the man himself, a " filthy 
 wretch," and he finally makes a villainous as- 
 sault on poor Florimell, who defends herself and 
 screams for aid. Very luckily : 
 
 " It fortuned, whilest thus she stiffly strove, 
 And the wide sea importuned long space 
 With shrilling shrieks, Proteus abrode did rove, 
 Along the fomy waves driving his finny drove. 
 Proteus is Shepheard of the seas of yore, 
 And hath the charge of Neptune's mighty heard; 
 An aged sire with head all frory hore . . . 
 
 His charett swifte in hast he thither steard, 
 Which with a teeme of scaly Phocas bownd 
 Was drawne upon the waves that fomed him 
 arownd." 
 
 13 In Francis Sabie's "Pan's Pipe," 1595, one of the 
 pieces is " The Fisherman's Tale," but this proves to be 
 nothing but a blank verse rendering of Greene's 
 " Pandosto." 
 
 16 Bk. 6, cantos 9, 10, n.
 
 106 IDYLLS OF FISHERMEN 
 
 He beat the wicked monster, dragged him behind 
 the chariot over the waves, and finally " cast him 
 up upon the shore," but Florimell he carried 
 down to his hall beneath the sea. There he tried 
 in vain to win her love, tried to frighten her by 
 his sudden and fearful changes, and failing in all, 
 threw her into a dungeon where she remained a 
 prisoner for a long while. After treating of 
 many other matters, Spenser at length returns to 
 the story of Florimell in a later part of his poem, 
 and then fills two entire cantos (n and 12, bk. 4) 
 with an elaborate marine, telling how Marinell 
 was cured by the Leach of the sea-gods, " Try- 
 phon," the same useful divinity who figures in 
 two of Fletcher's eclogues in the character of 
 divine healer. Marinell went seeking the lost 
 damsel, but for a long time was baffled. Mean- 
 while the marriage of Thames and Medway was 
 celebrated at Proteus' hall by a procession of all 
 the sea-gods, river-gods, and nymphs known to 
 classical mythology and to English poetry, the 
 whole story concluding happily with the libera- 
 tion of Florimell at the command of Neptune, to 
 whom she had prayed, and with whom the 
 mother of Marinell had interceded, much as 
 Thetis does for Achilles in the Iliad. 
 
 Evidently Spenser had no admiration for the 
 artificial singing fishermen of humanistic poems, 
 and took far more interest in elaborating the 
 splendor of his ocean pageantry than in describ- 
 ing the old man, whom he deliberately makes low 
 and vile. At the same time this villainous fisher 
 in the "Faerie Queene" is a disagreeably real-
 
 THE ENGLISH FISHER IDYLLS 107 
 
 istic personage, and may well have been sketched 
 from nature, so that perhaps we should look 
 upon his traits as a correction of the fancy pic- 
 tures of the Italian genre. 
 
 We come now to the poetry of Phineas Fletcher, 
 the most conspicuous writer of fisher idylls in 
 England. In view of what has been said about 
 English antecedents of his works, it may be in- 
 teresting to note some of his sayings about his 
 predecessors in pastoral literature. He calls Virgil 
 the "Arcadian Shepherd," greater than Homer, 
 who gladly changed the tongue in which Troy's 
 story was told " at the second time twice better 
 sung." Secondly he praises Sannazaro : 
 
 "And now of late th' Italian fisher-swain 
 Sits on the shore to watch his trembling line, 
 There teaches rocks and prouder seas to plain 
 By Nesis fair, and fairer Mergiline: 
 Whilst his thin net upon his oars entwin'd, 
 With wanton strife catches the sun and wind; 
 Which still do slip away, and still remain 
 behind." 
 
 In still another place he declares : 
 
 17 " Two shepherds most I love, and do adore, 
 
 That Mantuan swain, who chang'd his slender 
 
 reed, 
 To th' shrill trumpet's voice, and war's loud 
 
 roar, 
 
 From Corydon to Turnus daring deed; 
 And next our home-bred Colin, us inspiring 
 
 18 "The Purple Island" Canto i, sts. 11-15. 
 
 "Ec. 6, sts. 51 and 58. In Pise. ec. i, he expresses 
 admiration for his father's Latin pieces, and there are 
 many other passages in which he praises Spenser.
 
 I08 IDYLLS OF FISHERMEN 
 
 Their steps not following close, but far, admir- 
 ing: 
 
 To lackey one of these, is all my pride's aspir- 
 ing!" 
 
 One of these " swains " he did " lackey " so 
 faithfully as to earn the appellation " The Spen- 
 ser of his age," but at the same time he chose to 
 retain the Sannazarian fisher conventions. By 
 1603, a year before graduating from Cambridge, 
 Fletcher was known as the author of Latin 
 poems, among them, presumably, two early pis- 
 catory eclogues. In one the scene is a haven 
 with caverns sheltered from the ocean by beetling 
 cliffs, unmistakably suggestive of those about the 
 bay in Africa where Aeneas landed after the 
 tempest. There Myrtilus had come, bewailing 
 his unrequited affection, and lay flat in the green 
 sedge by his skiff, while throngs of pitying 
 nereids strove to soothe his violent grief. His 
 reproaches, sung to Daphne, are imitated almost 
 line for line from Sannazaro's " Galatea," and 
 occasional bits are borrowed from his other ec- 
 logues. Two touches not found in Sannazaro 
 may have been suggested by Bernardes' " The 
 Fisher's Lament." In the Spanish eclogue, 19 as 
 in Fletcher's, the singer lies beside his dory, and 
 in both pieces the singers tell how the force of 
 their desperate love caused them to tumble into 
 the sea, from which they were rescued by dol- 
 phins that had been charmed by their sweet voices. 
 Such resemblances may be coincidental, but it is 
 
 19 Canioes' and 1 Bernarde's poems were often published 
 together as by Camoes.
 
 THE ENGLISH FISHER IDYLLS 109 
 
 at least significant that Fletcher's other Latin 
 fisher eclogue is strikingly like Camoes' " Song 
 Contest," both poems being trials of skill held 
 before admiring fisher girls and shepherdesses, 
 and the songs in both presenting, side by side, 
 imitation of Virgil's singing match with that by 
 Sannazaro. That Fletcher was enough of a lin- 
 guist to read Camoes is of course beyond doubt, 
 for like his father, he was a distinguished scholar. 
 The exact dates of composition remain uncer- 
 tain, but the English eclogues were written after 
 1610, and we may safely assign the Latin to an 
 earlier period. This strikes the reader as prob- 
 able when he observes that the Latin pieces fol- 
 low their sources with the close manner of imita- 
 tion usual in a writer's early poems, and that in 
 some cases the English eclogues embody elabora- 
 tions of the Latin. Moreover, it can be shown 
 that the Latin pastorals were written before the 
 English, by an examination of these verses ad- 
 dressed by Fletcher to a friend : 
 
 " To my beloved Thenot in answer of his verse." 
 But if my Thenot love my humble vein, 
 Too lowly vein ne'er let him Colin call me; 
 He, while he was, was (ah!) the choicest swain, 
 That ever grac'd a reed: what e're befall me, 
 Or Myrtil, so 'fore Fusca fair did thrall me, 
 Most was I knowne or now poore Thyrsil name 
 
 me, 
 Thirsil, for so my Fusca pleases frame me." 
 
 Evidently the friend, to flatter the poet, has called 
 him " Colin " (*. e., Spenser) . He replies that he 
 is unworthy the name, and that he has given up
 
 HO IDYLLS OF FISHERMEN 
 
 his earlier appellation, "Myrtilus," from which 
 it appears that the " Myrtilus " of the two Latin 
 piscatories is the poet himself. A third Latin 
 piece, later expanded in two of the English pis- 
 catories, is called " Fusca Ecloga," and in this the 
 poet, calling himself " Thyrsilis," sings of his 
 love for the maiden, " Fusca." This shows that 
 the two Latin poems were written earlier than 
 the " Fusca," and as in the English poems and 
 in the "Purple Island" the poet styles himself 
 "Thyrsilis," 21 it is safe to assume that they are 
 of later composition. Whatever the exact dates 
 of composition may have been, Fletcher's Latin 
 
 ai His brother Giles calls him " The Kentish Lad 1 , young 
 Thyrsilis," in "Christ's Victorie" (pub. 1610). Phineas 
 also styles himself Thyrsilis in " To Mr. Jo. Tomkins," 
 "To Thomalin," and "To Master W. C." (Wm. Court- 
 hope?). In the latter poem Phineas writes from Cam- 
 bridge urging his friend to return from Little Haddam. 
 where he has been too much taken up with " the nymphs." 
 Art: Cambridge he says they may hear " the Mantuan 
 shepherd's complaint of Alexis, or ThyrsiFs moan, and 
 Fusca's cruelty : 
 
 " Fusca his care, but careless enemie : 
 Hope oft he sees shine in her humble eye." 
 
 Probably these poems were composed before 1610, and 
 the English piscatories were begun shortly after that date. 
 At any rate the Fusca affair has been replaced by another 
 more serious in the English piscatories, and the second of 
 these eclogues mentions the death of Phineas' father, which 
 occurred in 1610, as a recent occurrence. 
 
 From matter contained in the dedication of the Purple 
 Island to Edward Benlowes it is certain' that it was 
 Fletcher's last work. In it he cadis his earlier poems 
 " raw essays of my very unripe years, and almost child- 
 hood," yet the " Purple Island " must have been begun, 
 at least, not long after 1610, since it praises "Christ's 
 Victorie" as a work just completed, and that poem ap- 
 peared in 1610.
 
 THE ENGLISH FISHER IDYLLS III 
 
 eclogues were the work of his apprentice hand, 
 written under the influence of Virgil and Sanna- 
 zaro, and flung carelessly aside to give place to 
 the English " Piscatorie Eclogs," 22 a poem so 
 closely imitated from Spenser's Shepherds Cal- 
 ender that it may almost be called a fisher adap- 
 tation of the first great English pastoral. 
 
 Fletcher's calendar is a hybrid form, bearing 
 much the same relationship to Spenser's poetry 
 as Sannazaro's pastorals do to Virgil's. In all 
 the piscatories imagery, settings and general con- 
 ventions are borrowed directly from Sannazaro, 
 wherever such borrowing makes it feasible for 
 the poet to imitate Spenserian effects in their 
 equivalent marine phraseology. This method is 
 consistently followed throughout, just as we have 
 seen it done in Sannazaro's imitations of Virgil. 
 
 It is not difficult to account for such fondness 
 for the conventions of fisher pastoral. In his 
 "Angler" Izaak Walton declares that Fletcher 
 was a skillful angler and a very pious man, and 
 it is likely that he was actuated by the old feeling 
 that fishing is a godly craft. At any rate there 
 can be no question that he adopted the piscatory 
 form largely because of its adaptability to reli- 
 gious allegory of a type constantly stressed in 
 his eclogues, and well illustrated by the following 
 lines from his " Apollyonists " : 
 
 " Those fisher-swaynes, whom by full Jordan's wave 
 The Sea's great Soveraigne His art had taught, 
 To still loud stormes when winds and waters rave, 
 To sink their laden boats with heavenly fraught; 
 To free the fish with nets, with hooks to save : 
 
 82 Pub. London, 1633.
 
 112 IDYLLS OF FISHERMEN 
 
 For while the fish they catch, themselves were 
 
 caught : 
 
 And as the scaly nation they invade, 
 Were snar'd themselves. Ah ! much more blessed 
 
 trade 
 That of free fisher-swaines were captive fishes 
 
 made ! " 
 
 This conception of the sacred character of 
 fishing derived from the Bible, and apparently of 
 some influence in Italian and French piscatory 
 literature, finds its most concrete expression in 
 the debate between an angler, a huntsman and a 
 falconer which forms the introduction to Izaak 
 Walton's famous book. The angler's argument 
 is too long to quote here in full, but it is largely 
 supported by Holy Writ. " It is observable," 
 says Piscator, " that it was our Saviour's will, 
 that these our four Fishermen should have a 
 priority of nomination in the catalogue of his 
 Twelve Apostles, ... as namely, first St. Peter, 
 St. Andrew, St. James, and St. John, and then the 
 rest in their order." Again, " It is to be believed 
 that all the other Apostles, after they betook 
 themselves to follow Christ, betook themselves 
 to be Fishermen too; for it is certain that the 
 greater number of them were found together by 
 Jesus after his Resurrection, as it is recorded in 
 the twenty-first chapter of St. John's Gospel, 
 
 5, 3, 4-" 
 As we find both Fletcher and Milton influenced 
 
 by such scenes 23 from the Bible, it may be well 
 
 13 For this conception of the sacred nature of fishing see 
 also O. F. Emerson. " Some of Chaucer's Lines on the 
 Monk," Mod. Phil., vol. I., 1903-4, pp. 105. See also 
 " The Golden Fishing " in John Nichols' " The Progresses 
 of Queen Elizabeth and of King James."
 
 THE ENGLISH FISHER IDYLLS I 13 
 
 to quote here a part of the passage referred to 
 by Walton, which runs as follows: 
 
 "After these things Jesus shewed himself again 
 to the disciples at the sea of Tiberias; and on this 
 wise shewed he himself. There were together 
 Simon Peter, and Thomas called Didymus, and 
 Nathaniel of Cana in Galilee, and the sons of 
 Zebedee, and two other of his disciples. 
 
 Simon Peter saith unto them, I go a fishing. 
 They say unto him, We also go with thee. They 
 went forth, and entered into a ship immediately; 
 and that night they caught nothing. But when the 
 morning was come, Jesus stood on the shore ; but 
 the disciples knew not that it was Jesus. Then 
 Jesus saith unto them, Children have ye any meat? 
 They answered him, No. And he said unto them, 
 Cast the net on the right side of the ship, and ye 
 shall find. They cast therefore, and now they were 
 not able to draw it for the multitude of fishes. 
 Therefore that disciple whom Jesus loved saith unto 
 Peter, It is the Lord. 
 
 Now when Simon Peter heard that it was the 
 Lord, he girt his fisher's coat unto him (for he was 
 naked), and did cast himself into the sea. And the 
 other disciples came in a little ship (for they were 
 not far from land, but as it were two hundred 
 cubits), dragging the net with fishes. As soon as 
 they saw they were come to land they saw a fire 
 of coals there, and fish laid thereon, and bread. 
 
 Jesus saith unto them, Bring of the fish which 
 you have now caught. Simon Peter went up, and 
 drew the net to land full of great fishes, a hundred 
 and fifty and three : and for all there were so many, 
 yet was not the net broken. Jesus saith unto them, 
 Come and dine. And none of the disciples durst 
 ask him Who art thou ? knowing it was the Lord.
 
 114 IDYLLS OF FISHERMEN 
 
 There can be no question that this idyllic pic- 
 ture excels in simplicity even the analogous ones 
 in the poems of Theocritus. Christ as Shepherd 
 figures largely in the symbolism of renaissance 
 pastoral tradition; in Fletcher's poetry and in 
 Milton's we find a companion figure, Christ the 
 fisherman. 
 
 It should be remembered, also, that simulta- 
 neous imitation of Spenser and of Sannazaro did 
 not appear at all a complex matter to Fletcher, 
 and he may have been encouraged in the concep- 
 tion by the fact that some characteristics of the 
 famous humanist's piscatories resemble those of 
 the Shepherds Calender. In both works there 
 is an undertone of sorrow due to unrequited love, 
 and to disappointed ambition, that gives a slight 
 autobiographical unity to the poems, and as it 
 were, pitches all in a minor key. Both poets fol- 
 lowed the Virgilian types of song, both composed 
 panegyrics of royal personages, and both were 
 eminently patriotic. 
 
 Turning now to the English piscatory calendar 
 we find that just as in Spenser's work each poem 
 stands for a month. Fletcher begins with " Hal- 
 cyon Days" (the winter solstice, Dec. 15-29) as 
 forming a fitting commencement to the fisher 
 year: 
 
 " It was the time when faithful Halcyone, 
 Once more enjoying new-liv'd Ceyx' bed, 
 Had left her young birds to the wavering Sea, 
 Bidding him calm his proud white-curled head, 
 And change his mountains to a champian lea; 
 The time when gentle Flora's lover reigns, 
 Soft creeping all along green Neptunes smoothest 
 plains."
 
 THE ENGLISH FISHER IDYLLS 1 15 
 
 The poems are not, as in their model, actually 
 named for months, but in every one the seasonal 
 advance is more or less definitely indicated by a 
 descriptive passage. 
 
 The subject matter of Spenser's Calender is 
 freely borrowed by Fletcher. Spenser's Puritan 
 leanings, evidenced by his strictures against high 
 prelates in the May and September eclogues, and 
 those directed against proud and ambitious pas- 
 tors, with commendation of good ones in the July, 
 were particularly acceptable to his disciple. All 
 these motives find their expression in a conversa- 
 tion between two of Fletcher's fishermen (Ec- 
 logue IV) and thus the materials of Mantuan's 
 eclogues, on which Spenser had drawn, first found 
 their way into the English piscatory. 24 Spenser's 
 eclogues of moral or religious satire, however, 
 are but loosely connected with the general scheme, 
 and exemplify the poet's most labored efforts to 
 employ archaic diction, while Fletcher's criticisms 
 are put into the mouths of his own father (Thel- 
 gon 25 ) and of a friend (Chromis 26 ). As Thel- 
 gon's troubles form the burden of two other 
 poems, it will be seen that the poet makes no 
 attempt to set this religious eclogue apart, and 
 its vocabulary and metre are not distinctive, as 
 in Spenser. Since almost every line in Fletcher's 
 poetry is phrased in the Spenserian manner, a 
 few quotations will suffice to give the general 
 effect of his poem. Thelgon rebukes Chromis 
 
 24 July, cf. Mantuan 7, 8, and September Mantuan 9. 
 2S SaTin., 5. 
 28 Sann., 3.
 
 Il6 IDYLLS OF FISHERMEN 
 
 for grieving at being surrounded by the same evil 
 conditions that Christ had to face, reminding him 
 that " The Prince of fishers thousand tortures 
 rent," just as in the July eclogue of Spenser's 
 Calender Thomalin tells Morrell that Christ, " A 
 shepherd great," saved 'his " flocke . . . with 
 shepherd great " : 
 
 "... bought his flocke so deare, 
 And then did save with bloudy sweat 
 From Wolves that would them teare." 
 
 In like manner Spenser's Thomalin recalls the 
 piety of the shepherds of old, and contrasts it 
 with the impiety of his day, a passage adapted in 
 these words of the fisher Thelgon : 
 
 " Chromis, 'how many fishers dost thou know 
 That rule their boats and use their nets aright? 
 That neither winde nor time nor tide, foreslow ? 
 Such some have been but (ah!) by tempests' 
 spite 
 
 Their boats are lost; while we may sit and moan, 
 That few were such, and now those few are none." 
 
 " Instead of these a crue of idle grooms, 
 Idle and bold, that never saw the Seas, 
 Fearlesse succeed, and fill their empty rooms " 
 
 " Some stretching in their boats, supinely sleep, 
 Seasons in vaine recall'd, and windes neglecting: 
 Others their hooks and baits in poison steep, 
 Neptune himself with dreadful drugges infecting 
 The fish their life and death together drink, 
 And dead pollute the seas with venom'd stink. 
 
 Some teach to work, but have no hands to row : 
 Some will be eyes, but have no light to see: 
 Some will be guides, but have no feet to go :
 
 THE ENGLISH FISHER IDYLLS Uj 
 
 Some deaf, yet eares; some dumbe, yet tongues 
 
 will be : 
 Dumbe, deafe, lame, blinde, and maim'd; yet 
 
 fishers all : 
 Fit for no use, but store an hospital." 
 
 This entire invective was later paraphrased by 
 Fletcher in his " Apollyonists," and just as Mil- 
 ton's " Paradise Lost " shows traces of the influ- 
 ence of this work, it can hardly be doubted that 
 the noble lines in Lycidas on the corruption of 
 the clergy owe suggestions to the imagery of 
 Fletcher's epic. For instance, evil fishers " steal " 
 into the ship by night, know nothing of the use 
 of the " hook," are blind, and care for nothing 
 but their own gain. Moreover, both the sheep in 
 Lycidas and the fish in the "Apollyonists" are 
 poisoned by the bad ministration that they re- 
 ceive; both rot, and both spread contagion. Yet 
 though Milton may have borrowed a hint or so 
 from Fletcher, he was far too fond of the ortho- 
 dox in pastoralism to think of adopting the pisca- 
 tory form, and he may well have smiled at lines 
 like this " Some snorting in their hulks supinely 
 sleep." Neither he nor Spenser attempted such 
 open attacks on the clergy as Fletcher's words on 
 the Pope as the " Fisher," who by Tiber's banks : 
 
 "... casts to enlarge his See 
 
 His ship even then too great with stollen plankes 
 Lengthening, he makes a monstrous argosie " 
 
 lines which served to embroil the poet in a re- 
 ligious controversy, almost at once. 
 
 Though Fletcher wrote this theological poem
 
 Il8 IDYLLS OF FISHERMEN 
 
 with much zest, he stated elsewhere that he loved 
 best in Virgil Corydon's song, and in Spenser's 
 pastorals, the lament of Colin at fair Rosalind's 
 cruelty (Jan. EC.), adding: 
 
 " Well may I after look, but follow all in vain." 
 
 He made an attempt to " follow " in three of his 
 eclogues, February, April, and May. Under guise 
 of the fisher Myrtilus the poet utters a com- 
 plaint to heartless Coelia, obviously modeled on 
 Colin's. The swain "A shepeheards boye, (no 
 better doe him call,) "begins with this apostrophe: 
 
 " Ye Gods of love, that pitie lovers payne, 
 (If any gods the paine of lovers pitie) 
 Looke from above, where you in joyes remaine, 
 And bowe your eares unto my dolef ull dittie : 
 And, Pan, thou s'hepheards God that once didst 
 
 love, 
 Pitie the paines that thou thyself didst prove." 
 
 Myrtilus, "A Fisher-lad" (no higher dares he 
 look) , commences his plaint in these words : 
 
 " You sea-born maids that in the Ocean reigne, 
 (If in your courts is known Love's matchlesse 
 
 power,) 
 
 Kindling his fire in your cold watry bower 
 Learn by your own to pitie others paine, 
 Tryphon, that knowst a thousand herbs in vain, 
 But know'st not one to cure a love-sick heart, 
 See here a wound that farre outgoes thy art." 
 
 It will be observed that in the piscatory Fletcher 
 retains even the parentheses of his model. The 
 swain sees in the dreary aspect of nature the re- 
 flection of his sufferings :
 
 THE ENGLISH FISHER IDYLLS 1 19 
 
 " Thou barrein ground, whome winters wrath hath 
 
 wasted, 
 
 Art made a myrrhour to behold my plight : 
 Whilome thy fresh spring flowrd, and after hasted 
 Thy sommer prowde, with Daffadillies dight;" 
 
 Exactly the same sort of figure is found in the 
 fisher's exclamation: 
 
 " How well, fair Thetis, in thy glass I see, 
 As in a crystal, all my raging pains ! 
 Late thy green fields slept in their even plains, 
 While smiling heav'ns spread round a canopie." 
 
 Colin's apostrophe to the trees with its touch of 
 pathetic fallacy: 
 
 " You naked trees, whose shady leaves are lost, 
 Wherein the byrds were wont to build their bowre, 
 And now are clothed with mosse and hoary frost, 
 Instede of bloosmes, wherewith your buds did 
 
 flowre ; 
 I see your teares that from your boughes doe 
 
 raine, 
 Whose drops in drery Ysicles remaine . . ." 
 
 finds a parallel in Myrtilus' apostrophe to the 
 seas: 
 
 " Your stately Seas (perhaps with Love's fire) 
 
 glow, 
 
 And over-seeth their banks with springing tide ; 
 Mustring their white-plum'd waves with lordly 
 
 pride, 
 
 They soon retire, and lay their curl'd heads low ; 
 So sinking in themselves they backward go. 
 But in my breast full seas of grief remain, 
 Which ever flow and never ebbe again."
 
 120 IDYLLS OF FISHERMEN 
 
 Colin says of his own heart : 
 
 " Such rage as winters reigneth in my heart, 
 My life-blood friesing with unkindly cold."- 
 
 a passage rendered by the fisherman : 
 
 " Such cruel stormes my restless heart command : 
 Late thousand joyes securely lodged there." 
 
 From this point on the parallel ceases to hold, 
 Fletcher elaborating the themes of his misery, of 
 Coelia's beauty, and of her skill in singing. A 
 touch borrowed from the earlier Latin " Myrti- 
 lus" is the fisher's declaration that he does not 
 dare leap into the sea to cure his love for fear 
 the flames of his passion may fire the deep. At 
 the end of the song Myrtilus fainted " So down 
 he swooning sinks; nor can remove," just as we 
 read of Colin " So broke his oaten pipe, and 
 downe dyd lye." 
 
 Fletcher's second love poem, the April eclogue, 
 is not closely imitated from the Calender, but 
 forms a companion piece with Spenser's June, in 
 which Colin tells Hobbinoll his ill fortune in love, 
 and is comforted by him. Just so a fisher con- 
 fides his feelings to a friend, and the opening lines 
 show that the idyll is autobiographical, and that 
 it was probably finished after the poet left the 
 university, about i6i6: 27 
 
 " The well known fisher-boy, that late his name, 
 And place, and (ah for pity!) mirth had changed; 
 Which from the Muses' spring and Churlish 
 Chame 
 
 27 See also ec. 6 for same idea.
 
 THE ENGLISH FISHER IDYLLS 121 
 
 Was fled, (his glory late, but now his shame: 
 For he with spite the gentle boy estranged) 
 Now 'long the T>ent with his new-fellows ranged : 
 There Damon (friendly Damon) met the boy, 
 Where lordly Trent kisses the Darwin coy, 
 Bathing his liquid streams in lovers' meeting joy." 
 
 "Algon," for so Fletcher now styles himself, de- 
 scribes his symptoms, and Damon immediately 
 diagnoses the case as one of love, just as happens 
 in the Latin " Fusca Ecloga." Then the fisher 
 girl Nicaea appears, armed with hook and line, 
 and rowing in a skiff. Algon's evident confu- 
 sion shows Damon that she is the cause of the 
 trouble, and so he accosts her, and begins to 
 plead for Algon, whereupon that youth, plucking 
 up heart, also urges his suit. A subtile debate 
 follows, but eventually the damsel is persuaded 
 to grant her love to the suffering fisher, a suc- 
 cessful conclusion that affords a striking contrast 
 with Colin's quiet despair. 
 
 The remaining idyll of love, the May, evidently 
 records how Fletcher's friend Tomkins, later or- 
 ganist of St. Paul's, confided to him an affair 
 which he had at college. In piscatory terms : 
 
 " A fisher-Boy that never knew his peer 
 In daintie songs the gentle Thomalin, 
 With folded arms, deep sighs, and heavy cheer 
 Where hundred Nymphs, and hundred Muses inne 
 Sunk down by Chamus brinks ; with him his deare, 
 Deare Thyrsil lay . . ." 
 
 Thyrsil urges Thomalin to tell the cause of his 
 sorrow, while;
 
 122 IDYLLS OF FISHERMEN 
 
 " Under a sprouting vine they carelesse lie, 
 Whose tender leaves bit with the Eastern blast, 
 But now were born, and now begin to die." 
 
 The afflicted fisher replies : 
 
 " Thyrsil, my joyous Spring is blasted quite, 
 And Winter-storms prevent the Summer's ray : 
 All as this vine, whose green the Eastern spite 
 Hath di'd to black, his catching arms decay, 
 And letting go their hold for want of might, 
 Mar'l Winter comes so soon, in first of May." 
 
 Then Thomalin enumerates the emotions which 
 he has felt ever since seeing " fair Melite dancing 
 on the golden sand," and Thyrsil, just as does 
 Damon in the preceding poem, at once declares 
 that his friend is a victim of the gentle passion, 
 remarking : 
 
 " Thomalin, too well those bitter-sweets I know, 
 Since fair Nicaea bred my pleasing smart." 
 
 He then proceeds to reason with his friend, try- 
 ing to prove that moderation in love is the desir- 
 able thing, 28 and telling how Tryphon, 29 leech of 
 the sea-gods, once calmed the excess of his pas- 
 sion by: 
 
 "A salve of soveraigne and strange confection 
 Nepenthe mixt with rue and herb-de-grace." 
 
 A much more striking imitation of Spenser 
 than the last two is Fletcher's December eclogue, 
 partly a piscatory adaptation of the same month 
 in the Shepherds Calender. The rustic Colin 
 
 28 Cf. Mantuan ec. i. 
 
 29 Leech from Spenser.
 
 THE ENGLISH FISHER IDYLLS 123 
 
 utters a complaint to Pan in which he gives a 
 picture of the four seasons of his long life, with 
 the occupations of each, the baneful effects of 
 his ill success in love, and his final despair. Colin 
 is of course Spenser's name for himself, and as 
 he wrote the poem at the age of twenty-seven, 
 the melancholy retrospect was in large part a 
 fiction. Instead of following this affectation, 
 Fletcher puts his complaint into the mouth of his 
 father (the fisher "Thelgon"), who gives a mel- 
 ancholy account of his career. The parallel with 
 Colin's experiences is very close in the first part 
 of the poem, the shepherd's apostrophe to Pan 
 being replaced by invocation of the nereids, and 
 the pastoral sports of youth, gathering nuts, and 
 hunting the hare or the stag, being neatly changed 
 to spreading the sail, folding the net, or setting 
 fish traps in the Thames near Eton. Very early 
 Colin devoted himself to song: 
 
 " And for I was in thilke same looser yeares 
 (Whether the Muses so wrought me from my birth, 
 Or I too much beleeved my shepherd peeres,) 
 Somedele ybent to song and musicks mirth." 
 
 It was the same way with Thelgon : 
 
 " And whether nature, joyn'd with art, had wrought 
 
 me 
 
 0r I too much beleev'd the fishers' praise; 
 Or whether Phoebus self, or Muses taught me, 
 Too much enclin'd to verse, and musick-playes ; " 
 
 Flattery soon made Colin ambitious : 
 
 " 'Fro thence I durst in derring-doe compare 
 With shep'heards swayne what ever fedde in 
 field;"
 
 124 IDYLLS OF FISHERMEN 
 
 So of Thelgon : 
 
 " So that with Limnus and with Belgio 
 I durst to challenge all my fisher-peers." 
 
 In spite of the obvious parallel that may be traced 
 between the poems, the allusions in Fletcher's 
 are much more definite than those in Spenser. 
 Thus near Eton Thelgon learned from Aquadune 
 the art of an angler, after which he lived among 
 fisher boys " That by learn'd Chamus banks did 
 spend their youthful yeares." At Cambridge he 
 composed the Latin eclogues which have been 
 spoken of: 
 
 " I sang sad Telethusa's frustrate plaint, 
 And rustic Daphnis wrong, and magick's vain 
 
 restraint : 
 
 And then appeased young Myrtilus, repining 
 At general contempt of shepherd's life." 
 
 He speaks of his other productions, tells how he 
 roused the jealousy of dark "Janus," and finally 
 was taken by a " shepherd great " to the court of 
 Elizabeth, whom he terms : 
 
 " Fair Basilissa, fairest maid among 
 The nymphs that white-cliffe Albion's forests 
 grace ! " 
 
 The Queen sent him on diplomatic missions, to 
 Germany, Russia, and Scotland, but some enemy 
 gained all the credit for Thelgon's work, and even 
 " the great Amyntas," a friend whom he loved in 
 " Caledonia," forsook him for " Napean nymphs." 
 The rest of the poem is a complaint addressed to 
 Amyntas, and imitated from Colin's complaint to
 
 THE ENGLISH FISHER IDYLLS 125 
 
 Rosalind in Spenser's January. The conclusion 
 of Thelgon's plaint: 
 
 " So up he rose, and launch't into the deep ; 
 Dividing with his oare the surging main, 
 Which dropping seem'd with teares his case to 
 weep " 
 
 is almost a translation of the corresponding lines 
 at the end of Fletcher's Latin " Myrtilus " ren- 
 dered as much as possible like the close of Colin's 
 song : 31 
 
 " The pensive boy, halfe in despight, 
 Arose, and homeward drove his sonned sheepe, 
 Whose hanging heads seeme his carefull case to 
 wepe." 
 
 It should be added that Fletcher owes such sea- 
 sonal description as he here employs indirectly to 
 Marot, whose " Eglogue au Roy " was Spenser's 
 model for the type of allegory employed. 
 
 Fletcher's January supplements Thelgon's com- 
 plaint, the fisher Myrtilus, at the suggestion of 
 Dorus, repeating the songs sung by Thyrsilis 
 (Fletcher) to Thomalin (Tomkins) with their 
 conversation relative to Thyrsil's leaving Cam- 
 bridge. The latter repeats the story of his father's 
 diplomatic expeditions, and tells how " Chame " 
 twice gave him a position (a "painted boat"), 
 and each time unjustly deprived him of it to 
 honor " Gripus " 
 
 "The basest and most dung-hill swain 
 That ever drew a net or fisht in fruitfull main." 
 
 81 Jan. ec.
 
 126 IDYLLS OF FISHERMEN 
 
 Now " Chame " has treated Phineas in the same 
 outrageous manner: 
 
 " His stubborn hands my net hath broken quite : 
 My fish the guerdon of my toil and pain 
 He causelesse seaz'd, and with ungratefull spite 
 Bestow'd upon a lesse deserving swain: 
 The cost and labour mine, his all the gain. 
 My boat he's broke; my oares crackt and gone: 
 Nought ha's he left me, but my pipe alone, 
 Which with his sadder notes may help his master 
 moan." 
 
 In disgust he declares he will go away, and 
 Thomalin replies : 
 
 " Ah foolish Chame ! who now in Thyrsil's stead 
 Shall chant thy praise, since Thelgon's lately 
 dead?" 82 
 
 Fletcher's last lines on his father are among his 
 best: 
 
 " Thomalin, mourn not for him : he's sweetly sleep- 
 ing 
 
 In Neptune's court, whom here he sought to please, 
 While humming rivers by his cabin creeping, 
 Rock soft his slumbering thoughts in quiet ease." 
 
 Such elegiac passages in the piece, inspired by 
 genuine feeling, form a fitting conclusion to the 
 whole sad matter of Thelgon. 
 
 The last poem, " The Prize," is a song contest, 
 not imitated from Spenser's spirited "verse-cap- 
 ping " August eclogue, but expanded line by line 
 and passage by passage from the earlier Latin 
 
 82 Giles died 1610.
 
 THE ENGLISH FISHER IDYLLS 127 
 
 "Lusus." Apparently the piece was composed 
 later than 1616, when Fletcher left Cambridge, 
 if we may judge from the lines: 
 
 " Thyrsil their judge, who now's a shepherd base, 
 But late a fisher-swain, till envious Chame 
 Had rent his nets, and sunk his boat with shame 
 So robbed the boyes of him, and him of all his 
 game." 
 
 Before him are bands of fishermen, fisher maid- 
 ens, shepherds, shepherdesses, and nymphs who 
 hear Thomalin (Tomkins), champion of the sea- 
 shore, contest for the prize of song with Daphnis, 
 representing the rustics. The idyll is very elabo- 
 rate 33 and strives everywhere to catch the man- 
 nerisms of Spenser. It is, however, by far the 
 most classic in form of the entire set, since the 
 songs of the fisherman, as in the " Lusus," are 
 derived from Sannazaro, while the songs of the 
 shepherd are as strictly Virgilian. 
 
 From this brief summary it may be seen that the 
 eclogues include much the same material as the 
 Shepherds Calender: autobiography expressed 
 in the love lay, moral and religious satire, com- 
 plaint at the neglect of poets, elegy, slurs on 
 tyrannical nobles, and song contest. Thus in 
 seven idylls Fletcher tried his hand at adapting 
 all Spenser's leading motives except the fable 
 (Feb.), the story of the shepherd boy who mis- 
 took Cupid for a bird (March), the lyric eulogy 
 of Queen Elizabeth (April), and the dirge (No- 
 vember) imitated from Marot. It has been ob- 
 
 83 All are longer than those in Spenser's work.
 
 128 IDYLLS OF FISHERMEN 
 
 served, however, that Fletcher manages to pay a 
 handsome compliment to the Queen, and that his 
 elegy on Thelgon's fate forms a substitute for 
 Spenser's November theme, so that the work is 
 almost a complete " Fishers Calender." 
 
 The vital difference between the two sets of 
 poems is not one of material, but of meter and 
 of diction. All the fisher pastorals are rendered 
 in verse almost identical with that in Spenser's 
 December eclogue, but though some slight varia- 
 tions occur, Fletcher never attempted the experi- 
 mentation which is a marked characteristic of the 
 earlier work. Aside from this matter of versi- 
 fication Fletcher strove to imitate all the most 
 obvious mannerisms of his model, with one nota- 
 ble exception the matter of phraseology. The 
 vocabulary of the piscatories is Spenserian, and 
 occasionally includes archaic terms or unusual 
 spellings of words of the day, but this archaism 
 is slight, as compared with that in the Calender, 
 nor does the wording of the idylls vary to fit the 
 themes treated, as in Spenser. 
 
 These limitations, together with the ever- 
 present effort to express the Sannazarian conven- 
 tions in the figures and words of Spenser, con- 
 stituted a serious handicap, and it is no wonder 
 that Fletcher's verse, monotonously even and 
 sweet, never attained the higher poetical effects 
 of his model. It follows that naturalism could 
 hardly result from such a scheme, for thin as it 
 is, the allegory was perhaps Fletcher's chief aim, 
 and his characters are only Cambridge fisher boys, 
 even less professional than those of Sannazaro.
 
 THE ENGLISH FISHER IDYLLS 129 
 
 It will be recalled that the rather thin descrip- 
 tive matter in the Shepherds Calender becomes 
 less superficial in pieces like Colin's January com- 
 plaint, where the interest is more personal than 
 elsewhere, and the same thing is true of Fletcher's 
 imitations. Perhaps the most striking trait in 
 his illustrative matter is his adaptation of Sanna- 
 zarian imagery to English landscapes. Thus Thel- 
 gon, in the December eclogue, sings under beetling 
 cliffs beside the sea, but his thoughts fly to the 
 river he knew as a youth : 
 
 "Of Aquadune I learnt to fold my net, 
 And spread the sail, and beat the river round, 
 And withy labyrinths in straits to set, 
 And guide my boat, where Thames' and Isis' heire 
 By lowly Aeton slides and Windsor proudly fair." 
 
 " There while our thinne nets dangling in the winde 
 Hung on our oars' tips, I learnt to sing: 
 Among my peers, apt words to fitly binde 
 In numerous verse; witnesse thou crystall spring, 
 Where all the lads were pebbles wont to finde; 
 And you thich basics, that on Thamis' brink 
 Did oft with dallying boughs his silver waters 
 drink." 
 
 In like manner the January poem begins near the 
 ocean : 
 
 DORUS 
 
 " Myrtil, why idle sit we on the shore ? 
 Since stormy windes, and waves' intestine spite 
 Impatient rage of sail or bending oare; 
 Sit we and sing, while windes and waters fight; 
 And carol lowd of love and love's delight." 
 
 10
 
 130 IDYLLS OF FISHERMEN 
 
 Myrtilus suggests a more suitable theme: 
 
 " Tell we how Thyrsil late our seas forswore, 
 When Forc't he left our Chame, and desert shore." 
 
 Dorus replies: 
 
 " Now as thou art a lad, repeat that lay ; 
 Myrtil, his songs more please my ravisht eare, 
 Then rumbling brooks that with the pebles play, 
 Then murmuring seas broke on the banks to heare, 
 Or windes on rocks their whistling voices teare." 
 
 praise that sounds like the marine equivalent for 
 Spenser's 
 
 " Colin, to heare thy rymes and roundelayes, 
 Which thou were wont on wastfull hylls to singe, 
 I more delight then larke in Sommer dayes: 
 Whose Echo made the neyghbour groves to ring." 
 
 Yet almost immediately afterwards the poet turns 
 to inland scenes, and subsequent marine illustra- 
 tion is limited to bits like these : 
 
 " Myrtil, fast down by silver Medwaye's shore : 
 His dangling nets (hung on the trembling oare M ) 
 Had leave to play: so had his idle hook, 
 While madding windes the madder Ocean shook. 
 Of Chamus had he learnt to pipe and sing, 
 And frame low ditties to his humble string." 
 
 In the same month (Feb.) after a calm: 
 
 " Late thy green fields slept in their even plains, 
 While smiling heav'ns spread round a canopie, 
 Now tost with blasts and civil enmitie, 
 While whistling windes blow trumpets to their 
 fight, 
 
 84 Cf. Sann., ec. 3
 
 THE ENGLISH FISHER IDYLLS 131 
 
 And roaring waves, as drummes, whet on their 
 spite." 
 
 Again, the pathetic fallacy occasionally extends 
 to the waves : 
 
 "Your stately Seas (perhaps with Love's fire) 
 
 glow, 
 
 And over-seeth their banks with springing tide; 
 Mustring their white-plum'd waves with lordly 
 
 pride, 
 
 They soon retire, and lay their curl'd heads low; 
 So sinking in themselves they backward go. 
 But in my breast full seas of grief remain, 
 Which ever flow and never ebbe again." 
 
 Such are the marine glimpses, but the poet is 
 plainly more at home 
 
 " Where lordly Trent kisses the Darwin coy, 
 Bathing his liquid streams in lover's meeting 
 joy." (Ec. 5 .) 
 
 Pictures like the following in the sixth pisca- 
 tory eclogue suggest a tendency in the later poems 
 to revert to the orthodox scenery for pastoral: 
 
 " The warmer sunne his bride hath newly gown'd, 
 With firie arms clipping the wanton ground, 
 And gets an heav'n on earth : that primrose there, 
 Which 'mongst those violets sheds his golden hair, 
 Seems the sunne's little sunne, fixt in his azure 
 sphere." 
 
 Of lambs he says 
 
 " See'st how they skip, and in their wanton pranks 
 Bound o'er the hillocks, set in sportful ranks? 
 They skip, they vault ; full little caren they
 
 132 IDYLLS OF FISHERMEN 
 
 To make their milkie mother's bleating stay. 
 See'st how the salmons (water's colder nation) 
 Lately arriv'd from their sea-navigation, 
 How joy leaps in their heart, shewn by their 
 leaping fashion? " (ec. 6). 
 
 In expressing his poetic ideals (October) Spen- 
 ser, affecting to be already tired of the pastoral, 
 as Virgil had done before him, throws aside its 
 fiction, yearning for ideal achievement to be ex- 
 pressed later in the " Faerie Queene." Some- 
 what in the same manner the last piscatory shows 
 Fletcher no longer a fisher, but a philosophical 
 shepherd, perhaps looking forward to what he 
 considered his highest attainment, imitation of 
 Spenser's epic in the " Purple Island." 35 
 
 The uniformly serious tone of the eclogues, so 
 different from the sly humor which colors some 
 of the Italian marine pastorals, distinguishes them 
 from Fletcher's " Sicelides," written for presen- 
 tation before King James 30 at the university 
 (March, 1615). The lively action and interest- 
 ing characterization which distinguish this play 
 from the rather dull manner of the piscatory 
 eclogues, may be explained in part by the 
 nature of some productions which immediately 
 preceded the drama. Samuel Daniel's eclogue, 
 "Ulysses and the Siren" (published 1605), may 
 have suggested to William Browne the theme for 
 his Inner Temple Masque (1614), in which the 
 wiles of the sea-maiden and the evasions of the 
 crafty Greek furnish much the same humorous 
 
 86 In this poem the poet becomes the shepherd Thyrsilis. 
 "James left before it was played.
 
 THE ENGLISH FISHER IDYLLS 133 
 
 situations treated by Calderon in his " El Golfo 
 de las Sirenas." Again, as an island play, " Sice- 
 lides" belongs, topographically at least, to the 
 same category as Nashe's " Isle of Dogs," a satir- 
 ical piece acted in 1597, Day's farce (founded 
 on Sidney's "Arcadia"), "The Isle of Gulls" 
 (1605), and Shakespeare's "Tempest" (1610- 
 1611). The farcical element in Fletcher's pas- 
 toral drama, which furnishes a light under-plot, 
 contains touches probably inspired by the " Tem- 
 pect," of which the lines descriptive of the hid- 
 eous creature of the island furnish the most con- 
 spicuous example, and we may assume that 
 Fletcher had in mind a second Caliban : 
 
 "... Mago, (thus his hated rivall's nam'd) 
 All .blacke and foule, most strong and ugly fram'd, 
 Begot by Saturne on a sea-borne witch, 
 Resembling both ; his haires like threeds of pitch, 
 Distorted f eete, and eyes suncke in his head : 
 His face dead pale, and seem'd but mooving lead, 
 Yet worse within, for in his heart to dwell 
 His mother's furies have their darkest hell." 
 
 In view of the fact that occasional Shake- 
 spearean touches can be traced in " Sicelides," it 
 is quite possible that Fletcher found in Pericles 
 (1607-1608) recent and ample precedent for pre- 
 senting on the stage scenes depicting fisher life. 
 The two rude old fellows of Fletcher's play seem 
 caricatures of those described by Theocritus, but 
 at the same time they differ so completely from 
 their humanistic brethren as to suggest the proba- 
 bility that their conception was influenced by the 
 popularity of Pericles. The sources of Shake-
 
 134 IDYLLS OF FISHERMEN 
 
 speare's drama, a novel by Laurence Twine, the 
 " Patterne of Paineful Adventures," (1576), and 
 the tale of Apollonius of Tyre in Gower's " Con- 
 fessio Amantis," (1483), embody some of the 
 English renderings of a story extremely popular 
 throughout the literatures of Europe from early 
 times, and almost certainly taken from a lost 
 Greek romance of the Heliodorus cycle. It is 
 significant that the idyllic picture of the existence 
 of contented poverty led by the fishers in the 
 Ethiopian History was imitated in other ro- 
 mances, 37 notably in the Ephesian histories of 
 Xenophon, whose hero, Habrokomes, is aided and 
 entertained by a fisherman of Syracuse, and in 
 the story of Apollonius of Tyre. The sole sur- 
 vivor of a shipwreck, that prince was washed 
 ashore at Cyrene, where he met an old fisherman 
 who took pity on his misery. This fisherman 
 gave Apollonius some of his own garments, and 
 told him how to reach Pentapolis, where he 
 eventually won a game of ball in a competition 
 before the king. 38 This story changed little in 
 ten centuries, and in Shakespeare's play the iden- 
 tical fisher idyll of the Greek romance is repro- 
 duced, in amplified form. Near Pentapolis, Peri- 
 cles, who has been shipwrecked, is cast upon the 
 coast, where he sees a fisher directing the work 
 
 87 Rohde, " Der griechische Roman," pp. 412. 
 
 38 For the various ramification's of the Apollonius story, 
 see A. H. Smyth, " Shakespeare's Pericles and 1 Apollonius 
 of Tyre." For an account of the Heliodorus idyll, see 
 chapter I. A novel based on Pericles, Geo. Wilkins' 
 " Pericles Prince of Tyre," pub. 1608. Lillo's " Marina," 
 a play based on acts 4 and 5, pub. in the eighteenth cen- 
 tury. See A. H. Smyth.
 
 THE ENGLISH FISHER IDYLLS 135 
 
 of two others at the nets. The conversation be- 
 tween these men, full of rude mother wit and 
 smacking of the sea, forms part of the most real- 
 istic picture of the sort in English. At length 
 Pericles addresses the toilers and explains his 
 predicament. Insolent at first, they soon per- 
 ceive the prince's real distress, and give him a 
 dry gown, after which one leads him towards 
 their humble home to stay with them, while the 
 others run to the seines. Presently they reap- 
 pear dragging a net, heavy with some mysterious 
 object, which proves to be the rusty armor once 
 given Pericles by his father, and in this he suc- 
 ceeds in winning a tournament at Pentapolis, 
 whither he is directed by the fishers, after resting 
 at their cabin. If, as is likely, the fisher inter- 
 ludes in the Greek romances are imitated from 
 the piscatory idyll of Theocritus, in Pericles 39 we 
 find the survival of the essentials of the primitive 
 species, in a form much less altered by time than 
 the humanistic genre initiated in Italy by San- 
 nazaro. 
 
 Turning now to " Sicelides," we find that it is, 
 for the most part, a fisher adaptation of motives 
 characterizing the ordinary pastoral drama. The 
 fisherman Perindus is in love with the fisher 
 maiden Glaucilla, daughter of Glaucus and Circe, 
 and she returns his love. Fearing a threatening 
 oracle, however, he dissembles his affection and 
 treats the girl with apparent scorn. His sister 
 Olinda is loved by Glaucilla's brother, the fisher 
 
 89 As the Apollonius story was wide-spread the fisher 
 episode, often in elaborate form, is found in nearly every 
 European language.
 
 136 IDYLLS OF FISHERMEN 
 
 Thalander, but treats all his advances with a cold- 
 ness distinctly reminiscent of Silvia's treatment 
 of Amynta in the famous Italian pastoral. She 
 even goes so far as to accept attentions from 
 Thalander's rival, the hideous monster of the isle, 
 and this " hag-born whelp " makes Olinda banish 
 Thalander, and persuades her to gather Hesper- 
 ian apples in a sacred grove. For this she is 
 condemned to be chained to a reef and given to 
 Neptune's horrible " ore," but Thalander, having 
 returned to Sicily disguised as Atyches, slays the 
 beast, and as reward is betrothed to Olinda, who, 
 however, has now repented of her harshness to 
 Thalander, and hence can not love her rescuer. 
 
 Meanwhile a very wanton nymph of Messina, 
 Cosma, whose love affairs form marine equiva- 
 lents for those of the light Corisca of Guarini's 
 Italian " Pastor Fido," of the " Wanton Nymph 
 of Corinth" of Arcadian casts, or again of Cloe 
 in John Fletcher's " Faithful Shepherdess," falls 
 in love with Perindus. Perceiving his love for 
 Glaucilla she gives his sister poison, pretending 
 that it is a love philtre. Glaucilla suspects the 
 drug, and mingles with it other ingredients, so 
 that when the girl takes the draught she does not 
 die, but falls into a trance. Cosma, deeming the 
 venom effective, now accuses Glaucilla of poi- 
 soning Olinda, and manages to have her con- 
 demned to be thrown from the rocks into the 
 ocean. Perindus appears and forces the priest 
 of Neptune to let him be hurled from the cliff, in 
 place of Glaucilla. When he strikes the water 
 he is rescued by two old fishermen, Scrocca and
 
 THE ENGLISH FISHER IDYLLS 137 
 
 Cancrone, who are promptly arrested for inter- 
 fering with the course of divine justice, and are 
 condemned to be led to the mountains to be de- 
 voured by Rimbombo, a cyclops, son of famous 
 Polyphemus. 
 
 The uncouth gallantry of the giant to Cosma 
 recalls the Polyphemus and Galatea idylls of 
 Theocritus. Cosma's page, Conchylio, dressed in 
 his mistress' clothes, makes assignations with 
 various lovers, among them with Rimbombo, 
 whom he contrives to tie to a tree in the branches 
 of which the fisher Cancrone is watching for his 
 nymph, as he thinks. Cancrone leaps on Rim- 
 bombo's back and bounces to the ground. Then, 
 Ulysses-like, he and Conchylio try to put out the 
 eye of the giant with a staff, but the monster 
 manages to cut his bonds, and retreats to the 
 highlands in disgust. Another of Cosma's suitors, 
 the lustful old fisherman Fredocaldo, who is also 
 victimized by Conchylio, is perhaps a broad cari- 
 cature of the aged scoundrel in the " Faerie 
 Queene." 
 
 At the close of the play Olinda comes back to 
 life, and is led to Thalander by Glaucus and 
 Circe; the oracle is harmlessly fulfilled, the old 
 fishers are forgiven, and finally the father of 
 Perindus and Glaucilla, Tyrinthus, who had been 
 captured years before by pirates, returns in time 
 for the double wedding. As in the " Pastor 
 Fido" and the "Faithful Shepherdess," the 
 wicked nymph repents of her misdeeds, but in 
 the fisher play she is made to marry Cancrone in 
 punishment for her crimes.
 
 138 IDYLLS OF FISHERMEN 
 
 The choruses have considerable poetic merit. 
 One 40 on death is an English rendering of 
 Fletcher's own early Latin poem, " Mors est 
 Malum"; another is based on Ovid's version of 
 the descent of Orpheus into the under-world; 
 while two more are intended, apparently, for Eng- 
 lish equivalents of choruses in Tasso's Amintas, 
 or Guarini's Pastor Fido. One of them is on 
 love, and the other, a few stanzas of which fol- 
 low, is the fisher analogue for the famous Golden 
 Age chorus : 
 
 " Happie happie fisher-swaines, 
 If ye knew your happiness; 
 Your sport tastes sweeter by your paines, 
 Sure hope your labour relishes: 
 Your net your living, when you eate 
 Labour finds appetite and meat. 
 
 When the seas and tempests roare 
 You eyther sleepe or pipe or play, 
 And dance along the golden shore : 
 Thus you spend the night and day 
 Shrill windes a pipe, hoarse seas a tabor 
 To fit your sports or ease your labour."* 1 
 
 A word should be added about the portrayal of 
 fisher folk in " Sicelides." In spite of the broad 
 and farcical treatment of the scenes in which 
 Scrocca and Cancrone figure, they give more 
 local color and more realistic presentation of the 
 life of the seashore than all of the poet's eclogues 
 put together. They thus have more significance 
 in the piscatory genre than the other scenes of 
 
 40 Act. I., sc. 4 . 
 
 41 Act 2, sc. 7.
 
 THE ENGLISH FISHER IDYLLS 139 
 
 the drama, which are not essentially different 
 from those in contemporary shepherd plays, save 
 in the pretense of a fisher life and of appropriate 
 activities. 
 
 Unlike the eclogues the play is mainly in rimed 
 couplets, but the language, as in most of Fletcher's 
 poems, apes here and there the Spenserian affec- 
 tation of archaic phraseology. Some of the more 
 obvious borrowings have already been noted, but 
 it should be noticed that occasionally the author 
 utilizes lines from the piscatory eclogues, and 
 that the ore story, though perhaps suggested by 
 the Andromeda myth, or by the ore in Ariosto, 
 may have been influenced by the more recent 
 example of Lyly's Galatea. The crime for which 
 Olinda was condemned was probably taken from 
 the breaking of a tree sacred to Pan in Browne's 
 Britannia's Pastorals, 42 and from the same source 
 were borrowed Perindus' self-sacrificing leap and 
 the timely rescue. 
 
 As an example of the fisher variant on pastoral 
 drama " Sicelides " occupies rather an isolated 
 place, save for the relationship of the mytholog- 
 ical side of the piece with the marine masques, 
 but in " The Thracian Wonder," a pastoral play 
 of uncertain authorship, formerly attributed to 
 Webster and Rowley, and printed in 1661, a lin- 
 gering 43 of the piscatory element in the drama is 
 illustrated by the introduction of an old fisher- 
 
 42 See W. W. Gregg, pp. 341, "Pastoral Poetry and 
 Pastoral Drama." 
 
 43 In Monk Lewis' play, " The Castle Spectre " (pro- 
 chiced London, 1797) we find a fisherman's hut an 
 example of the piscatory motive in " Gothic " drama.
 
 140 IDYLLS OF FISHERMEN 
 
 man who comes to Pheander, King of Thrace, to 
 warn him of the approach of his foes, whom he 
 has seen coming from Sicily (Act 3, sc. i). 
 
 A little while after 44 Fletcher finished his play, 
 the Scotchman, John Leech, composed his Latin 
 " Musae Priores," 45 including fisher and " nau- 
 tical " eclogues. In a prefatory epistle the author 
 gives a rather unnecessary clue to his sources, 
 asking, " Who besides Sannazarius has done pis- 
 catories, and who besides Grotius has tried ' nau- 
 tical' poems?" An examination of the fisher 
 pastorals shows that Leech aimed to do in Latin 
 what Fletcher had done in English namely to 
 express the Calender motives in Sannazarian 
 form and imagery. Accordingly, Leech's father 
 (thinly disguised as the fisher Dorylas ec. i) 
 bewails the neglect of his poetry, his oppression 
 at the hands of an undeserving rival, and his 
 blighted youth, ending with an appeal for the 
 iavor of the chancellor, " Setonius." Next we 
 learn that Dorylas is lately dead (ec. 2) and 
 Leech as " Stymichon," with a companion fisher, 
 mourns his unjust treatment and sad death, 46 just 
 as occurs in the corresponding piece by Fletcher. 
 Then we find Lycon (ec. 3) lamenting the gen- 
 eral neglect of poetry and religion, and criticizing 
 
 44 Sicelides was first published 1631, in an edition teem- 
 ing with misprints. 
 
 45 Published London, 1620. In fifth " nautica " he says 
 the poem was done " Scotia discedens', Kal. Octobris 1617." 
 The volume contains also eclogues of vine-dressers, elegies, 
 epigrams, and anacreontics. 
 
 49 The elegy is like Sannazaro's " Phyllis," but concludes 
 with a song imitated from Virgil's lament for Daphnis, 
 the singer calling on the nymphs and seagods to tell 
 where they were when Dorylas died.
 
 THE ENGLISH FISHER IDYLLS 141 
 
 the evil ways of powerful fishers in " great boats." 
 Another poem (ec. 5) is a complaint by Stymi- 
 chon (the poet himself), an exile from Scotland, 
 whose boat and tackle lie on the banks of Thames. 
 Sitting there he repeats his father's lament at 
 being deprived of skiffs, nets and hooks by 
 "greedy Myrilus/' with other misfortunes. All 
 this is very like Fletcher, though Leech preserves 
 more specific Sannazarian effects, such as the 
 refrains. A single eclogue (4) deserves special 
 mention as the result of an effort to imitate the 
 Theocritean idyll of Asphalion and his friend. 
 Olpis 47 is seated on a rock with Eurybaton, " the 
 one skilled with nets, the other with hooks." 48 
 Their great age, their senile garrulity, and their 
 companionship in poverty recall the Greek source, 
 and the whole piece seems like a studied attempt 
 to transfer the ancient fishermen to the shores 
 of Scotland. Olpis jerks a fish from the sea, and 
 asks what use there is in remembering youth 
 " Old age has beset with ice the sharpness of my 
 mind, nor can I remember may you avail for 
 two." The other replies that they share the same 
 tasks, they are both aged, and their wattled cabins 
 stand side by side, so that what pleases one can 
 not displease the other true friends have not 
 different minds. This passage recalls the com- 
 rades whom Theocritus depicts both aged, shar- 
 ers in toil, sleeping in a wattled cabin, and the 
 Greek Asphalion's " I would not have thee to go 
 without thy share in my vision; even as we go 
 shares in the fish we catch, so share all my 
 
 ** Name from Theoc. 
 
 48 Sannazairius, fragmentum, lines 16-17.
 
 142 IDYLLS OF FISHERMEN 
 
 dreams." But instead of telling a vision, the 
 Scotchman gives a rambling discourse on the 
 wonders of nature in various lands, especially the 
 many varieties of marvelous fish, concluding with 
 a touch of local color in picturing salmon rushing 
 up the firths of Scotland, with the songs by which 
 Caledonian fishermen lure them to their weirs. 
 
 It has been remarked that Leech mentions 
 Grotius as the only poet to compose "nautical" 
 eclogues, and it is evident that he took the hu- 
 manist's word in the matter, since in a Latin 
 idyll written for his friend Daniel Heinsius, 
 Grotius had declared, " The stormy surges, and 
 the sandy shores" with which his piece deals, to 
 be " themes yet unsung." In spite of this claim, 
 however, Grotius' poem is a very plain imitation 
 of Sannazaro's " Galatea," given here and there 
 a "nautical," i. e., deep sea touch a type of 
 poem, as has been shown, of common occurrence 
 in the sixteenth century. The fisherman Myrtilus 
 has just landed from a storm-tossed bark on the 
 coast where " fair Cochlis " lives in a cave. His 
 complaint at the cruelty of this nymph is in form 
 closely modeled on the earlier Latin poem, but 
 the singer boasts "the strains which once Arion 
 sung," which, rather curiously, include the sea- 
 faring of Jason, Ulysses, Circe, Calypso, Nau- 
 sicaa, etc. Mention of such mythical voyagers 
 and an invitation to Cochlis to sail on his fish- 
 ing vessel are the only " nautical " hints -which 
 differentiate this poem from other piscatories, 
 with which after all it should be classed. Strictly 
 nautical eclogues are concerned with mariners
 
 THE ENGLISH FISHER IDYLLS H3 
 
 and not with fishers like Myrtilus, who offers 
 Sannazarian sea-spoil as propitiatory gifts oys- 
 ters, etc. and expresses his desire to have the 
 girl go fishing with him in dories, " with nets and 
 spears" for " tunnies and soles," and with "floats, 
 hooks, and lines." 
 
 The nautical touches were what Leech was 
 striving to emulate in his poems, and he accord- 
 ingly tried to give a deep sea tone to his descrip- 
 tions, at the same time imitating Sannazaro even 
 more closely than in his piscatories. One poem 
 modernizes the song of Arion, the sailors Em- 
 porus and Aegialeus (name from one of Alci- 
 phron's epistles) meeting on the shore near their 
 anchored vessels, and singing alternate songs 
 about Magellan, Vespucius, Columbus and other 
 great explorers. The second, " Proteus," differs 
 from Sannazaro's piece by the same name only in 
 that the sea-god sings to his herd near a vessel 
 on which the crew are sound asleep. Another is 
 imitated from Sannazaro's contest, but is ren- 
 dered nautical by the fact that the singers sit on 
 the lofty stern of a ship, while the sailors are 
 asleep. 49 The last is another complaint closely 
 resembling the " Galatea," and sung on shore by 
 a sailor-fisherman, just as in the piece by Grotius. 
 A saucy echo, however, is borrowed from other 
 fields of pastoralism to mock the cries of the love- 
 sick youth. These poems belong to humanistic 
 rather than to English literature, and are included 
 in this book only because they furnish rather in- 
 teresting examples of Latin imitation of the 
 
 49 Some parts of the poem are mere centos of Sannazaro.
 
 144 IDYLLS OF FISHERMEN 
 
 Shepherds Calender in piscatory imagery, and 
 because they may well have been influenced by 
 the more pretentious work of Fletcher. 
 
 The sixth nymphal in Michael Drayton's " The 
 Muses' Elyzium," published in 1630, is the last 
 of the fisher idylls of the Elizabethan period. 
 That the idea of composing such a poem was sug- 
 gested to him by Sannazaro's work may be in- 
 ferred from a sentence in his dedication of these 
 pastorals to Sir Walter Aston Drayton : 
 
 ..." this, as all the other forms of poesy (except- 
 ing perhaps the admirable Latin piscatories of that 
 noble Neapolitan, Sannazar) hath been received 
 from Greece and second from Rome." 
 
 He calls his own poems pastorals in name only, 
 and " bold upon a new strain," but he praises 
 Spenser's Calender, and calls Spenser the prime 
 pastoralist of England. 
 
 Superficially the nymphal bears some resem- 
 blance to Fletcher's last eclogue, being a song 
 contest between a forester, Silvius, a fisher, Hal- 
 cius, and a shepherd, Melanthus, held before the 
 nymphs as judges. Fletcher's piece, it will be 
 recalled, is a match between a fisher and a shep- 
 herd, before an umpire, nymphs and shepherd- 
 esses. Drayton's poem, however, is modeled on 
 nothing but the dainty fancies of an ideal world, 
 the culmination of a long sequence of pastoral 
 work, 50 and almost free from the fetters of the 
 classic forms. In such a fairy sphere it is not 
 
 "See W. W. Greg, pp. 103 fol.
 
 THE ENGLISH FISHER IDYLLS 1 45 
 
 surprising to find the nymphs, fair arbitresses, 
 praising the songs, and at the end crowning all 
 three singers with fresh garlands. Each youth 
 praises his own way of life, and Halcius' song, a 
 graceful lyric and at the same time one that offers 
 a contrast with the strains of the fisher in 
 Fletcher's poem, who followed the classic tech- 
 nique, may well be quoted here, together with a 
 few other lines of interest. The introductory 
 description has a lyric sweetness that forms a 
 fitting prelude to what follows : 
 
 " Cleere had the day bin from the dawne, 
 All chequered was the Skye, 
 Thin clouds like scarfs of Cobweb Lawne 
 Vayld Heaven's most glorious eye. 
 The Winde had no more strength then this, 
 That leisurely it blew, 
 To make one leafe the next to kisse, 
 That closly by it grew. 
 The Rils that on the Pebbles playd, 
 Might now be heard at will; 
 This world they onely Musick made, 
 Else everything was still. 
 The Flowers like brave embraudred Gerles, 
 Lookt as they much desired, 
 To see whose head with orient Pearles, 
 Most curiously was tyred." 
 
 The swains and nymphs met on a pretty hill, 
 where a dispute arose " who should the worthiest 
 be," and it was arranged that it should be settled 
 by a trial of skill. The forester sang first, and 
 the nymphs were generous in praise, vowing to 
 give him bays, after which the fisher began thus : 
 ii
 
 146 IDYLLS OF FISHERMEN 
 
 " No Forrester, it must not be borne away, 
 But heare what for himself the Fisher first can 
 
 say, 
 The Chrystall current Streames continually I 
 
 keepe, 
 Where every Pearle-pav'd Foard, and every Blew- 
 
 eyd deepe 
 With me familiar are; when in my Boate being 
 
 set, 
 My Oare I take in hand, my Angle and my Net." 
 
 He steers wherever he pleases, and in the waters 
 the " silver-scaled Sholes " swarm " As thick as 
 ye discerne the Atoms in the Beames." He likes 
 especially near a willow- fringed bank : 
 
 "... to sheeld me from the heat, 
 Where chusing from my Bag, some prov'd espe- 
 
 ciall bayt, 
 The goodly well growne Trout I with my Angle 
 
 strike, 
 And with my bearded Wyer I take the ravenous 
 
 Pike, 
 Of whom when I have hould, he seldom breakes 
 
 away 
 Though at my Lynes full length, soe long I let 
 
 him play 
 
 Till by my hand I finde he well-nere wearyed be, 
 When softly by degrees I drawe him up to me. 
 The lusty Salmon to, I oft with Angling take, 
 Which me above the rest most Lordly sport doth 
 
 make, 
 Who feeling he is caught, such Frisks and bounds 
 
 doth fetch, 
 And by his very strength my Line soe farre doth 
 
 stretch,
 
 THE ENGLISH FISHER IDYLLS 147 
 
 As drawes my floating Corcke downe to the very 
 
 ground, 
 And wresting of my Rod, doth make my Boat 
 
 turne round." 
 
 When not thus busied, he is dragging his nets, 
 or baiting fish traps, more after the manner of 
 Sannazarian fishermen, or even catching eels. 
 Nor are the nymphs absent from these scenes : 
 
 " The Naijdes and Nymphes that in the Rivers 
 
 Keepe, 
 Which take into their care, the store of every 
 
 deepe, 
 Amongst the Flowery flags, the Bullrushes and 
 
 Reed, 
 That of the Spawne have charge (abundantly to 
 
 breed) 
 Well mounted upon Swans, their naked bodies 
 
 lend 
 
 To my discerning eye, and on my Boate attend, 
 And dance upon the Waves, before me (for my 
 
 sake) 
 To th' musick the soft wind upon the Reeds doth 
 
 make." 
 
 Besides these inland beings the divinities of the 
 sea come in with every tide: 
 
 "... the roughrer Gods of Seas 
 From Neptunes court send in the blew Neriades, 
 Which from the bracky Realme upon the Billowes 
 ride." 
 
 Lastly, of course, he sings as only a fisher or a 
 shepherd could sing: 
 
 "The silent medowes seeme delighted with my 
 Layes,
 
 148 IDYLLS OF FISHERMEN 
 
 As sitting in my Boate I sing my Lasses praise, 
 Then let them that like, the Forrester up cry, 
 Your noble Fisher is the only man say I." 
 
 The strains of the other singers are as effective 
 as the ones quoted, but Halcius' pictures of 
 angling life are noteworthy as affording a glimpse 
 at a delicately idealized realm of fancy, and at 
 the same time as rendering a description of actual 
 fishing which is thoroughly true to life and thor- 
 oughly English. Side by side we see the nymphs 
 mounted on swans and the fisher engaged in play- 
 ing a salmon in the most sportsmanlike manner, 
 and angling of this sort forms a marked contrast 
 with the thin pretense of activities kept up by 
 the characters in earlier eclogues. 
 
 All the English poetry thus far cited is directly 
 or indirectly related to the humanistic genre. 
 Within regular pastoral, too, from ancient times, 
 occasional mention is made of fishing, and in 
 England, where angling was always popular, it 
 was only natural that these passages should re- 
 ceive some touches of local color, should tend in 
 time to receive considerable emphasis, and even- 
 tually should be rendered by themselves. Among 
 the earliest complete poems of the sort is John 
 Donne's 51 "The Bait," composed C. 1593, a clever 
 adaptation of Marlowe's famous pastoral, " The 
 Passionate Shepherd to his Love": 
 
 " Come, live with me, and be my love, 
 And we will some new pleasure prove 
 Of golden sands, and crystal brooks, 
 With silken lines and silver hooks. 
 
 51 Published London, 1633.
 
 THE ENGLISH FISHER IDYLLS 149 
 
 There will the river whispering run, 
 Warm'd by thine eyes more than the sun ; 
 And there th' enamour'd fish will stay, 
 Begging themselves they may betray. 
 
 When thou wilt swim in that live bath, 
 Each fish, which every channel hath, 
 Will amorously to thee swim, 
 Gladder to catch thee, than thou him. 
 
 If thou to be so seen be'st loth 
 By sun or moon, thou darkenest both; 
 And if myself have leave to see, 
 I need not their light, having thee. 
 
 Let others freeze with angling reeds, 
 And cut their legs with shells and weeds, 
 Or treacherously poor fish beset, 
 With strangling snare, or windowy net. 
 
 Let coarse bold hands from slimy nest 
 The bedded fish in banks out-wrest, 
 Or curious traitors, sleave-silk flies, 
 Bewitch poor fishes' wandering eyes : 
 
 For thee, thou need'st no such deceit, 
 For thou thyself art thine own bait, 
 That fish that is not catch'd thereby, 
 Alas! is wiser far than I." 
 
 Again, in John Fletcher's " Faithful Shepherd- 
 ess" (1609-1611) the satyr says: 
 
 "... when the weather 
 Serves to angle in the brook, 
 I will bring a silver hook, 
 With a rod as white as milk, 
 And a line of finest silk 
 To deceive the little fish. . . ."
 
 IDYLLS OF FISHERMEN 
 
 It is to be doubted whether Walton would have 
 approved of such fanciful tackle, which would 
 suit better the artificial manner of Drayton's 
 " Shepherds' Sirena," some lines of which repeat 
 the central idea of Donne's " The Bait " : 
 
 "The fishes in the flood, 
 When she doth angle, 
 For the hook strive a-good 
 Them to entangle; 
 And leaping on the land, 
 From the clear water, 
 Their scales upon the sand 
 Lavishly scatter." 
 
 Drayton's lines on angling are rarely so artificial 
 as these, and his description of salmon running 
 upstream, given in his " Polyolbion," is as accu- 
 rate as can be desired, being incidentally cited as 
 an authoritative passage by Walton in his " Com- 
 pleat Angler." Similar correctness characterizes 
 a passage of twenty-five lines in William Browne's 
 "Britannia's Pastorals" (1613-1616), describing 
 minutely an angler playing a large pike, and 
 within a few years independent fishing lyrics, 
 ballads, choruses, etc., became common. Mean- 
 while, after the publication of Fletcher's pisca- 
 tories (1633) the exotic genre almost died out 
 with the decay of pastoralism, not to be revived 
 until the following century, when Walton's fa- 
 mous treatise became so much an object of 
 imitation. 
 
 First published in 1653, the " Compleat An- 
 gler" went through eight editions before the 
 close of the century, and the piscatory poetry of
 
 THE ENGLISH FISHER IDYLLS 151 
 
 the late seventeenth century is best illustrated by 
 the quotations which it contains of poems by Du 
 Bartas, Sir Henry Wotton, Joseph Davors, 
 Michael Drayton, John Donne, Phineas Fletcher, 
 Joseph Chalkhill, Walton, and many others. 
 These verses breathe a love for the quiet, quasi- 
 pastoral existence of the angler, and form part 
 of an ever-increasing literature during this and 
 the two following centuries. Anthologies of such 
 poems include songs, heroics in many cantos, 
 sonnets, meditations, etc., and libraries of fish- 
 ing books often contain thousands of volumes in 
 verse or in prose. Much of all this verse, how- 
 over, though inspired by the same enthusiasm for 
 angling to which many writers of real merit gave 
 expression, is the work of men who were better 
 fishers than authors, and has no real connection 
 with the pastoral species which we are tracing in 
 this book excepting in the eighteenth century, 
 when we shall find some points of contact, espe- 
 cially between the treatise and the eclogue. 
 
 During the late seventeenth century the fisher 
 idyll is represented in England only by a few dis- 
 connected examples. The most interesting of 
 these is to be found in Milton's " Paradise Re- 
 gained," where Andrew and Simon, with others, 
 after searching in vain for the Saviour who had 
 been revealed to them : 
 
 "... returned in vain. 
 Then on the bank of Jordan, by a creek, 
 Where winds with reeds and osiers whispering 
 
 play, 
 
 Plain fishermen (no greater men them call) 
 Close in a cottage low together got."
 
 152 IDYLLS OF FISHERMEN 
 
 The parenthesis recalls at once Fletcher's "A 
 Fisher-lad (no higher dares he look)," and Spen- 
 ser's "A Shepeheards boye, (no better doe him 
 call,)" and there can be no doubt that the idyllic 
 picture owes its simplicity in part to the occa- 
 sionally realistic tradition of fisher pastoral, 
 though more, probably, to the ultimate source in 
 such passages in the Bible as the following : 52 
 
 18. "And Jesus, walking by the sea of Galilee, 
 saw two brethren, Simon called Peter, and Andrew 
 his brother, casting a net into the sea : for they were 
 fishers. 
 
 19. And he saith unto them, Follow me, and I 
 will make you fishers of men. 
 
 20. And they straightway left their nets, and fol- 
 lowed him." 
 
 Ths story, it will be remembered, seems to have 
 been the inspiration of Fletcher's favorite alle- 
 gory. No piece of the sort is complete without 
 a lament, and like so many of the humanistic 
 eclogues, Milton's fisher idyll voices a complaint 
 and a prayer. The fishers : 
 
 " Their unexpected loss and plaints outbreath'd," 
 and their words voice complaint at the disap- 
 pearance of Christ, an apostrophe to the Crea- 
 
 52 St. Matthew, 4, 18, 19, 20. Other pieces are: Nicholas 
 Rowe's " Glaucus and Scylla," in which the mythical fisher 
 speaks couplets, a ridiculous dialogue between am angler 
 and the owner of some land down stream who claims 
 that the sportsman is muddying the water, written by 
 William King and called " The Fisherman," and T. Ford's 
 " Piscatio " (1692), a Latin piece which imitates Horace's 
 " Beatus Ille " in imagery adapted to angling life, and 
 which was five times rendered in English in the next 
 century.
 
 THE ENGLISH FISHER IDYLLS 1 53 
 
 tor, a prayer that the Messiah be given back to 
 them, and determination to abide the divine will 
 in quiet hope. 
 
 THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 
 
 In the early eighteenth century the fisher ec- 
 logue revived, but its nature, as well as that of the 
 regular bucolic, was modified by the attitude of 
 the Augustan period towards pastoralism. Pope 
 criticised severely the use of allegory and religion 
 in Spenser's Calender, while Steele 53 insisted on 
 simplicity of manners, innocence and a mixture 
 of piety with superstition as essential parts of 
 shepherd character and maintained that style was 
 the most important thing in all pastoral poetry. 
 These writers, as was natural in an artificial 
 period, when form was more regarded than spirit, 
 preferred Virgil to Theocritus. By " style " and 
 " Virgil's style," the critics of the day meant in 
 English the sort of verse exemplified by Pope's 
 pastorals, and by Dryden's translation of Virgil's 
 bucolics. Of course, therefore, the meter of pis- 
 catories and shepherd songs alike became rhymed 
 couplet. 
 
 The first fisher idyll of the period, John Whit- 
 ney's " The Genteel Recreation with A Dialogue 
 between Piscator and Corydon " appeared in 
 1700. The " dialogue " is really a fisher poem in 
 which the classic motives are replaced by Walton- 
 ian imagery. Occasional references to Thetis, 
 Venus, Neptune, etc., recall vaguely the conven- 
 tions of the exotic genre, but do not convince the 
 
 63 Ta tier, 1704, "Discourse on the Pastoral."
 
 154 IDYLLS OF FISHERMEN 
 
 reader that Whitney had ever heard of Sanna- 
 zaro. His object was obviously to produce a 
 versified " Compleat Angler " in miniature. Ac- 
 cordingly Piscator and Corydon expatiate on the 
 delights of a fisherman's life and of a herdsman's 
 life, somewhat as do the classic shepherds and 
 neatherds, but more after the manner of " Pis- 
 cator, Venator and Auceps" at the beginning of 
 the "Angler," and as in that treatise, Piscator 
 persuades his hearer to watch him display the 
 beauties of angling, while a herdsman tends his 
 cattle. 54 A few lines will give an idea of the 
 qualities of the verse, which to tell the truth, is 
 not that of a poetic genius: 
 
 PISCATOR 
 
 " Propitious fortune bless my floating quill 
 By which, observing how the Fishes still 
 Nible the bait, then greedy swallow all, 
 As dying Victims, triumph in their fall, 
 That Corydon may see the difference and find, 
 That pleasure soon expels the troubles of the 
 mind." 
 
 The rest of the piece is almost an epitome of 
 Walton's treatise. Piscator's skill and success are 
 witnessed by Corydon, who becomes a convert to 
 the gentle art, and invites the angler with his 
 friends to feast on their catch, which Piscator 
 cooks in approved Waltonian fashion. The milk- 
 maids, Phillis and Chloris, are called on to sing, 
 just as in that part of the " Angler " where a milk- 
 maid sings Marlowe's " Come live with me and 
 
 M Just as occurs in Virgil's fifth bucolic.
 
 THE ENGLISH FISHER IDYLLS 155 
 
 be my love," and her mother replies with the 
 " Milk-maid's Mother's Answer." Whitney's lyrics 
 sound almost ludicrous beside Marlowe's, but 
 their enthusiasm entitles them at least to that mild 
 adjective, " quaint." 
 
 " Nereides or Sea-Eclogues," 55 by John Draper 
 (always misprinted " Diaper") are the first Eng- 
 lish poems, written after Drayton's nymphal, that 
 employ Sannazarian imagery, though strictly 
 speaking, only one of them is a fisher eclogue. 
 In his Journal to Stella, Swift particularly men- 
 tions this as the earliest book of its kind in our 
 literature, and says that Lord Bolingbroke sent 
 the author the then important sum of twenty 
 pounds. He might have said that it is the only 
 book of its kind in any literature, without being 
 guilty of a gross misstatement. In his dedica- 
 tion to Congreve the poet states that ancient and 
 modern bards have exhausted the beauties of the 
 land: 
 
 " But the vast unseen Mansions of the Deep, 
 Where secret Groves with liquid amber weep, 
 Where blushing Sprigs of knotty coral spread 
 And guild the Azure with a brighter red, 
 Were still untouch'd. . . ." 
 
 His Muse ..." But would plain songs in artless 
 verse contrive, 
 
 And humbly modest only asks to Dive." 
 
 He declares that the beauties of the sea have been 
 painted only " in a few piscatory eclogues," and 
 that though Lucian wrote of sea-gods it was 
 " chiefly to expose the heathen deities," but " The 
 
 "London, 1712.
 
 156 IDYLLS OF FISHERMEN 
 
 best modern productions are owing to hints of 
 Lucian the wit." He adds that he was encour- 
 aged to write of the ocean by accounts of " Sea- 
 Animals in human shape," told of by Aelian and 
 Pliny among the ancients, and by Olaus Magnus, 
 Rhannusius, Alvarez and other moderns. He 
 believes that these stories gave rise to tales of 
 nereids, tritons, sirens, with the numerous court 
 of Neptune and Tethys, so that he will not ven- 
 ture to decide whether such beings " have not 
 sometimes (at least as to their outward parts) 
 been found with bodies proportionable, and simi- 
 lar to ours, or like Horace's : 
 
 With lovely Face, and flowing Hair 
 The Nereid looks divinely fair; 
 But ah ! no farther seek to know, 
 A fishy tail is all below. 
 
 His belief in such creatures is strengthened by 
 the modern cases of the mermaid kept at Harlem, 
 of the mermaid, entirely human, told of in the 
 English chronicles, and by the statement of Du 
 Bartas that the sea holds " The mitred Bishop 
 and the Cowled Fryar." Lastly, he gives credit 
 to the words of Alexander ab Alexandro who 
 says that Theodorus Gaza, 56 a learned Greek of 
 Pelopponesus, once saw a nereid with shoals of 
 fish stranded by a storm. People gathered to 
 stare at the marvel, but as the mermaid wept bit- 
 
 M Besides the tales of Gaza Draper may have read other 
 accounts, such as " A most strange and true report of a 
 monsterous fish, who appeared in the forme of a woman, 
 from her waste upwards. Imprinted at London for W. B." 
 This nereid was found in the parish of Pendine, Carmar- 
 then, Feb. 17, 1630.
 
 THE ENGLISH FISHER IDYLLS 157 
 
 terly, Gaza put her back into the water. Alex- 
 ander also reports that another Greek saw a 
 nereid sporting in the waves, but when she per- 
 ceived herself observed she sank from sight. 
 Relying on such authorities, Draper states that 
 while some poets are talking about the inhabitants 
 of other planets, he will turn to the ocean and 
 " discover the manners of people nearer home." 
 
 Accordingly his Muse is allowed to " dive " to 
 a new Arcadia in the coral groves of the deep 
 sea. In his eclogues the characters are tritons 
 and mermaids, who wail laments, indulge in sing- 
 ing contests, or perform incantations, in a manner 
 as much like that of the classic pastorals as a 
 careful use of Pope's couplet permits, and yet 
 obvious imitations of Sannazarian illustration 57 
 are very numerous. Thus we find the curious 
 case of a poet of the Augustan school, interested 
 in sea-beings, and encouraged by classic and 
 modern lore, composing idylls of mermen and 
 nereids who behave exactly like the personages 
 in Virgil or Sannazaro. 
 
 A passage from a pharmaceutria performed by 
 the mermaid Meroe, with her friend Otys, illus- 
 trates Draper's manner of fitting classical pas- 
 toral activities to their surroundings in the sea: 
 
 " Otys, begin . . . 
 
 Since he is gone, I'll fetch him to my Arms 
 By sacred spells, and Force of Magick Charms. 
 Search in the Slime, you'll find the cramp-fish 
 there, 
 
 w It will be recalled that in Sannazaro's " Proteus " th 
 songs of the shepherd of the sea were made a piscatory.
 
 I5 IDYLLS OF FISHERMEN 
 
 That chilling stops whatever swims too near: 
 You'll find the Fish, that stays the labouring Ship, 
 Tho' ruffling Winds drive o'er the noisy Deep : 
 So Phorbas, while from me he perjur'd flies, 
 Is struck benumb'd, and fix'd with strange sur- 
 prise." 
 
 The fish mentioned are the same, and have the 
 same rather alarming attributes, as those that 
 figure in the Sannazarian piece from which 
 Draper adapted this idyll. Two bits show the 
 influence of Theocritus, the first a new render- 
 ing of the old refrain to the moon : 
 
 " Look down, auspicious Moon ; too well you know 
 What Love will force, and potent Charms can 
 do . . ." 
 
 and the other the treatment of a poor dog-fish 
 (here substituted for the Theocritean waxen 
 image) which is pierced to torture Phorbas by 
 proxy. 
 
 With this incantation may be classed two love 
 complaints, in one of which (ec. 2) Gaza's story 
 is utilized. The mermaid Eune swims ashore 
 with her triton lover, where she falls asleep, and 
 on waking finds herself left high and dry by the 
 tide, Melvin having treacherously stolen away. 
 She weeps, and utters a piteous lament, but in 
 time the sea rolls back over the sands and with 
 the first wave comes her recreant sweetheart. 
 The other plaint (ec. 13) is uttered by Cymo- 
 thoe, who upbraids our old friend Glaucus for 
 ingratitude she taught him swimming, with all 
 the other secrets of the deep, when he first tasted
 
 THE ENGLISH FISHER IDYLLS 159 
 
 the magic grass and was "added to the gods," 
 and now he neglects her for the "flat-nosed 
 Cyano." Her reproaches are phrased in the classic 
 manner, only that at the conclusion she makes no 
 threat of leaping from a cliff, but declares that 
 she will swim straight into the nets of fisher- 
 men unless Glaucus promises reform at once, and 
 this he proceeds to do. A companion piece is an 
 elegy, obviously a merman rendering of Sanna- 
 zaro's " Phyllis," and notable for the compliment 
 which the singer receives from his admiring 
 friend : 
 
 " Not half so sweet, when first the Morning dawns, 
 Are juicy Oysters, or the lucious Prawns." 
 
 The religious allegory of Spenser was not 
 looked on with favor in Draper's day, but one 
 group of the Nereides, related to the eclogues 
 contrasting shepherd life with that at court, re- 
 minds us of the old motive in the complacent 
 view which tritons take of their own state, with 
 their scorn for the baser ways of men. In one 
 poem Muraena from the summit of a rock views 
 with contemptuous pity toiling shepherds with 
 their bleating flocks, and tells how much happier 
 than human beings live the merry mermen. An- 
 other presents two tritons moralizing on the false 
 pride of mortals, and declaring the futility of 
 searching to understand the mysteries which 
 Heaven denies to our weaker sight before we 
 become spirits. In tone this is the most serious 
 of the set, but it imitates the amoeboean songs in 
 Sannazaro's third poem, in which ridiculous lists
 
 l6o IDYLLS OF FISHERMEN 
 
 of fish are substituted for the classic flower lists. 
 Draper utilizes these catalogues to illustrate the 
 greatness of the Creator, as proved by the mar- 
 vels of ocean. The most original of this group 
 gives a conversation in which Phorbas and Dry- 
 mon talk about a terrific naval battle which has 
 taken place, about a fleet in the distance, and 
 about the greed and avarice of men, as reported 
 by the transformed Glaucus. Melanthus comes 
 reeling along the beach, having broached a cask 
 which he has discovered amid some wreckage. 
 He declares that he feels like a king and adds : 
 
 '* My head's so wondrous light, I scarcely find 
 Whether I move on Waves or dance on Wind . . . 
 
 I quaffed full bowls in a capacious Shell. 
 Ye Gods ! if earthy Men thus live and drink, 
 Give me the Land, the Sea's a worthless Sink." 
 
 The other tritons immediately start in search of 
 the wonderful drink. 
 
 Draper composed several song contests, and 
 incidentally made use of Gaza's diving mermaid, 
 coquetting in the waves, who is the prize in one 
 of them (ec. 13). Another exemplifies the con- 
 ventional exchange of rude banter, and still an- 
 other is rendered by two nereids, of the wanton 
 type, an interesting touch being the refrain : 
 
 " Since nothing here we fixed or constant find, 
 Why should the Nereid boast a settled mind ? " 
 
 Everywhere in these poems occur bits of pretty 
 description, much better than one might expect
 
 THE ENGLISH FISHER IDYLLS l6l 
 
 in a work of such a peculiar sort. Of a sea- 
 nymph one triton sings : 
 
 " Her rising Breasts are white as polished Shells, 
 And in each part a different beauty dwells." 
 
 Another typical passage is a challenge : 
 
 " Begin, if thou art skill'd in tuneful lay, 
 Now whispering Breezes gentle Sounds convey, 
 The noisy Winds in bolted caves are prest, 
 And now the Halcyon builds her wavering nest." 
 
 Virgil's " seizing of Proteus " motive is ren- 
 dered when Ino and Cete, a merman and a nereid, 
 find that sea-god sleeping near his scaly herd, just 
 as occurs in the fourth georgic. Of course they 
 grasp the old fellow and insist on his singing a 
 song, to which he is forced to assent. He chants 
 an account of the history of the universe modern- 
 ized (from that given by Virgil's Silenus, when 
 caught by the shepherds in the sixth bucolic) to 
 embody the theories of Draper's day. 
 
 Only one of the collection is a true piscatory. 
 In it Murex asks Glaucus if he has seen the fleet, 
 and learns that it has sailed everywhere under 
 command of the great Lacon (Leake). Near 
 England the scaly god overheard the talk of two 
 half-frozen fishermen, who admired the admiral, 
 and repetition of their conversation makes up the 
 idyll proper. The two men are in a skiff toiling 
 at their nets by night, with fingers cramped by 
 the bitter cold. It is new moon and the snow- 
 covered shores are faintly visible through the 
 gray light. Exasperated by his wretched condi-
 
 162 IDYLLS OF FISHERMEN 
 
 tion the younger man decries the fate which 
 drives him abroad on the black sea at a time 
 when even the poorest clown lies at his ease. He 
 draws a picture of shepherd life, which he de- 
 clares far happier than that of fisher- folk. The 
 old man replies : " All think their Fortune is of 
 all the worst," and says that fishers are in fact 
 envied by countrymen. They eat the choicest of 
 food : cod, mullets, soles and mackerel, fish which 
 landsmen pay large prices for, even when stale. 
 Labor on the waves, too, is easier than that " in 
 clotting fields," for sometimes the zephyrs breathe 
 sweetly, while sands are soft and warm. Nor is 
 their livelihood dependent wholly on fish, since 
 they can scale high ledges, while sea-birds wheel 
 and scream, and can gather plenty of the most 
 delicious eggs. He then praises Lacon, admiral 
 of the English fleet, who protects the isle with its 
 fishers from the attacks of hostile ships. Glaucus 
 pities the men and drives shoals of fish into their 
 seine. There is a certain grim realism about the 
 dialogue and many bits of local color, which dis- 
 tinguish it sharply from the piscatories of Fletcher, 
 Leech and Drayton. Draper's poems, too, are 
 almost unspoiled by the ridiculous pathetic fal- 
 lacies that characterize so many verses of the 
 genre. In its underlying purpose the eclogue 
 bears some resemblance to Sannazaro's panegyric 
 of Ferdinand, but it is not, like the other Nereides, 
 filled with borrowings of individual Sannazarian 
 conceits, but gives the exotic species a local habi- 
 tation and a home. Perhaps the two fishers are 
 made real as an example of the Theocritean pis-
 
 THE ENGLISH FISHER IDYLLS 163 
 
 catory transferred to English shores, as is true of 
 one of the pieces by Leech already mentioned. 
 The verse of all these poems, though a bit stiff, 
 is yet replete with happy turns of speech and 
 pieces of description which denote an apprecia- 
 tion of nature unusual two decades before the 
 publication of Thomson's Seasons. 
 
 The favorable reception that the Nereides met 
 apparently did not please the contemporary critics, 
 who formulated cut and dried rules for the pas- 
 toral. Not long after the poems appeared the 
 Guardian (No. 28, Monday, April 13, 1713) printed 
 a severe criticism of Sannazaro's piscatories, of 
 which a few lines are as follows : 
 
 " While I am speaking of the Italians, it would 
 be unpardonable to pass by Sannazaro. He hath 
 changed the scene in this kind of poetry from 
 woods and lawns, to the barren beach and bound- 
 less ocean, introduces sea-calves in the room of 
 kids and lambs, sea-mews for the lark and the 
 linnet, and presents his mistress with oysters in- 
 stead of fruits and flowers. How good soever 
 his style and thought may be yet who can par- 
 don him for his arbitrary change of the sweet 
 manners and pleasing objects of the country, for 
 what in their own nature are uncomfortable and 
 dreadful? I think he hath few or no followers, 
 or, if any, such as knew little of his beauties, and 
 only copied his faults, and so are lost and for- 
 gotten." This criticism is said to have been 
 written by Addison. It will be noticed that San- 
 nazaro's style (being Virgilian) meets with no 
 censure, but that the critic objects to the arbi-
 
 164 IDYLLS OF FISHERMEN 
 
 trary shifting of the scene from sunny Arcadia 
 to " uncomfortable and dreadful " shores. Per- 
 haps his travels in Italy failed to impress Addison 
 with the quiet beauties of the Bay of Naples, and 
 at any rate, the criticism sounds in every way like 
 the view of pastoralism which was to be expected 
 from the Londoner of the day. 
 
 The Guardian probably helped to discourage 
 further imitation of Sannazarian pieces in Eng- 
 land, but it is clear that everybody did not agree 
 with Addison. In 1724 Beaupre Bell translated 
 Sannazaro's " Salices," and two years later met- 
 rical versions of the piscatories appeared, one by 
 Tate, and the other by J. Rooke. In a preface 
 to his translation, Rooke refutes Addison's state- 
 ments, and defends the pastoral of the sea-shore. 
 He has no patience with the view, sometimes 
 urged, that the life of fishers does not offer so 
 great a variety of materials to the poet as does 
 the life of shepherds, saying that the experiences 
 of fishermen may not be " so various " but are 
 " sufficient." Lastly he shows that Virgil, whom 
 the critics of the day regard as the highest au- 
 thority in poetical matters, is especially fond of 
 marine pictures, and that these form definite 
 precedent for the works of Sannazaro and his 
 imitators. The criticism in the Guardian, of 
 course, shows that Sannazaro's followers were 
 not known at this time in England, but the essay 
 of Rooke and the translations indicate that the 
 great humanist had loyal defenders even in this 
 period, more than two hundred years after the 
 composition of his poems.
 
 THE ENGLISH FISHER IDYLLS 165 
 
 Rooke's translations include besides Sanna- 
 zaro's eclogues, a few by other humanists, such 
 as the very poem by Grotius which suggested to 
 Leech the idea of writing " nauticae." The verse, 
 rhymed couplet, bears a striking resemblance to 
 that of Draper, and in fact may more justly be 
 regarded as rhymed paraphrase than as literal 
 translation. A passage from Buchanan's bucolic 
 "Amaryllis" will illustrate the style: 
 
 " So, have I seen a Fisherman convey 
 His nets ashore, in quest of nobler Prey, 
 And cast a little Tench, with Scorn, away: 
 Who, home at last returned, by Fortune crost, 
 And not a Mullet nor a Tench could boast." 
 
 Only a year after the publication of Rooke's 
 poems the Rev. Moses Browne, then twenty-two 
 years old (in the summer of 1727), composed the 
 most popular of all English fisher idylls, first 
 published in 1729, under the title "Angling 
 Sports in nine Piscatory Eclogues A New At- 
 tempt to introduce a more pleasing Variety and 
 Mixture of Subjects and Characters into Pas- 
 toral on the Plan of its primitive Rules and 
 Manners, and the lovers of Nature in rural 
 Scenes. With an Essay in Defence of this Un- 
 dertaking." In the blank verse dedication he 
 writes begging the favor of Dodington as follows : 
 
 " Nor, of the rural theme contemptuous scorn 
 An humble Verse, tho' of the watery race, 
 And Fisher's sports descriptive, labour new. 
 The fam'd Sicilian Swain 'his oaten reed 
 To Ptolemy attun'd, and Maro's Song 
 Made lowly shades deserve a Consul's care
 
 1 66 IDYLLS OF FISHERMEN 
 
 So might but thine the piscatory strain 
 
 Engage . . . 
 
 Nor less delightful shou'd th' unlofty lay 
 
 Be then esteemed, that sings of Fishy Lakes 
 
 Bank'd with green shade ; peace-visited retreats, 
 
 The Anglers Haunts, and lonely-loving Bard's. 
 
 Enrapt I languish for the wish'd retreat, 
 Deny'd to my unhappy choice For me 
 Hard-lotted hours with chearless round renew, 
 Except, when by the Poet's page enlarg'd, 
 I wander far thro' classic shades renown'd; 
 O'er Helicon, thy hallow'd walk, and thine 
 Green Ida, seat of desolated Troy." 
 
 Here we find an angler, kept from his craft by 
 circumstances, and turning to literature, espe- 
 cially to the pastorals of Theocritus and Virgil, 
 for comfort. Like Sannazaro and Grotius he 
 terms his work " labour new," rather a misnomer, 
 considering his obvious indebtedness to Sanna- 
 zaro and his acquaintance with the eclogues of 
 Fletcher, which as we shall see, gave him several 
 hints. 
 
 The introductory essay is an attempt to show 
 that fishermen's activities are legitimate material 
 for pastoral poetry. He takes exception to the 
 view of critics who make Theocritus, Virgil, and 
 Tasso the only writers of real pastorals, declar- 
 ing that to these names should be added Spenser, 
 John Fletcher, William Browne, Philip Congreve, 
 " with many others." He declares that the true 
 spirit of pastoral is greatly misunderstood, and 
 that clownish or low phrases, obsolete expres- 
 sions, labored turns of wit, and amorous ex-
 
 THE ENGLISH FISHER IDYLLS 167 
 
 travagances do not make good bucolics. He 
 then shows that in the works of acknowledged 
 masters of shepherd song, Theocritus, Virgil, 
 Tasso, and Spenser, there are frequent diver- 
 gences from the manner of strict bucolics, such, 
 for instance, as the heroic pieces among the 
 Sicilian idylls, and he recalls the saying of San- 
 nazaro that the pastoral is really a species of 
 epic. He calls the slow perfection of pastoral 
 verse a proof of its greatness, and accounts for 
 the inferiority of the poems by Moschus and 
 Bion with the long gap in the tradition between 
 Theocritus and Virgil by the suggestion that 
 pastoralism had to wait till the " slow advance 
 of genius should raise up some equal to the un- 
 dertaking." He adds that Servius allows only 
 seven of Virgil's bucolics to be pure pastorals, 
 and Heinsius rejects for the same reason all but 
 ten of the idylls. He declares this view absurd, 
 showing that husbandmen, vine-dressers, fishers 
 and others are proper subjects for pastoral treat- 
 ment, not only by nature but by the example of 
 Theocritus and Virgil themselves. He asks why 
 the Reapers, the Two Fishers or others not shep- 
 herds should be excluded, continuing thus: 
 
 " Why not Anglers, Fowlers and other rural 
 employments, whose leisure, solitude, and inno- 
 cent manners make them strictly conformable to 
 . . . rule. The heavy, precise Grammarians . . . 
 would be hard put to it by their rules to prove 
 the purity of those ten idylliums which they have 
 set apart as regular, or acquit themselves for 
 those they have rejected . . . What title has his
 
 1 68 
 
 IDYLLS OF FISHERMEN 
 
 Second, the Inchantment, to the genuine class 
 the man a town wrestler." He cavils also at the 
 second idyll, and at the seventh, eleventh, and 
 twentieth. After enlarging further on the min- 
 gling of characters in the works of Theocritus 
 and Virgil he concludes: 
 
 " Both from Theocritus' and Virgil's authority 
 and practice, let but the manners of the speakers 
 be adapted to the simplicity and purity of the 
 golden age; let them have but leisure for their 
 muses, and the country for their residence, and 
 whether they are Shepherds, Anglers, Fowlers 
 ... it is equally indifferent ; Nature is a wide 
 field, and varied for contemplation, and the mul- 
 tiform pleasing objects and observations that 
 present themselves from floods, hills, woods, val- 
 lies, and plains, and their numerous orders of 
 inhabitants, may furnish the pastoral poet with 
 a choice of familiar beautiful ideas." He con- 
 cludes this part of the essay by citing the names 
 of many famous writers who have been good 
 anglers and have at the same time written of 
 their art in a way to establish precedent. Among 
 the English writers cited are Dean Donne, Sir 
 Francis Bacon, Sir Henry Wotton and Izaak 
 Walton himself, whose love of angling he extols 
 at some length. What he here says about the 
 " Compleat Angler " is a naive confession of the 
 inspiration that led him to try his hand at writing 
 piscatory poems : 
 
 "I found by the Dialogues of his Anglers, how 
 properly they would suit with the innocent, 
 humble nature of Eclogue ..." a discovery
 
 THE ENGLISH FISHER IDYLLS 169 
 
 which, as has been shown, John Whitney had 
 made some years earlier. 
 
 The second part of the essay is not so logical 
 as the first, and the author is guilty of the same 
 fallacy of which he accuses other critics. He 
 thinks that the fishers most suitable for pastoral 
 treatment are gentlemen amateurs, strolling along 
 English streams. Great men have been shep- 
 herds, so that a poet is " not deviating from their 
 characters to make them civil and ingenius, and 
 for fear of drawing them courtiers, paint them 
 as savages : the golden mean is to be observed. 
 If ... I have made my Swains ... a little too 
 well bred for natives of the country, it was be- 
 cause I judged my subject not straightened, nor 
 the speakers limited to all the slavish forms the 
 pastoral critics have required." At this point he 
 forgets that the two old fishermen in the idyll by 
 Theocritus, whom he has cited as precedent for 
 the painting of analogous characters in English 
 poetry, are scarcely gentlemen amateurs, and he 
 declares that anglers are legitimate subjects but 
 " Fishers . . . following their laborious employ- 
 ments on the main, are not to be properly reduced 
 to this taste, nor are these the most eligible sub- 
 jects. If they can be lawfully used, it must be 
 but sparingly, and with some art and manage- 
 ment, or they will appear with no advantage. I 
 have used them but once in these eclogues . . . 
 my professed view in this undertaking was to 
 see how a mixture of characters, and a designed 
 variety of subjects would appear . . . I have but 
 one eclogue with Fowlers." He declares also
 
 170 IDYLLS OF FISHERMEN 
 
 that it would be better if Sannazaro had never 
 written his " sea-eclogues "- -" the exercise of 
 fishing appears so contemptible in him, that any 
 that writes on a subject that seems to be of a 
 similar aspect, must suffer disadvantage. His 
 oysters and crayfish are served plentifully over 
 without any change, and you may break your 
 teeth before you get at his entertainment. His 
 water-swains differ no ways from our most sim- 
 ple ones on land, only that he turns them to sea 
 in an old tattered boat, and so leaves them to 
 wail their loves and seek their fortunes." This 
 criticism of Sannazaro is much more severe than 
 that already cited from the Guardian, but it is 
 clear that Browne calls the exercise of fishing in 
 the humanistic poems " contemptible " chiefly be- 
 cause his own ideal is that of Walton. He evi- 
 dently examined the thin piscatory disguise in 
 the allegorical poems of Sannazaro, found little 
 technical information about actual fishing, and 
 decided to produce a work which should preserve 
 the classical conventions and types of song as 
 far as possible, and at the same time adapt the 
 piscatory form to the purpose of rendering the 
 " Compleat Angler " in verse. One entire ec- 
 logue, to be sure, is imitated from Milton, and 
 despite his savage strictures, one from Sanna- 
 zaro, but most are based on angling scenes in 
 Walton, with some touches from Bacon, Donne, 
 and others. This Browne tells the reader in 
 copious footnotes, aimed to show that everything 
 in his poems, especially the actual angling lore, 
 is sanctioned by high authority. Here and there
 
 THE ENGLISH FISHER IDYLLS I7 1 
 
 the influence of Spenser and that of Fletcher are 
 very obvious, and the prose arguments prefixed 
 to the poems, quaintly worded and somewhat 
 specific, are evidently imitated from those in the 
 " Shepherds Calender." 
 
 It should be added that Browne's attitude 
 towards the use of a variety of characters in 
 pastoral verse was not typical of the critics of 
 the earlier part of the century, Pope in particu- 
 lar, finding fault with Theocritus because of the 
 very fact that he introduces fishers and har- 
 vesters. In spite of his theory, too, Browne 
 after all, wishes only to establish the amateur 
 angler on a par with other characters in pastoral. 
 Fortunately his study of Walton and his expe- 
 rience as an angler led him to abandon the 
 pathetic fallacy, which in earlier pieces made 
 fishes pop their heads out of the water to hear 
 the songs of fishermen. That sort of thing does 
 not appear in the eighteenth century piscatory 
 eclogues, the poets being convinced that it was 
 not consistent with any realistic picture of anglers 
 engaged at their sport. 
 
 Having attempted to show that the best prece- 
 dent exists for the presentation of a judicious 
 variety of characters in pastoral poetry, he closes 
 the essay by ridiculing the idea that shepherds 
 must be in love, citing Dryden's criticism of 
 English eclogues for this affectation " This 
 Phyllissing comes from Italy." Finally he gives 
 a general eulogy of angling and cites a number 
 of famous fishermen, among them Phineas 
 Fletcher, from whose poems he quotes, Dr.
 
 l7 2 IDYLLS OF FISHERMEN 
 
 Nowell, Dean of St. Paul's, Cicero, Antony and 
 Cleopatra, with others ancient or modern, as they 
 happened to occur to him. It is hardly neces- 
 sary to remark that Browne fails to show that 
 gentlemen anglers are the most eligible charac- 
 ters for pastoral treatment, but nevertheless his 
 essay and Rooke's are far more logical and show 
 far keener insight into the real nature of coun- 
 try song than does the critic in the Guardian, 
 and than the great Johnson does a little later in 
 the Rambler, as will be shown. 
 
 Browne's poems are an interesting attempt, at 
 least, to carry into effect the theories expressed 
 in his preface. Three pieces are contests, one 
 of them beginning in rude banter borrowed and 
 adapted from Virgil's third bucolic. Two youth- 
 ful anglers sing before the herdsman Mico, who 
 watches them fishing, alternate songs giving an 
 accurate account of the inconveniences to fisher- 
 men resulting from long draughts and land floods, 
 the signs and changes of the weather, seasons 
 best for their recreation, and the methods of 
 summer and winter angling. All this knowledge 
 is of course, Waltonian, yet it has the sanction 
 of Augustan criticism in Pope's dictum that the 
 characters in pastoral should be made to know 
 enough astronomy to assist them in the pursuit 
 of their daily routine in life. Browne's singers 
 are rewarded with wreaths of flowers and myrtle, 
 invited to Mico's cottage because rain threatens, 
 and are promised " two rods of smoothest cane 
 with lines of silk and purest hair," if they will 
 teach him to fish and sing as well as they do.
 
 THE ENGLISH FISHER IDYLLS 1 73 
 
 Another match (ec. 6) between Myrtol and 
 Thelgon, with a third fisher as umpire, is made 
 the vehicle for detailed information about "the 
 nature and breed of fish, their haunts and feed- 
 ing," with the usual reward, and commendation. 
 The last contest (ec. 7), "The Strife," is imi- 
 tated in part from Fletcher's " The Strife," and 
 in part from other sources. Just as in Fletcher's 
 poem the match is held before a fisher umpire 
 between an angler and a shepherd, each singing 
 the praises of his own way of life, while the 
 rallying, which leads to the challenge, is that of 
 Virgil's third piece. Browne explains that the 
 shepherd Clorin's song, in compliment to Pan, 
 for the first time embodies in verse the story of 
 Pytis, a nymph beloved by the rural gods, but 
 changed to a pine to escape the rage of Boreas, 
 whom she slighted. Hence Pan crowns himself 
 with pine, and hence the tree sighs when the 
 north wind blows. The fisher Comus relates the 
 metamorphosis of beautiful Sabrina, drowned in 
 Severn, by which the contestants now sit. Browne 
 recalls that the ultimate source of the legend is 
 in Geoffrey of Monmouth, but the use of the 
 names Sabrina and Comus together certainly 
 suggests the influence of Milton's Comus. The 
 refrains, on the other hand, are English variants 
 on those in Virgil (8) : 
 
 " Ye graces aid, ye muses tune my tongue 
 Thou Pan be present and assist my song" 
 
 and 
 
 " Ye vales, ye rocks, ye caves your echoes bring, 
 And thou, Sabrina, listen while I sing."
 
 174 IDYLLS OF FISHERMEN 
 
 Here we have rather a complicated develop- 
 ment of the genre, including motives from 
 Fletcher, Virgil, and Geoffrey of Monmouth. 
 Moreover, the fisher's song describes no fewer 
 than thirty-seven rivers, all taken from Walton, 
 as copious notes explicitly state, and lastly we 
 find imitation of Milton. First suggested, as we 
 have seen, by the names of Comus and Sabrina, 
 this last mentioned influence is made more ob- 
 vious by a story of how a river-god seized and 
 wed the nymph Sabra. He called the floods to 
 the marriage, and a procession came that is 
 almost certainly imitated from one in Lycidas. 
 A short quotation may serve to make this clear: 
 
 " First aged Isca came with flattering pace, 
 And Pedred sprung of Ivel's kingly race; 
 A dropping wreath of Water-Thyme he wore 
 And smiling Munnow came, with youthful Dore." 
 
 Let us consider next Browne's use of the love- 
 lay, for although he censures this in his essay, it 
 forms an undertone in the poems which is plainly 
 reminiscent of Spenser. It is first introduced 
 (ec. 2) amid the gloomy surroundings incident 
 to night fishing for trout, and is thus expressed 
 in imagery taken directly from Walton. Laco 
 is the enthusiastic fisherman, and Renock (the 
 poet himself) is suffering from slighted love, as 
 he manages to say gently, between songs on other 
 matters, just as occurs in the fourth idyll by 
 Theocritus. A long footnote on catching trout 
 by night contrasts sharply with the sentimentality 
 of Renock's lament at the cruelty of his mistress.
 
 THE ENGLISH FISHER IDYLLS 1 75 
 
 A few words from the poem will show one 
 curious effect of combining angling phraseology 
 with the conventional complaint: 
 
 " Happy ye eels, who ne'er love's torment know 
 And carp, blest kind, exempt from am'rous woe." 
 
 That the introduction of this motive was actu- 
 ally suggested by the Calender is stated by 
 Browne in the argument to another piece, 
 " Renock's Despair," which, curiously enough, is 
 also called "An Imitation of Milton's Lycidas" 
 (ec. 5). " This eclogue," he says, " is of private 
 concern, and contains an amorous soliloquy of a 
 slighted swain, the same who is introduced with 
 a complaint of his unsuccessful passion in the 
 second eclogue (as Spenser more than once in- 
 troduces his unhappy Colin with a well-known 
 personal meaning). The Poet here, in respect 
 to the ancient birthplace of ! his family (whose 
 name in the female line he has made his lover 
 personate), has singled out upon this occasion a 
 particular place of action." 
 
 The conception of this pastoral, Spenser's 
 Colin metamorphosed into an angler, singing a 
 complaint to " Lovely Stella coy," busied (as the 
 notes assert) in the most scientific and Waltonian 
 style of fishing, and at the same time endeavor- 
 ing to rival the poetical effects of a poem like 
 Lycidas, is certainly a bold one. Browne is able 
 to turn out couplets with a reasonable degree of 
 fluency, but in attempting to parallel the haunt- 
 ing music of Lycidas in piscatory phraseology, 
 expressive of wrongs like Colin's, his efforts be-
 
 176 IDYLLS OF FISHERMEN 
 
 come almost absurd. On the banks of the Soar 
 he wails of " My luckless fate which never shall 
 amend." Stella is: 
 
 " Than Wolf or Pike more fell 
 With lives of foes their brutal rage they tame, 
 But thou, than savage kind more cruel grown, 
 Prey'st on a heart which love had made thy own." 
 
 Adapted from "the slighted shepherd's trade" 
 of Milton, is a statement that it is not " rude " 
 to make " shapely rods of caney reeds," or " weave 
 in silken folds the mimic fly." Such imitation 
 sounds strangely beside more notes on various 
 fish from Walton, Pliny and Martial. The con- 
 clusion is quite in the manner of Sannazaro: 
 
 " Ye fisher-swains and river maids adieu, 
 And all ye finny droves, a long farewell. . . ." 
 
 Renock is going to leap from a lofty cliff', or 
 hang himself, and his ghost will wail in lonely 
 groves. 
 
 The love theme appears in one other of the 
 poems (ec. 9), "The Complaints, or The Friends." 
 " This eclogue," says Browne, " is a kind of 
 familiar conference between the poet and his 
 friend. The style is designedly more negligent 
 and unlabored than the rest, filled up with little, 
 unconnected pieces of private history (in a man- 
 ner Virgil conducts a pastoral of the like nature) 
 wherein honourable and grateful mention is made 
 of some names, distinguished by their friend- 
 ships. The Whole has an appearance suited to 
 the condition of mind (produced by a series of 
 disappointments and dejections) under which it
 
 THE ENGLISH FISHER IDYLLS 1 77 
 
 was written." The Virgilian model is the first 
 bucolic, in which Tityrus (Virgil himself) talks 
 with a friend about his gratitude to Maecenas, 
 who has restored to him his farm, from which 
 he had been ousted. In the English imitation 
 Renock (the poet) laying down his catch of fish, 
 rests in the shade with Milo, who has been gather- 
 ing fruit. Renock sings his sorrow at the death 
 of a patron, Molesworth ("author of Gate's let- 
 ters"), and Milo answers with best wishes for 
 Renock's happiness, giving a Waltonian turn to 
 the conventional pharseology in these words: 
 "nor greedy poacher e'er thy Fry destroy." This 
 first division of the poem, then, is a frank imita- 
 tion of Virgil. After a time, however, Renock 
 is led to speak mournfully about " Proud Stella ! 
 Angel with a tyrant's heart ! " Though she has 
 been " torn from my arms vainly doating I will 
 still love," and this leads to Milo's begging him 
 to " repeat the song that won a prize from 
 Moeris." Renock accordingly utters a sad plaint, 
 descriptive of winter and its ill effects on fish, 
 but Colin's dismal strain (in the wintry Decem- 
 ber eclogue of Spenser's Calender) makes itself 
 heard in spite of unusually copious annotation 
 from the " Compleat Angler." Sannazaro's lament 
 (ec. 5) furnishes Browne with a suitable refrain: 
 
 " From seas haste, Proteus, with thy wat'ry wain 
 And thaw the floods, and save thy dying train." 
 
 One of the frankest adaptations of matter 
 from Walton is " Linus and Aquadune." The 
 fisher Aquadune calls on the swain Linus to help 
 
 13
 
 178 IDYLLS OF FISHERMEN 
 
 him recover a trout with which an otter is trying 
 to make off. The episode is taken from one in 
 the " Angler," but Aquadune's moralizing ac- 
 count of the calamities of fish, the poet states 
 that he based mainly on Donne's twenty-ninth 
 sonnet, which is as follows : 
 
 "Is any kind subject to rape like fish? 
 Ill unto man they neither do nor wish. 
 Fishers they kill not, nor with noise awake 
 They do not hurt, nor strive to make a prey 
 Of beasts, nor their young Sons to bear away. 
 Fowls they pursue not, nor do undertake 
 To spoil the nests industrious birds do make. 
 Yet them all these unkind kinds feed upon, 
 To kill them is an occupation 
 And Laws make Lents and Fasts for their de- 
 struction." 
 
 A single piece introduce fowlers. In the argu- 
 ment Browne says : 
 
 "This eclogue, it will be easily observed, con- 
 sists of different characters from the rest, and 
 was designedly introduced, consistent with the 
 plan, as a trial how a subject of this new and 
 unattempted nature might be intermixed with a 
 pastoral kind." The poem is another "pharma- 
 ceutria," with a love lament, given as in Sanna- 
 zaro, charm first and complaint second, a re- 
 versal of the order of these parts that the human- 
 ist was the first to try. A shepherdess, Melite, 
 strives to win back a fowler by incantations and 
 charms, in which all the terms and ingredients 
 for sacrifice are borrowed from " fowling " 
 phraseology. The refrain is imitated from the 
 one in Theocritus :
 
 THE ENGLISH FISHER IDYLLS 1 79 
 
 " Inconstant moon, fair wand'rer, change his mind 
 Or make me scorn, or make my tyrant kind." 
 
 Thrysil's complaint to Phylla is as close an imita- 
 tion of the conventional form as is the charm, 
 and contains the refrain: 
 
 " My voice, my reed, shall in their turns complain ; 
 Here mix, my moving pipe, thy sweetly mournful 
 strain." 
 
 Even the fowling lore, as the notes make clear, 
 is taken from bits in the " Angler." 
 
 In addition to the Sannazarian touches already 
 noted in the poems, mention should be made of 
 the fourth eclogue, the only one portraying pro- 
 fessional fishermen of the deep sea, and it is 
 manifestly imitated from Sannazaro's third pis- 
 catory. As the poet summarizes the content of 
 the piece: 
 
 "A company of fishers, forced by bad weather, 
 take harbour up a shady creek where they divert 
 and refresh themselves. An aged swain (at their 
 request) entertains them with a song in praise of 
 their humble, happy profession, in which by a 
 designed variety, he passes to the different wonder- 
 ful properties of some rivers, and of several curious 
 remarkable sea-fish, and by occasion suitable to his 
 subject introduces the Episodes of Arion and of 
 Glaucus but is interrupted by the return of a calm, 
 which invites them back to their employments." 
 
 The entire poem is much like the Sannazarian 
 source, only that the contest in that piece is 
 replaced by the solo of the old fisher. The fish 
 lists of Sannazaro are enthusiastically expanded,
 
 l8o IDYLLS OF FISHERMEN 
 
 however, in a manner more like that of Walton 
 and of Walton's sources, all of which is acknowl- 
 edged by Browne in the footnotes. Thus he cites 
 Walton's account of the " hot sargus," and of 
 the " chaste mullet " taken from Du Bartas, 
 and fromAelian's "Treatise of living creatures." 
 The stories of Glaucus and of Arion, which the 
 old fisher sings, Browne renders from the ac- 
 count in Ovid, and the final account of extraor- 
 dinary rivers from Boyle's " History of Firmness 
 and Fluidity," from Virgil, and from Gordon's 
 Geography, from Aristotle, and from "A Jesuit's 
 Voyage to Siam." All this frank admission of 
 indebtedness is very unusual and convenient, but 
 it, too, is only a characteristic suggested by the 
 example of the " Angler," in which the author is 
 careful to indicate the sources of his informa- 
 tion, whenever it is not obtained by actual obser- 
 vation alone. 
 
 Browne's eclogues have thus a quasi-scientific 
 tone which is rather out of keeping with the 
 classical forms of pastoral verse, but in them 
 appear shepherds, herdsmen, deep sea fishers, 
 fowlers, and anglers, the variety promised in the 
 introductory prose essay. Expert anglers, pur- 
 suing their sport along placid streams are his 
 favorite dramatis personae, however, and his 
 contribution to literature may be justly called a 
 blending of the Sannazarian piscatory conven- 
 tions with the material of a treatise on fishing. 
 There is a strongly marked didactic purpose in 
 this combination of motives, and the poems are 
 in the nature of miniature essays on angling
 
 THE ENGLISH FISHER IDYLLS l8l 
 
 adapted to the inherited technique of the pas- 
 toral idyll. The couplets in which most of the 
 pieces are written are very correct, and contain 
 many passages of some prettiness and charm, in 
 a purely conventional way. The work was well 
 liked, was reprinted in 1739, 1758, 1773 (in one 
 volume with Fletcher's piscatories) and has a 
 place today beside the " Compleat Angler " in 
 libraries of angling literature. 
 
 Apparently Dr. Johnson thought Browne might 
 have been better employed, because he urged him 
 to re-edit Walton's book, no edition of which had 
 appeared since 1676. This task Browne under- 
 took with enthusiasm, loving the work not only 
 as a treatise, but also as a piece of good litera- 
 ture. As he says in his preface : 
 
 "Mr. Izaak Walton's Complete Angler . . . has 
 been always had in the greatest reputation, by such 
 as are acquainted with books, and have any discern- 
 ing in works of merit and nature. Not only the 
 lovers of this art, but all others, who have no in- 
 clinations in the least to the diversion of angling 
 that it treats of have joined in giving it their mutual 
 suffrage and commendation." 
 
 In spite of this encomium, Browne thought it 
 necessary to polish Walton's style, to omit parts 
 here and there, and to smoothe any irregularities 
 that he found in his verse, all with the purpose 
 of adapting the book to suit the artificial stand- 
 ards of the day. 
 
 The edition appeared in 1750, and that same 
 year Johnson published in his " Rambler " " The 
 Reason why Pastorals delight" (no. 36, Satur-
 
 1 82 IDYLLS OF FISHERMEN 
 
 day, July 21, 1750), in which he kindly laid down 
 some rules for pastoralism, and showed at some 
 length the reasons why Sannazaro's plan ought 
 not to be followed. The criticism of the fisher 
 idylls begins with a confident explanation of the 
 motive that led Sannazaro to write as he did : 
 
 " The conviction of the necessity of some new 
 source of pleasure induced Sannazaro to remove 
 the scene from the fields to the sea." 
 
 He then cites the censure in the Guardian which 
 declares the sea "an object of terror" unsuited 
 to pastoral presentation, and remarks that the poet 
 has a right to select his images, and can as easily 
 describe a calm sea as the bucolic writer can pic- 
 ture a calm day on shore. His objections to 
 Sannazaro's eclogues are that the sea presents 
 much less variety to the poet than does the land, 
 so that descriptive writers must soon exhaust the 
 possibilities of marine imagery. He says, too, 
 that the greater part of mankind must always 
 live in utter ignorance of maritime pleasures, and 
 for this reason a sea poem will always remain for 
 an inlander as unintelligible as a chart. These 
 things, he believes, Sannazaro did not perceive 
 because he wrote in Latin, and for the learned 
 few had his piscatories been written in the vul- 
 gar tongue, people would not have taken the 
 trouble to read and understand them. It is 
 hardly necessary to add that the Theocritean 
 idyll is not in the least like a chart to the land- 
 lubber, and that the Italian piscatories had been 
 popular for a century before Johnson wrote.
 
 THE ENGLISH FISHER IDYLLS 183 
 
 His view, nevertheless, seems to have been gen- 
 erally accepted, and imitation of Sannazaro in 
 England accordingly ceased. Browne's adapta- 
 tion of a Sannazarian poem, at best but an effort 
 to show how that sort of thing might have been 
 done a kind of gentle correction, as it were, of 
 Sannazaro's "contemptible" professionalism, is 
 really the last of the strictly classic type to keep 
 the piscatory form. 
 
 Eight years after the publication of Johnson's 
 essay in the Rambler appeared William Thom- 
 son's " Hymn to May," which the poet states is 
 an imitation of Spenser and of Phineas Fletcher. 
 Part of the introduction is, in fact, a piscatory 
 idyll filled with the new feeling for nature, so 
 little understood by the writers of Pope's genera- 
 tion. The speaker, addressing lanthe says: 
 
 " Let us our steps direct where father Thame 
 In silver windings draws his humid train, 
 And pours, where-e'er he rolls his naval stream, 
 Pomp on the city, plenty o'er the plain : 
 Or by the banks of Isis shall we stray, 
 (Ah, why so long from Isis' banks away!) 
 Where thousand damsels dance, and thousand 
 shepherds play? 
 
 Amid the pleasaunce of Arcadian scenes, 
 
 Love steals his silent arrows on my breast; 
 
 Nor falls of water, nor enamel'd greens, 
 
 Can soothe my anguish, or invite to rest. 
 
 You, dear lanthe, you alone impart 
 
 Balm to my wounds, and cordial to my smart: 
 
 The apple of my eye! the life-blood of my heart! 
 
 With line of silk, with hook of barbed steel
 
 184 IDYLLS OF FISHERMEN 
 
 Beneath this oaken umbrage let us lye, 
 And from the water's crystal bosom steal 
 Upon the grassy bank the finny prey: 
 The perch, with purple speckled manifold; 
 And carp, all burnish'd with drops of scaly gold. 
 Or shall the meads invite, with Iris-hues 
 And Nature's pencil gay diversify'd, 
 (For now the Sun hath lick'd away the dews), 
 Fair flushing, and bedeck'd like virgin-bride ! 
 Thither, for they invite us, we'll repair, 
 Collect and weave (whate'er is sweet and fair) 
 A posy for thy breast, a garland for thy hair." 
 
 The lyric feeling in this piece, like that in Dray- 
 ton's sixth nymphal, differentiates it to some 
 degree from most Augustan eclogues, in which 
 (so far as structure is concerned) the important 
 thing is the imitation of a set model from the 
 classics. 
 
 Almost the last development that took place 
 in the English piscatory eclogue is exemplified in 
 " The Anglers Eight Dialogues in Verse," pub- 
 lished in 1758 by Dr. Thomas Scott, a dissenting 
 minister of Ipswich, and an ardent admirer of 
 Walton, whose Angler he extols in his poems. 
 The purpose of the pieces, like that of Whitney 
 and of Browne, is to emulate the glories of the 
 famous treatise. Browne succeeds in preserving 
 most of the traditional themes for the eclogue 
 the contest, the complaint, etc., sung by anglers 
 who manage, somehow, to give expression to a 
 great deal of Waltonian lore. Scott rejects all 
 the traditional motives, introduces only anglers 
 as characters, and preserves the amoeboean form 
 only that these characters may tell all they know
 
 THE ENGLISH FISHER IDYLLS 185 
 
 about fishing, in the style most approved by 
 English sportsmen. The kind of arguments in 
 favor of angling which Walton makes incidental 
 to a debate between an angler, a hunter and a 
 falconer, Scott puts into the mouths of Candidus 
 and Serius, who take the matter up with enthu- 
 siasm in the first eclogue. Then follow " Some 
 General Rules of the Sport," in a conversation 
 between Tyro and Piscator, his experienced tutor. 
 Next Musaeus talks with Simplicius about " An- 
 gling for trout " ; Garrulous and Lepidus discuss 
 " Angling for Perch " ; Lucius and Verus tell all 
 they can about capturing carp ; lapis and Mysta 
 expound the mysteries of " mixed angling " ; 
 Axylus, Musaeus and Chiron converse on " Trowl- 
 ing for Pike," and finally Icenus and Caurus take 
 up the matter of " Fishing for Pike with Lay- 
 hooks." Like Whitney's dialogue these are di- 
 dactic treatises in miniature, phrased in couplets 
 and interspersed with occasional lyrics, as in 
 Walton, aimed to illustrate points that arise 
 during the course of conversation. The charac- 
 ters are anglers, far too careful to frighten the 
 fish by singing while they whip the stream, and 
 about as far removed in every way from the 
 swains in Sannazaro as it is possible to be. An 
 examination of the eclogues, however, shows that 
 the author was an educated man, conversant with 
 the traditional forms for the pastoral, and that 
 he frankly preferred to render the " Compleat 
 Angler" in eclogue form rather than to attempt 
 a ridiculous compromise between the outworn
 
 1 86 IDYLLS OF FISHERMEN 
 
 classic conventions 58 and the treatise, which 
 Browne had attempted. 
 
 Scott's dialogues were reprinted (1773) in "A 
 Collection of Scarce, Curious and Valuable 
 Pieces, both in Verse and Prose, chiefly selected 
 from the fugitive Productions of The Most Emi- 
 nent Wits of the Present Age," published at 
 Edinburgh by W. Ruddiman in 1773. The whole 
 set of eclogues was later boldly pirated by Thomas 
 Pike Lathy and embodied in his poem in ten 
 cantos called " The Angler," which was published 
 in 1819, 1820 and 1822. 
 
 So the fisher eclogue was found wanting even 
 for quasi-sporting verse, and gradually disap- 
 peared. It never attained in England the vogue 
 which it had enjoyed in Italy, partly because the 
 classic types of song were not found flexible 
 enough to adapt themselves to the needs of the 
 only branch of angling literature which was 
 destined to much popularity, and partly because 
 the angler poetry in Walton's treatise, which was 
 allowed to set the style for such matters, was 
 almost exclusively lyric. The few ramifications 
 of the genre in England, though not important 
 by themselves, form, when grouped with analo- 
 gous developments on the continent, a consider- 
 able body of poetry, small if compared with pas- 
 toral of the woods and fields, but fairly continu- 
 ous, and illustrating so long as it lasts, the per- 
 
 68 A single imitation of the Sannazarian love serenade 
 motive, an " ecloga piscatoria " by Metastasio, composed 
 to be set to music, was printed in the appendix to Sir 
 John Hawkin's 1784 edition of Walton's Angler. The 
 piece is not found in Metastasio's works.
 
 THE ENGLISH FISHER IDYLLS 187 
 
 sistence of characteristics derived from the verse 
 of Theocritus, Virgil and Sannazaro. The con- 
 ventions of country song had become the thinnest 
 of shams long before they entered English litera- 
 ture, yet almost to the end of its existence the 
 fisher pastoral included occasional glimpses at 
 the realistic side of life inspired by the tradition 
 that began with the idyll of the two old men, and 
 the dream of the golden fish. 
 
 When the exotic pastoral died out in England 
 it left in its place a branch of literature destined 
 to attain great bulk, if little else. This was the 
 angling georgic, the joint result of the hearty 
 British love for the gentle sport, and of admira- 
 tion for Virgil. The germs of such works were 
 undoubtedly in such compositions as the didactic 
 dialogues by Whitney and Browne, but it re- 
 mained for John Gay to demonstrate in his 
 " Rural Sports " the feasibility of employing the 
 mechanism of Virgil's Georgics to combine de- 
 scription of piscatory and other country sport, 
 with idyllic pictures of rural life. 
 
 Some of his lines addressed to Pope declare 
 that: 
 
 " Where fields and shades, and the refreshing clime, 
 Inspire the sylvan song, and prompt my rhyme, 
 My muse shall rove, through flowery meads and 
 
 plains, 
 
 And deck with Rural Sports her native strains; 
 And the same road ambitiously pursue, 
 Frequented by the Mantuan swain and you." 59 
 
 68 "Rural Sports," a Georgic inscribed to Mr. Pope, 1713. 
 Quotations are from canto one.
 
 l88 IDYLLS OF FISHERMEN 
 
 By a " murmuring brook " he will read 
 
 " the Mantuan's Georgic strains, 
 And learn the labours of Italian swains." 
 
 If we place side by side Gay's pictures of rural 
 scenes in England with Dryden's translation of 
 Virgil's Georgics, we see at a glance how very 
 skillfully the poet managed to imitate at once the 
 manner of the great Roman and that of his friend 
 Pope. Space forbids quotation from any of the 
 numerous descriptions save that of angling, to 
 which more than half of the first canto is exclu- 
 sively devoted. The illustrations are drawn from 
 actual observation, but are agreeably free from 
 the heavy, didactic note distinguishing the poetry 
 of Browne. Spring, of course, is the season for 
 the sport: 
 
 " When genial Spring a living warmth bestows, 
 And o'er the year her verdant mantle throws, 
 No swelling inundation hides the grounds, 
 But crystal currents glide within their bounds; 
 The finny brood their wonted haunts forsake, 
 Float in the sun, and skim along the lake; 
 With frequent leap they range the shallow 
 
 streams, 
 Their silver coats reflect the dazzling beams." 
 
 At this season the angler prepares for the field: 
 
 " Now let the fisherman his toils prepare, 
 And arm himself with every watery snare; 
 His hooks, his lines peruse with careful eye, 
 Increase his tackle, and his rod retie." 
 
 All being prepared he betakes himself to a brook, 
 and:
 
 THE ENGLISH FISHER IDYLLS 189 
 
 " Far up the stream the twisted hair he throws, 
 Which down the murmuring current gently flows ; 
 When, if or chance or hunger's powerful sway 
 Directs the roving trout this fatal way, 
 He greedily sucks in the twining bait, 
 And tugs and nibbles the fallacious meat ! " 
 
 A struggle royal ensues : 
 
 " How thy rod bends ; behold, the prize is thine ! 
 Cast on the bank, he dies with gasping pains, 
 And trickling blood his silver mail distains." 
 
 After this picture Gay gives exact and Walton- 
 esque instructions about the preparation of the 
 various sorts of live bait and the circumstances 
 under which they should be used. Turning then 
 to angling in shallow rivers in sunny weather, he 
 enumerates the steps to be followed in the prep- 
 aration of artificial flies: 
 
 " To frame the little animal, provide 
 All the gay hues that wait on female pride. 
 Let nature guide thee : sometimes golden wire 
 The shining bellies of the fly require ; 
 The peacock's plumes thy tackle must not fail, 
 Nor the dear purchase of the sable's tail. 
 Each gaudy bird some slender tribute brings, 
 And lends the growing insect proper wings." 
 
 He gives elaborate directions of this sort, with 
 more about the choice of flies for the season of 
 the year and to suit the feeding habits of fish in 
 particular streams, and then after giving direc- 
 tions for trout fishing, describes the playing of 
 an enormous salmon. The canto closes with 
 warning to kill the otters that infest the streams,
 
 19 IDYLLS OF FISHERMEN 
 
 and with strictures on unsportsmanlike devices, 
 such as " the thievish nightly net," the " barbed 
 spear," and with eulogy of fly fishing, as the 
 finest of sports. 
 
 At the beginning of the second canto Gay 
 remarks : 
 
 " Now, sporting Muse, draw in the flowing reins, 
 Leave the clear streams awhile for sunny plains, 
 Should you the various arms and toils rehearse, 
 And all the fishermen adorn thy verse; 
 Should you the wide encircling net display, 
 And in its spacious arch inclose the sea; 
 Then haul the plunging load upon the land, 
 And with the soal and turbot hide the sand, 
 It would extend the growing theme too long, 
 And tire the reader with the watery song." 
 
 This passage gives about the same space to sea 
 fishing as is found devoted to it by Virgil (georgic 
 4), but Gay was interested primarily in amateur 
 fishing, so the professional pursuit of the craft 
 is left alone, and he goes on to describe the vari- 
 ous pleasures of hunting, with many charming 
 sketches of out door life with dog and gun, or 
 with horse and hounds. 
 
 It will readily be observed that the first canto 
 of this poem is in some ways merely an elaborate 
 fisher idyll fitted to the English taste for angling, 
 and in various adaptations of that form the genre 
 spread and multiplied for more than a century. 60 
 
 James Thomson told Collins that he took the 
 first hint for " The Seasons " from the four titles 
 of Pope's pastorals, and it is quite possible, too, 
 
 00 See " Biblioteca Piscatoria."
 
 THE ENGLISH FISHER IDYLLS 191 
 
 that Gay's angling scene may have suggested a 
 very similar passage in the familiar " Spring " 
 (1728). Whether this be so or not Thomson's 
 poem embodies one of the liveliest pictures of the 
 sort in English literature. First the poet gives 
 the proper time for the sport: 
 
 " Now, when the first foul torrent of the brooks, 
 Swelled with the vernal rains, is ebbed away 
 And, whitening, down their mossy-tinctured 
 
 stream 
 
 Descends the billowy foam now is the time, 
 While yet the dark-brown water aids the guile, 
 To tempt the trout." 
 
 Like Gay he scorns the worm, advising : 
 
 " The well-dissembled fly, 
 The rod fine-tapering with elastic spring, 
 Snatched from the hoary steed the floating line, 
 And all thy slender watery stores, prepare." 
 
 He describes the best weather and the likeliest 
 spot for a rise: 
 
 "Just in the dubious point, where with the pool 
 Is mixed the trembling stream, or where it boils 
 Around the stone, or from the hollowed bank 
 Reverted plays in undulating flow, 
 There throw, nice-judging, the delusive fly; 
 And, as you lead it round in artful curve, 
 With eye attentive mark the springing game. 
 Straight as above the surface of the flood 
 They wanton rise, or urged by hunger leap, 
 Then fix, with gentle twitch, the barbed hook; 
 Some lightly tossing to the grassy bank, 
 And to the shelving shore slow-dragging some, 
 With various hand proportioned to their force.
 
 192 IDYLLS OF FISHERMEN 
 
 Like a good sportsman he urges the angler to 
 throw back into the stream the smaller fish 
 caught, adding: 
 
 " But should you lure 
 
 From his dark haunts, beneath the tangled roots 
 
 Of pendant trees, the monarch of the brook, 
 
 Behoves you then to ply your finest art. 
 
 Long time he, following cautious, scans the fly ; 
 
 And oft attempts to seize it, but as oft 
 
 The dimpled water speaks his jealous fear." 
 
 Lucky is the angler if the giant bites: 
 
 " At last, while haply o'er the shaded sun 
 Passes a cloud, he desperate takes the death, 
 With sullen plunge. At once he darts along, 
 Deep-struck, and runs out all the lengthened line ; 
 Then seeks the farthest ooze, the sheltering weed, 
 The caverned bank, his old secure abode ; Ma 
 And flies aloft and flounces round the pool, 
 Indignant of the guile. With yielding hand, 
 That feels him still, yet to his furious course 
 Gives way, you, now retiring, following now 
 Across the stream, exhaust his idle rage; 
 Till, floating broad upon his breathless side, 
 And to his fate abandoned, to the shore 
 You gaily drag your unresisting prize." 
 
 With the growth of this branch of the species 
 the present book does not pretend to deal, since it 
 is hardly to be classed as pastoral verse, unless 
 under a very elastic definition. In one very dif- 
 ferent piece, however, we catch once more the 
 
 ** In the Latin poem already cited by Vanieri occurs a 
 passage almost identical with this sentence and with the 
 following one.
 
 THE ENGLISH FISHER IDYLLS 193 
 
 spirit of the gray myths of ocean divinities in 
 far off Greece, and of the story of Glaucus, the 
 fisher of the Golden Age, as told by Keats in 
 Endymion. 
 
 It is a far cry from Theocritus to the year 
 1818, yet the life of Keats' fisher 61 is not far 
 different from that described in the Sicilian 
 idylls. Glaucus says of himself: 
 
 " I touched no lute, I sang not, trod no measures ; 
 I was a lonely youth on desert shores. 
 My sports were lonely, 'mid continuous roars 
 And craggy isles and sea-mews' plaintive cry, 
 Plaining discrepant between sea and sky. 
 Dolphins were still my playmates; shapes unseen 
 Would let me feel their scales of gold and green," 
 
 His was a silent existence : 
 
 "... the crown 
 
 Of all my life was utmost quietude; 
 More did I love to lie in cavern rude, 
 Keeping in wait whole days for Neptune's voice, 
 And if it came at last, hark, and rejoice ! " 
 
 Finally he was a near neighbor to the shepherds 
 and a sharer in their idyllic life : 
 
 " There blushed no summer eve but I would steer 
 My skiff along green shelving coasts, to hear 
 The shepherd's pipe come clear from aerie steep, 
 Mingled with ceaseless bleatings of his sheep: 
 And never was a day of summer shine, 
 But I beheld its birth upon the brine: 
 For I would watch all night to see unfold 
 Heaven's gates, and Aethon snort his morning 
 gold 
 
 91 See Endymion, Book 3, 337 fol. 
 14
 
 194 IDYLLS OF FISHERMEN 
 
 Wide o'er the swelling streams : and constantly 
 At brim of day-tide, on some grassy lea, 
 My nets would be spread out, and I at rest. 
 The poor folk of the sea-country I blest 
 With daily boon of fish most delicate: 
 They knew not whence this bounty, and elate 
 Would strew sweet flowers on a sterile beach." 
 
 Critics who write of the pastoral often half 
 apologize for the fact that in England the species 
 did not take a realistic turn, save in such occa- 
 sional poems as those of Gay's " Shepherd's 
 Week." What the poets of the Romantic school 
 thought of the adaptability of the exotic genre 
 to purposes of realism is adequately shown by 
 their neglect of the classic pastoral, a subject 
 far beyond the scope of this book. 
 
 It has been shown that piscatory eclogues are 
 only a special field of the classic pastoral intro- 
 duced from Italy, a mere variant played on the 
 ancient reed pipe. In Theocritus the pictures of 
 fishers are as vivid as those of shepherds, and in 
 the later decadence of bucolic poetry we find 
 the faults of the piscatory akin to those of the 
 more regular form of country song. Naturally, 
 as we have seen, there is no more real fish lore 
 in the poems of Phineas Fletcher than there is of 
 sheep-craft in Spenser's Calender. 
 
 Poems on angling, as must have been realized 
 at an early date, should strive at exactness of 
 observation, a thing absolutely foreign to 
 Fletcher's conception of the possibilities of the 
 genre which he attempted to exploit in England. 
 Thus the " Secrets of Angling," first published by
 
 THE ENGLISH FISHER IDYLLS IQ5 
 
 John Dennys in 1613, and composed in stanzas 
 almost exactly like those of Fletcher, owes its 
 undoubted success as a piece of literature to the 
 nice and discriminating descriptions and observa- 
 tions with which the author elucidates the gentle 
 art, but it is no more a pastoral than is a treatise 
 on raising sheep. It should be classed with the 
 angling treatises, itself the first one in English 
 verse, but really descended lineally from the same 
 stock as that in Latin and Anglo-Saxon some- 
 times attributed to Aelf ric, and from " A Treatise 
 of Fysshynge with an Angle," written by Juliana 
 Berners in 1496. 
 
 John Dennys is the first of a long line of poets 
 who devoted themselves to poetry on angling, and 
 his realistic muse is she whom Moses Browne, 
 as has been shown, attempted to hamper with the 
 fetters of the classic conventions, an attempt 
 which was destined to fail of result. 
 
 In Sir Walter Scott's " Antiquary," (1616), we 
 find elements which open an interesting field for 
 speculation. Here we read prose idylls drawn 
 from the lives of actual Scotch fishers, of the 
 same sort, doubtless, as those whom Ben Jonson 
 had in mind when he planned to write a Scotch 
 piscatory drama. All is pictured from life: the 
 smoky huts, the boats drawn up on the beach 
 and reeking with pitch, the noisy fish-wives, the 
 chatter of girls, the simple lives of simple folk, 
 the old fisher-sibyll with her extraordinary lore 
 itself a match for that of the "wise" shepherd 
 of pastoral tradition, the scraps of fisher song. 
 A poet might have done much with such sub-
 
 196 IDYLLS OF FISHERMEN 
 
 jects but the day of the eclogue was past, and 
 did not return. 
 
 It remains to mention a single work which has 
 no immediate connection with the English fisher 
 poem, but which may in a way be considered the 
 last piscatory of the Sannazarian line, Lamar- 
 tine's " Graziella, a story of Italian Love." The 
 scenes described in this wonderful idyll recall on 
 every page the shores so loved by Sannazaro, and 
 the life led there by Lamartine among the fishers 
 is as primitive and picturesque as that shown in 
 the poems of Theocritus. " There are no differ- 
 ences," says the author, "between the shepherd 
 or laborer of our mountains and the fisherman of 
 the Gulf of Naples than those of location, 
 language and calling. The furrow or the wave 
 inspires with the same thoughts the man who 
 tills the ground and the man who toils upon the 
 sea. Nature speaks the same language to all 
 those who receive nourishment from her bosom, 
 whether it be on the mountain or on the 
 ocean." 61 * 
 
 Lamartine asks an old fisher to let him share 
 his arduous life, which he commends. The man 
 replies, " You are right," and then, " It is a trade 
 that makes the heart contented and the soul con- 
 fident in the protection of the saints. The fisher- 
 man is under the immediate charge of heaven. 
 Man knows not whence comes the wind or the 
 wave. The file and the plane are in the hand of 
 the workman, riches and favor are in the hand 
 of the king, but the boat is in the hand of God." 
 
 Ma Translation by J. B. Runnion, Chicago, 1876.
 
 THE ENGLISH FISHER IDYLLS 197 
 
 The hut of the fisher is on a lofty rock above 
 the sea "A great fig tree and some tortuous 
 vine stalks were bending over the angle of the 
 house, confusing their leaves and fruits at the 
 entrance of the walk, festooned and creeping 
 over the wall that supported the arcades above. 
 Their branches half formed bars to the two low 
 windows that looked out upon this little garden 
 walk ; and if there had been no window, the low, 
 square and solid house might have been mistaken 
 for one of the light gray rocks, peculiar to the 
 coast, or for one of those blocks of petrified lava 
 (entwined in the branches of the chestnut, the 
 ivy and the vine), out of which the grape cul- 
 tivators of Castellamare and Sorrento hew caves, 
 close them with a door, and there preserve the 
 wine by the side of the stock that first bore it." 
 
 The inside of the cabin was " as bare ... as the 
 outside. . . . The walls were entirely without 
 plaster and only covered with a thin coat of 
 whitewash. The lizards, aroused by the light, 
 shone in the crevices of the rocks and crept under 
 the fern leaves that served as the children's bed. 
 Nests of swallows, whose little black heads 
 peeped out, and whose restless eyes twinkled in 
 surprise, hung down from the beams, still covered 
 with bark, which formed the roof." 
 
 There Lamartine lived the life of a fisherman, 
 a hard life, but a contented one changing little 
 from age to age; there he heard the weird old 
 fisher songs, that have been sung since no man 
 can tell when, and there he met the fisher-girl 
 with whom he fell in love. The pathetic verses
 
 198 IDYLLS OF FISHERMEN 
 
 in which he mourned the death of his sweetheart 
 may be considered the last notable elegy among 
 idylls of fishermen, and like so many of the 
 earlier ones the poetry finds its key note in the 
 grayness and sadness of the sea.
 
 APPENDIX 
 
 The influence of Sannazaro's work, particularly 
 of the Arcadia, on French and Spanish literature 
 has been treated among others by Francesco 
 Torraca, in his Gl'Imitatori Stranieri di Jacopo 
 Sannazaro (Rome, 1882). This is an interesting 
 work, but not very accurate, as may be seen from 
 such indications as the fact that the author states 
 that Sir Philip Sidney imitated Sannazaro's Ar- 
 cadia, and then admits never having read the 
 English work. 
 
 A good account of the Italian piscatory is 
 Mario Mangani's Origine e svolgimento dell' 
 egloga pescatoria italiana (Nicastro, Bevilacqua, 
 1902). 
 
 M. Antoine Campaux, in a pamphlet entitled De 
 Ecloga Piscatoria qualem a veteribus adumbra- 
 tam absolvere sibi proposuit Sannazarius (Paris, 
 1859), covers much the same ground as the in- 
 troductory portions of the present work. M. 
 Campaux did not attempt, however, to trace the 
 relationship between the piscatory and the bu- 
 colic, but simply to list the early examples of 
 pictures of fishermen which Sannazaro may have 
 known, and to sketch the main lines of his influ- 
 ence in Italy (especially in Neo-Latin) and in 
 France. 
 
 The present work aims to treat the idyll of 
 fishers as part of the broader field of pastoral in 
 Europe, of which the English is but a corner. 
 199
 
 2OO IDYLLS OF FISHERMEN 
 
 Note. The translations in this volume from 
 Theocritus and Moschus are by Mr. A. Lang. 
 
 GERMANY 
 
 The influence of Sannazaro in Germany was 
 apparently slight. The best examples are Hulric 
 deHutten's Latin hexameter poem De Venetorum 
 Piscatura, 1488, and the vernacular Fischerge- 
 dichte und Erzahlungen by F. Bronner, Zurich, 
 1787. 
 
 In German dramatic literature are Theodor 
 Korner's Fischermadchen (Berlin, Dramatische 
 Beytrage), 1821, and Goethe's "Fischerin" 
 which was composed at Weimar, and was in- 
 tended for presentation on an open air stage. 
 
 The fisher scenes in Schiller's Wilhelm Tell are 
 too familiar to call for comment. It will be 
 recalled that the play opens to the accompaniment 
 of the " Kuhreihen," and that there follow three 
 songs: one rendered by a fisher boy in his skiff, 
 one by a herdsman on the mountain side, and one 
 by a hunter on the rocks. Here we find once 
 more placed side by side the figures so familiar 
 in humanistic eclogues.
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY OF PISCATORY 
 LITERATURE 
 
 AELFRIC. For the angling treatise attributed to 
 Aelfric see W. W. Skeat, "An Angler's 
 Notebook." London, 1880. 
 
 AESOP. Fables. Edwin Pearson. London, 1871. 
 
 ALCIPHRON. Epistles in which are described 
 The Domestic Manners, The Courtesans, 
 and Parasites of Greece. Now first trans- 
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 AMALTHEUS, J. (Giovanni Battista). See J. 
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 ANTIPHANIS. Fragments. See Athenaeus. 
 
 ARABIAN NIGHTS. Book I. Translation for the 
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 ARCHIPPUS. Fragments. See Athenaeus. 
 
 ARION. In The Poets of Greece. Sir Edwin 
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 ATHENAEUS. Deipnosophists ; or, Banquet of the 
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 202 IDYLLS OF FISHERMEN 
 
 BALDI, BERNARDINO. Egloghe Miste. Venice, 
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 BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER. The Maid's Trag- 
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 Bibliographia Piscatoria. Thomas Westwood and 
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 CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF THE CHIEF 
 ENGLISH PISCATORIES 
 
 GILES FLETCHER. Latin Eclogues, 158-. 
 
 EDMUND SPENSER. The Faerie Queene, 1595. 
 (First three books, 1579-1589.) 
 
 JOHN LYLY. Love's Metamorphosis, 1588. 
 
 PHINEAS FLETCHER. Latin Eclogues, ante 1610. 
 
 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. Pericles, 1607. The 
 Tempest, 1610. 
 
 PHINEAS FLETCHER. Piscatorie Eclogs, com- 
 posed 1610-1616, pub. 1633. Sicelides, com- 
 posed 1615, pub. 1631. 
 
 DENNYS, JOHN. The Secrets of Angling, 1613. 
 
 LAURENCE TWINE. Patterne of Paineful Ad- 
 ventures, 1516. 
 
 JOHN LEECH. Musae Priores, 1620. 
 
 MICHAEL DRAYTON. The Muses' Elyzium, 1630. 
 
 JOHN DONNE. The Bait, 1633. 
 
 JOHN MILTON. Paradise Regained, 1666. 
 
 T. FORD. Piscatio, 1692. 
 
 JOHN WHITNEY. The Genteel Recreation with 
 a Dialogue between Piscator and Corydon, 
 1700. 
 
 JOHN DIAPER. Nereides or Sea-Eclogues, 1712. 
 
 JOHN GAY. Rural Sports, 1713. 
 
 J. ROOKE. N. TATE. Translations of Sannazaro, 
 1726. 
 
 MOSES BROWNE. Angling Sports in nine Pisca- 
 tory Eclogues, 1729. 
 
 WM. THOMSON. Hymn to May, 1758.
 
 CHRONOLOGICAL LIST 313 
 
 DR. THOMAS SCOTT. The Anglers Eight Dia- 
 logues in Verse, 1758. 
 
 LEWIS, MONK. The Castle Spectre. London, 
 1797. 
 
 SCOTT, SIR WALTER. The Antiquary, 1816. 
 
 JOHN KEATS. Endymion, 1818.
 
 INDEX 
 
 Achilles Tatius, 36. 
 Addison, Joseph, 163, 164. 
 Aelfric, 195. 
 Aelian, 156, 180. 
 Aeschylus, 42. 
 Aesop, 9. 
 Agathias, 33. 
 Alcaeus, 8. 
 
 Alciphron, 27-31, 143. 
 Alexander ab Alexandro, 156, 
 
 157- 
 
 Alvarez, G., 156. 
 Amaltheus, J., 66. 
 Anthology, The Greek, 34. 
 Antiphanis, 13, 14, 15. 
 Apollonius of Tyre, 134, 135. 
 Archippus, 15. 
 Arion, 9, 84, 142, 143. 
 Ariosto, 64. 
 Aristotle, 180. 
 Athenaeus, 4, 7, 13, 14, 15, 
 
 26, 42. 
 Ausonius, Decimus Magnus, 
 
 43. 9. 
 
 Bacon, Sir Francis, 168. 
 Bagno, Ferrante, 66. 
 Baldi, Bernardino, 74. 
 Basilius Zanchius, 51. 
 Beaumont and Fletcher, 101. 
 Bell, Beaupre, 164. 
 Belleau, Remy, 87-91. 
 Bernardino, S., 78. 
 Bernardes, Diego, 84, 86, 108. 
 Bernardim Ribeiro, 81. 
 Bible, The, 112, 113, 151, 152. 
 Binet, Claude, 91. 
 Bion, 25, 167. 
 Biondi, Luigi, 68. 
 Bohn (Libraries), 36. 
 Bonarelli, C. G. de, 92. 
 Boscan, Juan, 81. 
 Bottazzo, G. I., 67. 
 Boyle, Robert, 180. 
 Brisset, Roland, 92. 
 Brizeus, A., 94. 
 Bronner, Xavier, 200. 
 Browne, Moses, 165-181, 184, 
 
 187, 188, 195. 
 Browne, William, 132, 139, 
 
 150, 1 66. 
 
 Bryant, William Cullen, 6. 
 Buchanan, George, 165. 
 Calderon de la Barca, 84, 86, 
 
 133- 
 
 Callimachus, 26. 
 Calmo, Andrea, 73. 
 Camoes, Louis de, 82, 83, 84. 
 
 86, 108. 
 
 Campaux, Antoine, 95, 199. 
 Capaccio, G. C., 73. 
 Carmosina Bonifacia, 45, 46, 
 
 51, 52, 88. 
 
 Carrara, Enrico, 67, 68, 70. 
 Casal Monferrato, 66. 
 Cervantes, M. de, 81. 
 Chalkhill, Joseph, 151. 
 Chaucer, Geoffrey, 96. 
 Cholmeley, R. J., 22. 
 Christophe de Gamon, 91. 
 Cicero, 42, 172. 
 Claude le Villain, 92. 
 Codax, Martin, '82. 
 Congreve, Philip, 166. 
 Cotta, Giovanni, 65. 
 Daniel, Samuel, 132. 
 Dante, 45, 63. 
 Davors, Joseph, 151. 
 Decimus Laberius, 41. 
 Delille, Jacques, 95. 
 Dennys, John, 195. 
 Diaper, John, 155-165. 
 Diphilos, 15, 39. 
 Donne, John, 148, 150, 151, 
 
 1 68, 178. 
 Drayton, Michael, 144-148, 
 
 150, 151, 162, 184. 
 Drummond, William, 102. 
 Dryden, John, 56, 153, 171, 
 
 188. 
 
 Du Bartas, S., 151, 156, 180. 
 Du Bellay, J., 87. 
 Elton, C. A., 7. 
 Emerson, O. F., 112. 
 Epicharmus, n, 12. 
 Erasmus, Desiderius, 64, 95. 
 Fawkes, T., 8. 
 
 Fletcher, John, 136, 149, 166. 
 Fletcher, Giles the Elder, 96, 
 
 97, 101, 126. 
 
 2X4
 
 INDEX. 
 
 215 
 
 Fletcher, Giles the Younger, 
 
 no. 
 Fletcher, Phineas, 97, 106, 
 
 107-139, 140, 141, 144, 145, 
 
 150, 151, 152. 162, 166, 171, 
 
 173, 174, 181, 183, 194, 195- 
 Fonteny, Jacques de, 95. 
 Ford, Simon, 152. 
 Franciscus Champion, 95. 
 Frondius, N., 95. 
 Gambara, Lorenzo, 67. 
 Garcilaso de la Vega, 81. 
 Gay, John, 187, 188, 189, 190, 
 
 191, 194. 
 Geoffrey of Montnouth, 173, 
 
 174. 
 
 Goethe, J. W., 200. 
 Goina (Goynaeus), 67. 
 Gordon, Patrick, 180. 
 Gower, John, 134. 
 Greban, Arnoul, 94. 
 Greene, Robert, 105. 
 Greg, W. W., 73, 139, 144- 
 Grotius, Hugo, 140, 142, 143, 
 
 165, 166. 
 Guardian, The, 163, 164, 170, 
 
 182. 
 
 Guarini, G. B., 136. 
 Hanford, J. H., 48. 
 Hardie, Alexandre, 93. 
 Hedyle (also Hedylus), 26, 27. 
 Heinsius, Daniel, 142, 167. 
 Heliodorus, 36, 134. 
 Herondas, 13, 15. 
 Hesiod, 6. 
 
 Homer, 4, 5, 6, 7, 19, 38, 107. 
 Horace, 152, 156. 
 Hulric de Hutten, 200. 
 Jacobi Vanieri, 95, 192. 
 Jodelle, E., 91. 
 Johnson, Samuel, 172, 181, 
 
 182, 183. 
 
 Jonson, Ben, 101, 102, 195. 
 Juliana, Dame, 195. 
 Keats, John, 193. 
 King, William, 152. 
 Lamartine, A. M., 196-198. 
 Lamennais, F. R., 95. 
 Lang, A., 200. 
 Lathy, Thomas Pike, 186. 
 Leech, John, 140-144, 162, 163. 
 Leonidas of Tarentum, 23, 31. 
 Lewis, Monk, 139. 
 
 Lillo, George, 134. 
 
 Longus, 35. 
 
 Lope de Vega, 81. 
 
 Lucan, 42. 
 
 Lucian, 31, 155, 156, 101. 
 
 Lyly. John, 101, 139. 
 
 Maecius Quintus, 32. 
 
 Mallory, Sir Thomas, 99. 
 
 Mangani, Mario, 199. 
 
 Mantuan, 67, 97, 115, 122. 
 
 Marchetti, A., 78. 
 
 Margaret of Navarre, 87. 
 
 Marlowe, Christopher, 148, 
 
 154- 
 
 Marot, Clement, 91, 125. 
 Marsan, Jules, 93. 
 Martial, 176. 
 Martin, Giovanni, 87. 
 Meli, Giovanni, 87. 
 Menander, 15, 16. 
 Mendoza, Inigo de, 81. 
 Menendez y Pelayo, M., 82. 
 Metastasio, Pietro, 186. 
 Michel, Jean, 94. 
 Milton, John, 48, 112, 114, 
 
 117, 151, 170, 173, 174. 175, 
 
 176. 
 
 Montemor, Jorge de, 81. 
 Moschus, 25, 26, 167, 200. 
 Munday, Anthony, 100. 
 Nashe, Thomas, 133. 
 Nichols, John, 99, 101, 112. 
 Nonnus, 34. 
 Nowell, Dr. A., 172. 
 Olaus Magnus, 156. 
 Ongaro, Antonio, 72, 77, 86, 
 
 92, 93- 
 Oppian, 32. 
 
 Ovid, 27, 42, 138, 1 80. 
 Pancrates (The Arcadian), 10. 
 Parini, Giuseppe, 79, 80. 
 Paulus Manutius, 62. 
 Paulus Silentuarius, 33. 
 Pausanias, 42. 
 Pedro de Encinas, 42. 
 Peter, E. W., 8. 
 Petrarch, 63. 
 Philostratus, 25. 
 Plato, 13. 
 
 Plautus, 15, 39, 40. 
 Pliny, 32, 44, 176. 
 Plutarch, 42. 
 Pollux, 1 6.
 
 2l6 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Pomponius Bononiens, 41. 
 
 Pontano, 45, 46, 51, 53, 56, 
 57, 59- 
 
 Pope, Alexander, 153, 157, 
 171, 172, 183, 187, 188, 190. 
 
 Prefect, The, of Egypt, 32. 
 
 Rambler, The, 181, 183. 
 
 Rhannusius, 156. 
 
 Rohde, Erwin, 134. 
 
 Ronsard, Pierre de, 91, 92. 
 
 Rooke, M., 164, 165, 172. 
 
 Rota, Berardino, 70, 71, 72, 
 79- 
 
 Rowe, Nicholas, 1 52. 
 
 Ruddiman, W. A., 186. 
 
 Ruffino, Baptista (Giovanni), 
 78. 
 
 Sabie, Francis, 105. 
 
 Saint-Amant, 94. 
 
 Sammartino, Matteo, 73. 
 
 Sannazaro, Giacopo, 4, 5, 27, 
 43, 44, 45-65, 66, 67, 68, 
 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 
 77, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 
 84, 86, 87, 88, 89, 90, 91, 
 92, 96, 97, 101, 107, 108, 
 109, in, 114, 128, 129, 135, 
 140, 141, 142, 143, 144, 147, 
 154, 155, 157, 158, 159, 162, 
 163, 164, 165, 166, 167, 170, 
 176, 177, 179, 180, 182, 183, 
 185, 186, 187, 196, 199. 
 
 Sappho, 8, 28. 
 
 Scaliger, Julius, 52. 
 
 Schiller, 200. 
 
 Scott, Dr. Thomas, 184, 185, 
 186. 
 
 Scott, Sir Walter, 195. 
 
 Seneca, 40. 
 
 Serapion, 33. 
 
 Servius, 107. 
 
 Shakespeare, William, 133, 
 144. 
 
 Sidnam, Jonathan, 92. 
 
 Sidney, Sir Philip, 133, 199. 
 
 Smyth, A. H., 134. 
 
 Solerti, Angelo, 78. 
 
 Spenser, Edmund, 74, 102, 
 103, 105, 106, 107, 108, 109, 
 in, 114, 115, 116, 117, 118, 
 120, 122, 123, 124, 125, 126, 
 127, 128, 130, 132, 139, 144, 
 
 152, 153, 159, 166, 167, 171, 
 174, 175, 177, 183, 194. 
 
 Sophron, 12, 13. 
 
 Steele, Richard, 153. 
 
 Strabo, 42. 
 
 Storck, Wilhelm, 84. 
 
 Swift, Jonathan, 155. 
 
 Taigeto, G. A., 67. 
 
 Tasso, Bernardo, 68, 69, 70, 
 167. 
 
 Tasso, Torquato, 72, 76, 77, 
 78, 93, 167. 
 
 Tate, N., 164. 
 
 Tatler, The, 153. 
 
 Theocritus, 3, 7, 8, 17, 18, 22, 
 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 
 3, 3i, 38, 39, 40, 43, 47, 
 48, 49, 52, 54, 55, 59, 60, 
 
 63, 64, 68, 69, 75, 80, 87, 
 89, 91, 92, 101, 114, 137, 
 141, 153, 158, 162, 166, 167, 
 
 168, 174, 179, 182, 187, 193, 
 194, 200. 
 
 Thomson, James, 190, 191. 
 
 Thomson, William, 183. 
 
 Tiraboschi, G., 70. 
 
 Torraca, Francesco, 199. 
 
 Twine, Laurence, 134. 
 
 Verdizotti, G. M., 67. 
 
 Virgil, 4, 31, 39, 41, 44, 47, 
 48, 49, So, 51, 52, 53, 55, 
 56, 57, 58, 59, 61, 62, 63, 
 
 64, 68, 69, 71, 80, 82, 87, 
 90-97, 107, 109, in, 114, 
 127, 132, 140, 153, 154, 157, 
 161, 163, 164, 166, 167, 168, 
 172, 173, 176, 177, 187, 188, 
 190. 
 
 Vida, M. H., 66. 
 
 Vulpius, 51, 52. 
 
 Walton, Izaak, 43, in, 112, 
 150, 151, 153, 154, 168, 170, 
 172, 174, 175, 176, 177, 180, 
 181, 184, 185, 186, 189. 
 
 Webster and Rowley, 139. 
 
 Whitney, John, 153, 154, 155, 
 
 169, 184, 185, 187. 
 Wilkins, George, 134. 
 Wotton, Sir Henry, 151, 168. 
 Xenophon, The Ephesian, 134. 
 Zarro, Juan, 82.
 
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