Yet, though it is because of Luzzatto that I am writing of Guarini, nevertheless, Guarini, and not Luzzatto, is my present subject. So I will re-tell for the reader the story of the _Pastor Fido_. Not that it is an easy task. Guarini, who influenced the late Elizabethans, shared, with the best of the latter, the inordinate fancy for complicated plots. Plot is entangled within plot, until we lose sight of the main theme. Luzzatto--I find it impossible to keep the Hebrew out!--here simplifies. He hardly gives us a story at all; he provides an allegory, eking out Guarini with Midrash. In the process of disentangling Guarini’s intricacies, he somewhat sacrifices the chief merit of his Italian model. Luzzatto’s _dramatis personae_ are almost abstractions; they remind us of the figures in morality plays. A Luzzatto drama more resembles _Everyman_ than it does _As You Like it_. Of Guarini, on the other hand, it may be said, that though he means his characters to represent types, he draws them as individuals. Silvio, to adopt Mr. Symond’s summaries, is “cold and eager”; Mirtillo “tender and romantic.” Corisca’s “meretricious arts” contrast with and enhance Amarillis’s “pure affection”; Dorinda is “shameless.” The dramatist, however, be he Luzzatto or Guarini, writes with a distinct tendency. His aim is to set up the country life and the country girl as essentially superior to the city varieties. This _motive_ is as old as satire, and as young as the “verses of society.” Austin Dobson’s Phyllida is all that is sweet and natural, she is a foil to the artificiality of the “ladies of St. James’s.” Guarini enjoys the honor not of creating the mood, but of bringing it into new vogue. But I am still keeping from the story. The scene is Arcadia. Yearly the inhabitants must sacrifice a young maiden to Diana. Diana had suffered through the perfidy of Lucrina; but the Oracle declares: Your Woes, Arcadians! never shall have End, Till Love shall two conjoin of heavenly Race, And till a faithful Shepherd shall amend, By matchless Zeal, Lucrina’s old Disgrace.