All this seems remarkable and strange, when we consider only the absurdities and inconsequences with which such fictions necessarily abound. But there is another side to the question, which should not be overlooked. Pastoral romance, after all, has its foundation in one of the truest and deepest principles of our common nature,--that love of rural beauty, of rural peace, in short, of whatever goes to constitute a country life, as distinguished from the constrained life of a city, which few are too dull to feel, and fewer still so artificial as wholly to reject. It has, therefore, prevailed more or less in all modern countries, as we may see in Italy, from the success that followed Sannazaro; in France, from the “Astrea” of Durfé; and in England, from the “Arcadia” of Sir Philip Sidney;--the two latter being pastoral romances of enormous length, compared with any in Spanish; and the very last enjoying for above a century a popularity which may well be compared with that of the “Diana” of Montemayor, if, indeed, it did not equal it.[88] [88] Portugal might have been added. The “Menina é Moça” of Bernardino Ribeyro, printed 1557, is a beautiful fragment; and the “Primaveira” of Francisco Rodriguez de Lobo, in three long parts, printed between 1601 and 1614,--the first of which was translated into Spanish by Juan Bart. Morales, 1629,--is among the best full-length pastoral romances extant. Both for a long time were favorites in Portugal, and are still read there. Barbosa, Bib. Lus., Tom. I. p. 518, Tom. II. p. 242. No doubt, in Spain, as elsewhere, the incongruities of such fictions were soon perceived. Even some of those who most indulged in them showed that it was not entirely from a misapprehension of their nature. Cervantes, who died regretting that he should leave his “Galatea” unfinished, still makes himself merry more than once in his “Don Quixote” with all such fancies; and, in his “Colloquy of the Dogs,” permits one of them, who had been in shepherd service, to satirize the false exhibition of life in the best pastorals of his time, not forgetting his own among the rest.[89] Lope de Vega, too, though he published his “Arcadia” under circumstances which show that he set a permanent value upon its gentle tales, could still, in a play where shepherds are introduced, make one of them--who found a real life among flocks and herds in rough weather much less agreeable than the life he had read of in the pastorals--say, when suffering in a storm,-- [89] Don Quixote, Parte I. c. 6, in the examination of the library, where his niece begs that the pastorals may be burnt as well as the books of chivalry, lest, if her uncle were cured of knight-errantry, he should go mad as a shepherd;--and Parte II. c. 67 and 73, where her fears are very nigh being realized. And I should like just now to see those men Who write such books about a shepherd’s life, Where all is spring and flowers and trees and brooks.[90]