To us it is true that the archaic quality, the pseudo-classicism of this pastoral seems at first artificial. "It has only so much of rustic nature as suits a graceful urban fancy." Arcadia is a no man's land, so far from our desires that we cannot picture it even in imagination; but to one who knows how sincere was the enthusiasm of the Renaissance for Greek ideals as well as for modes of expression, how classicism had come to be understood as a synonym for perfection in form whether in literature or the plastic arts,--all the pretty imagery of the Golden Age and its demigods becomes as natural a poetic rendering of sincere feeling as the equally formal restrictions of the measure of the sonnet or the rules which govern the composition of a concerto. Having once learned its technique genius and passion were unconscious of their limitations, but flowed with as true and spontaneous an impulse within these formal bounds as waters in their marble fountains and conduits. "All the melodies that had been growing through two centuries in Italy [says Symonds] are concentrated in the songs of the _Amyntas_ and the _Pastor Fido_. The idyllic voluptuousness which permeated literature and art steeps their pictures in a golden glow. While we recognise in both these poems--the one perfumed and delicate like flowers of spring, the other sculptured in pure forms of classic grace--evident signs of a civilisation sinking to decay, we are bound to confess that to this goal the Italian genius had been steadily advancing. They complete and close the Renaissance." But the living quality in the _Amyntas_ which makes it a thousand-fold more real to us than the Elizabethan masques is not its perfectness of form but the stamp which it bears of being the expression of personal experience and longing but thinly veiled in poetic imagery. Reading the poem at Villa d'Este we read between the lines and recognise the _scena_ of the pastoral and the love which inspired its plot. In spite of the changes wrought by time we discover the origin of each descriptive passage. This rocky reservoir whose shadowy surface seems to mirror reflections of mysterious faces is surely-- "Dian's pool Where the great plane's cool shade to cooler waves Invites the huntress nymphs." Its encircling laurel thickets might mask to-day strange woodland deities like the Satyr of the play who while Sylvia bathed "Crouched lynx-eyed among the thick-set shrubs." The description of the tumultuous pursuit of this Satyr calls up so vividly the Polyphemus in the _Triumph of Galatea_ that we are convinced that Tasso must have been influenced by Raphael's great painting in the Farnesina. "Not all am I A despicable thing,..." He makes the Satyr say;