_Spanish Influence._ Even when all due credit has been given to the charm of the pastoral romance, it still remains doubtful whether the influence of the Greek and Latin classics alone is sufficient to explain its vogue in the Elizabethan age. Their influence, though undoubtedly great, was scarcely sufficient to account for the naturalization in England of so exotic a form as the pastoral. Indeed the pastoral never was thoroughly naturalized, remaining to the end somewhat alien to its English surroundings. Shepherds with their oaten pipes were never quite at home in the English climate, which is ill suited to life in the open, to loose tunics, and bare limbs.[1] It is doubtful whether the pastoral would have become popular in England without the stimulus furnished by contemporary European literature. Most influential of these contemporary influences was the "Diana Enamorada," published about 1558, a Spanish pastoral romance written by Jorge de Montemayor, a Portuguese by birth, a Spaniard by adoption. Although the English translation of the "Diana" did not appear until 1598[2] it was well known to Sidney, who translated parts of it, and imitated it in his "Arcadia" (1590), and to Greene, whose "Menaphon," also an imitation of the "Diana," had appeared in 1589, the year before "Rosalynde." Though it is entirely possible that Lodge may have imitated Greene, it is probable that he, like Greene, had read the "Diana," for it is certain that he knew Spanish,[3] as well as French and Italian, and the "Diana" was already, it is said,[4] the most popular book in Europe. [Footnote 1: Steele, speaking of the pastoral (_The Guardian_, No. 30), says, "The difference of the climate is also to be considered, for what is proper in Arcadia, or even in Italy, might be quite absurd in a colder country."] [Footnote 2: Though not published till 1598, Bartholomew Young's translation of the "Diana" was made in 1583.] [Footnote 3: In the epistle To the Gentlemen Readers, prefixed to "A Margarite of America," he tells us that he read the original of that story "in the Library of the Jesuits in Sanctum ... in the Spanish tongue."] [Footnote 4: Jusserand, "The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare," p. 236.]