_The Affectionate Shepheard_ was inspired by Virgil's Second Eclogue. Though the choice of subject was not happy, it must be allowed that in describing country contentment and the pastimes of silly shepherds Barnfield shows un-laboured fluency and grace, with playful touches of quaint extravagance. The passage beginning 'And when th'art wearie of thy keeping Sheepe'(pp. 159, 160) and ending 'Like Lillyes in a bed of roses shed' is a pleasant piece of poetical embroidery. Barnfield doubtless adopted the six-line stanza in imitation of _Venus and Adonis_, 1593(which had in turn been modelled on Lodge's _Glaucus and Scylla_, 1589). It has been recently pointed out--by Mr. Charles Crawford in _Notes and Queries_--that some passages in _The Affectionate Shepheard_ were closely imitated from Marlowe and Nashe's _Dido_ (published in 1594), and that one line has been taken straight out of Marlowe's _Edward II._ Appended to _The Affectionate Shepheard_ are _The Complainte of Chastitie_, in imitation of Michael Drayton, and _Hellens Rape_--a copy of 'English Hexameters' so atrociously bad that one wonders whether it was written to bring contempt on the metre which Gabriel Harvey and others were vainly striving to popularise. To _Cynthia_ is prefixed a copy of high-flying commendatory verses, from which very little sense can be extracted, by 'T.T.,' possibly Thomas Thorpe, the publisher of Shakespeare's Sonnets. In the address to 'The Curteous Gentlemen Readers' Barnfield claims indulgence for _Cynthia_ on the ground that it was the first 'imitation of the verse of that excellent Poet, Maister _Spencer_, in his _Fayrie Queene_.' The poem is a compliment to Queen Elizabeth, who is adjudged by Jove to have merited the golden apple wrongly given by Paris to Venus. When Barnfield mentioned that he borrowed the metre of _Cynthia_ from Spenser, he forgot to add that the matter was drawn from Peele's _Arraignment of Paris_. To _Cynthia_ succeed twenty sonnets extolling, after the fashion of the age, the beauty and virtues of an imaginary youth, Ganymede. In the last sonnet Barnfield introduces compliments to Spenser (Colin) and Drayton (Rowland):-- 'Ah had great _Colin_, chiefe of sheepheards all, Or gentle _Rowland_, my professed friend, Had they thy beautie, or my pennance pend, Greater had beene thy fame, and lesse my fall: But since that euerie one cannot be wittie, Pardon I craue of them, and of thee pitty.' The 'Ode' that follows the sonnets runs trippingly away in easy trochaics; but _Cassandra_ is laboured and languid.