Sidney’s romance did not escape ridicule in his own time; Ben Johnson parodied Arcadianism in _Every Man out of his Humour_; Dekker poked fun at Arcadian and Euphuised gentlewomen in the _Gul’s Horne-book_; and the involved and careless construction of the story came in for mild satire in one of the earliest burlesques of chivalrous and pastoral romances, Sorel’s _Berger Extravagant_, which was translated by John Davies of Kidwelly in a book that may be remembered by its sub-title, the _Anti-Romance_. The criticism in the passage following is not particularly acute, but is cited because few readers of Sidney are likely to come across such a very rare work as this translation (1648). “Nor hath England wanted its _Arcadia_, whereof it is not long since we have had the translation. I find no more order in that than in the rest, and there are many things whereof I am not at all satisfied. At the very beginning you have the complaints of the shepherds Strephon and Claius upon the departure of Urania, without telling us who she was, nor whither she went. Now an author ought never to begin his book but he should mention the persons principally concerned in the history whose actions he is to raise up beyond any of the rest; yet this man makes afterward no more mention of these two shepherds than if he had never named them; and though he bring them in again at some sports before Basilius, yet that signifies nothing, since a man finds no period of their adventures, and that those verses wherein they speak of their loves are so obscure that they may be taken for the oracles of a Sybill. It is true that Sir Philip dying young might have left his work imperfect; but there’s no reason why we should suffer by that misfortune, and be obliged to take a thing for perfect because it might have been made so.” … Thus Clarimond in his “Oration against Poetry, Fables, and Romances”; Philiris in his “Vindication” replies:-- {xxi} “As for Sidney’s _Arcadia_, since it hath crossed the sea to come and see us, I am sorry Clarimond receives it with such poor compliments. If he hears nothing of the loves of Strephon and Claius, he must not quarrel with the author who hath made his book one of the most excellent in the world. There are discourses of love and discourses of state so generous and pleasant that I should never be weary to read them. I should say much in his commendation were I not in haste to speak of Astraea, which Clarimond brings in next, and I am very glad to find that book generally esteemed, which should oblige him to esteem it also.” Sorel’s _Berger Extravagant_ appeared in 1628. Two French translations of the _Arcadia_ had already been made, one by Baudoin in 1624, and a second by D. Geneviefve, Chappelain, the year following. The book was translated into German in 1629, by Valentinus Theocritus, whose translation was revised by Martin Opitz, and appeared again in 1643 and 1646.