Of this class we have in English literature such works as the _Shepheard’s Calender_ of Spenser, a manifest and avowed imitation of Virgil through the Italians. As, however, Virgil is but the pupil of Theocritus in this kind, it is to the Greek Theocritus that we are in the end brought back. Spenser’s imitation is, indeed, anything but good. He mixes up “Fair Elisa, queen of shepherds all” with talk of Parnassus, Helicon, Pan, Cynthia and the nymphs (whom he calls “ladies of the lake”). Colin Clout, Cuddie, and Hobbinol are found side by side with Tityrus and invocations to Calliope. Moreover he justly incurs the reproach of Sir Philip Sidney by his affectation of an archaic language for his shepherds, a language which never was on land or sea. Says Sidney, “that same framing of his style to an old rusticke language I dare not allow; since neither Theocritus in Greek, Virgil in Latin, nor Sannazaro in Italian, did affect it.” We have also the youthful _Pastorals_ of Pope, in which the poet begins by announcing his studied imitation: Fair Thames, flow gently from thy sacred spring, While on thy banks Sicilian Muses sing; that is to say, the Muses of Theocritus of Sicily. He even appends notes to show what lines he has especially copied. We meet always the familiar Greek characters, Daphnis, Strephon, Alexis, Lycidas, and Thyrsis. Like the pastorals of Spenser, they are purely and confessedly artificial; they are anachronisms, carelessly mixing modern and antique ideas and associations. When Theocritus wrote pastorals in ancient and sunny Sicily he wrote, as we have remarked, of what lay within the range of conceivable possibility. Pope relegates the pastoral to a fictitious golden age in a purely fictitious golden land.