The _story_ of the _Gentle Shepherd_ is fitted to excite the warmest interest, because the situations, into which the characters are thrown, are strongly affecting, whilst they are strictly consonant to nature and probability. The whole of the _fable_ is authorized by the circumstances of the times, in which the action of the piece is laid. The era of _Cromwell's_ usurpation, when many loyal subjects, sharing the misfortunes of their exiled sovereign, were stripped of their estates, and then left to the neglect and desolation of forfeiture; the necessity under which those unhappy sufferers often lay, of leaving their infant progeny under the charge of some humble but attached dependant, till better days should dawn upon their fortunes; the criminal advantages taken by false friends in usurping the rights of the sufferers, and securing themselves against future question by deeds of guilt; these circumstances, too well founded in truth, and nature, are sufficient to account for every particular in this most interesting drama, and give it perfect verisimilitude. The _fables_ of the _Aminta_ and _Pastor Fido_, drawn from a state of society which never had an existence, are, for that reason, incapable of exciting any high degree of interest; and the mind cannot for a moment remain under the influence of that deception, which it is the great purpose of the drama to produce. The _characters_ or _persons_ of the Italian pastorals are coy nymphs and swains, whose sole occupation is hunting wild beasts, brutal satyrs who plot against the chastity of those nymphs, shepherds deriving their origin from the gods, stupid priests of these gods who are the dupes of their ambiguous will, and gods themselves disguised like shepherds, and influencing the conduct and issue of the piece. The manners of these unnatural and fictitious beings are proper to their ideal character. A dull moralizing chorus is found necessary to explain what the characters themselves must have left untold, or unintelligible.