If, at times, we discern in the _Aminta_ the proofs of a knowledge of the human heart, and the simple and genuine language of nature, our emotions of pleasure are soon checked by some frivolous stroke of refinement, or some cold conceit. In the _Pastor Fido_, the latter impression is entirely predominant, and we are seldom gratified with any thing like a natural or simple sentiment. The character of _Silvio_, utterly insensible to the charms of beauty or of female excellence, and who repays an ardent passion with insolence and hatred, if it exists at all in nature, is fitted only to excite contempt and detestation. _Dorinda's_ courtship of _Silvio_ is equally nauseous, and the stratagem she employs to gain his love is alike unnatural. She steals and hides his favourite dog _Melampo_, and then throwing herself in his way while he is whooping after him through the forest, tells him she has found both the dog and a wounded doe, and claims her reward for the discovery. "What shall that be?" says _Silvio_.--"Only," replies the nymph, "one of those things that your mother so often gives you."--"What," says he, "a box o' the ear?"--"Nay, nay, but," says Dorinda, "does she never give thee a kiss?"--"She neither kisses me, nor wants that others should kiss me."--The dog is produced, and _Silvio_ asks, "Where is the doe?"--"That poor doe," says she, "am I." A petulance which, though rudely, we cannot say is unjustly punished, by Silvio giving a thousand kisses to his dear dog, and leaving the forward nymph, with a flat assurance of his hatred, to ruminate on his scorn, and her own indelicacy. If this is nature, it is at least not _la belle nature_. But the circumstance, on which turns the conversion of the obdurate Silvio, bids defiance even to possibility. Hunting in the forest, he holds a long discourse with an echo, and is half persuaded, by the reflected sounds of his own voice, that there is some real pleasure in love, and that he himself must one day yield to its influence. Dorinda clothes herself in the skin of a wolf, and is shot by him with an arrow, mistaking her for that animal. Then all at once he becomes her most passionate lover, sucks out the barb of the arrow with a plaister of green herbs, and swears to marry her on her recovery, which, by the favour of the gods, is fortunately accomplished in an instant. Equally unnatural with the fable are the sentiments of this pastoral. _Amaryllis_, passionately adored by _Mirtillo_, and secretly loving him, employs a long and refined metaphysical argument to persuade him, that if he really loves her, he ought to love her virtue; and that man's true glory lies in curbing his appetites. The _moral_ chorus seems to have notions of love much more consonant to human nature, who discourses for a quarter of an hour on the different kinds of kisses, and the supreme pleasure felt, when they are the expression of a mutual passion. But we need no chorus to elucidate _arcana_ of this nature.