of Aminta, impossible as in the rescue of Silvia from the satyr, but resorted to in order to veil the dramatic weakness of the author’s imagination, as is plain from the description of the final meeting of the lovers.  Yet it may be freely admitted that to this device, the substitution namely of narrative for action, we owe most of the finest poetic passages of the play:  the description of the youthful loves of Aminta and Silvia and the former’s ruse to win a kiss, the picture of Silvia bound to the tree by the pool, Tirsi’s account of the court, the description of Silvia at the spring—­one of the most elaborate in the piece—­the account of her escape from the wolves, last but not least that description of Silvia finding the unconscious Aminta, so full of subtle and effeminate seduction, prophetic of a later age of morals and of taste: 

    Ma come Silvia il riconobbe, e vide
    Le belle guance tenere d’ Aminta
    Iscolorite in si leggiadri modi,
    Che viola non e che impallidisca
    Si dolcemente, e lui languir si fatto,
    Che parea gia negli ultimi sospiri
    Esalar l’alma; in guisa di Baccante
    Gridando, e percotendosi il bel petto,
    Lascio cadersi in sul giacente corpo,
    E giunse viso a viso, e bocca a bocca. (V. i.)

So too the chorus, though awkward enough from a dramatic point of view and in so far as it fulfils any dramatic purpose, offers a sufficient justification for its existence in the magnificent ode on ‘honour,’ that rapturous song of the golden age of love, the poetic supremacy of which has never been questioned, whatever may have been thought of its ethical significance.  To that aspect we shall return later.  At present it will be well to give some more or less detailed account of the action of the piece itself.

The shepherd Aminta loves Silvia, formerly as a child his playmate and companion, now a huntress devoted to the service of Diana, proud in her virginity and unfettered state.  The play opens in a sufficiently conventional manner, but wrought with sparkling verse, with two companion scenes.  In the first of these Silvia brushes aside the importunities of her confidant Dafne who seeks to allure her to the blandishments of love with sententious natural examples and modern instances.

    Cangia, cangia consiglio,
    Pazzerella che sei,
    Che il pentirsi dassezzo nulla giova;

such is the burden of her song, or yet again, recalling the golden days of love she too of yore had wasted: 

    Il mondo invecchia
    E invecchiando intristisce.

Words of profound melancholy these, uttered in the days of the burnt-out fires of the renaissance.  But all this moves not Silvia, nymph of the woods and of the chase, and, if she is indeed as fancy-free as she would have us believe, her lover may even console himself with the reflection that

    If of herself she will not love,
    Nothing will make her—­
    The devil take her!