is drawn with some delicacy and pathos, though we sadly miss those poignant touches that the English playwrights seem always to have had at command on similar occasions.  Her fear of death, however, stands in powerful dramatic contrast with the sudden courage she displays when her lover seeks to die in her place.  Guarini was perfectly aware of the value of this contrast, for he placed the following lines in the mouth of the messo who reports the scene: 

    Or odi maraviglia. 
    Quella che fu pur dianzi
    Si dalla tema del morire oppressa,
    Fatta allor di repente
    A le parole di Mirtillo invitta,
    Con intrepido cor cosi rispose: 
    ’Pensi dunque, Mirtillo,
    Di dar col tuo morire
    Vita a chi di te vive? 
    O miracolo ingiusto!  Su, ministri;
    Su, che si tarda? omai
    Menatemi agli altari.’ (V. ii.)

And yet this dramatic contrast has been wantonly thrown away by the substitution of narrative for representation, less for the sake of a blind adherence to classical convention, as on account of the author’s inability honestly to face a powerful situation.  The same dramatic incapacity shows itself in his use of borrowings.  It will be sufficient to mention the sententious words from Ovid (Amores, I. viii. 43) placed in the mouth of the chorus: 

    Dunque non si dira donna pudica
    Se non quella che mai
    Non fu sollecitata; (IV. in.)

in order to compare them with the use made of the same by Webster when he made Vittoria at her trial exclaim: 

    Casta est quam nemo rogavit!—­

a comparison which at once reveals the gulf fixed between the clairvoyant dramatist and the mere pedantic scholar.

And yet the subsequent history of pastoral reminds us that it is quite possible to underestimate Guarini’s merits as a playwright.  In the construction of a complicated plot, apart from the dramatic presentation thereof, he achieved a success not to be paralleled by any previous work in Italy, for the difference in the titles of the Aminta and the Pastor fido, the one styled favola and the other tragi-commedia, indicates a real distinction; and Guarini’s proud claim to have invented a new dramatic kind was not wholly unfounded[189].  It was this that caused Symonds to speak of his play as ’sculptured in pure forms of classic grace,’ while describing the Aminta as ’perfumed and delicate like flowers of spring.’  And lastly, it was this more elaborately dramatic quality that was responsible for the far greater influence exercised by Guarini than by Tasso, both on the subsequent drama of Italy and still more on the fortunes of the pastoral in England.