did raize,
    And call’d it Honour, whence it came
    To tyrannize or’e ev’ry brest,
      Was not then suffred to molest
    Poore lovers hearts with new debate;
    More happy they, by these his hard
    And cruell lawes, were not debar’d
    Their innate freedome; happy state;
    The goulden lawes of Nature, they
    Found in their brests; and them they did obey. (Ch.  I.)

Before leaving the Aminta it will be worth while straying beyond the strict chronological limits of this inquiry to glance for a moment at the version produced by John Dancer in 1660, for the sake of noting the change which had come over literary hack-work of the kind in the course of some thirty years.  Comparing it with Reynolds’ translation we are at first struck by the change which long drilling of the language to a variety of uses has accomplished in the work of uninspired poetasters; secondly, by the fact that the conventional respectability of production, which has replaced the halting crudities of an earlier date, is far more inimical to any real touch of poetic inspiration.  Equally evident is that spirit of tyranny, happily at no time native to our literature, which seeks to reduce the works of other ages into accordance with the taste of its own day.  Thus, having ‘improved’ Tasso’s apostrophe to the bella eta dell’ oro almost beyond recognition, Dancer complacently closes the chorus with the following parody: 

    We’l hope, since there’s no joy, when once one dies
    We’l hope, that as we have seen with our eies
    The Sun to set, so we may see it rise. (Ch.  I.)

Again, while all the spontaneity and reverential labour of an age of more avowed adolescence has disappeared, there is yet lacking the justness of phrase and certainty of grammar and rime, which later supply, however inadequately, the place of poetic enthusiasm.  The defects of the style, with its commonplace exaggeration of conceits, the thumbed token-currency of the certified poetaster, are well seen in such a passage as the following: 

    Weak love is held by shame, but love grows bold
    As strong, what is it then can it with-hold: 
    She as though in her ey’s she did contain
    Fountains of tears, did with such plenty rain
    Them on his cheeks, and they such vertue had,
    That it reviv’d again the breathlesse lad;... 
    Aminta thought ’twas more then heav’nly charms,
    That thus enclasp’d him in his Silvia’s armes;
    He that loves servant is, perhaps may guesse
    Their blisse; but none there is can it expresse[234]. (V. i.)