The next translation we meet with never got into print.  It is preserved in a manuscript at the British Museum[236], and bears the heading:  ’Il Pastor Fido, or The Faithfull Sheapheard.  An Excellent Pastorall Written In Italian by Battista Guarinj And translated into English By Jonathan Sidnam Esq, Anno 1630.’  The prologue is again omitted, and the translation is distinguished from its contemporaries by an endeavour to reproduce to some extent the freer metrical structure of the Italian.  This was not a particularly happy experiment, since it ignored the fact that the character of a metre may differ considerably in different languages.  The Italian endecasillabi sciolti are far less flexible than our own blank verse, and it is only when freely interspersed with the shorter settinari that they can attempt to rival the range of effect possible to the English metre in the hands of a skilful artist.  Thus the imitation of the irregular measures of Guarini was a confession of the translator’s inability adequately to handle the dramatic verse of his own tongue.  As a specimen we may take the rendering of Amarillis’ speech already quoted from the ‘Dymocke’ version: 

    If my mischance had come by mine own fault,
    Nicander, or had beene as thou beleevst
    The foule effect of base and wicked thoughts,
    Or, as it now appeares, a deed of Sinn,
    It had beene then lesse greevous to endure
    Death as a punishment for such a fault,
    And just it had beene with my blood to wash
    My impure Soule, to mitigate the wrath
    And angar of the Godds, and satisfie
    The right of humane justice,
    Then could I quiett my afflicted Soule
    And with an inward feeling of my just
    Deserved death, subdue my outward Sence,
    And fawne uppon my end, and happelie
    With a more settled countenance passe from hence
    Into a better world: 
    But now, Nicander, ah! tis too much greefe
    In soe yong yeares, in such a happie state,
    To die so suddenlie, and which is more,
    Die innocent. (IV. v.)

It was not until the civil war was at its height, namely in 1647, that English literature was enriched with a translation in any way worthy of Guarini’s masterpiece.  It is easy to strain the interpretation of such facts, but there is certainly a strong temptation to see in the occasion and circumstances of the composition of the piece an illustration of a critical law already noticed, namely the constant tendency of literature to negative as well as to reproduce the life of actuality, and furthermore of the special liability of pastoral to take birth from a desire to escape from the imminence and pressure of surrounding circumstance.  Like Reynolds’ Aminta, Richard Fanshawe’s Pastor fido is better appreciated as a whole than in quotation, though, thanks partly to its own greater maturity of poetic attainment, partly to the