For we perceiv’d how Love and Modestie
    With sev’rall Ensignes, strove within her cheekes
    Which should be Lord that day, and charged hard
    Upon each other, with their fresh supplies
    Of different colours, that still came, and went,
    And much disturb’d her, but at length dissolv’d
    Into affection, downe she casts her selfe
    Upon his senselesse body, where she saw
    The mercy she had brought was come too late: 
    And to him calls:  ’O deare Amyntas, speake,
    Look on me, sweete Amyntas, it is I
    That calles thee, I it is, that holds thee here,
    Within those armes thou haste esteem’d so deare.’ (V. ii.)

Amyntas’ subsequent recovery is reported in the same strain.  The reader will remember the lines in which Tasso described a similar scene.  And yet, in spite of the identity of the situations and even of the close similarity of the language, the tone and atmosphere of the two passages are essentially different; for if Daniel’s treatment of the scene, which is typical of a good deal of his work, has the power to call a tear to the eye of sensibility, his sentiment, divested as it is of the Italian’s subtle sensuousness, appears perfectly innocuous and at times not a little ridiculous.

Cloris and Amyntas are now safe enough, and Carinus has the despised but faithful Amarillis to console him.  The other pairs of lovers need not detain us further than to note that their adventures are equally borrowed from Tasso and Guarini.  Silvia relates how, wounded by her ‘cruelty,’ Palaemon sought to imitate Aminta by throwing himself from a cliff, but was prevented by her timely relenting.  Amarillis fondles Carinus’s dog, and is roughly upbraided by its master in the same manner as her prototype Dorinda in the Pastor fido.

Amid much that is commonplace in the verse occur not a few graceful passages, while Daniel is at times rather happy in the introduction of certain sententious utterances in keeping with the conventionality of the pastoral form.  Thus a caustic swain remarks of a girl’s gift: 

    Poore withred favours, they might teach thee know,
    That shee esteemes thee, and thy love as light
    As those dead flowers, shee wore but for a show,
    The day before, and cast away at night;

and to a lover: 

    When such as you, poore, credulous, devout,
    And humble soules, make all things miracles
    Your faith conceives, and vainely doe convert
    All shadowes to the figure of your hopes. (I. ii.)

Colax is a subtle connoisseur in love: 

    Some thing there is peculiar and alone
    To every beauty that doth give an edge
    To our desires, and more we still conceive
    In that we have not, then in that we have. 
    And I have heard abroad where best experience
    And wit is learnd, that all the fairest choyce
    Of woemen in the world serve but to make
    One perfect beauty, whereof each brings part. (I. iii.)