Mr. Gosse once expressed the opinion that Cowley’s play is ’a distinct following without imitation of The Jealous Lovers of Thomas Randolph.’  Exactly what was meant by this phrase it is difficult to tell, but if it was intended to imply any resemblance between the two pieces its application is confined to the character of a woman to whom age has not taught continence, and an incidental hit at the jargon of astrologers.[334] That Cowley had read The Jealous Lovers, published in 1633, is by no means unlikely, for he was certainly acquainted with the yet unpublished Amyntas.  This he may perhaps have seen when it was performed at Whitehall, and he imitated several passages of it in his own Westminster play.  The most important point of connexion is the madness of Aphron, which is modelled with some closeness on that of Amyntas.  Actual verbal reminiscences are not common, but there can, I think, be little doubt that the schoolboy has been imitating the half-grotesque, half-poetic fantasies of the university wit, though he has wholly failed to achieve his pathos.  Again, the speech of Florellus at the opening of Act III recalls the return both of Corymbus and of Claius in Amyntas, while Cowley is much more likely to have been influenced to lay the scene of his play in Sicily by Randolph’s example than by his reading of Theocritus, whose influence, if it exists, is of the slightest.  Emulation, rather than imitation, was Cowley’s attitude towards his predecessor, and his means are not always happy.  Thus, though the humours of Truga may have been suggested by the character of Dipsa in the Jealous Lovers, she is probably introduced into Cowley’s play as the counterpart of Dorylas in Amyntas.  Randolph trod on thin ice in some of the speeches of the liquorish wag, whose ‘years are yet uncapable of love,’ but censure will not stick to the witty knave.  On the other hand, Cowley’s portrait of incontinent age in Truga fails wholly of being comic, and appears all the loathlier for the fact that the author himself was still a mere schoolboy—­though this is, indeed, his best excuse.  Other parallels could be pointed out, but it would be superfluous; convention and petty theft are the warp and woof of the piece.  The satire, which has met with some praise, is, of course, staled by a hundred poets of the pastoral vein.  The position of Callidora, loved in her disguise by the two girls, recalls that of many pastoral heroines before and since Daniel’s Silvia, particularly perhaps of the courtly Rosalind loved by the Arcadian Phoebe.  The chivalric admixture is, as usual, traceable to Sidney, and the duel finds of course an obvious parallel in Twelfth Night.  The discovery of Bellula’s identity recalls more particularly, perhaps, that of Chloe’s in Longus’ romance, or may possibly indicate an acquaintance with Bonarelli’s Filli di Sciro, which might also be traced in the attribution to centaurs of the character long identified with satyrs in pastoral tradition.