that is, of the favola di pastori, or dramatic pastoral, as he elsewhere explains.  ‘But in these words,’ objects Carducci, ’the writer is in no way referring to the Italian eclogues of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.  The eclogue had passed out of its infancy in the work of Theocritus.’  Here, however, Carducci appears to me to misinterpret Guarini’s meaning in an almost perverse manner.  The metaphoric ‘infancy’ of which Guarini speaks is the pre-dramatic period of pastoral growth.  No one will deny that the Theocritean idyl had attained full and perfect development in its own kind; but from the dramatic point of view, and granted that it contained the germ of the later pastoral drama, it belonged to a period of infancy, or, to adopt a more strictly accurate metaphor, of gestation.  Were further evidence needed to show that the allusion is to the Italian rather than to the classical eclogue, it might be found in the fact that the passage in question was Guarini’s answer to the following criticism of De Nores, as to the meaning of which there can be no two opinions.  Attacking the pastoral tragi-comedy, the critic remarks:  ’Until the other day similar compositions were represented under the name of eclogues at festivals and banquets, ... but now of a sudden they have been fashioned of the extension of comedies and tragedies in five acts[368].’  It will be noticed that in his reply Guarini makes no attempt to question the underlying identity of the pastoral tragi-comedy with the dramatic eclogue, but contents himself with very justly asserting the right of the latter to develop into a mature literary form.  Two other passages from Guarini have been quoted as germane to the discussion.  They occur in the Verato secondo, written as a counterblast to De Nores’ Apologia,[369].  One may be rendered thus:  ’Although the dramatic pastoral, in respect of the characters introduced, recognizes its ultimate origin in the eclogue and in the satire [i. e. the satyric drama] of the ancients, nevertheless, in respect of its form and ordinance it may be said to be a modern kind of poetry, seeing that no example of such dramatic composition, whether Greek or Latin, is to be found in ancient times.’  The other runs:  ’having regard to the fact that Theocritus stepped beyond the number of persons usual in similar poems, and composed one [the Feast of Adonis] which not only contains many interlocutors, but is of a more dramatic character than usual, and remarkable also for its greater length; it seemed to him [Beccari] that he might with great honour supply that kind neglected by the Greek and Latin authors[370].’  In the former of these passages Guarini, while recognizing the community of subject-matter between the classical eclogue and the renaissance pastoral drama, claims that as an artistic form the latter is independent of the former.  Nor is this inconsistent with what he says in the subsequent passage, for it is perfectly true that it was with Beccari that the pastoral