army.  The British Museum Catalogue, on the other hand, distinguishes between John Reynolds, of Exeter, author of God’s Revenge and other works, and John Reynolds the translator (to whom the Aminta is tentatively ascribed).  I am not aware of any authority for this distinction, though there is nothing in the composition of God’s Revenge to make one suppose the author capable of producing the translation of the Aminta.  On the other hand, it must be admitted that the incidental verse in some of his other works, notably in the Flower of Fidelity, a romance published in 1650, is distinctly on a more respectable level than his prose.  The ascription, however, to John Reynolds has not very much to support it.  Phillips’ authority is second-rate at best, and is not likely to be at its best in the present case.  It is indeed surprising that he should have been acquainted with this early translation rather than with that by John Dancer, which appeared in 1660, and must have been far more generally known at the end of the seventeenth century.  The first to identify the translator with Henry Reynolds was, so far as I am aware, Mary A. Scott, in her valuable series of papers on ‘Elizabethan Translations from the Italian,’ in the Publications of the Modern Language Association of America (vol. xi. p. 112); and the same view was taken independently by the writer of a notice in the Dic.  Nat.  Biog. This ascription is based upon the entry in the Stationers’ Register, which runs:  ’7º Novembris 1627.  William Lee.  Entred for his Copye under the handes of Sir Henry Herbert and both the wardens A booke called Torquato Tassos Aminta Englished by Henry Reynoldes ... vj^{d}’ (Arber, iv. p. 188).  Several songs of his are extant, and an epistle of Drayton’s is dedicated to him.  This appears to me the more reasonable ascription of the two.  The writer in the Dic.  Nat.  Biog. further claims that the identity of the translator with Henry Reynolds is proved by internal evidence of style.  I may add that Serassi, in his remarks prefixed to the Bodoni edition of the Aminta (Parma, 1789), ascribed the present translation to Oldmixon through a confusion of the dates 1628 and 1698.

[232] Streams or inlets.

[233] The unfortunate cacophony of the opening is the retribution on the translator for not having the courage to begin with a hypermetrical line.

[234] Later translations of the Aminta may be mentioned:  John Oldmixon, 1698; P. B. Du Bois, in prose, with Italian, 1726; William Ayre [1737]; Percival Stockdale, 1770; and, lastly, the very graceful rendering by Leigh Hunt, 1820.  As lately as 1900 a gentleman who need not be named had the impertinence to publish, in an American series, a mediocre version of the Aminta as being ‘Now first rendered into English.’  I may mention that some confusion has been introduced into the question of the date of Du Bois’ translation by the wholly unwarranted opinion on the part of the B. M. catalogue that the second (undated) edition appeared c. 1650.  I have compared the two editions at the Bodleian, and have no doubt that the second belongs to c. 1730.