THE IDVr. IN CLASSIC LITEUATUUK. 13 



herd's dress became but a mask, the pastoral poem was to be 

 allegorically interpreted. Vergil's influence in this respect was of 

 lastmg importance, determining for more than seventeen cen- 

 turies the character of pastoral litei'ature in the Romance coun- 

 tries, in England and in Germany, until nature and healthy real- 

 ism again asserted themselves in the idyl of the eighteenth century. 

 Classic Latin literature, however, has given us at least one perfect 

 idyl, some say onlj one: the Moretvm, of unknown authorship.^ 

 In the third century, when the classic era was nearing its 

 close, ^ Greek literature produced one more work of enduring- 

 power, the shepherd romance Daphnis and Chloe, attributed to 

 Longos.3 It has all the healthy enjoyment of simple life that we 

 find in Theocritus, and is of importance as being the great model 

 for the later pastoral romance. 



CHAPTER II. 



Idyllic Literatube in Germany Before the Time of Opitz. 



As we enter the Middle Ages, when the classics fast became a 

 sealed book, the idyl as a literary form almost disappears.* We 



1 TV. Hertzberg in the Gedicbte des Virgilius (Stuttgart 1856), p. 9-3, speaks 

 of this, calling it a "literarisches Unicum" — Cf. Gosche, ALG., I., 20.5. 



~ Of the followers and imitators of Vergil may be mentioned: Calpurnius, 

 the gross flatterer of Nero; Nemesianus, Ausonius of Bordeaux, the first Christian 

 writer of eclogues, the best being Mosella, a description of a journey along the 

 rivers Mosel and the Rhine (before .37.5) . 



3 Gosche in ALG., I., p. 211, says: The old Grjeco-Roman world completed 

 its idyllic poetry in these three stages: The great Theocritus, the unknown au- 

 thor of the Moretum, and Longos. 



1 Its place is, perhaps, supplied by Christian legends and stories, some of 

 which, especially those of the hermits, contain idyllic elements. But these are 

 few, as the very seclusion of the hermits was to show in what utter contempt 

 they held the outer world. 



