In the shade
of beech trees, the coils of elaborated and intricate love-making wind
and unravel themselves through an endless afternoon. In that art nothing
is too far-fetched, nothing too sentimental, no sorrow too unreal. The
pastoral romance was used, too, to cover other things besides a
sentimental and decorative treatment of love. Authors wrapped up as
shepherds their political friends and enemies, and the pastoral eclogues
in verse which Spenser and others composed are full of personal and
political allusion. Sidney's story carries no politics and he depends
for its interest solely on the wealth of differing episodes and the
stories and arguments of love which it contains. The story would furnish
plot enough for twenty ordinary novels, but probably those who read it
when it was published were attracted by other things than the march of
its incidents. Certainly no one could read it for the plot now. Its
attraction is mainly one of style. It goes, you feel, one degree beyond
_Euphues_ in the direction of freedom and poetry. And just because of
this greater freedom, its characteristics are much less easy to fix than
those of _Euphues_. Perhaps its chief quality is best described as that
of exhaustiveness.
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