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offensive, as, for example, Fontenelle's own pastorals
and two or three of the idyls of Theocritus. Both
these schools have regarded the pastoral more as a
literary "mode" than as an opportunity for un-self-
conscious poetic expression.

Mr. Homer Smith concurs in part with Fonte-
nelle's theory that there should be idealized
portrayal of shepherd life; he says:
"Idealized portrayal of rural life . . .
may be appropriately designated as
pastoral literature," 1 a conclusion based
upon a study of Italian Renascence pastorals with
their evident ideal elements. As English pastorals
were mainly indebted to the Italy of the Renascence,
such a conclusion is not to be discounted. A dis-
tinction, however, must be made at this point
between Fontenelle's theory and Homer Smith's
conclusion. The artificial and the ideal are by no
means identical, for the one is a bastard, illegitimate
species of art, the other a desirable and legitimate
phase of the truth. Fontenelle emphasizes the
artificial, Homer Smith the ideal. Such pastorals
as Fontenelle sanctions, Klein says are witnesses
of an over-refined, effete civilization, and originate
in a sentimental longing for an imaginary simplicity
and innocence of nature. 2

Homer
Smith's defi-
nition of the
pastoral.

The simplest and best discussion of the pas-
toral which has as yet appeared seems to me H.
Oskar Sommer's. Although recognizing certain

____________________
1 Homer Smith, p. 356.
2 J. L. Klein, vol. v. p. 1.

-21-

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Publication Information: Book Title: English Pastoral Drama, from the Restoration to the Date of the Publication of the "Lyrical Ballads": (1660-1798). Contributors: Jeannette Marks - author. Publisher: Methuen. Place of Publication: London. Publication Year: 1908. Page Number: 21.
    
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