ment. _Euphues_ is very much
_sui generis_: failure as it may be from some points of view, it
deserves the highest respect for this, and like most other things _sui
generis_ it was destined to propagate the genus, if only after many
days. The _Arcadia_ was in intention certainly, and to great extent in
actual fact, merely a carrying out of the attempt, common all over
Europe (as a result of the critical searchings of heart of the
Italians), to practise a new kind--the Heroic Romance of the sub-variety
called pastoral. The "heroic" idea generally was (as ought to be, but
perhaps is not, well known) to blend, after a fashion, classical and
romantic characteristics--to substitute something like the classic unity
of fable or plot for the mere "meandering" of romantic story, and to pay
at least as much attention to character as the classics had paid,
instead of neglecting it altogether, as had recently though not always
been the case in Romance. But the scheme retained on the other hand the
variety of incident and appeal of this latter: and especially assigned
to Love the high place which Romance had given it. As for the
Pastoral--that is almost a story to itself, and a story which has been
only once (by Mr. W.W. Greg) satisfactorily, and then not quite
completely, told. It is enough to say here, and as affecting our own
subject, that it supplied a new opportunity of gratifying the passion of
the Renaissance for imitating antiquity, at the same time permitting to
no small extent the introduction of things that were really romantic,
and above all providing a convention. The Heroic romance generally and
the Pastoral in particular went directly back to the Greek romances of
Heliodorus and Longus: but they admitted many new and foreign elements.

At the same time, bastard as the heroic romance was, it could not but
exercise an important influence on the future of fiction, inasmuch as it
combined, or attempted to combine, with classical unity and mediaeval
variety the more modern interest of manners and (sometimes) personality.
Sidney's attempt (which, it must be remembered, is not certainly known
to be wholly his as it stands, and _is_ certainly known not to have been
revised by him for publication) exercised a very great influence in
English. For its popularity was enormous, and it doubtless served as
shoehorn to draw on that of the English translations of French and
Spanish romance which supplied, during the greater part of the