he English novels of the period. There is also, according to
Greene's custom, a great abundance of songs and verses, the best piece
being the lullaby quoted above. Propriety and the truth of characters
are not much better observed here than in Greene's other stories.
Everybody in this romance speaks with infinite grace and politeness. The
shepherd Menaphon, introducing himself to the Princess Sephestia and her
child, who have been cast ashore through a shipwreck, says to them:
"Strangers, your degree I know not, therefore pardon if I give lesse
title than your estates merit." And, falling desperately in love with
the beautiful young woman, who gives as her name Samela of the island of
Cyprus, he describes to her with ardour and not without grace the
pastoral life that he would like to lead with her: "I tell thee, faire
nymph, these plaines that thou seest stretching southward, are pastures
belonging to Menaphon: ther growes the cintfoyle, and the hyacinth, the
cowsloppe, the primrose and the violet, which my flockes shall spare for
flowers to make thee garlands, the milke of my ewes shall be meate for
thy pretie wanton, the wool of the fat weathers that seemes as fine as
the fleece that Jason fet from Colchos, shall serve to make Samela
webbes withall; the mountaine tops shall be thy mornings walke, and the
shadie valleies thy evenings arbour: as much as Menaphon owes shall be
at Samelas command if she like to live with Menaphon."

The romance goes on its way, strewn with songs whose refrains of varied
and tuneful metres afford charming melody. In the end two knights,
Melicertus and Pleusidippus, both enamoured of Sephestia, fight a duel;
they are separated. The king of the country interferes, and
comprehending nothing of these intricate love affairs, he is on the
point of cutting off all their heads, when it is discovered that
Melicertus is the long lost husband of Sephestia; the other duellist is
the child of the shipwrecked woman, who, in the course of the tale, has
been stolen from her on the shore and has grown up in hiding. They
embrace one another; and, as for Menaphon, whose sweetheart finds
herself thus provided with a sufficiently fond husband and son, he
returns to his old love, Pesana, who had had patience to wait for him,
doubtless without growing old: for, in these romances, people do not
grow old. Pleusidippus has become a man, without the least change in his
mother's face; she has remained as beautiful as