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The whole ten eclogues did not find a translator till 1656, when Thomas Harvey published a version in decasyllabic couplets. The next poet to appear in English dress was Theocritus, of whose works 'Six Idillia, that is, Six Small, or Petty, Poems, or Aeglogues, were translated by an anonymous hand and dedicated to E. D. probably or possibly Sir Edward Dyer in 1588.
The chief and most obvious device is that suggested by the title The Shepherd's Calender 'Conteyning twelve Aeglogues proportionable to the twelve monethes. This might, indeed, have been no more than a fanciful name for any series of twelve poems; with Spenser it indicates a conscious principle of artistic construction.
Petrarch entertained the learned men of his age with the novelty of modern pastorals in Latin. Being not ignorant of Greek, and finding nothing in the word "eclogue" of rural meaning, he supposed it to be corrupted by the copiers, and therefore called his own productions "AEglogues," by which he meant to express the talk of goat-herds, though it will mean only the talk of goats.
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