Note 110 — Chapter II

Perhaps Anne Goodere: but the question is alien to our present discussion. Some of the allusions in the eclogues are obvious, and probably all the names, except perhaps the speaker's, conceal real personalities. In the Muses' Elizium, on the other hand, most of the names and characters appear to me fictitious. In connexion with the name 'Idea,' in which certain critics have wished to see a deep philosophical meaning, I would suggest that it may be nothing but the feminine of 'Idaeus,' that is, a shepherd of Mount Ida, a name found in the second eclogue of Petrarch. It is, however, true that the word 'idea' bore the meaning of 'an ideal,' in which sense, no doubt, we occasionally find it applied to England.