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The oppofite fault to ftudied rufticity, is giving fublime and lofty ideas to fhepherds. It cannot be in character to affemble a parcel of fhepherds to debate on the corruptions of the court of Rome, as fhepherds have done; or to endow them with a knowledge, either I have of politics or mathematics. already obferved, that all ranks of perfons may be introduced into a paftoral with propriety: Now a poet may make a courtier talk in a courtly ftrain, but the fame language and ideas would be abfurd in a fhepherd. For which reason I cannot approve of thofe whining fhepherds, who are made to fay fuch a deal of things fo marvellously tender, and fo fublimely infipid in fome of our eclogues. Thefe pretended fhepherds are neither copied nor imitated from nature; they B 4

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These

are a parcel of chimerical entities, and mere children of poets brains, who confult only their own imagination in forging them. They bear no manner of refemblance with our ruftic inhabitants, and the fhepherds of our times. are peasants, whofe fole occupation is to procure themselves, by the exercites of a laborious life, wherewithal to fupply the preffing neceffities of an ever indigent family. Thus the languishing fhepherds of our eclogues are not copied from nature; their kind of life, wherein they intermix the most delicate pleasures with their rural cares, and especially with the folicitude of feeding their tender flocks, is far from being the life of any of our peasants t.

+ Reflexions critiques fur la Poefie & Peinture, par Du Bos, tom. i, fect. 22.

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Theocritus is allowed to excel all others in nature and fimplicity . He is the original, and Virgil little more than an elegant copy; but by means of the latter's judgment, he has in many places excelled his mafter. Among the Italians the famous Taffo Bonarelli, Guarini, and Marino, have written pastorals; but the first of thefe poets is thought far to surpass the reft . Luis de Gongora, and Camoens, have attempted the fame in Spanish, but with little fuccefs;

Pope vol. i. p. 7.

But the Italians are of opinion, that the Paftor Fido of Guarini is equal to his Aminta. Tafso himself, on reading it, cried out in a violent paffion, fe non havuto visto il mio Aminta. Other nations have a different opinion of his merit; the pastorals of Guarini, Bonarelli, and Marino, abounding with unnatural and forced epigrammatic turns, and crowded to the last degree with affected conceits and false glitter and ornament.

In

their idyllia, like thofe of Ronfard in French, have nothing in them that is tender or delicate; thofe of Fontenelle are too polite and refined in the fentiment. His fhepherds are all courtiers; and are better fuited to the toilettes of Paris than the foreft of Arcadia*. our own language Spenfer, tho' extremely faulty in many particulars, wrote the beft paftoral that has appeared fince the time of Virgil, according to the opinion of Mr. Dryden, who praises his Calendar highly. Pope fays, that in his manners, thoughts, and characters, he comes near to Theocritus himself.

Mr. Pope's paftorals have been criticifed in fo mafterly a manner by Mr. Warton, that I fhall forbear to speak particularly on him here. He has made

Warton's Virgil, vol. i. p. 46.

his

his fhepherds fpeak a language too courtly for people in their fituation, tho' not too refined for paftoral, if it had been given to proper perfonages; but Mr. Pope was of opinion with other critics, that they were the only proper perfons to be introduced into an eclogue *.

The pastorals of Mr. Gay are compofed in too homely a ftrain. The end of all poetry is to please the imagination;

Upon the whole, the principal merit of the paftorals of Pope, confifts in their correct and mufical verfification; mufical, to a degree of which rhyme could hardly be thought capable; and in giving the first fpecimen of that harmony in English verfe, which is now become indifpenfably neceffary, and which has fo forcibly and univerfally influenced the public ear, as to have rendered every moderate rhymer melodious. Pope lengthened the abruptnefs of Waller, and at the fame time contracted the exuberance of Dryden. Effay on the writings and genius of Pope, p. 10.

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