herds discoursing together in a natural way; but a regard must be had to the subject; that it contain some particular beauty in itself, and that it be different in every Eclogue. Besides, in each of them a designed scene or prospect is to be presented to our view, which should likewise have its variety'. This variety is obtained in a great degree by frequent comparisons, drawn from the most agreeable objects of the country; by interrogations to things inanimate; by beautiful digressions, but those short; sometimes by insisting a little on circumstances; and lastly, by elegant turns on the words, which render the numbers extremely sweet and pleasing. As for the numbers themselves, though they are properly of the heroic measure, they should be the smoothest, the most easy and flowing imaginable. It is by rules like these that we ought to judge of pastoral. And since the instructions given for any art are to be delivered as that art is in perfection, they must of necessity be delivered from those in whom it is acknowledged so to be. It is therefore from the practice of Theocritus and Virgil (the only undisputed authors of Pastoral) that the Critics have drawn the foregoing notions concerning it. Theocritus excels all others in nature and simplicity. The subjects of his Idyllia are purely pastoral; but he is not so exact in his persons, having introduced reapers3 and fishermen as well as shep 1 See the forementioned Preface. P. 2 Stesichorus, it is said, wrote pastorals also. 'OEPITAI, Idyll. x. and AAIEI, Idyll. xxi. P. herds'. He is apt to be too long in his descriptions, of which that of the Cup in the first pastoral is a remarkable instance. In the manners he seems a little defective, for his swains are sometimes abusive and immodest, and perhaps too much inclining to rusticity; for instance, in his fourth and fifth Idyllia. But 'tis enough that all others learnt their excellences from him, and that his Dialect alone has a secret charm in it, which no other could ever attain. Virgil', who copies Theocritus, refines upon his original and in all points, where judgment is principally concerned, he is much superior to his master. Though some of his subjects are not pastoral in themselves, but only seem to be such; they have a wonderful variety in them, which the Greek was a stranger to. He exceeds him in regularity and brevity, and falls short of him in nothing but simplicity and propriety of style; the first of which perhaps was the fault of his age, and the last of his language. Among the moderns, their success has been greatest who have most endeavoured to make these ancients their pattern. The most considerable Ge The 10th and 21st Idyll. here alluded to, contain some of the most exquisite strokes of nature and true poetry any where to be met with, as does the beautiful description of the carving on the cup; which, indeed, is not a cup, but a very large pastoral vessel or caldron. Vas pastoritium amplissimum. "He refines indeed so much as to make him, on this very account, much inferior to the beautiful simplicity of his original. Rapin, Refl. on Arist. part ii. refl. xxvii.-Pref. to the Ecl. in Dryden's Virg. P. nius appears in the famous Tasso, and our Spenser. Tasso in his Aminta has as far excelled all the Pastoral writers, as in his Gierusalemme he has outdone the Epic poets of his country. But as this piece seems to have been the original of a new sort of poem, the Pastoral Comedy, in Italy, it cannot so well be considered as a copy of the ancients. Spenser's Calendar, in Mr. Dryden's opinion, is the most complete work of this kind which any nation has produced ever since the time of Virgil. Not but that he may be thought imperfect in some few points. His Eclogues are somewhat too long, if we compare them with the ancients. He is sometimes too allegorical, and treats of matters of religion in a pastoral style, as the Mantuan had done before him. He has employed the Lyric measure, which is contrary to the practice of the old Poets. His stanza is The Aminta of Tasso is here erroneously mentioned by Pope as the very first pastoral comedy that appeared in Italy: and Dr. Hurd also fell into the same mistake. But it is certain that Il Sacrificio of Agostino Beccari was the first, who boasts of it in his prologue, and who died very old in 1590; which drama was acted in the palace of Francesco of Este. Such a mistake is very pardonable in so young an author, and very different from the gross and unscholar-like blunder of Trapp, who tells us in his fourteenth Lecture, that all the eclogues of Calphurnius and Nemesian, who flourished under Diocletian, were entirely lost. I will just add, that the famous critic, Jason de Nores, who wrote so well on Horace's Art of Poetry, condemned the Pastoral Drama: and that the above-mentioned Il Sacrificio was acted at Ferrara 1550, and the Aminta 1573, and the Pastor Fido before Cardinal Borghese 1590. It is observable, that Pope does not mention the Comus of Milton, the most exquisite of all pastoral dramas. * Dedication to Virg. Ecl. P. not still the same, nor always well chosen. This last may be the reason his expression is sometimes not concise enough for the Tetrastic has obliged him to extend his sense to the length of four lines, which would have been more closely confined in the Couplet. In the manners, thoughts, and characters, he comes near to Theocritus himself; tho', notwithstanding all the care he has taken, he is certainly inferior in his Dialect: For the Doric had its beauty and propriety in the time of Theocritus; it was used in part of Greece, and frequent in the mouths of many of the greatest persons: whereas the old English and country phrases of Spenser were either entirely obsolete, or spoken only by people of the lowest condition. As there is a difference betwixt simplicity and rusticity, so the expression of simple thoughts should be plain, but not clownish. The addition he has made of a Calendar to his Eclogues, is very beautiful; since by this, besides the general moral of innocence and simplicity, which is common to other authors of Pastoral, he has one peculiar to himself; he compares human Life to the several Seasons, and at once exposes to his readers a view of the great and little worlds, in their various changes and aspects. Yet the scrupulous division of his Pastorals into Months, has obliged him either to repeat the same description, in other words, for three months together; or, when it was exhausted before, entirely to omit it: whence it comes to pass that some of his Eclogues (as the sixth, eighth, and tenth, for example) have nothing but their Titles to distin guish them. The reason is evident, because the year has not that variety in it to furnish every month with a particular description, as it may every season.9 Of the following Eclogues I shall only say, that these four comprehend all the subjects which the Critics upon Theocritus and Virgil will allow to be fit for pastoral: That they have as much variety of description, in respect of the several seasons, as Spenser's that in order to add to this variety, the The superiority of Milton's Lycidas to all pastoral poems in our language is, I should hope, acknowledged by every man of true classical judgment; and Dr. Johnson's strange animadversions on it have been thus effectually answered. "Lycidas (says he) is filled with the heathen deities; and a long train of mythological imagery, such as a college easily supplies.-But it is also such as even the court itself could now have easily supplied. The public diversions, and books of all sorts, and from all sorts of writers, more especially compositions in poetry, were at this time overrun with classical pedantries. But what writer, of the same period, has made these obsolete fictions the vehicle of so much fancy and poetical description? How beautifully has he applied this sort of allusion to the druidical rocks of Denbighshire, to Mona, and the fabulous banks of Deva! It is objected, that its pastoral form is disgusting. But this was the age of pastoral: and yet Lycidas has but little of the bucolic cant, now so fashionable. The satyrs and fauns are but just mentioned. If any trite rural topics occur, how are they heightened! Together both, ere the high lawns appear'd What time the gray-fly winds her sultry horn, "Here the day-break is described by the faint appearance of the upland lawns under the first gleams of light: the sun-set, by the buzzing of the chaffer: and the night sheds her fresh dews on their flocks. We cannot blame pastoral imagery and pastoral allegory, which carry with them so much natural painting. In |