[132] Dryden, in Palamon and Arcite, says of women that they
Still follow fortune where she leads the way.
PASTORALS,
WITH A
DISCOURSE ON PASTORAL.
WRITTEN IN THE YEAR 1704.
Rura mihi et rigui placeant in vallibus amnes,
Flumina amem, sylvasque, inglorius!—Virg.
These Pastorals were written at the age of sixteen, and then passed through the hands of Mr. Walsh, Mr. Wycherley, G. Granville, afterwards Lord Lansdowne, Sir William Trumbull, Dr. Garth, Lord Halifax, Lord Somers, Mr. Mainwaring, and others. All these gave our author the greatest encouragement, and particularly Mr. Walsh, whom Mr. Dryden, in his postscript to Virgil, calls the best critic of his age. "The author," says he, "seems to have a particular genius for this kind of poetry, and a judgment that much exceeds his years. He has taken very freely from the ancients. But what he has mixed of his own with theirs is no way inferior to what he has taken from them. It is not flattery at all to say that Virgil had written nothing so good at his age. His preface is very judicious and learned." Letter to Mr. Wycherley, Ap. 1705. The Lord Lansdowne, about the same time, mentioning the youth of our poet, says, in a printed letter of the character of Mr. Wycherley, that "if he goes on as he hath begun in the pastoral way, as Virgil first tried his strength, we may hope to see English poetry vie with the Roman." Notwithstanding the early time of their production, the author esteemed these as the most correct in the versification, and musical in the numbers, of all his works. The reason for his labouring them into so much softness, was, doubtless, that this sort of poetry derives almost its whole beauty from a natural ease of thought and smoothness of verse: whereas that of most other kinds consist in the strength and fulness of both. In a letter of his to Mr. Walsh about this time, we find an enumeration of several niceties in versification, which perhaps have never been strictly observed in any English poem, except in these Pastorals. They were not printed till 1709.—Pope.