[3] Heinsius in Theocr.—Pope.
[4] Rapin de Carm. Past., P. 2.—Pope.
[5] I cannot easily discover why it is thought necessary to refer descriptions of a rural state to the golden age, nor can I perceive that any writer has consistently preserved the Arcadian manners and sentiments. The only reason that I have read on which this rule has been founded is that, according to the customs of modern life, it is improbable that shepherds should be capable of harmonious numbers, or delicate sentiments; and therefore, the reader must exalt his ideas of the pastoral character by carrying his thoughts back to the age in which the care of herds and flocks was the employment of the wisest and greatest men. These reasoners seem to have been led into their hypothesis by considering pastoral, not in general, as a representation of rural nature, and consequently as exhibiting the ideas and sentiments of those, whoever they are, to whom the country affords pleasure or employment, but simply as a dialogue or narrative of men actually tending sheep, and busied in the lowest and most laborious offices; from whence they very readily concluded, since characters must necessarily be preserved, that either the sentiments must sink to the level of the speakers, or the speakers must be raised to the height of the sentiments. In consequence of these original errors, a thousand precepts have been given, which have only contributed to perplex and confound.—Johnson.
[6] Rapin, Reflex. sur l'Art. Poet. d'Arist., P. ii. Refl. xxvii.—Pope.
[7] Pope took this remark from Dr. Knightly Chetwood's Preface to the Pastorals in Dryden's Virgil: "Not only the sentences should be short and smart, but the whole piece should be so too, for poetry and pastime was not the business of men's lives in those days, but only their seasonable recreation after necessary hours." The rule is purely fanciful. By continuing the same subject from week to week, a shepherd could as easily find leisure to compose a single piece of a thousand lines as ten pieces of a hundred lines each. Most of the laws of pastoral poetry which Pope has collected are equally unfounded.
[8] Pref. to Virg. Past. in Dryd. Virg.—Pope.
[9] Fontenelle's Disc. of Pastorals.—Pope.
[10] See the forementioned Preface.—Pope.
[11] ΘΕΡΙΣΤΑΙ, Idyl. x. and ΑΛΙΕΙΣ, Idyl. xxi.—Pope.
Pope's definition of Pastoral is too confined. In fact, his Pastoral Discourse seems made to fit his Pastorals. For the same reason he would not class as a true Pastoral the most interesting of all Virgil's Eclogues,—I mean the first, which is founded on fact, which has the most tender and touching strokes of nature, and the plot of which is entirely pastoral, being the complaint of a shepherd obliged to leave the fields of his infancy, and yield the possession to soldiers and strangers. Pope says, because it relates to soldiers, it is not pastoral; but how little of a military cast is seen in it. The soldier is mentioned, but only as far as was absolutely necessary, and always in connection with the rural imagery from whence the most exquisite touches are derived. Pope's pastoral ideas, with the exception of the Messiah, seem to have been taken from the least interesting and poetic scenes of the ancient eclogue,—the Wager, the Contest, the Riddle, the alternate praises of Daphne or Delia, the common-place complaint of the lover, &c. The more interesting and picturesque subjects were excluded, as not being properly pastoral according to his definition.—Bowles.