In saying that Pope would not allow Virgil's first eclogue to be "a true pastoral," Bowles refers to the paper in the Guardian, where the design was to laugh at the strict definition which would exclude a poem from the pastoral class on such frivolous grounds. In the same jesting tone, Pope asserts that the third eclogue must be set aside, because it introduces "calumny and railing, which are not proper to a state of concord," and the eighth, because it has a shepherd "whom an inviting precipice tempts to self-destruction."
[12] The tenth and twenty-first Idyll here alluded to contain some of the most exquisite strokes of nature and true poetry anywhere 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 cauldron.—Warton.
[13] In what does the great father of the pastoral excel all others? In "simplicity, and nature." I admit with Pope, but more particularly in one circumstance, which seems to have escaped general attention, and that circumstance is the picturesque. Pope says he is too long in his descriptions, particularly of the cup. Was not Pope, a professed admirer of painting, aware that the description of that cup contains touches of the most delightful and highly-finished landscape? The old fisherman, and the broken rock in one scene; in another, the beautiful contrast of the little boy weaving his rush-work, and so intent on it, that he forgets the vineyard he was set to guard. We see him in the foreground of the piece. Then there is his scrip, and the fox eyeing it askance; the ripe and purple vineyard, and the other fox treading down the grapes whilst he continues at his work. Add to these circumstances the wild and beautiful Sicilian scenery, and where can there be found more perfect landscapes in the works, which these pictures peculiarly resemble, of Vernet or Gainsborough? Considered in this view, how rich, wild, and various are the landscapes of the old Sicilian, and we cannot but wonder that so many striking and original traits should be passed over by a "youthful bard," who professed to select from, and to copy the ancients.—Bowles.
[14] He refines indeed so much, as to make him, on this very account, much inferior to the beautiful simplicity of his original.—Warton.
[15] It is difficult to conceive where is the "wonderful variety" in Virgil's Eclogues which "the Greek was a stranger to." Many of the more poetical parts of Virgil are copied literally from Theocritus; but are weakened by being made more general, and often lose much of their picturesque and poetical effect from that circumstance.—Bowles.
[16] Rapin. Refl. on Arist., P. ii. Refl. xxvii. Pref. to the Ecl. in Dryden's Virgil.—Pope.
[17] The Aminta of Tasso is here erroneously mentioned by Pope as the very first pastoral comedy that appeared in Italy. 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.—Warton.
"There were," says Roscoe, "several writers of pastoral in Italy prior to those mentioned either by Pope or Warton." Roscoe mistook the question, which was, who was the first author of the pastoral drama? None of the prior pastoral writers he enumerates produced a drama, and Warton was right in giving the precedency to Beccari.
[18] Dedication to Virg. Ecl.—Pope.
[19] In the manuscript Pope had added, "Some of them contain two hundred lines, and others considerably exceed that number."