Prima Syracusio dignata est ludere versu,
Nostra nec erubuit sylvas habitare Thalia.
Ecl. vi. 1.
This is the general exordium and opening of the Pastorals, in imitation of the sixth of Virgil, which some have therefore not improbably thought to have been the first originally. In the beginnings of the other three Pastorals, he imitates expressly those which now stand first of the three chief poets in this kind, Spenser, Virgil, Theocritus.
A shepherd's boy (he seeks no better name)—
Beneath the shade a spreading beech displays,—
Thyrsis, the Music of that murm'ring Spring,—
are manifestly imitations of
"—A shepherd's boy (no better do him call)."
"—Tityre, tu patulæ recubans sub tegmine fagi."
"—Ἁδὑ τι ψιθὑρισμα και ἁ πιτυς, αιτολε, τηνα"—Pope.
[3] Pope not only imitated the lines he quotes from Virgil, but, as Wakefield points out, was also indebted to Dryden's translation of them.
I first transferred to Rome Sicilian strains:
Nor blushed the Doric muse to dwell on Mantuan plains.
Originally Pope had written,
First in these fields I sing the sylvan strains,
Nor blush to sport in Windsor's peaceful plains.