Now frantic Love amidst thick Darts and Foes Detains me in the rigid Toil of Arms.
Which, I confess, raises in me some Difficulty; because the Speaker introduc'd is manifestly a Soldier. But it must be observ'd, that he does not at the same Time personate a Shepherd, as is manifest, from his Speech to the Arcadians, when he expresses his Envy of their happy Retirement:
[246] Atque utinam è vobis unus, vestrique fuissem Aut custos gregis, aut maturæ vinitor uvæ.
O had kind Fortune made me one of you, Keeper of Flocks, or Pruner of the Vine.
Had he been one of them, he would have join'd two contradictory Ideas; for a Shepherd in Arms, who could have born? But if it be ask'd, Why then is the chief Person in the Pastoral drawn of a very different Character from Pastoral; it is sufficient to answer, That Virgil so thought fit; and there is nothing absurd, or unnatural, in such a Conduct. For the State of the Case is no more than this: Gallus, engag'd in Camps, happens to fall in Love, and retires to the Solitude of the Country, to give vent to his Passion. Shepherds, Nymphs, Sylvanus, Pan, and even Apollo himself, lend their kind Endeavours to asswage it. Thus far every Thing is natural, elegant, and truly pastoral. And the whole Poem is of the same Nature, excepting only the two Verses I have now cited. Leave out these, and even Gallus's Complaint is perfectly rural, and all the Thoughts drawn from the Country. In short, so far am I from assenting to those Critics who would exterminate this from the Number of Pastorals, that I would place it the very first of all. The sixth Eclogue of Virgil, which I just now mention'd, is full of Philosophy and Religion: And that's a sort of Sublime, which, I before observ'd, was very consistent with Pastoral. The fourth I have likewise spoke to. The rest of them are Pastoral, without any Objection; tho' the Etymology of the Word Eclogue by no means implies it; which signifies no more than Select Poems upon any Subject whatsoever. The Word Idyllium is as little expressive of Pastorals, nor are all Theocritus's such: It is deriv'd from eidos, Species; and the Word Idyllia imports no more than Poems of various Sorts.
It must be own'd, however, that the greatest Essential in Pastoral is Simplicity; and that these Lines have much less of the Nature of it,
[247] Aspice convexo nutantem pondere mundum, Terrasque, tractusque maris, &c.
See the globous Weight Of Earth, of Heav'n, of Ocean, nod and shake.
than the following:
[248] Forte sub arguta consederat ilice Daphnis, Compulerantque greges Corydon & Thyrsis in unum, Thyrsis oves, Corydon distentas lacte capellas.