Once Delia lay, on easy Moss reclin'd;
Her lovely Limbs half bare, and rude the Wind.
I smooth'd her Coats, and stole a silent Kiss;
Condemn me, Shepherds, if I did amiss.
Past. 5.
The last Line contains a Pastoral Thought, of the best Sort; as the three first a Pastoral Image.
The middle of this last Pastoral is full of beautiful Images, and has therefore proved so Entertaining to all Readers, that I wonder Mr. Phillips would not give us the Beautiful in his four first Pieces also.
Of all the Persons who have written in the English Language, no one ever had a Mind so well form'd by Nature for Pleasurable Writing, as Spencer. Yet as he wrote his Pastorals when very Young, this does not appear so much from them, as from his Fairy Queen; thro' which, (like Ovid, in his Metamorphoses) he has perpetually recourse to Pastoral. Especially in his Second Book; in which there are more pleasurable Pastoral Images in every eight Lines, than in all his Pastorals. We have Knights basking in the Sun by a pleasant Stream, rambling among the Shepherdesses, entering delightful Groves surrounded with Trees, or the like, almost in every Stanza; but thro' all his Pastorals, we have not half a dozen beautiful Images. 'Tis therefore the Pastoral Language that support's 'em, which he took excessive pains about.
CHAP. III.
Of Pastoral Descriptions. And what Authors have the finest.
Of Images are form'd Descriptions, as by a Combination of Thoughts a
Speech is composed. And a Description is good or bad, chiefly as the
Images or Circumstances are judiciously, or otherwise, chosen; and
artfully put together.
As to the putting them together, I shall only observe, that in Descriptions of the Heat of Love, not in Pastoral, but in such Pieces as Sapho's, or the like, the Circumstances should be couch'd extreamly close; in Epick Poetry the Circumstances should be somewhat less closely heap'd together; and that Pastoral requires 'em the most diffuse of any; being of a Nature extreamly calm and sedate.
Hence we may learn what Length Pastoral will admit of in it's
Descriptions. And certain it is, that as we are easily wearied by a cold
Speech, so are we by a cold Description, unless very concise.