In impersonating the private virtues, the poet has observed great propriety, and has formed their genealogy with the most perfect judgment, when he represents them as the daughters of truth and wisdom.
The characteristics of modesty and chastity are extremely happy and peinturesque:
| “Come thou, whose thoughts as limpid springs are clear, To lead the train, sweet Modesty, appear; With thee be Chastity, of all afraid, Distrusting all, a wise, suspicious maid; Cold is her breast, like flowers that drink the dew; A silken veil conceals her from the view.” |
The two similes borrowed from rural objects are not only much in character, but perfectly natural and expressive. There is, notwithstanding, this defect in the former, that it wants a peculiar propriety; for purity of thought may as well be applied to chastity as to modesty; and from this instance, as well as from a thousand more, we may see the necessity of distinguishing, in characteristic poetry, every object by marks and attributes peculiarly its own.
It cannot be objected to this eclogue, that it wants both those essential criteria of the pastoral, love and the drama; for though it partakes not of the latter, the former still retains an interest in it, and that too very material, as it professedly consults the virtue and happiness of the lover, while it informs what are the qualities
| –––that must lead to love. |