But though his general merit has been universally
acknowledged, I am far from thinking all the
productions of his rural Thalia equally excellent; there
is, indeed, in all his pastorals a strain of versification
which it is vain to seek in any other poet; but if we
except the first and the tenth, they seem liable either
wholly or in part to considerable objections.
The second, though we should forget the great
charge against it, which I am afraid can never be
refuted, might, I think, have perished, without any
diminution of the praise of its author; for I know
not that it contains one affecting sentiment or pleasing
description, or one passage that strikes the
imagination or awakens the passions.
The third contains a contest between two
shepherds, begun with a quarrel of which some particulars
might well be spared, carried on with sprightliness
and elegance, and terminated at last in a reconciliation:
but, surely, whether the invectives with which
they attack each other be true or false, they are too
much degraded from the dignity of pastoral innocence;
and instead of rejoicing that they are both
victorious, I should not have grieved could they
have been both defeated.
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