Perhaps his most explicit expression of this appreciation is
made while he is discussing Horace's statement that the muses love
the country:
And to speak from the very bottome of my heart... methinks he
is much more happy in a Wood, that at ease contemplates this
universe, as his own, and in it, the Sun and Stars, the
pleasing Meadows, shady Groves, green Banks, stately Trees,
flowing Springs, and the wanton windings of a River, fit
objects for quiet innocence, than he that with Fire and Sword
disturbs the World, and measures his possessions by the wast
that lys about him (p. 4).
Rene Rapin (1621-1687), in spite of his duties as a Jesuit priest and
disputes with the Jansenists, became one of the most widely read men
of his time and carried on the celebrated discussions about the
Ancients with Maimbourg and Vavasseur. His _chef-d'oeuvre_ without
contradiction is _Hortorum libri IV_. Like Virgil, Spenser, Pope, and
many aspiring lesser poets, he began his literary career by writing
pastorals, _Eclogae Sacrae_ (1659), to which is prefixed in Latin the
original of "A Treatise de Carmine Pastorali."
J.E. Congleton
University of Florida
Reprinted here from the copy owned by the Boston Athenaeum by
permission.
* * * * *
* * * *
* * * * *
A
TREATISE
de CARMINE PASTORALI
Written by RAPIN.
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