2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 11.
for all the rest are deficient either in matter or form, and from this
number of pure pastoral _Idylliums_ I am apt to think, that
_Theocritus_ seems to have made that Pipe, on which he tun'd his
_Pastorals_ and which he consecrated to _Pan_ of ten Reeds, as
_Salmasius_ in his notes on _Theocritus's_ Pipe hath learnedly
observed: _in which two Verses always make one Reed of the Pipe,
therefore all are so unequal, like the unequal Reeds of a Pipe, that
if you put two equals together which make one Reed, the whole
inequality consists in ten pairs_; when in the common Pipes there were
usually no more then seven Reeds, and this the less curious observers
have heedlessly past by.
Some are of opinion that whatever is done in the Country, and in one
word, every thing that hath nought of the City in it may be treated of
in _Pastorals_; and that the discourse of Fishers, Plow-men, Reapers,
Hunters, and the like, belong to this kind of Poetry: which according
to the Rule that I have laid down cannot be true for, as I before
hinted nothing but the action of a {28} Shepherd can be the Subject of
a Pastoral.
I shall not here enquire, tho it may seem proper, whether we can
decently bring into an Eclogue Reapers, Vine-dressers, Gardners,
Fowlers, Hunters, Fishers, or the like, whose lives for the most part
are taken up with too much business and employment to have any vacant
time for Songs, and idle Chat, which are more agreeable to the leisure
of a Sheapards Life: for in a great many Rustick affairs, either the
hardship and painful Labor will not admit a song, as in Plowing, or
the solitude as in hunting, Fishing, Fowling, and the like; but of
this I shall discourse more largely in another place.
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