e. the Rustick Dialect, sometimes scarce true Grammar; &
the other studiously affects ignorance in the persons of his
Shepherds, as _Servius_ hath observ'd, and is evident in _Melibaeus_,
who makes _Oaxes_ to be a River in _Crete_ when 'tis in
_Mesopotamia_: and both of them take this way that the Manners may
the more exactly suit with the Persons they represent, who of
themselves are rude and unpolisht: And this proves that they
scandalously err, who make their Shepherds appear polite and elegant;
nor can I imagine what _Veratus_ {33} who makes so much ado about the
polite manners of the _Arcadian_ Shepherds, would say to _Polybius_
who tells us that _Arcadians_ by reason of the Mountainousness of the
Country and hardness of the weather, are very unsociable and austere.
Now as too much neatness in _Pastoral_ is not to be allow'd, so
rusticity (I do not mean that which _Plato_, in his Third Book of a
Commonwealth, mentions which is but a part of a down right honesty)
but Clownish stupidity, such as _Theophrastus_, in his Character of a
_Rustick_, describes; or that disagreeable unfashionable roughness
which _Horace_ mentions in his Epistle to _Lollius_, must not in my
opinion be endur'd: On this side _Mantuan_ errs extreamly, and is
intolerably absur'd, who makes Shepherds blockishly sottish, and
insufferably rude: And a certain Interpreter blames _Theocritus_ for
the same thing, who in some mens opinion sometimes keeps too close to
the _Clown_, and is rustick and uncouth; But this may be very well
excus'd because the Age in which he sang was not as polite as now.
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