Page:Monsieur Bossu's Treatise of the epick poem - Le Bossu (1695).djvu/327

 less used, they have also less uneasiness, less distaste, and less fickleness; that is to say, in short, a Love purg'd of whatever the Excesses of human Fancy have sophisticated it with.

This consider'd, 'tis not to be admir'd why the Pictures which are drawn of a Pastoral Life, have always something so very smiling in them, and indulge our Fancies more than the Pompous Description of a splendid Court and of all the Magnificence that can shine there. A Court gives us no Idea but of toilsome and constrain'd Pleasures: For, as we have observ'd, the Idea is all in all: Cou'd the Scene of this quiet Life, with no other business but Love, be plac'd any where but in the Country, so that no Goats nor Sheep shou'd be brought in, I fansie it would be never the worse; for, the Goats and Sheep add nothing to its Felicity; but as the scene must lye either in the Country or in Towns, it seems more reasonable to chuse the First.

As the Pastoral Life is the most idle of all others, 'tis also the most fit to be the Ground work of those Ingenious Representations of which we are speaking. So that no Ploughmen, Reapers, Vine-dressers or Hunts men, can by any means be so properly introduc'd in Eclogues, as Shepherds: Which confirms what I said, that what makes this kind of Poetry please, is not it's giving an Image of a Country Life, but rather the Idea which it gives of the tranquility and Innocence of that Life.

Yet there is an Idyllium of Battus and Milo, two Reapers in Theocritus, which has Beauties. Milo asks Battus why he does not Reap as fast as he used to do? He answers, that he is in Love, and then sings something that's very pretty about the Woman that he loves. But Milo laughs at him, and tells him he is a Fool, for being so idle as to be in Love; that this is not an Imployment fit for one who Works for Food; and that, to divert himself and excite one another to Work, he should sing some Songs which he denotes to him, and which altogether relate to the Harvest. I must needs own that I do not so well like this Conclusion. For I would not be drawn from a pleasing and soft Idea to another that is low and without Charms.

Sannazarius has introduced none but Fishermen in his Eclogues; and I always perceive, when I read those Piscatory Poems, that the Idea which I have of the Fishermen's hard and toilsome way of living, shocks me. I don't know what moved him to bring in Fishermen instead of Shepherds, who were in possession of the Eclogue time out of mind, but had the Fishermen been in possession of it, it had been necessary to put the Shepherds in their place: For, singing, and above all, an Idle life becomes none but Shepherds: Besides methinks 'tis prettier and more genteel to send Flowers or Fruit to one's Mistress, than send her Oysters as Sannazarius's Lyco doth to his.