Page:Monsieur Bossu's Treatise of the epick poem - Le Bossu (1695).djvu/337

Rh Grief for dying in his Bed. I shrewdly suspect that Achilles's Shield is the Original from which this Basket has been imitated.

I find that Virgil has us'd similitudes very often in his Pastoral Discourses: These similitudes are very properly brought in, to supply the place of those trivial Comparisons, and principally of those clownish proverbial sayings, which real Shepherds use almost continually: But as there is nothing more easily to be imitated than this way of using similitudes, 'tis what Virgil hath been most copied in. We find in all your Writers of Eclogues, nothing more common than Shepherdesses who exceed all others as much as lofty Pines e'er top the lowly Reed, or highest Oaks the humblest Shrubs exceed; we see nothing but the cruelty of ungrateful Shepherdesses who are to a Shepherd, What Frosts or Storms are to the tenderest Flowers, like Hale to rip'ning Corn, &c. I think all this old and worn thread-bare at this Time of Day, and to say the Truth on't, 'tis no great Pity. Similitudes naturally are not very proper for Passion, and Shepherds shou'd only use them when they find it difficult to express themselves otherwise; then they wou'd have a very great Beauty, but I know but very few of that kind.

Thus we have pretty near discover'd the Pitch of Wit which Shepherds ought to have, and the Style they should use. 'Tis methinks with Eclogues, as with those Dresses which are worn at Masques or Balls; they are of much finer stuff than those which real Shepherds usually wear; nay they are even adorn'd with Ribbands and Points, and are only made after the Country cut. In the same manner the Thoughts which are the Subject matter of Eclogues, ought to be finer and more delicate than those of real Shepherds; but they must have the most simple and most rural Dress possible.

Not but that we ought to use both simplicity and a Country-like plainness ev'n in the Thoughts, but we ought to take notice that this simplicity and Country-like plainness only exclude your excessive delicacy in the Thoughts, like that of the refin'd Wits in Courts and Cities, and not the Light which Nature and the Passions bestow of themselves; otherwise the Poet wou'd degenerate and run into Childish Talk that wou'd beget Laughter rather than admiration. Something of this kind is pleasant enough in one of Remi Belleau's Eclogues; where a young Shepherd, having stoln a kiss from a pretty Shepherdess, says to her,