Page:The Dunciad - Alexander Pope (1743).djvu/252

Rh of all the Idyllia of Theocritus are to be admitted as Pastorals; and even out of that number the greater part will be excluded for one or other of the reasons above mentioned. So that when I remark'd in a former paper, that Virgil's Eclogues taken altogether are rather select poems than Pastorals; I might have said the same thing with no less truth of Theocritus. The reason of this I take to be yet unobserved by the critics, viz. They never meant them all for pastorals.

Now it is plain Philips hath done this, and in that particular excelled both Theocritus and Virgil.

As Simplicity is the distinguishing characteristic of Pastoral, Virgil hath been thought guilty of too courtly a style; his language is perfectly pure, and he often forgets he is among peasants. I have frequently wondered that since he was so conversant in the writings of Ennius, he had not imitated the rusticity of the Doric, as well by the help of the old obsolete Roman language, as Philips hath by the antiquated English: For example, might not he have said quoi instead of cui, queijum for cujum, volt for vult, &c. as well as our modern hath welladay for alas, whilome for of old, make mock for deride, and witlsess younglings for simple lambs, &c. by which means he had attained as much of the air of Theocritus, as Philips hath of Spencer.

Mr. Pope hath fallen into the same error with Virgil. His clowns do not converse in all the simplicity proper to the country; his names are borrowed from Theocritus and Virgil, which are improper to the scene of his Pastorals: He introduces Daphnis, Alexis, and Thyrsis on British plains, as Virgil hath done before him on the Mantuan. Whereas Philips, who hath the strictest regard to propriety, makes choice of names peculiar to the country, and more agreeable to a reader of delicacy, such as Hobbinol, Lobbin, Cuddy, and Colin-Clout.

So easy as pastoral writing may seem (in the simplicity we have described it) yet it requires great reading, both of the ancients and moderns, to be a master of it. Philips hath given us manifest proofs of his knowledge of books. It must be confessed his competitor hath imitated some single thoughts of the ancients well enough (if we consider he had not the happiness of an University education) but he hath dispersed them, here and there, without that order and method which Mr. Philips observes, whose whole third Pastoral is an instance how well he hath studied the fifth of Virgil, and how judiciously reduced Virgil's thoughts to the standard of Pastoral; as his contention of Colin-Clout and the Nightingale shows with what exactness he hath imitated every line in Strada.

When I remarked it as a principal fault to introduce fruits and flowers of a foreign growth, in the descriptions where the scene lies in our own country, I did not design that observation should extend also to animals, or the sensitive life; for Mr. Philips hath with great judgment described Wolves in England in his first Pastoral. Nor would I have a poet slavishly confine himself (as Mr. Pope hath done) to one particular season of the year, one certain time of the day, and one unbroken scene in each Eclogue. 'Tis plain Spencer neglected this pedantry, who in his Pastoral of November mentions the mournful song of the Nightingale.