Page:Virgil's Pastorals, Georgics and Aeneis - Dryden (1709) - volume 1.pdf/16

6 ''Affection. But the Complaint perhaps contains some Topicks which are above the Condition of his Persons; and our Author seems to have made his Herdsmen somewhat too Learn'd for their Profession: The Charms are also of the same nature, but both were Copied from Theocritus, and had receiv'd the applause of former Ages in their Original. There is a kind of Rusticity in all those pompous Verses; somewhat of a Holiday Shepherd strutting in his Country Buskins. The like may be observ'd, both in the Pollio, and the Silenus; where the Similitudes are drawn from the Woods and Meadows. They seem to me to represent our Poet betwixt a Farmer, and a Courtier, when he left Mantua for Rome, and drest himself in his best Habit to appear before his Patron: Somewhat too fine for the place from whence he came, and yet retaining part of its simplicity. In the Ninth Pastoral he Collects some Beautiful Passages which were scatter'd in Theocritus, which he cou'd not insert into any of his former Eclogues, and yet was unwilling they shou'd be lost. In all the rest he is equal to his Sicilian Master,''