Others with Caesius Bassus and Isacius Tzetzes hold that that distribution of Poetry, which Aristotle and Tully hath left us, is deficient and imperfect; and that only the chief Species are reckoned, but the more inconsiderable not mention’d:  I shall not here interest my self in that quarrel of the Criticks, whether we have all Aristotles books of Poetry or no; this is a considerable difficulty I confess, for Laertius who accurately weighs this matter, says that he wrote two books of Poetry, the one lost, and the other we have, tho Mutinensis is of an other mind:  but to end this dispute, I must agree with Vossius, who says the Philosopher comprehended these Species not expressly mentioned, under a higher and more noble head:  and that therefore Pastoral was contain’d in Epick. for these are his own words, besides there are Epicks of an inferior rank, such as the Writers of Bucolicks. Sincerus, as Minturnus quotes him, is of the same mind, for thus he delivers his opinion concerning Epick Verse:  The matters about which these numbers may be employed is various; either mean and low, as in Pastorals, great and lofty, as when {19} the Subject is Divine Things, or Heroick Actions, or of a middle rank, as when we use them to deliver precepts in: And this likewise he signifys before, where he sets down three sorts of Epicks:  one of which, says he, is divine, and the most excellent by much in all Poetry; the other the lowest but most pure, in which Theocritus excelled, which indeed shews nothing of Poetry beside the bare numbers:  These points being thus settled, the remaining difficultys will be more easily dispatched.

For as in Dramatick Poetry the Dignity and meanness of the Persons represented make two different Species of imitation the one Tragick, which agrees to none but great and Illustrious persons, the other Comick, which suits with common and gentile humors:  so in Epick too, there may be reckoned two sorts of Imitation, one of which belongs to Heroes, and that makes the Heroick; the other to Rusticks and Sheapards and that constitutes the Pastoral, now as a Picture imitates the Features of the face, so Poetry doth action, and tis not a representation of the Person but the Action.

From all which we may gather this definition of Pastoral:  It is the imitation of the Action of a Sheapard, or of one taken under that Character:  Thus Virgil’s Gallus, tho not really a Sheapard, for he was a man of great quality in Rome, yet belongs to Pastoral, because he is represented like a Sheapard:  hence the Poet: 

  {20} The Goatherd and the heavy Heardsmen came,
  And ask’t what rais’d the deadly Flame.