The Scene lys amongst Sheapards, the Swains are brought in, the Herdsmen come to see his misery, and the fiction is suited to the real condition of a Sheapard; the same is to be said for his Silenus, who tho he seems lofty, and to sound to loud for an oaten reed, yet since what he sings he sings to Sheapards, and suits his Subject to their apprehensions, his is to be acknowledged Pastoral.  This rule we must stick to, that we might infallibly discern what is stricktly Pastoral in Virgil and Theocritus, and what not:  for in Theocritus there are some more lofty thoughts which not having any thing belonging to Sheapards for their Subject, must by no means be accounted Pastoral, But of this more in its proper place.

My present inquiry must be what is the Subject Matter of a Pastoral, about which it is not easy to resolve; since neither from Aristotle, nor any of the Greeks who have written Pastorals, we can receive certain direction.  For sometimes they treat of high and sublime things, like Epick Poets; what can be loftier than the whole Seaventh Idyllium of Bias in which Myrsan urges Lycidas the Sheapard to sing the Loves of Deidamia and Achilles.  For he begins from Helen’s rape, and goes on to the revengful fury of the Atrides, and shuts up in one Pastoral, all that is great and sounding in Homers Iliad.

  {21} Sparta was fir’d with Rage
  And gather’d Greece to prosecute Revenge.

And Theocritus his verses are sometimes as sounding and his thoughts as high:  for upon serious consideration I cannot mind what part of all the Heroicks is so strong and sounding as that Idyllium on Hercules leontophono in which Hercules himself tells Phyleus how he kill’d the Lyon whose Skin he wore:  for, not to mention many, what can be greater than this expression.

  And gaping Hell received his mighty Soul: 

Why should I instance in the dioskouroi, which hath not one line below Heroick; the greatness of this is almost inexpressible.

  aner hyperoplos enemeros, endiaaske
    deinos idein

And some other pieces are as strong as these, such is the Panegyrick on Ptolemy, Helen’s Epithalamium, and the Fight of young Hercules and the Snakes:  now how is it likely that such Subjects should be fit for Pastorals, of which in my opinion, the same may be said which Ovid doth of his Cydippe.

  Cydippe, Homer, doth not fit thy Muse.

For certainly Pastorals ought not to rise to the Majesty of Heroicks:  but who on the other side {22} dares reprehend such great and judicious Authors, whose very doing it is Authority enough?  What shall I say of Virgil? who in his Sixth Eclogue hath put together allmost all the particulars of the fabulous Age; what is so high to which Silenus that Master of Mysterys doth not soar?