For lo! he sung the Worlds stupendious birth,
  How scatter’d seeds of sea, of Air, and Earth,
  And purer Fire thro universal night
  And empty space did fruitfully unite: 
  From whence th’ innumerable race of things
  By circular successive order springs: 

And afterward

  How Pyrra’s Stony race rose from the ground,
  And Saturn reign’d with Golden plenty crown’d,
  How bold Prometheus (whose untam’d desire,
  Rival’d the Sun with his own Heavenly Fire)
  Now doom’d the Scythian Vulturs endless prey
  Severely pays for Animating Clay: 

So true, so certain ’tis, that nothing is so high and lofty to which Bucolicks may not successfully aspire.  But if this be so, what will become of Macrobius, Georgius Valla, Julius Scaliger, Vossius, and the whole company of Grammarians? who all affirm that simplicity and meanness is so essential to Pastorals, that it ought to be confin’d to the State, Manners, Apprehension and even common phrases of Sheapards:  for nothing can {23} be said to be Pastoral, which is not accommodated to their condition; and for this Reason Nannius Alcmaritanus in my opinion is a trifler, who, in his comments on Virgils Eclogues, thinks that those sorts of Composures may now and then be lofty, and treat of great subjects:  where he likewise divides the matter of Bucolicks, into Low, Middle, and High:  and makes Virgil the Author of this Division, who in his Fourth Eclogue, (as he imagines) divides the matter of Bucolicks into Three sorts, and intimates this division by these three words:  Bushes, Shrubs and Woods.

  Sicilian Muse begin a loftier strain,
  The Bushes and the Shrubs that shade the Plain
  Delight not all; if I to Woods repair
  My Song shall make them worth a Consuls Care.

By Woods, as he fancys, as Virgil means high and stately Trees, so He would have a great and lofty Subject to to be implyed, such as he designed for the Consul:  by Bushes, which are almost even with the ground, the meanest and lowest argument; and by Shrubs a Subject not so high as the one, nor so low as the other, as the thing it-self is, And therefore these lines

       If I to Woods repair
  My Song shall make them worth a Consuls care.

{24} are thus to be understood, That if we choose high and sublime arguments, our work will be fit for the Patronage of a Consul, This is Nanniu’s interpretation of that place; too pedantial and subtle I’me affraid, for tis not credible that ever Virgil thought of reckoning great and lofty things amongst the Subjects of Bucolicks especially since