Mean Persons are brought in, those in Comedy indeed more polite, those in Pastorals more unelegant, as suppos’d to lead a rude life in Solitude; and Jason Denor a Doctor of Padua takes notice of the same as a very absurd Error:  Aristotle heretofore for a like fault reprehended the Megarensians, who observ’d no Decorum in their Theater, but brought in mean persons with a Train fit for a King and cloath’d a Cobler or Tinker in a Purple Robe:  In vain doth Veratus in his Dispute against Jason Denor, to defend those elaborately exquisite discourses, and notable sublime sentences of his Pastor Fido, bring some lofty Idylliums of Theocritus, for those are not acknowledged to be Pastoral; Theocritus and Virgil must be consulted in this matter, the former designdly makes his Shepherds discourse in the Dorick i. e. the Rustick Dialect, sometimes scarce true Grammar; & the other studiously affects ignorance in the persons of his Shepherds, as Servius hath observ’d, and is evident in Melibaeus, who makes Oaxes to be a River in Crete when ’tis in Mesopotamia:  and both of them take this way that the Manners may the more exactly suit with the Persons they represent, who of themselves are rude and unpolisht:  And this proves that they scandalously err, who make their Shepherds appear polite and elegant; nor can I imagine what Veratus {33} who makes so much ado about the polite manners of the Arcadian Shepherds, would say to Polybius who tells us that Arcadians by reason of the Mountainousness of the Country and hardness of the weather, are very unsociable and austere.

Now as too much neatness in Pastoral is not to be allow’d, so rusticity (I do not mean that which Plato, in his Third Book of a Commonwealth, mentions which is but a part of a down right honesty) but Clownish stupidity, such as Theophrastus, in his Character of a Rustick, describes; or that disagreeable unfashionable roughness which Horace mentions in his Epistle to Lollius, must not in my opinion be endur’d:  On this side Mantuan errs extreamly, and is intolerably absur’d, who makes Shepherds blockishly sottish, and insufferably rude:  And a certain Interpreter blames Theocritus for the same thing, who in some mens opinion sometimes keeps too close to the Clown, and is rustick and uncouth; But this may be very well excus’d because the Age in which he sang was not as polite as now.

But that every Part may be suitable to a Shepherd, we must consult unstain’d, uncorrupted Nature; so that the manners might not be too Clownish nor too Caurtly:  And this mean may be easily observed if the manners of our Shepherds be represented according to the Genius of the golden Age, in which, if Guarinus may be believ’d {34}, every man follow’d that employment:  And