corrupt himself with foreign manners; for if he hath once vitiated the healthful habit, as I may say, of Expression, which Bucolicks necessarily require, ’tis impossible he should be fit for that task.  Yet let him not affect pompous or dazling Expressions, for such belong to Epicks, or Tragedians.  Let his words sometimes tast of the Country, not that I mean, of which Volusius’s Annals, upon which Catullus hath made that biting Epigram, are full; for though the Thought ought to be rustick, and such as is suitable to a Shepherd, yet it ought not to be Clownish, as is evident in Corydon, when he makes mention of his Goats.

  Young sportive Creatures, and of spotted hue,
  Which suckled twice a day, I keep for you: 
  These_ Thestilis hath beg’d, and beg’d in vain,
  But now they’re Hers, since You my Gifts disdain.

For what can be more Rustical, than to design those Goats for Alexis, at that very time when {59} he believes Thestylis’s winning importunity will be able to prevail? yet there is nothing Clownish in the words.  In short, Bucolicks should deserve that commendation which Tully gives Crassus, of whose Orations he would say, that nothing could be more free from childish painting, and affected finery.  So let the Expression in Pastoral be without gawdy trappings, and all those little fineries of Art, which are us’d to set off and varnish a discourse:  But let an ingenuous Simplicity. and unaffected pleasing Neatness appear in every part; which yet will be flat, if ’tis drawn out to any length, if not close, short, and broken, as that in Virgil,

  He that loves Bavius Verses, hates not Thine: 

And in the same Eclogue,

    —­It is not safe to drive too nigh,
  The Bank may fail, the Ram is hardly dry: 

And in Corydon,

  To learn this Art what won’t Amyntas do?

And in Theocritus much of the same nature may be seen; as in his other Pastoral Idylliums, so chiefly in his fifth.  Thus Battus in the fourth Idyllium, complaining for the loss of Amaryllis,

  {60} Dear Nymph, dear as my Goats, you dy’d.

And how soft and tender is that in the third Idyllium,

  And she may look on me, she may be won,
  She may be kind, she is not perfect Stone,

And in this concise, close way of Expression lies the chiefest Grace of Pastorals:  for in my opinion there’s nothing in the whole Composition that can delight more than those frequent stops, and breakings off.  Yet lest in these too it become dull and sluggish, it must be quickned by frequent lively touches of Concernment:  such as that of the Goatherd in the third Idyllium,

  —­I see that I must die: 

Or Daphnis’s despair, which Thyrsis sings in the first Idyllium,