The Composure will be more suitable to the Genius of a Shepherd, if now and then there are some short turns and digressions from the purpose:  Such is that concerning Pasiphae in Silenus, although tis almost too long; but we may give Viogil a little leave, who takes so little liberty himself.

{65} Concerning Descriptions I cannot tell what to lay down, for in this matter our Guides, Virgil, and Theocritus, do not very well agree.  For he in his first Idyllium makes such a long immoderate description of his Cup, that Criticks find fault with him, but no such description appears in all Virgil; for how sparing is he in his description of Meliboeus’s Beechen Pot, the work of Divine Alcimedon?  He doth it in five verses, Theocritus runs out into thirty, which certainly is an argument of a wit that is very much at leisure, and unable to moderate his force.  That shortness which Virgil hath prudently made choice of, is in my opinion much better; for a Shepherd, who is naturally incurious, and unobserving, cannot think that tis his duty to be exact in particulars, and describe every thing with an accurate niceness:  yet Roncardus hath done it, a man of most correct judgment, and, in imitation of Theocritus, hath, considering the then poverty of our language, admirably and largely describ’d his Cup; and Marinus in his Idylliums hath follow’d the same example.  He never keeps within compass in his Descriptions, for which he is deservedly blam’d; let those who would be thought accurate, and men of judgment, follow Virgil’s prudent moderation.  Nor can the Others gain any advantage from Moschus’s Europa, in which the description of the Basket is very long, for that Idyllium is not Pastoral; yet I confess, that some {66} descriptions of such trivial things, if not minutely accurate, may, if seldom us’d, be decently allow’d a place in the discourses of Shepherds.

But tho you must be sparing in your Descriptions, yet your Comparisons must be frequent, and the more often you use them, the better and more graceful will be the Composure; especially if taken from such things, as the Shepherds must be familiarly acquainted with:  They are frequent in Theocritus but so proper to the Country, that none but a Shepherd dare use them.  Thus Menalcas in the eighth Idyllium: 

  Rough Storms to Trees, to Birds the treacherous Snare,
  Are frightful Evils; Springes to the Hare,
  Soft Virgins Love to Man, &c.

And Damoetas in Virgil’s Palaemon,

  Woolves sheep destroy, Winds Trees when newly blown,
  Storms Corn, and me my Amaryllis frown.

And that in the eighth Eclogue,

  As Clay grows hard, Wax soft in the same fire,
  So Daphnis does in one extream desire.