{6} And from this head I think the dignity of Bucolicks is sufficiently cleared, for as much as the Golden Age is to be preferred before the Heroick, so much Pastorals must excell Heroick Poems:  yet this is so to be understood, that if we look upon the majesty and loftiness of Heroick Poems, it must be confest that they justly claim the preheminence; but if the unaffected neatness, elegant, graceful smartness of the expression, or the polite dress of a Poem be considered, then they fall short of Pastorals:  for this sort flows with Sweet, Elegant, neat and pleasing fancies; as is too evident to every one that hath tasted the sweeter muses, to need a farther explication:  for tis not probable that Asinius Pollio, Cinna, Varius, Cornelius Gallus, men of the neatest Wit, and that lived in the most polite Age, or that Augustus Caesar the Prince of the Roman elegance, as well as of the common Wealth, should be so extreamly taken with Virgils Bucolicks, or that Virgil himself a man of such singular prudence, and so correct a judgment, should dedicate his Eclogues to those great Persons; unless he had known that there is somewhat more then ordinary Elegance in those sort of Composures, which the wise perceive, tho far above the understanding of the Crowd:  nay if Ludovicus Vives, a very learned man, and admired for politer studies may be believed, there is somewhat more sublime and excellent in those Pastorals, than the Common {7} sort of Grammarians imagine:  This I shall discourse of in an other place, and now inquire into the Antiquity of Pastorals.

Since Linus, Orpheus, and Eumolpus were famous for their Poems, before the Trojan wars; those are certainly mistaken, who date Poetry from that time; I rather incline to their opinion who make it as old as the World it self; which Assertion as it ought to be understood of Poetry in general, so especially of Pastoral, which, as Scaliger delivers, was the most antient kind of Poetry, and resulting from the most antient way of Liveing:  Singing first began amongst Sheapards as they fed their Flocks, either by the impulse of nature, or in imitation of the notes of Birds, or the whispering of Trees.

For since the first men were either Sheapards or Ploughmen, and Sheapards, as may be gathered out of Thucydides and Varro, were before the others, they were the first that either invited by their leisure, or (which Lucretius thinks more probable) in imitation of Birds, began a tune.

  Thro all the Woods they heard the pleasing noise
  Of chirping Birds, and try’d to frame their voice,
  And Imitate, thus Birds instructed man,
  And taught them Songs before their Art began.

In short, tis so certain that Verses first began in the Country that the thing is in it self evident, and this Tibullus very plainly signifies,