of actiuitie and
strength, also their baitings of wild beasts, as Elephants, Rhinocerons,
Tigers, Leopards and others, which sights much delighted the common
people, and therefore the places required to be large and of great
content.

_CHAP. XVIII._

_Of the Shepheards or pastorall Poesie called Eglogue, and to what purpose
it was first inuented and vsed._

Some be of opinion, and the chiefe of those who haue written in this Art
among the Latines, that the pastorall Poesie which we commonly call by the
name of _Eglogue_ and _Bucolick_, a tearme brought in by the Sicilian
Poets, should be the first of any other, and before the _Satyre_ comedie
or tragedie, because, say they, the shepheards and haywards assemblies &
meetings when they kept their cattell and heards in the common fields and
forests, was the first familiar conuersation, and their babble and talk
vnder bushes and shadie trees, the first disputation and contentious
reasoning, and their fleshly heates growing of ease, the first idle
wooings, and their songs made to their mates or paramours either vpon
sorrow or iolity of courage, the first amorous musicks, sometime also they
sang and played on their pipes for wagers, striuing who should get the
best game, and be counted cunningest. All this I do agree vnto, for no
doubt the shepheards life was the first example of honest felowship, their
trade the first art of lawfull acquisition or purchase, for at those daies
robbery was a manner of purchase. So saith _Aristotle_ in his bookes of
the Politiques, and that pasturage was before tillage, or fishing or
fowling, or any other predatory art or cheuisance. And all this may be
true, for before there was a shepheard keeper of his owne, or of some
other bodies flocke, there was none owner in the world, quick cattel being
the first property of any forreine possession. I say forreine, because
alway men claimed property in their apparell and armour, and other like
things made by their owne trauel and industry, nor thereby was there yet
any good towne or city or Kings palace, where pageants and pompes might be
shewed by Comedies or Tragedies. But for all this, I do deny that the
_Eglogue_ should be the first and most auncient forme of artificiall
Poesie, being perswaded that the Poet deuised the _Eglogue_ long after the
other _drammatick_ poems, not of purpose to counterfait or represent the
rusticall manner of loues and communication: but vnder the vaile of home