r in our Language that ever attempted tender
Phrazes or Turns of Words. Yet there are two such Passages in _Creech_'s
_Theocritus_, which I will also quote.

_All as the Sheep, such was the Shepherd's Look;
For pale and wan he was (alas the while!)_ &c.

And again.

_Ye Gods of Love, who pity Lover's Pain.
(If any Gods the Pain of Lovers pity)_ &c.

And again.

_A simple Shepherd Born in_ Arcady,
_Of gentlest Blood that ever Shepherd bore_, &c.

Such beautiful Turns of Words as these are extremely scarce in
_Spencer_; but he has not one but what is inimitably fine and natural.

Let us now see the two Phrazes which _Creech_ has happen'd upon.
Whose Language I have observ'd to be infinitely the best of any of our
Pastoral writers, next to Spencer. This is one of them. A Shepherdess
says to a persuading Swain.

_You will deceive, you Men are all Deceit;
And we so willing to believe the Cheat_.

The other is this, to Diana; when she consents.

_I liv'd your Vot'ry, but no more can live_.

CHAP. III.

_The Tender in Pastory distinguish'd from that in Epick poetry or
Tragedy_.

'Tis strange to me that our Pastoral Writers should make no Distinction
between their SOFT when they write Pastories, and when they write Epick
Poetry. This in _Philips_ is the Epick Softness, or what we call the
Beautiful sometimes in Epick Poetry in Opposition to the Sublime.

_Breath soft ye Winds, ye Waters gently flow;
Shield her ye Trees, ye Flow'rs around her grow_, &c.

And this which also is the Sixth Pastory.

_Once_ Delia _lay, on easy Moss reclin'd,
Her lovely Limbs half bare, and rude the Wind_, &c.

This also is of the same kind of SOFT.

_A Girland deckt in all the Pride of May,
Sweet as her Breath, and as her Beauty Gay_, &c.

But Instances were endless. In Opposition to this kind of Soft, I shall
quote out of _Spencer_ some Passages which have the truest Softness.
For such that Author has, beyond any in the World, tho' perhaps not very
often. He begins his last Pastory thus.

_A gentle Shepherd sate besides a Spring,
All in the shadow of a bushy Breer_, &c.

And his first he begins thus.

_A Shepherd's Boy (no better do him call)_ &c.

His Pastoral named _Colin Clout's come home_, begins thus.

_The Shepherd-boy (best known by that Name)
Who after TITYRUS first sang his Lay,
Lays of sweet Love, without Rebuke or Blow,
Sate, as his manner was, upon a