a minor form and consequently had narrowed their attention to a few
frequently debated questions, mainly the state of rural life to be
depicted and the level of the style to be adopted. All agreed that the
poem should be brief and simple in its fable, characters, and style.
But it was therefore a poetic exercise, no more significant, Purney
complained, than a madrigal. He was intent upon investing the pastoral
with all the major poetic elements--extended, worthy fable; moral;
fully-drawn characters; and appropriate expression. For in his mind the
poem best incorporates one of the only two true styles, the tender, and
therefore warrants a literary status beneath only tragedy and the epic.

Like his critical method, Purney's decision that the pastoral should
depict contemporary rural life divested of what is vulgar and painful
in it, rather than either the life of the Golden Age or true rustic
existence places him on the side of Addison, Tickell, Ambrose Philips,
and Fontenelle (indeed, his statement is a paraphrase of Fontenelle's),
and in opposition to the school of Rapin, Pope, and Gay, who argued for
a portrait of the Golden Age. Both schools campaigned for a simplicity
removed from realistic rusticity (which they detected in Spenser and
Theocritus) and refinement (as in Virgil's eclogues); but to one group
the term meant the innocence of those remote from academic learning and
social sophistication, and to the other the refined simplicity of an
age when all men--including kings and philosophers--were shepherds. With
reservations, the first group tended to prefer Theocritus and Spenser;
and the second, Virgil. Hence, too, the first group approved of Philips'
efforts to create a fresh and simple pastoral manner. As a poet, Purney
moved sharply away from the classical pastoral by curiously blending an
entirely original subject matter with a sentimentalized realism and a
naive, diffuse expression; and as a critic he pointed in the direction
of Shenstone and Allan Ramsay by emphasizing the tender, admitting
the use of earthy realism in the manner of Gay, and recommending for
pastoral such "inimitably pretty and delightful" tales as _The Two
Children in the Wood_. Had his contemporaries read the treatise,
how they would have been amused to contemplate the serious literary
treatment of chapbook narratives, despite Addison's praise of this
ballad.

In his usual nervous manner, the critic did not confine himself to his
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