ootnote 14: Dryden, Preface to Fables, Ancient and Modern.]

[Footnote 15: Spence, p. 236.]

[Footnote 16: Spence, p. 212.]

[Footnote 17: Oeuvres, ed. Beuchot, tom. xxxvii. p. 258.]

[Footnote 18: Lives of the Poets, ed. Cunningham, vol. iii. p. 136. The
principle which Johnson derided in his Life of Pope he had upheld in No.
86 of the Rambler: "We are soon wearied with the perpetual recurrence of
the same cadence. Necessity has therefore enforced the mixed measure, in
which some variation of the accents is allowed. This, though it always
injures the harmony of the line considered by itself, yet compensates
the loss by relieving us from the continual tyranny of the same sound,
and makes us more sensible of the harmony of the pure measure."]

[Footnote 19: Elements of Criticism, 6th ed. vol. ii. p. 143, 155.]

[Footnote 20: Gray's Works, ed. Mitford, vol. v. p. 303.]

[Footnote 21: Trapp's Virgil, vol. i. p. lxxix.]

[Footnote 22: Lives of the Poets, vol. iii. p. 136.]

[Footnote 23: Guardian, No. 30, April 15, 1713.]

[Footnote 24: Guardian, No. 40, April 27, 1713.]

[Footnote 25: Life of Hannah More, vol. i. p. 301.]

[Footnote 26: Pope to Caryll, June 8, 1714.]

[Footnote 27: Nichols, Illustrations of Lit. Hist. vol. vii. 713.]

A DISCOURSE

ON

PASTORAL POETRY.[1]

There are not, I believe, a greater number of any sort of verses than of
those which are called pastorals; nor a smaller, than of those which are
truly so. It therefore seems necessary to give some account of this kind
of poem; and it is my design to comprise in this short paper the
substance of those numerous dissertations the critics have made on the
subject, without omitting any of their rules in my own favour. You will
also find some points reconciled, about which they seem to differ, and a
few remarks, which, I think, have escaped their observation.

The original of poetry is ascribed to that age which succeeded the
creation of the world: and as the keeping of flocks seems to have been
the first employment of mankind, the most ancient sort of poetry was
probably pastoral.[2] It is natural to imagine, that the leisure of
those ancient shepherds admitting and inviting some diversion, none was
so proper to that solitary and sedentary life as singing; and that in
their songs they took occasion to celebrate their own felicity. From
hence a poem was invented, and afterwards improved to a perfect image of
that happy time; which,