Pastorals_ than for
the _Greeks_; because the _Latines_ had not some _Dialects_ peculiar
to the Country, and others to the City, as the _Greeks_ had; Besides
the _Latine_ Language, as _Quintilian_ hath observ'd, is not capable
of the neatness which is necessary to Bucolicks, no, that is the
peculiar priviledge of the _Greeks_: _We cannot_, says he, _be so low,
they exceed us in subtlety, and in propriety they are at more
certainty than We_: and again, _in pat and close Expressions we cannot
reach the Greeks_: And, if we believe _Tully_, _Greek is much more fit
for Ornament than Latin_ for it hath much more of that neatness, {37}
and ravishing delightfulness, which _Bucolicks_ necessarily require.

Yet of Pastoral, with whose Nature we are not very well acquainted,
what that _Form_ is which the _Greeks_ call the _Character_, is not
very easy to determine; yet that we may come to some certainty, we
must stick to our former observation, _viz._ that _Pastoral_ belongs
properly to the _Golden Age_: For as _Tully_ in his Treatise _de
Oratore_ says, _in all our disputes the Subject is to be measur'd by
the most perfect of that kind_, and _Synesius_ in his _Encomium_ on
_Baldness_ hints the very same, when he tells us that Poetry fashions
its subject as Men imagine it should be, and not as really it is:
*pros doxan, ou pros aletheian*: Now the Life of a Shepherd, that it
might be rais'd to the highest perfection, is to be referr'd to the
manners and age of the world whilst yet innocent, and such as the
Fables have describ'd it: And as Simplicity was the principal vertue
of that Age, so it ought to be the peculiar Grace, and as it were
_Character_ of _Bucolicks_: in which the Fable, Manners, Thought, and
Expression ought to be full of the most innocent simplicity
imaginable: for as Innocence in Life, so purity and simplicity in
discourse was the Glory of that Age: So as gravity to _Epicks_,
Sweetness to _Lyricks_, Humor to _Comedy_, softness to _Elegies_ and
smartness to _Epigrams_, so simplicity to _Pastorals_ is proper; and
one upon _Theocritus_ says, _that the Idea of his Bucolicks is in
every part pure, and in all {38} that belongs to simplicity very
happy_: Such is this of _Virgil_, unwholsome to us Singers is the
shade

Of Juniper, 'tis an unwholsome shade:

Than which in my opinion nothing can be more simply; nothing more
rustically said; and this is the reason I suppose why _Macrobius_ says
that this kind of Poetry