Cruel _Alexis_ can't my Verses move? Hast thou no Pitty? I must dye for Love_.
He neither Gods, nor yet my Verse regards.
The Sense must not be long, copious, and continued, For _Pastoral_ is weak, and not able to hold out; but of this more when I come to lay down rules for its Composure: But tho it ought to imitate _Comedy_ in its common way of discourse, yet it must not chose _old Comedy_ for its pattern, for that is too impudent, and licentiously abusive: Let it be free and modest, honest and ingenuous, and that will make it agreeable to the Golden Age.
Let the Expression be plain and easy, but elegant and neat, and the purest which the language will afford; _Pontanus_ upon _Virgils_ Bucolicks gives the very same rule, _In Bucolicks the Expression must be humble, nearer common discourse than otherwise, not very Spirituous and vivid, yet such as shows life and strength_: Tis certain that _Virgil_ in his _Bucolicks_ useth the same words which _Tully_ did in the _Forum_ or the _Senate_; and _Tityrus_ beneath his shady Beech speaks as pure and good _Latin_ as _Augustus_ in his Palace, as _Modicius_ in his _Apology_ for _Virgil_ hath excellently observ'd: { 36} This rule, 'tis true; _Theocritus_ hath not so strictly follow'd, whose Rustick and Pastoral Muse, as _Quintilian_ phraseth it, _not only is affraid to appear in the_ Forum, _but the City_, and for the very same thing an _Alexandrian_ flouts the _Syracucusian Weomen_ in the Fifteenth _Idyllium_ of _Theocritus_, for when they, being then in the City, spoke the _Dorick_ Dialect, the delicate Citizen could not endure it, and found fault with their distastful, as he thought, pronunciation: and his reflection was very smart.
Like Pidgeons you have mouths from Ear to Ear.
So intolerable did that broad way of pronunciation, tho exactly fit for a Clowns discourse, seem to a Citizen: and hence _Probus_ observes that 'twas much harder for the _Latines_ to write _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.