Here underneath a shade by purling Springs The Sheapards Dance, whilst sweet _Amyntas_ sings; Thus first the new found Pipe was tun'd to Love, And Plough-men taught their Sweet hearts to the Grove,
Thus the _Fescennine_ jests when they sang harvest-home, and then too the Grape gatherers and Reapers Songs began, an elegant example of which we have in the Tenth _Idyllium_ of _Theocritus_.
From this birth, as it were, of _Poetry_, Verse began to grow up to greater matters; For from the common discourse of _Plough-men_ and _Sheapards_, first _Comedy_, that Mistress of a private Life, next _Tragedy_, and then _Epick Poetry_ which is lofty and _Heroical_ arrose, This _Maximus Tyrius_ confirms in his Twenty first dissetation, where he tells us that Plough-men just comeing from their work, and scarce cleansed from the filth of their employment, did use to flurt out some sudden and _extempore_ Catches; and from this beginning Plays were produc'd and the Stage erected: Thus { 10} much concerning the _Antiquity_, next of the _Original_ of this sort.
About this Learned men cannot agree, for who was the first Author, is not sufficiently understood; _Donatus_, tis true, tells us tis proper to the Golden Age, and therefore must needs be the product of that happy time: but who was the Author, where, what time it was first invented hath been a great Controversy, and not yet sufficiently determined: _Epicharmus_ one of _Pythagoras_ his School, in his *alkyoni* mentions one _Diomus_ a _Sicilian_, who, if we believe _Athænæus_ was the first that wrote _Pastorals: those that fed Cattle had a peculiar kind of Poetry, call'd Bucolicks, of which Dotimus a Sicilian was inventer:_
_Diodorus Siculus_ *en tois mythologoumenois*, seems to make _Daphnis_ the son of _Mercury_ and a certain _Nymph_, to be the Author; and agreeable to this, _Theon_ an old _scholiast_ on _Theocritus_, in his notes upon the first _Idyllium_ mentioning _Daphnis_, adds, _he was the author of Bucolicks_, and _Theocritus himself_ calls him _the Muses Darling_: and to this Opinion of _Diodorus Siculus Polydore Virgil_ readily assents.
But _Mnaseas_ of _Patara_ in a discourse of his concerning _Europa_, speaks thus of a Son of _Pan_ the God of Sheapards: _Panis Filium Bubulcum à quo & Bucolice canere:_ Now Whether _Mnaseas_ by that _Bubulcum_, means only a _Herds-man_, or one skilled in _Bucolicks_, is uncertain; but if _Valla's_ { 11} judgment be good, tis to be taken of the latter: yet _Ælian_ was of another mind, for he boldly affirms that _Stesichorus_ called _Himeræus_ was the first, and in the same place adds, that _Daphnis_ the Son of _Mercury_ was the first Subject of _Bucolicks_.