not, as we advance into the intellectual world, throw it away among other childish amusements and pastimes, but willingly return to it in any hour of indolence and relaxation. The images of true pastoral have always the power of exciting delight, because the works of nature, from which they are drawn, have always the same order and beauty, aud continue to force themselves upon our thoughts, being at once obvious to the most careless regard, and more than adequate to the strongest reason, and severest contemplation. Our inclination to stillness and tranquillity is seldom much lessened by long knowledge of the busy and tumultuary part of the world. In childhood we turn our thoughts to the country, as to the region of pleasure we recur to it in old age as a port of rest, and perhaps with that secondary and adventitious gladness, which every man seels on reviewing thofe places, or recollecting thofe occurrences, that contributed to his youthsul enjoyments, and bring him back to the prime of lise, when the world was gay with the bloom of novelty, when mirth wantoned at his fide, and hope sparkled before him.

The sense of this universal pleasure has invited numbers without number to try their skill in pastoral performances, in which they have generally succeeded aster the manner of other imitators, transmitting the same images in the same combination from one to another, till he that reads the title of a poem, may guess at the whole series os the composition; nor will a man, after the perusal of thousands of these performances, sind his knowledge enlarged with a singla view of nature not produced before, or his imagination

tion amused with any new application of thofe views to moral purpofes.

The range of pastoral is indeed narrow, for though nature itself, philofophically considered, be inexhaustible, yet its general effects on the eye and on the ear,are unisorm, arid incapable of much variety of description. Poetry cannot dwell upon the minuter distinctions, by which one species differs from another, without departing from that simplicity of grandeur which sills the imagination; nor dissect the latent qualities of things, without losing its general power of gratifying every mind by recalling its conceptions. However, as each age makes some discoveries, and those discoveries are by degrees generally known, as new plants or modes of culture are introduced, and by little and little become common, pastoral might receive, from time to time, small augmentations, and exhibit once.in a century a scene somewhat varied.

But pastoral subjects have been often, like others, taken into the hands of thofe that were not qualified to adorn them, men to whom the face of nature was so little known, that they have drawn it only aster their own imagination, and changed or distorted her seatures, that their portraits might appear something more than servile copies from their predecessors.

Not only the images of rural lise, but the occasions on which they can be properly produced, are sew and general. The state of a man confined to the employments and pleasures of the country, is so, little diversified, and expofed to so sew of thofe accidents which produce perplexities, terrors, and sur6 prises,

prises, in more complicated transactions, that he can be (hewn but seldom in such circumstances as attract curiofity. II is ambition is without policy, and his love without intrigue. He has no complaints to make of his rival, but that he is richer than himsels; nor any disasters to lament, but a cruel mistress, or a bad harvest.

The conviction of the necessity of some new source of pleasure induced Sannazarius to remove the scene from the fields to the sea, to substitute fishermen for shepherds, and derive his sentiments from the piscatory lise; for which he has been censured by succeeding criticks, because the sea is an object of terror, and by no means proper to amuse the mind and lay the passions asleep. Against this objection he might be desended by the established maxim, that the poet has a right to select his images, and is no more obliged to shew the sea in a storm, than the land under an inundation; but may display all the pleasures, and conceal the dangers of the water, as he may lay his shepherd under a shady beech, without giving him an ague, or letting a wild beast loofe upon him.

There are, however, two desects in the piscatory eclogue, which perhaps cannot be supplied. The lea, though in hot countries it is considered by thofe who live, like Sannazarius, upon the coast, as a ]>' ;ce of pleasure and diversion, has notwithstanding much less variety than the land, and therefore will be sooner exhausted by a.descriptive writer. When he has once shewn the sun riling or setting upon it, cuiled its waters with the vernal breeze, rolled the

waves -waves in gentle succession to the shore, and enumerated the fish sporting in the shallows, he has nothing remaining but what is common to all other poetry, the complaint of a nymph for a drowned lover, or the indignation of a fisbertthat his oysters are resused, and Mycon's accepted.

Another obstacle to the general reception of this kind of poetry, is the ignorance of maritime pleasures, in which the greater part of mankind must always Jive. To all the inland inhabitants of every region, the sea is only known as an immense diffusion of waters, over which men pass from one country to another, and in which lise is frequently lost. They have, theresore, no opportunity of tracing in their own thoughts, the descriptions of winding shores, and calm bays, nor can look on the poem in which they are mentioned, with other senfations than on a sea chart, or the metrical geography of Dionyfius.

This desect Sannazarius was hindered from perceiving, by writing in a learned language to readers generally acquainted with the works of nature; but if he had made his attempt in any vulgar tongue, he would soon have discovered how vainly he had endeavoured to make that loved, which was not understood.

I am asraid it will not be found easy to improve the pastorals of antiquity, by any great additions or diversifications. Our descriptions may indeed differ from thole of Virgil, as an English f#om an Italian summer, and, in some respects, as modern from ancient lise; but as nature is in both countries nearly the fame, and as poetry has to do rather with

the the passions of men, which are uniform, than their customs, which are changeable, the-varieties, which time or place can surnish, will be inconsiderable: and I shall endeavour to shew, in the next paper, how little the latter ages have contributed to the improvement of the rustick muse.

Numb. 37. Tuesday, July 24, 1750.

Canto quæ solitus, Ji quando armcnta •vocabat,

Amphion Dircœus. VlRG.

Such strains I sing as once Ampbion play'd,
When listening flocks the powersul call obey'd,

Elphinston.

IN writing or judging of pastoral poetry, neither the authors nor criticks of latter times seem to have paid sufficient regard to the originals left us by antiquity, but have entangled themselves with unnecessary difficulties, by advancing principles, which, having no foundation in the nature of things, are wholly to be rejected from a species of compofition, in which, above all others, mere nature is to be regarded.

It is therefore necessary to enquire aster some more distinct and exact idea of this kind of writing. This may, I think, be easily found in the pastorals of Virgil, from whose opinion it will not appear very safe to depart, if we consider that every advantage of nature, and of fortune, concurred to complete his productions;