NUMBER XVI. I sat me down to watch upon a bank Till fancy had her fill. Milton. O may the muse that loves to grieve, In Maro's lays that murmur still! Langhorne. In no species of poetry has imitation been, carried on with greater servility than, in what is termed the Eclogue; yet it might readily be supposed that he who was alive to the beauties of rural imagery; who possessed a just taste in selecting the more striking and pictoresque features of the objects around him, would find in the inexhaustible stores of nature ample materials for decoration, while incidents of sufficient simplicity and interest, neither too coarse on the one hand, nor too refined on the other, adapted to the country and tinged with national manners and customs, might with no great difficulty be drawn from fact, or arranged by the fancy of the poet. Such combinations, however, under the epithet of pastoral, have not frequently occurred, owing, I conceive, to the mistaken idea that one peculiar form, style and manner, a tissue of hacknied scenery and sentiment, cannot with propriety be deviated from. Under such a preposterous conception genius must expire, a languid monotony pervade every effort, and the incongruity of the imagery and incident excite nothing but contempt. Theocritus, the father of pastoral poetry, has done little more than paint the rich and romantic landscape of Sicily, the language and occupations of its rustic inhabitants; a beautiful and original picture and drawn from the very bosom of simplicity and truth; and had succeeding poets copied him in this respect, and, instead of absurdly introducing the costume and scenery of Sicily, given a faithful representation of their own climate and rural character, our pastorals would not be the insipid things we are now, in general, obliged to consider them, but accurate imitations of nature herself, sketched with a free and liberal pencil, and glowing with appropriate charms. Unfortunately, however, for those few authors who possess some originality in pastoral composition, the professed critics in this department, with the exception of one or two, have exclusively and perversely dwelt and commented upon mere copyists, to the utter neglect of poets who might justly aspire to contest the palm of excellence with the grecian. In most of our dissertations on pastoral poetry, after due encomium on the merits of the Sicilian bard, few authors save Virgil, Spenser, Pope, Gay and Phillips are noticed, all, except the second, translators, imitators or parodists rather than original writers in this branch of poetry. If rural life no longer present us with shepherds. singing and piping for a bowl or a crook, why persist, in violation of all probability, to introduce such characters? If pastoral cannot exist without them, let us cease to compose it, for to Theocritus these personages were objects of hourly observation, and the peasants of Sicily a kind of Improvisatori. I am persuaded, however, that simplicity in diction and sentiment, a happy choice of rural imagery, such incidents and circumstances as may even now occur in the country, with interlocutors equally removed from vulgarity or considerable refinement, are all that are essential to success.* Upon this plan the celebrated Gesner has written his Idyllia, compositions which have secured him immortality and placed him on a level with the Grecian. By many indeed, and upon no trifling grounds, he is preferred, having with much felicity assumed a medium between the rusticity of Theocritus, and the too refined and luxuriant imagination of Bion and Moschus, preserving at the same time the natural painting of the Sicilian, with the pathetic touches and exquisite sensibility of the contemporary bards. Since the first edition of these essays Mr. Southey has published six English Eclogues; these are avowedly written upon a plan similar to that which I have taken much pains to recommend in this sketch. In some of these pieces I think he has succeeded well. I would particularly distinguish for their simplicity and beauty the "Old Mansion House," "The Witch," and "The Ruined Cottage." The "Grandmother's Tale" appears to me to have too much of the horrid in it for this species of poetry. One of the most harmonious and beautifully plaintive passages perhaps in the whole compass of grecian poetry may be drawn from the Epitaph on Bion by Moschus; the comparison between vegetative and human life, which, though in some measure foreign to the purport of this paper, I cannot avoid indulging myself and my readers in quoting, with the addition of a couple of versions and one or two of the most happy imitations; they cannot fail of being acceptable to feeling and to taste. Αι, αι, ται, μαλαχαι μεν επαν καλα καπον ολωνται, Η τα χλωρα σελινα, το 7' ευθαλες υλον ανηθον, Υσερον αν ζωοντι, και εις έξος αλλο φύονζι Αμμες δύο μεγαλοι και καρτεροι η σοφοι άνδρες, Οππότε πρώτα θανωμες ανακοοι εν χθονι κοιλα Ενδομές εν μαλα μακρον αζερμονα υηγρέζον ύπνον. Though fade crisp anise, and the parsley's green, |