Allan Ramsay. [A biography.] - National Library of Scotland

go FAMOUS SCOTS
Virgil precluded in antiquity all imitation, until the weak
productions of Nemesian and Calphurnius, in the Brazen
Age of Latin literature,' proceeds to say :
' At the revival
of learning in Italy it was soon discovered that a
dialogue of imaginary swains might be composed with
litde difficulty, because the conversation of shepherds
excludes profound or refined sentiment.' Rapin, in his
De Carmine Fastorali, observes :
' 'Tis hard to give rules
for that in which there have been none already given.
Yet in this difficulty I will follow Aristotle's example,
who, being to lay down rules concerning epics, proposed
Homer as a pattern, from whom he deduced the whole
art. So will I gather from Theocritus and Virgil, those
fathers of pastoral, what I deliver on this account, their
practice being rules in itself.' And Pope, in his Discourse
on Pastoral Poetry^ says :
' Since the instructions given
for any art are to be delivered as that art is in perfection,
they must of necessity be derived from those in whom it
is acknowledged so to be. It is therefore from the
practice of Theocritus and Virgil (the only undisputed
authors of pastoral) that the critics have drawn the foregoing
notions concerning it.' And Boileau, in his Art
Poetique, after cautioning writers of pastoral against the
introduction of bombast splendour or pomp on the one
hand, and the use of low and mean language on the
other, making shepherds converse comme on park au
village^ observes that ' the path betw^een the two extremes
is very difficult ' ; while Dryden, in his preface to Virgil's
Pastorals^ defines pastoral to be 'the imitation of a
shepherd considered under that character.' Finally,
to quote Dr. Johnson once more, he remarks, in his Lives
of the PoetSj ' truth and exactness of imitation, to show