Rura mihi et rigui placeant in vallibus amnes,
Flumina amem, sylvasque, inglorius!--VIRG.
These Pastorals were written at the age of sixteen, and then passed
through the hands of Mr. Walsh, Mr. Wycherley, G. Granville, afterwards
Lord Lansdowne, Sir William Trumbull, Dr. Garth, Lord Halifax, Lord
Somers, Mr. Mainwaring, and others. All these gave our author the
greatest encouragement, and particularly Mr. Walsh, whom Mr. Dryden, in
his postscript to Virgil, calls the best critic of his age. "The
author," says he, "seems to have a particular genius for this kind of
poetry, and a judgment that much exceeds his years. He has taken very
freely from the ancients. But what he has mixed of his own with theirs
is no way inferior to what he has taken from them. It is not flattery at
all to say that Virgil had written nothing so good at his age. His
preface is very judicious and learned." Letter to Mr. Wycherley, Ap.
1705. The Lord Lansdowne, about the same time, mentioning the youth of
our poet, says, in a printed letter of the character of Mr. Wycherley,
that "if he goes on as he hath begun in the pastoral way, as Virgil
first tried his strength, we may hope to see English poetry vie with the
Roman." Notwithstanding the early time of their production, the author
esteemed these as the most correct in the versification, and musical in
the numbers, of all his works. The reason for his labouring them into so
much softness, was, doubtless, that this sort of poetry derives almost
its whole beauty from a natural ease of thought and smoothness of verse:
whereas that of most other kinds consist in the strength and fulness of
both. In a letter of his to Mr. Walsh about this time, we find an
enumeration of several niceties in versification, which perhaps have
never been strictly observed in any English poem, except in these
Pastorals. They were not printed till 1709.--POPE.
The sycophancy of A. Philips, who had prejudiced Mr. Addison against
Pope, occasioned those papers[1] in the Guardian, written by the latter,
in which there is an ironical preference given to the Pastorals of
Philips above his own, in order to support the profound judgment of
those who could not distinguish between the rural and the rustic, and on
that account condemned the Pastorals of Pope for wanting simplicity.
These papers were sent by an unknown hand to Steele, and the irony
escaping him, he communicated them to Mr. Pope, declaring he would never
publish any paper where one of the club was complimented at the expense
of another. Pope told him he was too delicate, and insisted that the
papers should be published in the Guardian. They were so. And the
pleasantry escaped all but Addison, who, taking Pope aside,[2] said to
him in his agreeable manner, "You have put your friends here in a very
ridiculous light, as will be seen when it is understood, as it soon must
be, that you were only laughing at the admirers of Philips." But this
ill conduct of Philips occasioned a more open ridicule of his Pastorals
in the mock poem called the Shepherd's Week, written by Gay. But though
more open, the object of it was ill understood[3] by those who were
strangers to the quarrel. These mistook the Shepherd's Week for a
burlesque of Virgil's Pastorals. How far this goes towards a vindication
of Philips's simple painting, let others judge.--WARBURTON.
In 1704 Pope wrote his Pastorals, which were shown to the poets and
critics of that time. As they well deserved, they were read with
admiration, and many praises were bestowed upon them and upon the
preface, which is both elegant and learned in a high degree. They were,
however, not published till five years afterwards. Cowley, Milton, and
Pope are distinguished among the English poets by the early exertion of
their powers; but the works of Cowley alone were published in his
childhood, and, therefore, of him only can it be certain that his
juvenile performances received no improvement from his maturer studies.
The Pastorals were at last printed [1709] in Tonson's Miscellany, in a
volume which began with the Pastorals of Philips, and ended with those
of Pope. It seems natural for a young poet to initiate himself by
pastorals, which, not professing to imitate real life, require no
experience, and exhibiting only the simple operation of unmingled
passions, admit no subtle reasoning or deep inquiry. Pope's Pastorals
are not, however, composed but with close thought; they have reference
to the time of the day, the seasons of the year, and the periods of
human life. The last, that which turns the attention upon age and death,
was the author's favourite. To tell of disappointment and misery, to
thicken the darkness of futurity, and perplex the labyrinth of
uncertainty, has been always a delicious employment of the poets. His
preference was probably just. I wish, however, that his fondness had not
overlooked the line in which the _Zephyrs_ are made _to lament in
silence_. To charge these pastorals with want of invention is to require
what was never intended. The imitations are so ambitiously frequent that
the writer evidently means rather to show his literature than his wit.
It is surely sufficient for an author of sixteen, not only to be able to
copy the poems of antiquity with judicious selection, but to have
obtained sufficient power of language and skill in metre to exhibit a
series of versification which had in English poetry no precedent, nor
has since had an imitation.--JOHNSON.
It is somewhat strange that in the pastorals of a young poet there
should not be found a single rural image that is new; but this, I am
afraid, is the case in the Pastorals before us. The ideas of Theocritus,
Virgil, and Spenser are, indeed, here exhibited in language equally
mellifluous and pure; but the descriptions and sentiments are trite and
common. To this assertion, formerly made, Dr. Johnson answered, "that no
invention was intended." He, therefore, allows the fact and the charge.
It is a confession of the very fault imputed to them. There _ought_ to
have been invention. It has been my fortune from my way of life,[4] to
have seen many compositions of youths of sixteen years old, far beyond
these Pastorals in point of genius and imagination, though not perhaps
of correctness. Their excellence, indeed, might be owing to having had
such a predecessor as Pope.[5] A mixture of British and Grecian ideas
may justly be deemed a blemish in these Pastorals, and propriety is
certainly violated when he couples Pactolus with Thames, and Windsor
with Hybla.[6] Complaints of immoderate heat, and wishes to be conveyed
to cooling caverns, when uttered by the inhabitants of Greece, have a
decorum and consistency, which they totally lose in the character of a
British Shepherd,[7] and, Theocrites, during the ardors of Sirius, must
have heard the murmurings of a brook, and the whispers of a pine, with
more home-felt pleasure than Pope could possibly experience upon the
same occasion. Pope himself informs us, in a note, that he judiciously
omitted the following verse: