r, lest you should think me tedious and censorious.

_Scip._ I have heard that it was a saying of a great poet among the
ancients, that it was a difficult thing to write satires. I consent that
you put some point into your remarks, but not to the drawing of blood.
You may hit lightly, but not wound or kill; for sarcasm, though it make
many laugh, is not good if it mortally wounds one; and if you can please
without it, I shall think you more discreet.

_Berg._ I will take your advice, and I earnestly long for the time when
you will relate your own adventures; for seeing how judiciously you
correct the faults into which I fall in my narrative, I may well expect
that your own will be delivered in a manner equally instructive and
delightful. But to take up the broken thread of my story, I say that in
those hours of silence and solitude, it occurred to me among other
things, that there could be no truth in what I had heard tell of the
life of shepherds--of those, at least, about whom my master's lady used
to read, when I went to her house, in certain books, all treating of
shepherds and shepherdesses; and telling how they passed their whole
life in singing and playing on pipes and rebecks, and other old
fashioned instruments. I remember her reading how the shepherd of
Anfriso sang the praises of the peerless Belisarda, and that there was
not a tree on all the mountains of Arcadia on whose trunk he had not sat
and sung from the moment Sol quitted the arms of Aurora, till he threw
himself into those of Thetis, and that even after black night had spread
its murky wings over the face of the earth, he did not cease his
melodious complaints. I did not forget the shepherd Elicio, more
enamoured than bold, of whom it was said, that without attending to his
own loves or his flock, he entered into others' griefs; nor the great
shepherd Filida, unique painter of a single portrait, who was more
faithful than happy; nor the anguish of Sireno and the remorse of Diana,
and how she thanked God and the sage Felicia, who, with her enchanted
water, undid that maze of entanglements and difficulties. I bethought me
of many other tales of the same sort, but they were not worthy of being
remembered.

The habits and occupations of my masters, and the rest of the shepherds
in that quarter, were very different from those of the shepherds in the
books. If mine sang, it was no tuneful and finely composed strains, but
very rude and vulgar songs, to th