h Language, no one ever
had a Mind so well form'd by Nature for Pleasurable Writing, as Spencer.
Yet as he wrote his Pastorals when very Young, this does not appear so
much from them, as from his Fairy Queen; thro' which, (like Ovid, in his
Metamorphoses) he has perpetually recourse to Pastoral. Especially in
his Second Book; in which there are more pleasurable Pastoral Images in
every eight Lines, than in all his Pastorals. We have Knights basking in
the Sun by a pleasant Stream, rambling among the Shepherdesses, entering
delightful Groves surrounded with Trees, or the like, almost in every
Stanza; but thro' all his Pastorals, we have not half a dozen beautiful
Images. 'Tis therefore the Pastoral Language that support's 'em, which
he took excessive pains about.

CHAP. III.

_Of Pastoral Descriptions. And what Authors have the finest_.

Of Images are form'd Descriptions, as by a Combination of Thoughts a
Speech is composed. And a Description is good or bad, chiefly as the
Images or Circumstances are judiciously, or otherwise, chosen; and
artfully put together.

As to the putting them together, I shall only observe, that in
Descriptions of the Heat of Love, not in Pastoral, but in such Pieces
as Sapho's, or the like, the Circumstances should be couch'd extreamly
close; in Epick Poetry the Circumstances should be somewhat less closely
heap'd together; and that Pastoral requires 'em the most diffuse of any;
being of a Nature extreamly calm and sedate.

Hence we may learn what Length Pastoral will admit of in it's
Descriptions. And certain it is, that as we are easily wearied by a cold
Speech, so are we by a cold Description, unless very concise.

But as those Poets whose Minds have delighted in Pastoral Images have
always been Men of Pleasurable Fancies, and who never would bring their
Minds under the Regulation of Art; all who have touch'd Pastoral the
finest have egregiously offended in this Particular. The only Writers, I
think, who have ever had Genius's form'd for Pastoral Images, are _Ovid_
and _Spencer_; which appear's from the _Metamorphoses_ of the first, and
the _Fairy-Queen_ of the latter. As for _Theocritus_, he seem's to me
to be better in the Pastoral Thought than Image; and as I rank together
_Ovid_ and _Spencer_, so I put _Theocritus_ in the same Class with
_Otway_. And I think any one of these Four, if he had form'd his Mind
aright by Art, (that is, had either thoroughly understood Criticism