ntirely pastoral, being the complaint of a shepherd obliged to leave
the fields of his infancy, and yield the possession to soldiers and
strangers. Pope says, because it relates to soldiers, it is not
pastoral; but how little of a military cast is seen in it. The soldier
is mentioned, but only as far as was absolutely necessary, and always in
connection with the rural imagery from whence the most exquisite touches
are derived. Pope's pastoral ideas, with the exception of the Messiah,
seem to have been taken from the least interesting and poetic scenes of
the ancient eclogue,--the Wager, the Contest, the Riddle, the alternate
praises of Daphne or Delia, the common-place complaint of the lover, &c.
The more interesting and picturesque subjects were excluded, as not
being properly pastoral according to his definition.--BOWLES.

In saying that Pope would not allow Virgil's first eclogue to be "a true
pastoral," Bowles refers to the paper in the Guardian, where the design
was to laugh at the strict definition which would exclude a poem from
the pastoral class on such frivolous grounds. In the same jesting tone,
Pope asserts that the third eclogue must be set aside, because it
introduces "calumny and railing, which are not proper to a state of
concord," and the eighth, because it has a shepherd "whom an inviting
precipice tempts to self-destruction."]

[Footnote 12: The tenth and twenty-first Idyll here alluded to contain
some of the most exquisite strokes of nature and true poetry anywhere to
be met with, as does the beautiful description of the carving on the
cup, which, indeed is not a cup, but a very large pastoral vessel or
cauldron.--WARTON.]

[Footnote 13: In what does the great father of the pastoral excel all
others? In "simplicity, and nature." I admit with Pope, but more
particularly in one circumstance, which seems to have escaped general
attention, and that circumstance is the picturesque. Pope says he is too
long in his descriptions, particularly of the cup. Was not Pope, a
professed admirer of painting, aware that the description of that cup
contains touches of the most delightful and highly-finished landscape?
The old fisherman, and the broken rock in one scene; in another, the
beautiful contrast of the little boy weaving his rush-work, and so
intent on it, that he forgets the vineyard he was set to guard. We see
him in the foreground of the piece. Then there is his scrip, and the fox
eyeing it askance; the