rings
The Sheapards Dance, whilst sweet _Amyntas_ sings;
Thus first the new found Pipe was tun'd to Love,
And Plough-men taught their Sweet hearts to the Grove,

Thus the _Fescennine_ jests when they sang harvest-home, and then too
the Grape gatherers and Reapers Songs began, an elegant example of
which we have in the Tenth _Idyllium_ of _Theocritus_.

From this birth, as it were, of _Poetry_, Verse began to grow up to
greater matters; For from the common discourse of _Plough-men_ and
_Sheapards_, first _Comedy_, that Mistress of a private Life, next
_Tragedy_, and then _Epick Poetry_ which is lofty and _Heroical_
arrose, This _Maximus Tyrius_ confirms in his Twenty first
dissetation, where he tells us that Plough-men just comeing from their
work, and scarce cleansed from the filth of their employment, did use
to flurt out some sudden and _extempore_ Catches; and from this
beginning Plays were produc'd and the Stage erected: Thus {10} much
concerning the _Antiquity_, next of the _Original_ of this sort.

About this Learned men cannot agree, for who was the first Author, is
not sufficiently understood; _Donatus_, tis true, tells us tis proper
to the Golden Age, and therefore must needs be the product of that
happy time: but who was the Author, where, what time it was first
invented hath been a great Controversy, and not yet sufficiently
determined: _Epicharmus_ one of _Pythagoras_ his School, in his
*alkyoni* mentions one _Diomus_ a _Sicilian_, who, if we believe
_Athaenaeus_ was the first that wrote _Pastorals: those that fed Cattle
had a peculiar kind of Poetry, call'd Bucolicks, of which Dotimus a
Sicilian was inventer:_

_Diodorus Siculus_ *en tois mythologoumenois*, seems to make
_Daphnis_ the son of _Mercury_ and a certain _Nymph_, to be the
Author; and agreeable to this, _Theon_ an old _scholiast_ on
_Theocritus_, in his notes upon the first _Idyllium_ mentioning
_Daphnis_, adds, _he was the author of Bucolicks_, and _Theocritus
himself_ calls him _the Muses Darling_: and to this Opinion of
_Diodorus Siculus Polydore Virgil_ readily assents.

But _Mnaseas_ of _Patara_ in a discourse of his concerning _Europa_,
speaks thus of a Son of _Pan_ the God of Sheapards: _Panis Filium
Bubulcum a quo & Bucolice canere:_ Now Whether _Mnaseas_ by that
_Bubulcum_, means only a _Herds-man_, or one skilled in _Bucolicks_,
is uncertain; but if _Valla's_ {11} judgment be good, tis to be taken
of the latter: yet _AElian