of an
inferior rank, such as the Writers of Bucolicks_. _Sincerus_, as
_Minturnus_ quotes him, is of the same mind, for thus he delivers his
opinion concerning _Epick Verse_: _The matters about which these
numbers may be employed is various; either mean and low, as in
Pastorals, great and lofty, as when {19} the Subject is Divine Things,
or Heroick Actions, or of a middle rank, as when we use them to
deliver precepts in:_ And this likewise he signifys before, where he
sets down three sorts of _Epicks_: _one of which, says he, is divine,
and the most excellent by much in all Poetry_; the _other the lowest
but most pure, in which Theocritus excelled, which indeed shews
nothing of Poetry beside the bare numbers_: These points being thus
settled, the remaining difficultys will be more easily dispatched.

For as in _Dramatick_ Poetry the Dignity and meanness of the
_Persons_ represented make two different _Species of imitation_ the
one _Tragick_, which agrees to none but great and Illustrious persons,
the other _Comick_, which suits with common and gentile humors: so in
_Epick_ too, there may be reckoned two sorts of _Imitation_, one of
which belongs to _Heroes_, and that makes the _Heroick_; the other to
_Rusticks_ and _Sheapards_ and that constitutes the _Pastoral_, now as
a _Picture_ imitates the Features of the face, so _Poetry_ doth
action, and tis not a representation of the Person but the Action.

From all which we may gather this definition of Pastoral: _It is the
imitation of the Action of a Sheapard, or of one taken under that
Character_: Thus _Virgil's Gallus_, tho not really a _Sheapard_, for
he was a man of great quality in _Rome_, yet belongs to _Pastoral_,
because he is represented like a Sheapard: hence the Poet:

{20} The Goatherd and the heavy Heardsmen came,
And ask't what rais'd the deadly Flame.

The _Scene_ lys amongst Sheapards, the _Swains_ are brought in, the
_Herdsmen_ come to see his misery, and the fiction is suited to the
real condition of a _Sheapard_; the same is to be said for his
_Silenus_, who tho he seems lofty, and to sound to loud for an oaten
reed, yet since what he sings he sings to _Sheapards_, and suits his
Subject to their apprehensions, his is to be acknowledged _Pastoral_.
This rule we must stick to, that we might infallibly discern what is
stricktly _Pastoral_ in _Virgil_ and _Theocritus_, and what not: for
in _Theocritus_ there are some more lofty thoughts which not havi