n his second Book _de Poeta_ declares against
this opinion: But as a glorious _Heroick_ action must be the Subject
of an _Heroick_ Poem, so a _Pastoral_ action of a _Pastoral_; at least
it must be so turn'd and wrought, that it might appear to be the
action of a _Shepherd_; which caution is very necessary to be
observ'd, to clear a great many difficulties in this matter: for tho
as the Interpreters assure us; most of _Virgils_ Eclogues are about
the Civil war, planting Colonys, the murder of the Emperor, and the
like, which in themselves are too great and too lofty for humble
_Pastoral_ to reach, yet because they are accomodated to the Genius of
Shepherds, may be the Subject of an _Eclogue_, for that sometimes will
admit of Gods and Heroes so they appear like, and are shrouded under
the Persons of Shepherds: But as for these matters which neither
really are, nor are so wrought as to seem the actions of Shepherds,
such are in _Moschus's_ _Europa_, _Theocritus's_ _Epithalamium of
Helen_, and _Virgil's_ _Pollio_, to declare my opinion freely, I
cannot think them to be fit Subjects for _Bucolicks_: And upon this
account I suppose 'tis that _Servius_ in his {27} Comments on
_Virgil's_ _Bucoliks_ reckons only seven of _Virgil's_ ten Eclogues,
and onely ten of _Theocritus's_ thirty, to be pure Pastorals, and
_Salmasius_ upon _Solinus_ says, that _amongst Theocritus's_ _Poems
there are some which you may call what you please Beside Pastorals_:
and _Heinsius_ in his _Scholia_ upon _Theocritus_ will allow but Ten
of his _Idylliums_ to be _Bucoliks_, 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 11.
for all the rest are deficient either in matter or form, and from this
number of pure pastoral _Idylliums_ I am apt to think, that
_Theocritus_ seems to have made that Pipe, on which he tun'd his
_Pastorals_ and which he consecrated to _Pan_ of ten Reeds, as
_Salmasius_ in his notes on _Theocritus's_ Pipe hath learnedly
observed: _in which two Verses always make one Reed of the Pipe,
therefore all are so unequal, like the unequal Reeds of a Pipe, that
if you put two equals together which make one Reed, the whole
inequality consists in ten pairs_; when in the common Pipes there were
usually no more then seven Reeds, and this the less curious observers
have heedlessly past by.

Some are of opinion that whatever is done in the Country, and in one
word, every thing that hath nought of the City in it may be treated of
in _Pastorals_; and that the discourse o