uld be full of plainess and simplicity who would paint or
endeavor to be gawdy when such appearances would be very disagreeable
and offend? _Pontanus_ in this matter hath said very well, _The
Thought must not be to exquisite and witty, the Comparisons obvious
and common, such as the State of Persons and Things require_: Yet tho
too scrupulous a Curiosity in Ornament ought to be rejected, {35} yet
lest the Thought be cold and flat, it must have some quickness of
Passion, as in these.

Cruel _Alexis_ can't my Verses move?
Hast thou no Pitty? I must dye for Love_.

And again,

He neither Gods, nor yet my Verse regards.

The Sense must not be long, copious, and continued, For _Pastoral_ is
weak, and not able to hold out; but of this more when I come to lay
down rules for its Composure: But tho it ought to imitate _Comedy_ in
its common way of discourse, yet it must not chose _old Comedy_ for
its pattern, for that is too impudent, and licentiously abusive: Let
it be free and modest, honest and ingenuous, and that will make it
agreeable to the Golden Age.

Let the Expression be plain and easy, but elegant and neat, and the
purest which the language will afford; _Pontanus_ upon _Virgils_
Bucolicks gives the very same rule, _In Bucolicks the Expression must
be humble, nearer common discourse than otherwise, not very Spirituous
and vivid, yet such as shows life and strength_: Tis certain that
_Virgil_ in his _Bucolicks_ useth the same words which _Tully_ did in
the _Forum_ or the _Senate_; and _Tityrus_ beneath his shady Beech
speaks as pure and good _Latin_ as _Augustus_ in his Palace, as
_Modicius_ in his _Apology_ for _Virgil_ hath excellently observ'd:
{36} This rule, 'tis true; _Theocritus_ hath not so strictly follow'd,
whose Rustick and Pastoral Muse, as _Quintilian_ phraseth it, _not
only is affraid to appear in the_ Forum, _but the City_, and for the
very same thing an _Alexandrian_ flouts the _Syracucusian Weomen_ in
the Fifteenth _Idyllium_ of _Theocritus_, for when they, being then in
the City, spoke the _Dorick_ Dialect, the delicate Citizen could not
endure it, and found fault with their distastful, as he thought,
pronunciation: and his reflection was very smart.

Like Pidgeons you have mouths from Ear to Ear.

So intolerable did that broad way of pronunciation, tho exactly fit
for a Clowns discourse, seem to a Citizen: and hence _Probus_ observes
that 'twas much harder for the _Latines_ to write _