PREFACE LIFE OF VIRGIL INTRODUCTION TO THE ECLOGUES ECLOGUES. ON THE LATER BUCOLIC POETS OF ROME INTRODUCTION TO THE GEORGICS GEORGICS. ON THE LATER DIDACTIC POETS OF ROME. INDEX ADDITIONS AND CORRECTIONS THE history of Pastoral Poetry shows us how easily th species of composition may pass into the most artific may have been its earliest beginnings-a question' w belong as much to speculation as to historical inquiryto have been recognized or cultivated as a distinct branch mind had passed its great climacteric, and the centre of had been transferred from Athens to Alexandria. Yet into the world by Theocritus, if modern criticism is rigi him to have been its real originator, it exhibits little of and want of vitality which might have been expected to child of old age. It is a vigorous representation of she its simple habits, its coarse humour, its passionate suscep grotesque superstition. But it was not long to retail character of healthy, dramatic energy. Already in th Syracuse it began to show signs of failing power: and on to Rome, these were at once developed into the unmistake of premature constitutional decay. What it became aft racteristically described in one of Johnson's sarcastic se the revival of learning in Italy," he says in his Life of Am "it was soon discovered that a dialogue of imaginary st composed with little difficulty: because the conversatio excludes profound or refined sentiment: and for images a Satyrs and Fauns, and Naiads and Dryads, were always v woods, and meadows, and hills, and rivers supplied vari which, having a natural power to soothe the mind, did n it." Arcadia, more famous among the ancients, at least 1 1 The theories of its origin resolve themselves into speculations like (5. 1382 foll.), as Heyne remarks in his treatise " De Carmine Bucolic edition. It is easy to see that music is a natural solace for a shepl whistling of the wind through the reeds would suggest the use of the re 2 The names of the supposed pastoral poets who preceded Theocritu Heyne's treatise, or in the Dictionary of Biography, art. Theocritus. criticism on their existence or claims to the title, see Näke's Opuscu foll. 3 Lives of the Poets, Cunningham's edition, vol. iii. pp. 262, 3. |