Excerpt from P. Virgilii Maronis Bucolicorum Eclogae Decem: The Bucolicks of Virgil, With an English Translation and Notes Allow above ten or eleven out of the thirty Idyllia of that author to belong to that species of poetry. Those who would have a' pastoral to be entirely conformable to the manners of the golden age, in which nothing is to. Be found but piety, inno cence, and simplicity, will exclude almost all the Idyllia of Theocritus, and Eclogue's of Virgil. The dying groans cf Daphnis, ' in the first I'dyllium, twill be judged too melancholy for the peace and happiness of that state; the witchcraft made use of in the second is inconsistent with piety; in the third, the goatherd wickedly talks of killing himself the railing and gross obscenity in the fifth is contrary to good manners; and the tenth is not a pastoral, because it is a dialogue between two reapers. Thus, if we adhere, strictly to the rules laid down by most of our critics, we shall find, that no more than six out of the eleven first Idyllia of Theocritus are to be admitted into the number. The like objections have been, or may 0 be, ' framed against most of the Eclogues of Vir gil. But there are other critics, who are so far from requiring the purer manners of the golden age in pastoral writings, that nothing Will please them but downright rusticity; They tell us, that herdmen are a rude, unpolished, ignorant set of people: that pastorals are an imitation of the action of a herdma'n, or ofoue represented under that character wherefore any deviation from. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.