OBSERVATIONS, &c.

TH

HE genius of the paftoral, as well as of every other respectable fpecies of poe try, had its origin in the Eaft, and from thence

was tranfplanted by the mufes of Greece; but whether from the continent of the leffer Afia, or from Egypt, which, about the æra of the Grecian paftoral, was the hospitable nurse of letters, it is not easy to determine. From the fubjects, and the manner of Theocritus, one would incline to the latter opinion, while the hiftory of Bion is in favour of the former.

HOWEVER, though it fhould ftill remain a doubt through what channel the paftoral travelled weftward, there is not the leaft fhadow

of

of uncertainty concerning its Oriental Origin.

IN thofe ages, which, guided by facred chronology, from a comparative view of time, we call the early ages, it appears from the moft authentic hiftorians that the chiefs of the people employed themselves in rural exercises, and that aftronomers and legiflators were at the fame time thepherds. Thus Strabo informs us that the hiftory of the creation was communicated to the Egyptians by a Chaldean fhepherd.

From thefe circumftances it is evident not only that such shepherds were capable of all the dignity and elegance peculiar to poetry, but that whatever poetry they attempted would be of the paftoral kind; would take its fubjects from thofe fcenes of rural fimplicity in which they were converfant, and, as it was the off

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fpring

spring of Harmony and Nature, would employ the powers it derived from the former to celebrate the beauty and benevolence of the latter

ACCORDINGLY we find that the most ancient poems treat of agriculture, aftronomy, and other objects within the rural and natural fyftems.

WHAT constitutes the difference between the Georgic and the Paftoral is love and the colloquial, or dramatic form of compofition peculiar to the latter: this form of compofition is fometimes difpensed with, and love and rural imagery alone are thought fufficient to diftinguish the pastoral. The tender passion, however, feems to be effential to this fpecies of poetry, and is hardly ever excluded from those pieces that were intended to come under this denomination even in thofe eclogues of the Ame

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bean kind, whofe only purport is a trial of skill between contending thepherds, love has its ufual fhare, and the praises of their respective miftreffes are the general fubjects of the competitors.

Ir is to be lamented that scarce any oriental compofitions of this kind have furvived the ravages of ignorance, tyranny and time; we cannot doubt that many fuch have been extant, poffibly as far down as that fatal period, never to be mentioned in the world of letters without horrour, when the glorious monuments of human ingenuity perished in the alhes of the Alexandrian library.

THOSE ingenious Greeks whom we call the parents of paftoral poetry were, probably, no more than imitators of imitators, that derived their harmony from higher and remoter four

ces,