To these may be added _sports_, _Jests_, _Gifts_, and _Presents_; but
not _costly_, such are yellow Apples, young stock-Doves, Milk,
Flowers, and the like; all things must appear delightful and easy,
nothing vitious and rough: A perfidious Pimp, a designing Jilt, a
gripeing Usurer, a crafty factious Servant must have no room there,
but every part must be full of the simplicity of the _Golden-Age_, and
of that Candor which was then eminent: for as _Juvenal affirms_

Baseness was a great wonder in that Age;

Sometimes _Funeral-Rites_ are the subject of an _Eclogue_, where the
Shepherds scatter flowers on the Tomb, and sing Rustick Songs in honor
of the Dead: Examples of this kind are left us by _Virgil_ in his
_Daphnis_, and _Bion_ in his _Adonis_, and this hath nothing
disagreeable to a Shepherd: In {26} short whatever, the decorum being
still preserv'd, can be done by a _Sheapard_, may be the Subject of a
_Pastoral_.

Now there may be more kinds of Subjects than _Servius_ or _Donatus_
allow, for they confine us to that Number which _Virgil_ hath made use
of, tho _Minturnus_ in his second Book _de Poetâ_ 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