themselves are rude and unpolisht: And this proves that they
scandalously err, who make their Shepherds appear polite and elegant;
nor can I imagine what _Veratus_ {33} who makes so much ado about the
polite manners of the _Arcadian_ Shepherds, would say to _Polybius_
who tells us that _Arcadians_ by reason of the Mountainousness of the
Country and hardness of the weather, are very unsociable and austere.

Now as too much neatness in _Pastoral_ is not to be allow'd, so
rusticity (I do not mean that which _Plato_, in his Third Book of a
Commonwealth, mentions which is but a part of a down right honesty)
but Clownish stupidity, such as _Theophrastus_, in his Character of a
_Rustick_, describes; or that disagreeable unfashionable roughness
which _Horace_ mentions in his Epistle to _Lollius_, must not in my
opinion be endur'd: On this side _Mantuan_ errs extreamly, and is
intolerably absur'd, who makes Shepherds blockishly sottish, and
insufferably rude: And a certain Interpreter blames _Theocritus_ for
the same thing, who in some mens opinion sometimes keeps too close to
the _Clown_, and is rustick and uncouth; But this may be very well
excus'd because the Age in which he sang was not as polite as now.

But that every Part may be suitable to a Shepherd, we must consult
unstain'd, uncorrupted Nature; so that the manners might not be too
Clownish nor too Caurtly: And this mean may be easily observed if the
manners of our Shepherds be represented according to the _Genius_ of
the _golden Age_, in which, if _Guarinus_ may be believ'd {34}, every
man follow'd that employment: And _Nannius_ in the Preface to his
Comments on _Virgil's_ _Bucolicks_ is of the same opinion, for he
requires that the manners might represent the Golden Age: and this was
the reason that _Virgil_ himself in his _Pollio_ describes that Age,
which he knew very well was proper to _Bucolicks_: For in the whole