In "_The Third_ Part," when he begins to "lay down" his _Rules for
writing_ Pastorals," he declares:
Yet in this difficulty I will follow _Aristotle's_ Example, who
being to lay down Rules concerning _Epicks_, propos'd _Homer_
as a Pattern, from whom he deduc'd the whole Art; So I will
gather from _Theocritus_ and _Virgil_, those Fathers of
_Pastoral_, what I shall deliver on this account (p. 52).

These passages represent the apogee of the neoclassical criticism of
pastoral poetry. No other critic who wrote on the pastoral depends so
completely on the authority of the classical critics and poets. As a
matter of fact, Rapin himself is not so absolute later. In the
section of the _Réflexions_ on the pastoral, he merely states that
the best models are Theocritus and Virgil. In short, one may say
that in the "Treatise" the influence of the Ancients is dominant; in
the _Réflexions_, "good _Sense_."

Reduced to its simplest terms, Rapin's theory is Virgilian. When
deducing his theory from the works of Theocritus and Virgil, his
preference is almost without exception for Virgil. Finding Virgil's
eclogues refined and elegant, Rapin, with a suggestion from Donatus
(p. 10 and p. 14), concludes that the pastoral "belongs properly to
the _Golden Age_" (p. 37)--"that blessed time, when Sincerity and
Innocence, Peace, Ease, and Plenty inhabited the Plains" (p. 5).
Here, then, is the immediate source of the Golden Age eclogue, which,
being transferred to England and popularised by Pope, flourished
until the time of Dr. Johnson and Joseph Warton.

In France the most prominent opponent to the theory formulated by
Rapin is Fontenelle. In his "Discours sur la Nature de l'Eglogue"