he thinks they observ'd. Facetious Head! (_Works_, Oxford,
1933, pp. 51-52. The Peroy Reprints, No. XII)

The influence of Rapin on the development of the pastoral,
nevertheless, was salutary. Finding the genre vitiated with wit,
extravagance, and artificiality, he attempted to strip it of these
Renaissance excrescencies and restore it to its pristine purity by
direct reference to the Ancients--Virgil, in particular. Though Rapin
does not have the psychological insight into the esthetic principles
of the genre equal to that recently exhibited by William Empson or
even to that expressed by Fontenelle, he does understand the
intrinsic appeal of the pastoral which has enabled it to survive, and
often to flourish, through the centuries in painting, music, and
poetry. Perhaps his most explicit expression of this appreciation is
made while he is discussing Horace's statement that the muses love
the country:
And to speak from the very bottome of my heart... methinks he
is much more happy in a Wood, that at ease contemplates this
universe, as his own, and in it, the Sun and Stars, the
pleasing Meadows, shady Groves, green Banks, stately Trees,
flowing Springs, and the wanton windings of a River, fit
objects for quiet innocence, than he that with Fire and Sword
disturbs the World, and measures his possessions by the wast
that lys about him (p. 4).

René Rapin (1621-1687), in spite of his duties as a Jesuit priest and
disputes with the Jansenists, became one of the most widely read men
of his time and carried on the celebrated discussions about the
Ancients with Maimbourg and Vavasseur. His _chef-d'oeuvre_ without
contradiction is _Hortorum libri IV_. Like Virgil, Spenser, Pope, and