Life of Pleasure; contrary to the usual Method. For when a Citizen or
Person in Business divert's himself in the Country, 'tis not from seeing
the Swains employ'd or at Labour; he visits the Country for the easy
and agreeable Retiredness of it; and I believe the Pleasure of seeing
a Shepherd folding his Sheep, proceeds from the Prospect of Evening, of
the Woods and Fields, and from the Innocence we conceive in the Sheep,
and the like; not from the Action of the Shepherd folding them. So of
Reapers, we conceive 'em filling the following Year with Plenty; We
have, while we see 'em, the Thought of Fulness, and the time when every
thing is brought to Perfection; and these, and the like Thoughts, rather
raise the Delight of seeing those particular Labours, than the Actions
themselves. For we see, that if we behold Sheep, or the like, in a City,
tho' Countrymen are ordering them, we have no such Delight; because
there the Silence of Evening, the Prospect of Fields, &c. are not added.

I would therefore omit the Labour of Shepherds, if I could invent a Life
more agreeable; but the latter must be form'd from a Man's Imagination,
the former from Observation; and _Virgil_ could draw that almost as well
as _Theocritus_. I wonder the Writers of Pastoral should be so fond
of showing their Shepherds Beating Their Ronts, or Scolding With each
other, or the like; when they might describe 'em sleeping upon Violets;
plaiting rosy Chaplets by a lovely Rivulet; getting _Strawberries_ for a
Lass, &c.

'Tis observable, that no Tragedy can be well constituted without a
mixture of Love; and even _Shakespear_, (who seem's to have had so
little of the Soft or Tender in his Genius) was obliged to have some
recourse to that Passion, in forming his most regular Tragedy; I mean
Othello. Not that an Hero should be soften'd, much less drawn in his
most degenerate Hours, when he is in Love. For, methinks, the French