doctrines of the ancients. Taking his cue from the Hobbesian and Lockian
methodology of Addison's papers of the pleasures of the imagination
without delving into Addison's sensational philosophy, Purney outlined
an extensive critical project to investigate (1) "the Nature and
Constitution of the human Mind, and what Pleasures it is capable
of receiving from Poetry"; (2) the best methods of exciting those
pleasures; (3) the rules whereby these methods may be incorporated into
literary form (_Works_, ed. White, p. 48). It is this pattern of thought
that regulates the _Full Enquiry_. Perhaps more than any other poetic
type, the pastoral of the Restoration and the early eighteenth century
was dominated by classical tradition; the verse composed was largely
imitative of the eclogues of Theocritus and Virgil, especially the
latter, and criticism of the form was deduced from their practices or
from an assumption that the true pastoral of antiquity was the product
of the Golden Age. Of this mode of criticism Rapin and Pope were the
leading exemplars. In opposition, Fontenelle, Tickell (if he was the
author of the _Guardian_ essays on the pastoral), and Purney developed
their theories empirically and hence directed the pastoral away from the
classical tradition. (On these two schools see J.E. Congleton, "Theories
of Pastoral Poetry in England, 1684-1717," _SP_, XLI, 1944, pp.
544-575.) Although Purney adopted a modification of Aristotle's critical
divisions into Fable, Character, Sentiment, and Diction, and took
for granted the doctrine of the distinction of _genres_, he otherwise
rejected traditional formulae and critical tenets, and began with the
premise that man is most delighted by the imaginative perception of the
states of life for which he would willingly exchange his own. These are
"the busy, great, or pompous" (depicted in tragedy and the epic) and
"the retir'd, soft, or easy" (depicted in the pastoral). From this
analysis of "the Nature of the Human Mind," the characteristics of the
true pastoral, such as the avoidance of the hardships and vulgarities