of rural life, follow logically. Similarly, since a minutely drawn
description deprives the reader's fancy of its naturally pleasurable
exercise, pastoral descriptions should only set "the Image in the finest
Light." Rapin, on the other hand, had determined the proper length of
descriptions by examining Virgil and Theocritus. For the association of
the pleasure afforded by the pastoral with the natural human delight
in ease, Purney was indebted to the essays on the pastoral in _The
Guardian_ (see no. 22), from which he borrowed extensively for many of
his principles, and to Fontenelle, who constructed his theory of the
pastoral upon the premise that all men are dominated "par une certaine
paresse." By contrast, although Pope adopted Fontenelle's premise, he
tested its validity by relating it to the accepted definition of the
_genre_.

One of Purney's major purposes in the essay was to dignify the pastoral
by demonstrating that it admits all the components generally reserved
for tragedy and the epic. Most critics had considered the pastoral
a minor form and consequently had narrowed their attention to a few
frequently debated questions, mainly the state of rural life to be
depicted and the level of the style to be adopted. All agreed that the
poem should be brief and simple in its fable, characters, and style.
But it was therefore a poetic exercise, no more significant, Purney
complained, than a madrigal. He was intent upon investing the pastoral
with all the major poetic elements--extended, worthy fable; moral;
fully-drawn characters; and appropriate expression. For in his mind the
poem best incorporates one of the only two true styles, the tender, and
therefore warrants a literary status beneath only tragedy and the epic.

Like his critical method, Purney's decision that the pastoral should
depict contemporary rural life divested of what is vulgar and painful