in it, rather than either the life of the Golden Age or true rustic
existence places him on the side of Addison, Tickell, Ambrose Philips,
and Fontenelle (indeed, his statement is a paraphrase of Fontenelle's),
and in opposition to the school of Rapin, Pope, and Gay, who argued for
a portrait of the Golden Age. Both schools campaigned for a simplicity
removed from realistic rusticity (which they detected in Spenser and
Theocritus) and refinement (as in Virgil's eclogues); but to one group
the term meant the innocence of those remote from academic learning and
social sophistication, and to the other the refined simplicity of an
age when all men--including kings and philosophers--were shepherds. With
reservations, the first group tended to prefer Theocritus and Spenser;
and the second, Virgil. Hence, too, the first group approved of Philips'
efforts to create a fresh and simple pastoral manner. As a poet, Purney
moved sharply away from the classical pastoral by curiously blending an
entirely original subject matter with a sentimentalized realism and a
naive, diffuse expression; and as a critic he pointed in the direction
of Shenstone and Allan Ramsay by emphasizing the tender, admitting
the use of earthy realism in the manner of Gay, and recommending for
pastoral such "inimitably pretty and delightful" tales as _The Two
Children in the Wood_. Had his contemporaries read the treatise,
how they would have been amused to contemplate the serious literary
treatment of chapbook narratives, despite Addison's praise of this
ballad.

In his usual nervous manner, the critic did not confine himself to his
topic, but touched on a number of significant peripheral subjects. He
showed the virtue of concrete and specific imagery at a time when most
poets sought the sanctuary of abstractions and universals; commented
cogently on the styles of Chaucer, Spenser, and Shakespeare; anticipated
the later doctrine of the power of the incomplete and the obscure to