best game, and be counted cunningest. All this I do agree vnto, for no
doubt the shepheards life was the first example of honest felowship, their
trade the first art of lawfull acquisition or purchase, for at those daies
robbery was a manner of purchase. So saith _Aristotle_ in his bookes of
the Politiques, and that pasturage was before tillage, or fishing or
fowling, or any other predatory art or cheuisance. And all this may be
true, for before there was a shepheard keeper of his owne, or of some
other bodies flocke, there was none owner in the world, quick cattel being
the first property of any forreine possession. I say forreine, because
alway men claimed property in their apparell and armour, and other like
things made by their owne trauel and industry, nor thereby was there yet
any good towne or city or Kings palace, where pageants and pompes might be
shewed by Comedies or Tragedies. But for all this, I do deny that the
_Eglogue_ should be the first and most auncient forme of artificiall
Poesie, being perswaded that the Poet deuised the _Eglogue_ long after the
other _drammatick_ poems, not of purpose to counterfait or represent the
rusticall manner of loues and communication: but vnder the vaile of homely
persons, and in rude speeches to insinuate and glaunce at greater matters,
and such as perchance had not bene safe to haue beene disclosed in any
other sort, which may be perceiued by the Eglogues of _Virgill_, in which
are treated by figure matters of greater importance then the loues of
_Titirus_ and _Corydon_. These Eglogues came after to containe and enforme
morall discipline, for the amendment of mans behauiour, as be those of
_Mantuan_ and other moderne Poets.




_CHAP. XIX._