Pastoral poetry can be defined as an imitation of country life presented with all its possible charms. This definition is accurate, for it puts an immediate end to the dispute that arises between the partisans of the traditional pastoral and those who espouse the modern notion. It suffices not in the least to attach garlands of flowers to a subject which in itself really has nothing to do with the country. It is necessary to show country life itself, embellished only by those graces that is its due.

Pastoral poems are also called eclogues , ἐκλοcγὴ in Greek, signifying a collection of selected compositions in whatever genre they might be presented. It is deemed appropriate to give this name to little poems about country life, assembled in the same volume. Thus one speaks about the eclogues of Virgil , that is, the collection of his little works about country life.

Occasionally they are also referred to as the idylles. Idylle , εἰδύλλιον in Greek, signifying a little image , a painting of the graceful and gentle type.

If there is a difference between the idylls and the eclogues, it is so small that writers often confuse the two. In any event it appears that in practice there is more action and movement in the eclogue than in the idyll, where it is enough to find only images, stories, or sentiments.

It follows from the definition we have given that the purpose or the substance of the eclogue is the serenity of country life that goes with it and follows it. This serenity includes a fitting abundance, a perfect freedom, and a sweet gaiety. It admits of moderated passions which can result in laments, songs, poetic combats, and interesting stories.

Strictly speaking, pastoral art is the painting of the golden age placed within reach of the people and stripped of that marvelous exaggeration with which the poets have endowed their descriptions. It is the reign of liberty, of innocent pleasures, of peace, of those possessions the people feel to be a birthright, whenever their passions allow them a few moments of silence in which to know themselves. In a word, it is the suitable and smiling evocation of a person who has a simple and at the same time delicate heart, who has found the means to recreate for himself that happy century.

When the generous skies were pouring down in abundance all those things that satisfied humans, when the infant world only had for nurture the meals readied through the care of nature.

Everything that happens in the countryside is certainly not worthy of being part of the pastoral poem. The author must select only those things of a pleasing nature. Thus the coarseness, the harsh things, the little details that create only dumb and idle images must be excluded. In a word, all that contributes nothing piquant or sweet to the scene. For an even stronger reason, atrocious and tragic events must not enter into the account. A shepherd who strangles himself at the entry to his sheepfold is definitely not a pastoral spectacle, since in the life of the shepherds the reader must not encounter the degrees of passion that lead to such extremities.

Pastoral poetry could present itself not only in the form of a story but also in every form that poetry drew on as a resource. In these poems are presented people in society animated by their interests and thus by their passions, passions as sweet and innocent as ours. This is true. But these passions can take on the same forms in the hands of poets. The shepherds thus could be portrayed in poetic epics (epiquess) as in Athis de Segrais, in comedies as in the shepherds of Racan, in tragedies, in operas, in elegies, in eclogues, in idylls, in epigrams, in inscriptions, in allegories, in funeral dirges and others, and this be done effectively.

The character of the shepherds can be judged by where they are placed. The fields are always green, the shade is always cool, the air always pure. In like manner, the actors and the actions in the pastoral poem must own a smiling sweetness no matter that their sky is sometimes covered with clouds, if only to vary the scene and have the sheen of the meadows and the woods renewed through the action of several dewy mornings. The poet can also involve his characters in the odd sadness, if only to reawaken the taste for happiness and season the idea of repose.

The shepherds have to be delicate and naïve; that is, in all their undertakings and their speech there must be nothing disagreeable, refined, or too subtle. Yet at the same time they have to show a discernment in address and even in spirit, provided it is in a natural manner.

The shepherds depicted must have contrasting characters, at least in several aspects; for this was so everywhere and so must it appear in art.

They must all be sound morally. For all know that the genius of poetry consists in striking a resemblance between the portrait and the model. Thus, even in the tragedy of Nero, rendered in all its cruelty, there exists evidence of this genius.

Moral goodness is the conformity of conduct with what is or what is meant by the rule and the prevailing model of good behavior. The shepherds must own this second kind of goodness as well as the first. A crook, a certified cheat, an assassin would be out of place in a pastoral poem . A noxious shepherd would be obliged to try blinding himself or hurling himself on rocks, or perhaps, better, do as Alcidor did, jump into the Seine without drowning himself completely.

Although the characters of the shepherds all are about the same at bottom, they are none the less susceptible to a great variation in their expression. From a mere taste for tranquility and innocent pleasures, the poet is able to illicit every passion. It is sufficient only to give them the tone and the register of the pastoral poem and from that moment on the fear, the sadness, the hope, the joy, the love, the friendship, the hate, the jealous, the generosity, the pity - each and all of these taken together - will furnish discreet points of departure on which further diversity can be realized through the assignment of age, sex, place, event, and the like.

From what has already been said about the nature of pastoral poetry , it is easy now to imagine what must be the style of this genre. It must be simple, that is, ordinary language must be use without ostentation, without adornment, without an apparent design to please. It must be gentle: the sweetness is better felt than expressed. There is a certain softness mixed with a delicacy and simplicity, be it in the thoughts, in the turn of phrase, or in the words.

Timarette is gone : The ingrate, despising my sighs and tears, leaves my heart devastated at the mercy of my sorrows. It would be hopeless for me ever to believe that one day she would deign to put an end to my pitiful pangs. But,I love her more than my life and her vision will be before me all my days .

It must be naive:

If you cared to come, oh miraculous beauty, I would give you the pledge of my faith, I would teach you what a nest of turtledoves is like, for it is said they are faithful, like.me .

It is elegant in its descriptions.

Attired in its most beautiful dress, the ruby dawn announces to the universe the return of the sun, and before its chariot his feathery servants open the brilliant gates of the east. From the moment my shepherd left these beautiful surrounds, the sky had no further light nor transparency for my eyes .

The shepherds have the turns of phrase that are familiar, especially those comparisons they employ when they lack the appropriate expressions.

As in height this column exceeds that of the fern, so in beauty does Aramynte surpass that of our shepherds.

Symmetries

He calls me his sister, I call him my brother. We eat the same bread under the roof of my father. And while it will be so, we will live thus; all that I want, he will want also .

Frequent repetitions

Pan a soin des brebis, Pan a soin des pasteurs, Et Pan me peut venger de toutes vos rigueurs .

Pan cares for his sheep, Pan cares for his pastures, and Pan will protect me from all extremities .

In other genres, repetition is ordinarily used to render the style more animated. Here it seems that it is used out of laziness, and because the poet did not want to make the effort to search more widely for the other words.

They readily have recourse to natural signs rather than to the normal designations. To say it is noon, they say the flock is in the shade of the wood. It is late , the shadow of the mountains stretch along the valleys.

The poets have detailed descriptions, sometimes of a cup, a basket; of tiny circumstances that tend sometimes toward sentiment. Such are those the remind us of the shepherds of Racan.

A year passed by and their little arms were already at work cutting fruits from the lower branches .

Also occasionally the poems do nothing but paint the extreme laziness of the shepherds and it is only by doing this that one could justify Theocritus’ description of a cup carved on which are carved several different figures.

In general, the pastoral style must avoid any evidence of the mind and hand of the poet, anything that might suggest a long and difficult voyage. In a word, anything that would give the idea of an agony of creation. But since the poetic shepherds owe their existence to artistic genius of their authors, it is really hard for writers to forget themselves to the point that they do not intrude in the slightest.

This is not to say that the pastoral poems cannot occasionally attain a higher level. Theocritus and Virgil have dealt with subjects very elevated in tone. You could do undertake to do likewise and their example would withstand the most strenuous objections. It seems, nevertheless, that the nature of the pastoral poetry is self-limiting. You could, if you wanted to, suppose that the shepherds had different levels of knowledge and wit, but if you were to give them a less bold and rich imagination than city dwellers, you could characterize them as you wished, for we no longer see shepherds in the streets.

We have said a bold imagination. The shepherds are able to imagine great things, but this must always be done with a kind of timidity. They have to speak with an astonishment and discomfort that must convey their simplicity in the context of a high-sounding tale. “Ah, Mélibée ! This city that one calls Rome, I believe it is like that to which we sometimes take our lambs. It carries its head as far above the others as the cypress stands above the willow.” Or if you might really want to sing about the origin of the world in a decisive voice, or predict the future, you need only to introduce Pan, the old Silenus, a faun or some other such god.

The shepherds don’t have just their poetry. They have also their dances, their music, their finery, their festivals, their architecture, if it may be allowed to give this name to the bushes, the thickets, and the hills. Simplicity, sweetness, and smiling gaiety always form the fundamental character of this genre. And if it is true that in every age the connoisseurs have been able to judge all arts by a single art, and even as Seneca said, all the arts by the manner in which a table is served, then the ruby fruits, the chestnuts, the quail prepared in milk, and the leafy vegetable beds which Titre wanted to have the honor of de Moelibée, must give us a fair idea of the dances, the songs, the Shepherds’ festivals, and of their poetry as well.

If pastoral poetry was born among the shepherds, it must then be one of the most ancient genres of poetry, the profession of shepherd being the most natural of man and the first he exercised. It is easy to think that the first men found themselves peaceful masters of an earth that offered them in abundance all that was sufficient to their needs and flattering to their taste, and regarding these gifts as evidence of a sovereign benefactor. And that in their enthusiasm they involved in their sentiments the rivers, the meadows, the mountains, the woods, and all that surrounded them. Shortly after having sung of this recognition, they celebrated the tranquility and the happiness of their state, and this is precisely the substance of the pastoral poem : the happy man: it required but one small step to arrive at this realization.

Yet even before Theocritus there were pastoral songs, descriptions, stories told in verse, poetic combats which were doubtless celebrated in their time. But since there survive other more perfect works, those that preceded have been forgotten, these masterpieces having created a poetic age before which it is not worth the effort to recur. It is thus that Homer is supposed to be the father of this epoch, with Aeschylus for the tragedy, Aesop for the apology, Pindar for the lyric poem, and Theocritus for the pastoral poem . Moreover, it is pleasing to see this genre have as its birthplace the banks of the Anapus, and the valleys of the Elore where the zephyrs play and where the scenery is always redolent in green and the air refreshed by the neighboring sea. What cradle more worthy of the pastoral muse whose nature is so sweet!

Theocritus about whom we have just spoken, was born in Syracuse and lived about 260 years before Christ. In his idylls, he painted nature as naïve and generous. His works could be regarded as a shepherd’s dictionary if he had permitted them to have one. In his works are gathered an infinite number human traits from which can be fashioned the most appealing characteristics of the shepherd. It is true that there are also several which might have been more delicately rendered, that there are others whose simplicity seems not quite ripe. But for the most part, there is a sweetness a softness that none of his successors have been able to attain. These authors have been reduced to copying him almost literally, lacking the genius to imitate him. His scenes could be compared to exquisitely ripened fruits served replete with the freshness of the morning and the subtle coloring that seems to have been left there by the dew. The versification of the poet is admirable, full of fire and images, and especially a melody which gives him an incontestable superiority over the others.

Moschus and Bion came some time after Theocritus. The former was celebrated in Sicily and the other in Smyrna, in Ionia. If one were to judge by the small number of poems of his that still exist, he added to the eclogue a certain art that it never had. His compositions contain more finesse, more choice, and less negligence. Yet perhaps what they gain in precision they lose in naivite, which is, after all, the essence of the pastoral poem. His woodlands are thickets rather than woods and his fountains are reduced to jets of water. It even seems his creations, if not another genre than that of Theocritus, are at least another species of the same genre. We see little of the pastoral poem. We see little of the pastoral. What we have are ingenious allegories, embellished tales, polished panegyrics which clearly reveal his style. There is nothing more brilliant than his idyll of the abduction of Europa.

Bion has gone even further afield than Moschus. His pastorals are more dressed up than those of his fellow poet. The desire to please is everywhere, occasionally it is revealed in affectation. His Tomb of Adonis, so beautiful and so touching, has several antitheses that are nothing more than plays of wit.

If one were to bring together the major features of these three poets and compare them in a few words, it could be said that Theocritus paints nature as simple and somewhat negligent, Moschus has arranged it with art, and Bion has given it trimmings. For Theocritus the idyll is in a wood and in a meadow, for Moschus, it is in a city, for Bion it is almost a theatre piece. However when we read the pastoral poems, we are quite content to be out of the city.

Virgil, born near Mantua of parents in modest circumstances, made himself known in Rome by his pastoral poems. He is the sole Latin poet to have excelled in this genre and loved Theocritus as a model better than either Moschus or Bion. Virgil was so attached to him that his eclogues are almost nothing but imitations of this Greek poet.

Calpurnious and Némésianus distinguished themselves by their pastoral poems during the reign of Diocletian. One of these was Sicilian, the other born in Carthage. After having read Virgil, the reader will find in these authors little of the softness that forms the soul of the pastoral poem . There are from time to time graceful images, happy verses, but there is nothing of that pastoral verve which inspired the muse of Theocritus.

We have just finished transcribing with great pleasure a complete discourse on pastoral poetry which has established the form, the style, the origin, and the character of the ancient authors who were the most distinguished of this genre. This interesting discourse is the work of the author of The Principles of Literature and we believe that when taken with the articles Bucolic, Eclogue, and Idyll, the reader will have nothing further to desire in this genre.