Note 1 — PASTORAL POETRY.[1]
Reading edition
Written at sixteen years of age.—Pope.
This sensible and judicious discourse written at so early an age is a more extraordinary production than the Pastorals that follow it. Our author has chiefly drawn his observations from Rapin, Fontenelle, and the preface to Dryden's Virgil. A translation of Rapin's Discourse had been some years before prefixed to Creech's translation of Theocritus, and is no extraordinary piece of criticism. And though Hume highly praises the Discourse of Fontenelle, yet Dr. Hurd thinks it only rather more tolerable than his Pastorals.—Warton.
Hume had said that there could not be a finer piece of criticism than Fontenelle's Dissertation on Pastorals, but that the Pastorals themselves displayed false taste, and did not exemplify the rules laid down in the criticism.