Note 21 — PASTORAL POETRY.[1]

"It was from hence," the poet went on to say in his manuscript, "I took my first design of the following eclogues. For, looking upon Spenser as the father of English pastoral, I thought myself unworthy to be esteemed even the meanest of his sons, unless I bore some resemblance of him. But, as it happens with degenerate offspring, not only to recede from the virtues, but to dwindle from the bulk of their ancestor; so I have copied Spenser in miniature, and reduced his twelve months into four seasons." When Pope published his Pastorals he stated that three of them were imitated from Virgil and Theocritus, which occasioned his cancelling this passage where he speaks as if he had taken Spenser alone for his model.