24 THE PASTORAL AND ROMANTIC. 



ened by our ideas of the piety and devotion of the hermit ; 

 but it does not awaken our sympathies or interest our 

 affections like a simple pastoral scene. In all these cases 

 it is the imagination that lends the scene its charms. To 

 a man of cold heart and inactive mind, nothing is pictu- 

 resque, nothing is poetical, solemn, pastoral, or romantic. 

 Hence it is not difficult to understand why a man of cul- 

 ture must have sources of happiness which are entirely 

 hidden from the boor and the sensualist. 



It is this rural sentiment, this love of shepherd life 

 and its accompaniments, that causes our interest in pas- 

 toral poetry, which has little else in general to recommend 

 it. Our love of shepherd life, which is almost purely 

 ideal and practically delusive, is closely allied with our 

 love of nature and simplicity. "We associate the employ- 

 ments of a shepherd with all the pleasant imagery of 

 freedom and leisure, with shady groves and the sylvan 

 muse, with the rustic pipe and all the various scenes de- 

 scribed in the idyl and the eclogue. A shepherd's life is 

 probably very tiresome to the rural swain who is obliged 

 to follow it, but no less interesting to the spectator, whose 

 imagination calls up in connection with it gentle flocks, 

 murmuring bees, flowery meads, and the sweet Menalian 

 strains of the classical eclogue. But the ideas of happi- 

 ness which are associated with rural life in general are 

 far from delusive ; and its occupations are usually attend- 

 ed with more personal freedom than the pursuits either 

 of trade or ambition. 



Though I have joined together, in this essay, the pas- 

 toral and the romantic, they are in many respects oppo- 

 site sentiments, the one relating to action and adventure, 

 the other to quiet and seclusion. The pastoral has by 

 custom acquired a more extended meaning than its origi- 

 nal expression of shepherd life, and includes the feel- 

 ing with which we regard almost all quiet occupations 



