Introduction 



and 1726 does not, with two exceptions, 'contain 

 a single new image of external nature.' One of the 

 exceptions is ' a passage or two ' in the earlier work 

 of Pope. Although Pope and Virgil were destined 

 to develop on very different lines, there was a touch 

 of likeness in their earlier works, and Pope's juvenilia 

 stand somewhat to Virgil's pastorals as Virgil's stand 

 to the works of Theocritus and Moschus. Virgil 

 seems at times to think less of the objects with 

 which he deals than of his desire to reproduce in 

 the graver, not to say heavier, language of Rome 

 the beauties of the Sicilian poets. My subject does 

 not call for any defence of the Eclogues. It might 

 else be necessary to contend that the pastoral form 

 of these poems is not to be accused of affectation 

 or falsehood. It is the vehicle by which a young 

 poet expresses his view of beauty and of the purpose 

 and passions of life. 



Now when Theocritus tells us that the goat goes 

 in quest of cytisus and the wolf in quest of the 

 goat, we may well believe that he had seen the goat 

 browsing on the shrub and the wolf coming down 

 from the hills. But the shrub did not come within 

 many miles of Mantova, and, although the possi- 

 bility of Alpine wolves occasionally descending upon 

 the plain cannot be denied, we cannot be certain 

 that Virgil had yet seen one. If Virgil, when he 

 wrote the fourth Eclogue, had ever seen a tamarisk, 

 he would probably have chosen some other epithet 

 than humilis to represent the shrub as the emblem 

 of lowly poetry ; for the word might suggest that the 



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