Nearly a year before the appearance of Pope's Pastorals in print, one Ambrose Philips had published a series of six pastorals modeled after the Shepherd's Calendar. It was owing to a too friendly notice of this work that a bitter quarrel arose between the rival authors. Thomas Tickell had written for the Guardian (Nos. 22, 23, 28, 30, 32), in April, 1713, a series of papers on pastoral poetry, in which he took occasion to eulogize the performance of Philips, closing with the assertion that "Theocritus left his dominion to Virgil, Virgil left his to his son Spenser, and Spenser was succeeded by his eldest son Philips." Pope, writhing under this implied condemnation of his own work, resorted to an ingenious method of revenge. Knowing that Addison, the editor of the Guardian, would not publish any direct attack upon Philips, he prepared for that paper an article, professing to be the sixth of the series on pastoral poetry, "in which," says Dr. Johnson, "with an unexampled and unequaled artifice of irony, though he has himself always the advantage, he gives the preference to Philips. The design of aggrandizing himself he disguised with such dexterity that, though Addison discovered it, Steele was deceived, and was afraid of displeasing Pope by publishing his paper. Published, however, it was (in No. 40 of the Guardian), and from that time Pope and Philips lived in a perpetual reciprocation of malevolence."

The Shepherd's Week is the title of a series of six pastorals written by John Gay in 1714. The design of this work was to ridicule particularly the affected simplicity of Philips, and, perhaps, also of all other writers of pastorals in their false portraiture of English country life. The six eclogues are entitled, respectively, Monday, or the Squabble; Tuesday, or the Ditty; Wednesday, or the Dumps; Thursday, or the Spell; Friday, or the Dirge; Saturday, or the Flights. "Thou wilt not," says Gay in his preface, "find my shepherdesses idly piping on their reeds, but milking the kine, tying up the sheaves, or, if the hogs are astray, driving

them into their sties. My shepherd gathereth none other nosegays but what are the growth of our fields; he sleepeth not under myrtle shades, but under an hedge; nor doth he vigilantly defend his flock from wolves, because there are none."

The public were not long in discovering that, notwithstanding its humorous character, there was much more real poetry in this bit of burlesque than there was in the labored production of Philips, which had suggested it, and it at once met with favor far beyond the most sanguine expectations of its author.

We give a short extract for the sake of illustration:

Ah, Colin! canst thou leave thy Sweetheart true!
What I have done for thee will Cic❜ly do?
Will she thy linen wash or hosen darn,
And knit thee gloves made of her own-spun yarn?
Will she with housewife's hand provide thy meat,
And every Sunday morn thy neckcloth plait?
Which o'er thy kersey doublet spreading wide,
In service-time drew Cic'ly's eyes aside.
If in the soil you guide the crooked share,
Your early breakfast is my constant care;
And when with even hand you strow the grain,
I fight the thievish rooks from off the plain.
In misling days when I my thresher heard,
With nappy beer I to the barn repaired;
Lost in the music of the whirling flail,
To gaze on thee I left the smoking pail :
In harvest when the sun was mounted high,
My leathern bottle did thy drought supply;
Whene'er you mowed I followed with the rake,
And have full oft been sun-burnt for thy sake;
When in the welkin gathering showers were seen,
I lagged the last with Colin on the green;
And when at eve returning with thy car,
Awaiting heard the jingling bells from far;
Straight on the fire the sooty pot I placed,
To warm thy broth I burnt my hands for haste.

When hungry thou stoodst staring, like an oaf,

I sliced the luncheon from the barley loaf:
With crumbled bread I thickened well thy mess.

Ah, love me more, or love thy pottage less!

The Gentle Shepherd is the title of a pastoral drama written by Allan Ramsay in 1725. It is written in the Scotch dialect, and contains some rich humor. Numerous songs are interspersed here and there throughout the poem, and as a burlesque it is almost equal to Gay's Shepherd's Week. The following passage between Patie and Peggy will illustrate:

Patie.

By the delicious warmness of thy mouth

And rowing eye, which smiling tells the truth,
I guess, my lassie, that, as well as I,

You're made for love, and why should you deny?

Peggy.

But ken ye, lad, gin we confess o'er soon,
Ye think us cheap, and syne the wooing's done:
The maiden that o'er quickly times her power,
Like unripe fruit will taste but hard and sour.

Patie.

But when they hing o'er lang upon the tree,
Their sweetness they may tine, and sae may ye;
Red-cheeked you completely ripe appear,
And I have tholed and wooed a lang half year.

Peggy.

Then dinna pu' me; gently thus I fa'

Into my Patie's arms for good and a'.

But stint your wishes to this kind embrace,
And mint nae farther till we've got the grace.

Patie.

O charming armfu'! Hence, ye cares away.
I'll kiss my treasure a' the livelang day:
A' night I'll dream my kisses o'er again,
Till that day come that ye'll be a' my ain.

Chorus.

Sun, gallop down the westling skies,
Gang soon to bed, and quickly rise;
O lash your steeds, post time away,
And haste about our bridal day;
And if ye're wearied, honest light,

Sleep, gin ye like, a week that night.

William Shenstone's Pastoral Ballad in Four Parts, published in 1743, is a serious attempt at the writing of conventional pastoral poetry. But, aside from the melody of the verse, it is rather a ridiculous performance. It is a love-poem celebrating the passion of one Corydon for a certain Phyllis. The four parts are entitled, respectively, Absence, Hope, Solicitude, Despair. Of the fickle Phyllis, the lover speaks in Absence:

When forced the fair nymph to forego,
What anguish I felt at my heart!
Yet I thought-but it might not be so-
'Twas with pain that she saw me depart.
She gazed as I slowly withdrew;
My path I could hardly discern ;
So sweetly she bade me adieu,

I thought that she bade me return.

And in the strain of Hope he says:

One would think she might like to retire
To the bower I have labored to rear,
Not a shrub that I heard her admire,
But I hasted and planted it there.
Oh how sudden the jessamine strove
With the lilac to render it gay!
Already it calls for my love,

To prune the wild branches away.

And in Solicitude:

Why will you my passion reprove?
Why term it a folly to grieve?

Ere I show you the charms of my love,
She's fairer than you can believe.
With her mien she enamors the brave,
With her wit she engages the free;
With her modesty pleases the grave;
She is every way pleasing to me.

But in Disappointment :

O ye woods, spread your branches apace;
To your deepest recesses I fly;

I would hide with the beasts of the chase;
I would vanish from every eye.

Yet my reed shall resound through the grove,
With the same sad complaint it begun;
How she smiled-and I could not but love;
Was faithless-and I am undone!

Endymion, a poem by John Keats, written in 1818, may be classed among pastorals, although in its general character it differs widely from all other poems of the kind. Lord Jeffrey says that the models upon which Endymion is formed "are obviously the Faithful Shepherdess of Fletcher and the Sad Shepherd of Ben Jonson, the exquisite metres and inspired diction of which Keats has copied with great boldness and fidelity; and, like his great originals, has also contrived to impart to the whole piece that true rural and poetical air which breathes only in them and in Theocritus." It is not what we would call a great poem, but it contains many passages of rare poetical merit; and Shelley pronounced it "full of some of the highest and the finest gleams of poetry." As the student will scarcely be expected to read the entire poem, we make a few extracts:

A thing of beauty is a joy forever;

Its loveliness increases; it will never

Pass into nothingness; but still will keep

A bower quiet for us, and a sleep

Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing.