Indifference to the Audience, and checking the Progress of the Passions.
No Species of Poetry is more entertaining than Pastoral; and every one is sensible, that the chief Source of its Pleasure arises from those Images of a gentle and tender Tranquillity, which it represents in its Personages, and of which it communicates a like Sentiment to the Readers. Sannazarius, who transfer'd the Scene to the Sea-shore, tho' he presented the most magnificent Object in Nature, is confest to have err'd in his Choice. The Idea of Toil, Labour, and Danger, suffer'd by the Fishermen, is painful, by an unavoidable Sympathy, which attends every Conception of human Happiness or Misery.
When I was twenty, says a French Poet, Ovid was my Choice: Now I am forty, I declare for Horace. We enter, to be sure, more readily into Sentiments, that resemble those we feel every Moment: But no Passion, when well represented, can be altogether indifferent to us; because there is none, of which every Man has not within him, at least, the Seeds and first Principles. 'Tis the Business of Poetry to approach every Object by lively Imagery and Description, and make it look like Truth and Reality: A certain Proof, that whereverthat
