Cupid, or Satyr, are not once mentioned throughout the whole. I shall make no apology for inserting some few lines of this excellent piece. Cicily breaks thus into the subject as she is going a milking:
Cicily.Rager, go vetch tha kee[1], or else tha zun
Will quite be go, bevore c'have half a don.
Roger. Thou shouldst not ax ma tweece, but I've a bee
To dreave our bull to bull tha parson's kee.
It is to be observed, that this whole dialogue is formed upon the passion of jealousy; and his mentioning the parson's kine naturally revives the jealousy of the shepherdess Cicily, which she expresses as follows:
Cicily.Ah Rager, Rager! ches was zore avraid
When in yon vield you kiss'd the parson's maid;
Is this the love that once to me you zed,
When from the wake thou brought'st me ginger-bread?
Roger. Cicily, thou charg's me valse—I'll zwear to thee
The parson's maid is still a maid for me.
In which answer of his are expressed at once that spirit of Religion, and that Innocence of the Golden age, so necessary to be observed by all writers of Pastoral.
At the conclusion of this piece, the author reconciles the lovers, and ends the eclogue the most simply in the world:
So Rager parted, vor to vetch tha kee;
And vor her bucket in went Cicily.
I am loth to shew my fondness for antiquity so far as to prefer this ancient British author to our present English writers of Pastoral; but I cannot avoid making this obvious remark, that Philips hath hit into the same road with this old West-country bard of ours.
After all that hath been said, I hope none can think it any injustice to Mr. Pope, that I forbore to mention him as a Pastoral writer; since upon the whole, he is of the same class with Moschus and Bion, whom we have excluded that rank; and of whose eclogues, as well as some of Virgil's, it may be said, that (according to the description we have given of this sort of poetry) they are by no means Pastorals, but something better.
- ↑ That is, the kine, or cows.
