1.18. Of the Shepheards or pastorall Poesie called Eglogue, and to what purpose it was first inuented and used.
Some be of opinion, and the chiefe of those who haue written in this Art
among the Latines, that the pastorall Poesie which we commonly call by the
name of Eglogue and Bucolick, a tearme brought in by the
Sicilian Poets, should be the first of any others, and before the
Satyre comedie or tragedie, because, say they, the shepheards and
haywards assemblies & meetings when they kept their cattell and
heards in the common fields and forests, was the first familiar
conuersation, and their babble and talk vnder bushes and shadie trees, the
first disputation and contentious reasoning, and their fleshly heates
growing of ease, the first idle wooings, and their songs made to their mates
or paramours either vpon sorrow or iolity of courage, the first amorous
musicks, sometime also they sang and played on their pipes for wagers,
striuing who should get the best game, and be counted cunningest. All this I
do agree vnto, for no doubt the shepheards life was the first example of
honest felowship, their trade the first art of lawfull acquisition or
purchase, for at those daies robbery was a manner of purchase. So saith
Aristotle in his bookes of the Politiques, and that pasturage was
before tillage, or fishing or fowling, or any other predatory art or
cheuisance. And all this may be true, for before there was a shepheard
keeper of his owne, or of some other bodies flocke, there was none owner in
the world, quick cattel being the first property of any forreine possession. I
say forreine, because alway men claimed property in their apparell and
armour, and other like things made by their owne trauel and industry, nor
thereby was there yet any good towne or city or Kings palace, where
pageants and pompes might be shewed by Comedies or Tragedies. But for all
this, I do deny that the Eglogue should be the first and most auncient
forme of artificiall Poesie, being perswaded that the Poet deuised the
Eglogue long after the other drammatick poems, not of purpose
to counterfait or represent the
rusticall manner of loues and communication: but vnder the vaile of homely
persons, and in rude speeches to insinuate and glaunce at greater matters,
and such as perchance had not bene safe to haue beene disclosed in any other
sort, which may be perceiued by the Eglogues of
Virgill, in which are
treated by figure matters of greater importance then the loues of
Titirus and
Corydon. These Eglogues came after to containe and
enforme morall discipline, for the amendment of mans behauiour, as be
those of
Mantuan and other moderne Poets.