CHARACTER

OF THE

SHEPHEARDS CALENDER,

BY

DRYDEN AND POPE.

THE SHEPHERD'S CALENDAR of Spenser is not to be matched in any modern language; not even by Tasso's Aminta, which infinitely transcends Guarini's Pastor Fido, as having more of nature in it, and being almost wholly clear from the wretched affectation of learning.-Spenser, being master of our northern dialect and skilled in Chaucer's English, has so exactly imitated the Dorick of Theocritus, that his love is a perfect image of that passion, which God infused into both sexes, before it was corrupted with the knowledge of arts and the ceremonies of what we call good manners. DRYDEN.

Spenser's Calendar, in Dryden's opinion, is the most complete work of this kind which any nation has produced ever since the time of Virgil. Not but that he may be thought imperfect in some few points. His Eclogues are somewhat

too long, if we compare them with the ancients. He is sometimes too allegorical, and treats of matters of religion in a pastoral style, as the Mantuan had done before him. He has employed the Lyrick measure, which is contrary to the practice of the old poets. His stanza is not still the same, nor always well chosen. This last may be the reason his expression is sometimes not concise enough; for the Tetrastich has oblig ed him to extend his sense to the length of four lines, which would have been more closely confined in the Couplet.

In the manners, thoughts, and characters, he comes near to Theocritus himself; though, notwithstanding all the care he has taken, he is certainly inferiour in his dialect: For the Dorick bad its beauty and propriety in the time of Theocritus; it was used in part of Greece, and frequent in the mouths of many of the greatest persons: Whereas the old English and country phrases of Spenser were either entirely obsolete, or spoken only by people of the lowest condition. As there is a difference betwixt simplicity and rusticity, so the expression of simple thoughts should be plain but not clownish. The addition he has made of a Calendar to Eclogues, is very beautiful; since by this, besides the general moral of innocence and simplicity, which is common to other authors of Pastoral, he has one peculiar to himself; he compares human

Life to the several Seasons; and at once exposes, to his readers, a view of the great and little worlds in their various changes and aspects. Yet the scrupulous division of his Pastorals into Months, has obliged him either to repeat the same description, in other words, for three months together; or, when it was exhausted before, entirely to omit it: whence it comes to pass that some of his Eclogues (as the sixth, eighth, and tenth, for example,) have nothing but their Titles to distinguish them. The reason is evident; because the year has not that variety in it to furnish every month with a particular description, as it may every season. POPE.

HYMNES.

To the right Honorable and most vertuous Ladies,

THE LADIE MARGARET,

COUNTESSE OF CUMBERLAND;

AND

THE LADIE MARIË,

COUNTESSE OF WARWICK.

HAVING, in the greener times of my youth, composed these former two Hymnes in the praise of love and beautie, and finding that the same too much pleased those of like age and disposition, which being too vehemently carried with that kind of affection, do rather sucke out poyson to their strong passion, then honey to their honest delight, I was moved, by the one of you two most excellent Ladies, to call in the same; but, being unable so to do, by reason that many copies thereof were formerly scattered abroad, I resolved at least to amend, and, by way of retraction, to reform them, making (instead of those two Hymnes of earthly or naturall love and beautie) two others of heavenly and celestiall; the which I doe VOL. VII.