Of POLITE LEARNING.
51
abbes turn'd into shepherds, and shepherdesses without sheep, indulge their innocent divertimenti. Perhaps, while I am writing, a shepherdess of threescore is listening to the pastoral tale of a French abbe; a warm imagination might paint her in all the splendor of ripened beauty, reclined on a paste-board rock; might fancy her lover, with looks inexpressibly tender, ravishing a kiss from the snowy softness of one of her hands, while the other holds a crook according to pastoral decorum. Amidst such frippery as this, there was no place for friendless Metastasio; he has left Italy, and the genius of nature seems to have left it with him.
The Filosofi are entirely different from the former. As those pretend to havegot
