I've kist some new fawn'd Kids, like other Swains,
I've kist the sucking Calf, which in our Plains
Young Colin gave me; but this Liss I swear,
Is sweeter much than all those Kisses were.
Yet such a Childishness seems more pardonable in this young Shepherd than in the Cyclops Polyphemus. In Theocritus's Idyllium that bears his Name and which is fine, he is thinking how to be reveng'd on his Mother, a Sea Nymph, because she never took care to make Galatæa, another Sea Nymph, have a kindness for his Giantship; so he says to his Mistress, that He'll tell his Mother, to make her mad, that he has à pain in his Head and in his Thighs.
'Tis hard to imagine that, ugly as he was, his Mother cou'd doat on him so much as to be very much concern'd to hear the poor little Urchin had those petty ills, or that the Clownish Giant cou'd invent so gentle a Revenge, his Character is better kept when he promises his Mistress to make her a present of a Litter of Cubs, or young Bears, which he breeds for her in his Cave. And now that I speak of Bears, I wou'd gladly know why Daphnis when he is going to die bids adieu to the Bears, the Lyons and the Wolves, as well as to the fair Fountain Arethuse, and to the Silver Streams of Sicily: Methinks a Man does not often use to regret the Loss of such Company.
I have but one Remark more to make which hath no manner of Connection with those that go before: 'Tis concerning those Eclogues which have a Burthen much like those in Ballads, that is, a Verse or two repeated several times. I need not say that we ought to place those repeated. Verses in such Parts of the Eclogue as may require, or at least bear such a Verse to interlard them; but it may not be amiss to observe that all the Art that Theocritus hath us'd in an Idyllium of this kind, was only to take this Burthen and scatter it up and down through his Idyllium right or wrong, without the least regard to the Sence of the places where he inserted it, nay without even so much as respecting some of the Phrases which he made no difficulty to split in two.
I have here spoken with a great deal of Freedom of Theocritus and Virgil, notwithstanding they are Ancients; and I do not doubt but that I shall be esteem'd one of the Profane, by those Pedants who profess a kind of Religion which consists in worshipping the Ancients. 'Tis true, however, that I have often commended Virgil and Theocritus; but yet I have not alwaysprais'd
