in general, something that relates to shepherds; hence we say, pastoral life, manners, poetry, &c.

Pastoral life may be considered in three different views; either such as it now actually is; when the state of shepherds is reduced to be a mean, servile, and laborious state; when their employments are become disagreeable, and their ideas grofs and low; or such as we may suppose it once to have been, in the more early and simple ages, when it was a life of ease and abundance; when the wealth of men consisted chiefly in flocks and herds, and the shepherd, though unrefined in his manners, was respectable in his state: or, lastly, such as it never was, and never can in reality be, when, to the ease, innocence, and simplicity of the early ages, we attempt to add the polished taste, and cultivated manners, of modern times. Of these three states, the first is too grofs and mean, the last too refined and unnatural, to be made the ground-work of pastoral poetry. Either of these extremes is a rock upon which the poet will split, if he approach too near it. We shall be disgusted if he give us too much of the servile employments and low ideas of actual peasants, as Theocritus is censured for having sometimes done; and if, like some of the French and Italian writers of pastorals, he makes his shepherds discourse as if they were courtiers and scholars, he then retains the name only, but wants the spirit of pastoral poetry.

PASTORAL Poetry. See POETRY, Part II. Sect. IV.