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 a mean, servile, and laborious state; when their employments are become disagreeable, and their ideas gross 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 gross and mean, the last too refined and unnatural, to be made the groundwork of pastoral poetry. Either of these extremes is a rock upon which the poet will split, if he approach too near it. We will 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 make 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. 4.

**Pastry**, that branch of cookery which is chiefly taken up in making pies, pasties, cakes, &c. See **Paste**.

Dr Cullen observes, that paste is very hard and indigestible without butter; and even with it, is apt to produce heartburn and ascendency. Perhaps this is increased by the burned butter, from a certain sensibility in the stomach, which occasions all empyreumatic oils to be long retained, and so produce acidity.

**Pasture**, or **Pasture Land**, is that reserved for feeding cattle. See **Agriculture Index**.

**Patæci**, in Mythology, images of gods which the Phoenicians carried on the prows of their galleys. Herodotus, lib. iv. calls them *melanai*. The word is Phoenician, and derived from *pethia*, i.e. *titulus*. See Boeckh's Chamaan, lib. ii. cap. 3. But Scaliger does not agree. Morin derives it from *mēsēs*, monkey, this animal having been an object of worship among the Egyptians, and hence might have been honoured by their

knighthood. For at this juncture, he had such a tremor upon him, that instead of laying the sword upon the shoulder of the person to be knighted, he frequently would be observed almost to thrust the point of it into the face of the party: which occasioned those about him to assist him in the direction of his hand. Patagons does not call the pataei gods; but that they obtained this dignity from the liberality of Hesychius and Suidas, and other ancient lexicographers, who place them at the stern of ships; whereas Herodotus placed them at the prow. Scaliger, Bochart, and Selden, have taken some pains about this subject.—Mr. Morin has also given us a learned dissertation on this head, in the Memoires de l'Acad. des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres, tom. i.; but Mr. Elsner thinks it defective in point of evidence.