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The eighth eclogue of Virgil, entitled Pharmaceutria, is particularly to our purpose in this point. There is an Idyll of Theocritus under the same name; but it is of an obscurer character; and the enchantress is not, like that of Virgil, triumphant in the success of her arts.
The practice of eclogue-writing soon became no less general in the vernacular than in Latin, and the band of pastoral poets included men so different in temperament as Machiavelli, who left a 'Capitolo pastorale' among his miscellaneous works, and Ariosto, whose eclogue on the conspiracy contrived in 1506 against Alfonso d'Este was published from manuscript in 1835.
The first part of Belleau's Bergerie appeared in 1565, the complete work, including a piscatory poem, in 1572. On the stage Nicolas Filleul anticipated the regular Italian drama in a dramatized eclogue entitled Les Ombres in 1566.
The use of stanzas with a recurring refrain was not unexampled; Virgil, following Theocritus and Catullus, had employed the device with singular beauty in the eighth Eclogue; but this is the first known instance of the refrain being added to a poem in stanzas of a fixed and equal length; it is more than halfway towards the structure of an eleventh-century Provencal alba.
The tenth Eclogue, to Gallus, steeped in all the literary associations of pastoral elegies, from the time of Theocritus' Daphnis to our own "Lycidas" and "Adonais," has perhaps surrounded itself with an atmosphere that should not be disturbed by biographical details. However, we must intrude.
"The not observing of this Rule, is that which the World has blamed in our satirist CLEVELAND. To express a thing hard and unnaturally is his New Way of Elocution. Tis true, no poet but may sometimes use a catachresis. VIRGIL, does it, "Mistaque ridenti Colocasia fundet Acaniho "in his Eclogue of POLLIO. "And in his Seventh AEneid
It may be questioned to what extent these rustic shows influenced the development of the pastoral eclogue. Their recognition as a dramatic form was subsequent to that of the ecloga rappresentativa, and no element traceable to their influence can be shown to exist in the dramatic pastoral as finally evolved.
The Elizabethans, that is, had not discovered the secret of the long poem; the abstract idea of the "heroic" epic which was in all their minds had to wait for embodiment till Paradise Lost. In a way their treatment of the pastoral or eclogue form was imperfect too.
They apparently assumed that poets as a matter of course wrote what they did in order to please some patron a questionable enough assumption regarding any Roman poetry composed before the Silver Age. The second Eclogue is a very early study which, in the theme of the gift-bringing, seems to be reminiscent of Messalla's work.
The objectivity of the writer is such that we are in doubt whether the speaker the young peasant Vallera, who declares his love to Nencia awakens his sympathy or ridicule. The deliberate contrast to the conventional eclogue is unmistakable. Lorenzo surrenders himself purposely to the realism of simple, rough country life, and yet his work makes upon us the impression of true poetry.
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