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The first production of Virgil was his Bucolics, consisting of ten eclogues, written in imitation of the Idyllia or pastoral poems of Theocritus. It may be questioned whether any language which has its provincial dialects, but is brought to perfection, can ever be well adapted, in that state, to the use of pastoral poetry.
On approaching the farm-buildings, Randal was seized with the terror of an impostor; for, despite all the theoretical learning on Bucolics and Georgics with which he had dazzled the squire, poor Frank, so despised, would have beat him hollow when it came to the judging of the points of an ox, or the show of a crop. "Ha, ha," cried the squire, chuckling, "I long to see how you'll astonish Stirn.
The safest way is to trust these records only when they harmonize with the data provided by reliable historians, and to interpret the Eclogues primarily as imaginative pastoral poetry, and not, except when they demand it, as a personal record. We shall here treat the Bucolics in what seems to be their order of composition, not the order of their position in the collection.
And are you aware that your writing is full of Latin turns of style. I noticed more than fifty expressions which could be found in the 'Bucolics. Your book is a charm, a perfect charm!"
Do not my friend Graham and myself guide and direct you? do we not distribute the patronage and the honours of the government, take the pay and rule the kingdom what more would you have? Ungrateful bucolics, you know not what you want! The apostrophe was bold, but not original.
Maecenas desired to keep the poet at Rome, and as an inducement provided him with a villa in his own gardens on the Esquiline. The fame of the digitus praetereuntium awaited his coming and going, his Bucolics had been set to music and sung in the concert halls to vehement applause. He seems even to have made an effort to be socially congenial.
Given, indeed, the Bucolics of Vergil, they are imitations such as might at any moment have appeared, irrespective of date and surroundings, and independent of any living literary tradition . It is therefore impossible to regard them as in any way belonging to, or foreshadowing, the great body of renaissance pastoral, a division of literature endowed with remarkable vitality and evolutionary force, which must in its growth and decay alike be studied in close connexion with the ideas and temperament of the age, and in relation to the general development of the history of letters .
Don Quixote no sooner heard a book of chivalry mentioned, than he said: "Had your worship told me at the beginning of your story that the Lady Luscinda was fond of books of chivalry, no other laudation would have been requisite to impress upon me the superiority of her understanding, for it could not have been of the excellence you describe had a taste for such delightful reading been wanting; so, as far as I am concerned, you need waste no more words in describing her beauty, worth, and intelligence; for, on merely hearing what her taste was, I declare her to be the most beautiful and the most intelligent woman in the world; and I wish your worship had, along with Amadis of Gaul, sent her the worthy Don Rugel of Greece, for I know the Lady Luscinda would greatly relish Daraida and Garaya, and the shrewd sayings of the shepherd Darinel, and the admirable verses of his bucolics, sung and delivered by him with such sprightliness, wit, and ease; but a time may come when this omission can be remedied, and to rectify it nothing more is needed than for your worship to be so good as to come with me to my village, for there I can give you more than three hundred books which are the delight of my soul and the entertainment of my life; though it occurs to me that I have not got one of them now, thanks to the spite of wicked and envious enchanters; but pardon me for having broken the promise we made not to interrupt your discourse; for when I hear chivalry or knights-errant mentioned, I can no more help talking about them than the rays of the sun can help giving heat, or those of the moon moisture; pardon me, therefore, and proceed, for that is more to the purpose now."
In 1481 appeared an Italian translation of the Bucolics of Vergil from the pen of Bernardo Pulci.
A poet is always reaching toward the unattainable, and he may reach forward to the perfections of a life of which the best that he sees around him is an intimation, or backward to the animal content of a life as yet undisturbed by the intimation of something better. Bucolics are very sweet, but their writers do not believe in them.
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