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Read Ebook: De Carmine Pastorali Prefixed to Thomas Creech's translation of the Idylliums of Theocritus (1684) by Rapin Ren Congleton J E James Edmund Author Of Introduction Etc Creech Thomas Translator
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Ebook has 90 lines and 21159 words, and 2 pages
No. 3
With an Introduction by J.E. Congleton and a Bibliographical Note
The Augustan Reprint Society July, 1947 Price: 75c
GENERAL EDITORS
RICHARD C. BOYS, University of Michigan EDWARD NILES HOOKER, University of California, Los Angeles H.T. SWEDENBERG, JR., University of California, Los Angeles
ADVISORY EDITORS
Lithoprinted from copy supplied by author by Edwards Brothers, Inc. Ann Arbor, Michigan, U.S.A. 1947
INTRODUCTION
In France the most prominent opponent to the theory formulated by Rapin is Fontenelle. In his "Discours sur la Nature de l'Eglogue" Fontenelle, with studied and impertinent disregard for the Ancients and for "ceux qui professent cette esp?ce de religion que l'on s'est faite d'adorer l'antiquit?," expressly states that the basic criterion by which he worked was "les lumi?res naturelles de la raison" . It is careless and incorrect to imply that Rapin's and Fontenelle's theories of pastoral poetry are similar, as Pope, Joseph Warton, and many other critics and scholars have done. Judged by basic critical principles, method, or content there is a distinct difference between Rapin and Fontenelle. Rapin is primarily a neoclassicist in his "Treatise"; Fontenelle, a rationalist in his "Discours." It is this opposition, then, of neoclassicism and rationalism, that constitutes the basic issue of pastoral criticism in England during the Restoration and the early part of the eighteenth century.
The influence of Rapin on the development of the pastoral, nevertheless, was salutary. Finding the genre vitiated with wit, extravagance, and artificiality, he attempted to strip it of these Renaissance excrescencies and restore it to its pristine purity by direct reference to the Ancients--Virgil, in particular. Though Rapin does not have the psychological insight into the esthetic principles of the genre equal to that recently exhibited by William Empson or even to that expressed by Fontenelle, he does understand the intrinsic appeal of the pastoral which has enabled it to survive, and often to flourish, through the centuries in painting, music, and poetry. Perhaps his most explicit expression of this appreciation is made while he is discussing Horace's statement that the muses love the country: And to speak from the very bottome of my heart... methinks he is much more happy in a Wood, that at ease contemplates this universe, as his own, and in it, the Sun and Stars, the pleasing Meadows, shady Groves, green Banks, stately Trees, flowing Springs, and the wanton windings of a River, fit objects for quiet innocence, than he that with Fire and Sword disturbs the World, and measures his possessions by the wast that lys about him .
J.E. Congleton University of Florida
Reprinted here from the copy owned by the Boston Athenaeum by permission.
TREATISE
de CARMINE PASTORALI
Written by RAPIN.
For some think that to be a Sheapard is in it self mean, base, and sordid; And this I think is the first thing that the graver and soberer sort will be ready to object.
His own small Flock each Senator did keep.
Thro Sheapards ease, and their Divine retreats.
The Muses that the Country Love.
The Rural Muse upon the Mountains feeds.
For sometimes the Country is so raveshing and delightful, that twill raise Wit and Spirit even in the dullest Clod, And in truth, amongst so many heats of Lust and Ambition which usually fire our Citys, I cannot see what retreat, what comfort is left for a chast and sober Muse.
Take the Poets description
Here Lowly Innocence makes a sure retreat, A harmless Life, and ignorant of deceit, and free from fears with various sweet's encrease, And all's or'e spread with the soft wings of Peace: Here Oxen low, here Grots, and purling Streams, And Spreading shades invite to easy dreams.
And thus Horace,
Happy the man beyond pretence Such was the state of Innocence, &c.
Thro all the Woods they heard the pleasing noise Of chirping Birds, and try'd to frame their voice, And Imitate, thus Birds instructed man, And taught them Songs before their Art began.
First weary at his Plough the labouring Hind In certain feet his rustick words did bind: His dry reed first he tun'd at sacred feasts To thanks the bounteous Gods, and cheer his Guests.
For Whilst soft Evening Gales blew or'e the Plains And shook the sounding Reeds, they taught the Swains, And thus the Pipe was fram'd, and tuneful Reed, And whilst the Flocks did then securely feed, The harmless Sheapards tun'd their Pipes to Love, And Amaryllis name fill'd every Grove.
But who soft Elegies was the first that wrote Grammarians doubt, and cannot end the doubt:
for either the leisure or fancy of Shepherds seems to have a natural aptitude to Verse.
For then the Rural Muses reign'd.
The Goatherd and the heavy Heardsmen came, And ask't what rais'd the deadly Flame.
Sparta was fir'd with Rage And gather'd Greece to prosecute Revenge.
And gaping Hell received his mighty Soul:
Cydippe, Homer, doth not fit thy Muse.
And afterward
Sicilian Muse begin a loftier strain, The Bushes and the Shrubs that shade the Plain Delight not all; if I to Woods repair My Song shall make them worth a Consuls Care.
Whilst on his Reed he Shepherd's stifes conveys, And soft complaints in smooth Sicilian lays.
Baseness was a great wonder in that Age;
I shall not here enquire, tho it may seem proper, whether we can decently bring into an Eclogue Reapers, Vine-dressers, Gardners, Fowlers, Hunters, Fishers, or the like, whose lives for the most part are taken up with too much business and employment to have any vacant time for Songs, and idle Chat, which are more agreeable to the leisure of a Sheapards Life: for in a great many Rustick affairs, either the hardship and painful Labor will not admit a song, as in Plowing, or the solitude as in hunting, Fishing, Fowling, and the like; but of this I shall discourse more largely in another place.
Let each be grac't with that which suits him best.
And again,
He neither Gods, nor yet my Verse regards.
Like Pidgeons you have mouths from Ear to Ear.
Of Juniper, 'tis an unwholsome shade:
These Fields and Corn shall a Barbarian share? See the Effects of all our Civil War.
And the like you may every where meet with, as
But when she saw, how great was the surprize! &c.
And to the Bushes flys, yet would be seen.
To look on all mens lives as in a Glass, And take from those Examples for our Own,
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