Book cover De Carmine Pastorali / Prefixed to Thomas Creech's translation of the Idylliums of Theocritus (1684)

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De Carmine Pastorali / Prefixed to Thomas Creech's translation of the Idylliums of Theocritus (1684)
Published by:
René Rapin
Block: f0553e2d6b8d47b8bbd83dd29569ace0

Let the Expression be plain and easy, but elegant and neat, and the purest which the language will afford; Pontanus upon Virgils Bucolicks gives the very same rule, In Bucolicks the Expression must be humble, nearer common discourse than otherwise, not very Spirituous and vivid, yet such as shows life and strength: Tis certain that Virgil in his Bucolicks useth the same words which Tully did in the Forum or the Senate; and Tityrus beneath his shady Beech speaks as pure and good Latin as Augustus in his Palace, as Modicius in his Apology for Virgil hath excellently observ’d: This rule, ’tis true; Theocritus hath not so strictly follow’d, whose Rustick and Pastoral Muse, as Quintilian phraseth it, not only is affraid to appear in the Forum, but the City, and for the very same thing an Alexandrian flouts the Syracucusian Weomen in the Fifteenth Idyllium of Theocritus, for when they, being then in the City, spoke the Dorick Dialect, the delicate Citizen could not endure it, and found fault with their distastful, as he thought, pronunciation: and his reflection was very smart.

Like Pidgeons you have mouths from Ear to Ear.