A Full Enquiry into the Nature of the Pastoral | Page 2

Pope were the leading exemplars. In opposition, Fontenelle, Tickell
(if he was the author of the Guardian essays on the pastoral), and

Purney developed their theories empirically and hence directed the
pastoral away from the classical tradition. (On these two schools see
J.E. Congleton, "Theories of Pastoral Poetry in England, 1684-1717,"
_SP_, XLI, 1944, pp. 544-575.) Although Purney adopted a
modification of Aristotle's critical divisions into Fable, Character,
Sentiment, and Diction, and took for granted the doctrine of the
distinction of _genres_, he otherwise rejected traditional formulae and
critical tenets, and began with the premise that man is most delighted
by the imaginative perception of the states of life for which he would
willingly exchange his own. These are "the busy, great, or pompous"
(depicted in tragedy and the epic) and "the retir'd, soft, or easy"
(depicted in the pastoral). From this analysis of "the Nature of the
Human Mind," the characteristics of the true pastoral, such as the
avoidance of the hardships and vulgarities of rural life, follow logically.
Similarly, since a minutely drawn description deprives the reader's
fancy of its naturally pleasurable exercise, pastoral descriptions should
only set "the Image in the finest Light." Rapin, on the other hand, had
determined the proper length of descriptions by examining Virgil and
Theocritus. For the association of the pleasure afforded by the pastoral
with the natural human delight in ease, Purney was indebted to the
essays on the pastoral in The Guardian (see no. 22), from which he
borrowed extensively for many of his principles, and to Fontenelle,
who constructed his theory of the pastoral upon the premise that all
men are dominated "par une certaine paresse." By contrast, although
Pope adopted Fontenelle's premise, he tested its validity by relating it to
the accepted definition of the genre.
One of Purney's major purposes in the essay was to dignify the pastoral
by demonstrating that it admits all the components generally reserved
for tragedy and the epic. Most critics had considered the pastoral a
minor form and consequently had narrowed their attention to a few
frequently debated questions, mainly the state of rural life to be
depicted and the level of the style to be adopted. All agreed that the
poem should be brief and simple in its fable, characters, and style. But
it was therefore a poetic exercise, no more significant, Purney
complained, than a madrigal. He was intent upon investing the pastoral
with all the major poetic elements--extended, worthy fable; moral;
fully-drawn characters; and appropriate expression. For in his mind the

poem best incorporates one of the only two true styles, the tender, and
therefore warrants a literary status beneath only tragedy and the epic.
Like his critical method, Purney's decision that the pastoral should
depict contemporary rural life divested of what is vulgar and painful in
it, rather than either the life of the Golden Age or true rustic existence
places him on the side of Addison, Tickell, Ambrose Philips, and
Fontenelle (indeed, his statement is a paraphrase of Fontenelle's), and
in opposition to the school of Rapin, Pope, and Gay, who argued for a
portrait of the Golden Age. Both schools campaigned for a simplicity
removed from realistic rusticity (which they detected in Spenser and
Theocritus) and refinement (as in Virgil's eclogues); but to one group
the term meant the innocence of those remote from academic learning
and social sophistication, and to the other the refined simplicity of an
age when all men--including kings and philosophers--were shepherds.
With reservations, the first group tended to prefer Theocritus and
Spenser; and the second, Virgil. Hence, too, the first group approved of
Philips' efforts to create a fresh and simple pastoral manner. As a poet,
Purney moved sharply away from the classical pastoral by curiously
blending an entirely original subject matter with a sentimentalized
realism and a naive, diffuse expression; and as a critic he pointed in the
direction of Shenstone and Allan Ramsay by emphasizing the tender,
admitting the use of earthy realism in the manner of Gay, and
recommending for pastoral such "inimitably pretty and delightful" tales
as The Two Children in the Wood. Had his contemporaries read the
treatise, how they would have been amused to contemplate the serious
literary treatment of chapbook narratives, despite Addison's praise of
this ballad.
In his usual nervous manner, the critic did not confine himself to his
topic, but touched on a number of significant peripheral subjects. He
showed the virtue of concrete and specific imagery at a time when most
poets sought the sanctuary of abstractions and universals; commented
cogently on the styles of Chaucer, Spenser, and Shakespeare;
anticipated the later doctrine of the power of the incomplete and the
obscure to suggest and therefore to compel the imagination to create;
adopted and expanded Addison's distinction between the sublime and
the beautiful;