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.