_Of Beautiful Images. And of those; which are more, which less fine_. In my usual way of considering Beautiful Images; for the greater Clearness, I rank 'em into three several Classes. This division I do not desire to impose on any one else; but the mentioning it, cannot be amiss. Of the three sorts or kinds of Beautiful Images, the first, and least delightful is, where only a simple Image is exhibited to the Reader's Mind. As of a Fair Shepherdess. The second Sort is, where there is the Addition of the Scene; as suppose we give the Picture of the fair Shepherdess, sitting on the Banks of a pleasant streamlet. The third, and finest kind of Beautiful Images is, where the Picture contain's a still further Addition of action. As, the Image of a fair Shepherdess, on the Banks of a pleasant Stream asleep, and her innocent Lover harmlessly smoothing her Cloaths as flutter'd by the Wind. And the most beautiful Image in Phillips, or I think any Pastoral-Writer, is of this Nature. _Once_ Delia _lay, on easy Moss reclin'd; Her lovely Limbs half bare, and rude the Wind. I smooth'd her Coats, and stole a silent Kiss; Condemn me, Shepherds, if I did amiss_. _Past_. 5. The last Line contains a Pastoral Thought, of the best Sort; as the three first a Pastoral Image. The middle of this last Pastoral is full of beautiful Images, and has therefore proved so Entertaining to all Readers, that I wonder Mr. Phillips would not give us the Beautiful in his four first Pieces also. Of all the Persons who have written in the English Language, no one ever had a Mind so well form'd by Nature for Pleasurable Writing, as Spencer. Yet as he wrote his Pastorals when very Young, this does not appear so much from them, as from his Fairy Queen; thro' which, (like Ovid, in his Metamorphoses) he has perpetually recourse to Pastoral. Especially in his Second Book; in which there are more pleasurable Pastoral Images in every eight Lines, than in all his Pastorals. We have Knights basking in the Sun by a pleasant Stream, rambling among the Shepherdesses, entering delightful Groves surrounded with Trees, or the like, almost in every Stanza; but thro' all his Pastorals, we have not half a dozen beautiful Images. 'Tis therefore the Pastoral Language that support's 'em, which he took excessive pains about. CHAP. III. _Of Pastoral Descriptions. And what Authors have the finest_. Of Images are form'd Descriptions, as by a Combination of Thoughts a Speech is composed. And a Description is good or bad, chiefly as the Images or Circumstances are judiciously, or otherwise, chosen; and artfully put together.