'Tis best, I think, only just to exhibit the Picture of an Object to the Reader's Mind; for if 'tis rightly set and well given, he will himself supply the minute Particulars better to please himself than any Poet can do; as no different Fancies are equally delighted with one and the same thing, the Poet in an extended Description must needs hit upon many Circumstances not pleasant to every Fancy; even tho' he touches all the best Particulars. But if the Poet only set's the Image in the finest Light, by enumerating two or three Circumstances, the Reader's Mind in that very instant it sees the Image or Picture, fill's up all the Omissions with such Particulars, as are most suitable to it's own single Fancy. Which farther conceives something beyond, and something out of the way, if all is not told. Whereas descending to Particulars cool's the Mind, which in those Cases ever finds less than it expected. To instance in Painting, for that's the same. When I first cast my Eye on a beauteous Landscape, and take in a View of the whole and all it's parts at once, I am in Rapture, not knowing distinctly what it is that pleases me; but when I come to examine all the several Parts, they seem less delightful. Pleasure is greatest if we know not whence it proceeds. And such is the Nature of Man, that if he has all he desires he is no longer delighted; but if ought is with-held, he is still in Eagerness, and full of Curiosity. Besides, Descriptions in Pastoral should be particularly short, because it draw's into Description nought but the most Common tho' the most Beautiful of Nature's Works: Whereas Epick Poetry, whose Business is to Astonish, represents Monsters and Things unheard of before, and a _Polyphemus_ or a _Cyclops_ will bear, nay require, a more particular Description, than a beauteous Grott, or falling Water; because the One is only calling up into our Mind what we knew before, the other is Creation. Besides that in Epick Poetry the Descriptions are generally more necessary than in Pastoral. To describe the fair Bank where your Lovers sate to talk does not help the _Fable_; but if _Homer_ had not prepared us, by a particular Description of _Polyphemus_'s hugeness, he would not have been credited, when he afterwards said, _That he hurl'd such a Piece of a Rock after_ Ulysses'_s Ship, as drove it back, tho' it touch'd it not, but only plung'd into the Waves, and made 'em roll with so great Violence_.