Series Two: _Essays on Poetry_ No. 3 Rapin's _De Carmine Pastorali_, prefixed to Thomas Creech's translation of the _Idylliums_ of Theocritus (1684) With an Introduction by J.E. Congleton and a Bibliographical Note The Augustan Reprint Society July, 1947 Price: 75c * * * * * GENERAL EDITORS RICHARD C. BOYS, University of Michigan EDWARD NILES HOOKER, University of California, Los Angeles H.T. SWEDENBERG, JR., University of California, Los Angeles ADVISORY EDITORS EMMETT L. AVERY, State College of Washington LOUIS I. BREDVOLD, University of Michigan BENJAMIN BOYCE, University of Nebraska CLEANTH BROOKS, Louisiana State University JAMES L. CLIFFORD, Columbia University ARTHUR FRIEDMAN, University of Chicago SAMUEL H. MONK, University of Minnesota JAMES SUTHERLAND, Queen Mary College, London Lithoprinted from copy supplied by author by Edwards Brothers, Inc. Ann Arbor, Michigan, U.S.A. 1947 * * * * * INTRODUCTION Recent students of criticism have usually placed Rapin in the School of Sense. In fact Rapin clearly denominates himself a member of that school. In the introduction to his major critical work, _Reflexions sur la Poetique d'Aristote_ (1674), he states that his essay "is nothing else, but Nature put in Method, and good _Sense_ reduced to Principles" (_Reflections on Aristotle's Treatise of Poesie_, London, 1731, II, 131). And in a few passages as early as "A Treatise de Carmine Pastorali" (1659), he seems to imply that he is being guided in part at least by the criterion of "good _Sense_." For example, after citing several writers to prove that "brevity" is one of the "graces" of pastoral poetry, he concludes, "I could heap up a great many more things to this purpose, but I see no need of such a trouble, since no man can rationally doubt of the goodness of my Observation" (p.41). The basic criterion, nevertheless, which Rapin uses in the "Treatise" is the authority of the Ancients--the poems of Theocritus and Virgil and the criticism of Aristotle and Horace. Because of his constant references to the Ancients, one is likely to conclude that he (like Boileau and Pope) must have thought they and Nature (good sense) were the same. In a number of passages, however, Rapin depends solely on the Ancients. Two examples will suffice to illustrate his absolutism. At the beginning of "_The Second_ Part," when he is inquiring "into the nature of _Pastoral,_" he admits: And this must needs be a hard Task, since I have no guide, neither _Aristotle_ nor _Horace_ to direct me.... And I am of opinion that none can treat well and clearly of any kind of _Poetry_ if he hath no helps from these two (p. 16).