Now there may be more kinds of Subjects than _Servius_ or _Donatus_ allow, for they confine us to that Number which _Virgil_ hath made use of, tho _Minturnus_ in his second Book _de Poetâ_ declares against this opinion: But as a glorious _Heroick_ action must be the Subject of an _Heroick_ Poem, so a _Pastoral_ action of a _Pastoral_; at least it must be so turn'd and wrought, that it might appear to be the action of a _Shepherd_; which caution is very necessary to be observ'd, to clear a great many difficulties in this matter: for tho as the Interpreters assure us; most of _Virgils_ Eclogues are about the Civil war, planting Colonys, the murder of the Emperor, and the like, which in themselves are too great and too lofty for humble _Pastoral_ to reach, yet because they are accomodated to the Genius of Shepherds, may be the Subject of an _Eclogue_, for that sometimes will admit of Gods and Heroes so they appear like, and are shrouded under the Persons of Shepherds: But as for these matters which neither really are, nor are so wrought as to seem the actions of Shepherds, such are in _Moschus's_ _Europa_, _Theocritus's_ _Epithalamium of Helen_, and _Virgil's_ _Pollio_, to declare my opinion freely, I cannot think them to be fit Subjects for _Bucolicks_: And upon this account I suppose 'tis that _Servius_ in his {27} Comments on _Virgil's_ _Bucoliks_ reckons only seven of _Virgil's_ ten Eclogues, and onely ten of _Theocritus's_ thirty, to be pure Pastorals, and _Salmasius_ upon _Solinus_ says, that _amongst Theocritus's_ _Poems there are some which you may call what you please Beside Pastorals_: and _Heinsius_ in his _Scholia_ upon _Theocritus_ will allow but Ten of his _Idylliums_ to be _Bucoliks_, 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 11. for all the rest are deficient either in matter or form, and from this number of pure pastoral _Idylliums_ I am apt to think, that _Theocritus_ seems to have made that Pipe, on which he tun'd his _Pastorals_ and which he consecrated to _Pan_ of ten Reeds, as _Salmasius_ in his notes on _Theocritus's_ Pipe hath learnedly observed: _in which two Verses always make one Reed of the Pipe, therefore all are so unequal, like the unequal Reeds of a Pipe, that if you put two equals together which make one Reed, the whole inequality consists in ten pairs_; when in the common Pipes there were usually no more then seven Reeds, and this the less curious observers have heedlessly past by. Some are of opinion that whatever is done in the Country, and in one word, every thing that hath nought of the City in it may be treated of in _Pastorals_; and that the discourse of Fishers, Plow-men, Reapers, Hunters, and the like, belong to this kind of Poetry: which according to the Rule that I have laid down cannot be true for, as I before hinted nothing but the action of a {28} Shepherd can be the Subject of a Pastoral.