"In dramatic composition, the representation of strong passions is best calculated to produce interest or emotion, but the feelings of rural existence should be painted as tranquil and calm. In choosing a prose romance as the vehicle of pastoral writing, Longus has adopted a form that may include all the beauties arising from the description of rustic manners, or the scenery of nature, and which, as far as the incidents of rural life admit, may interest by an agreeable fable, and delight by a judicious alternation of narrative and dialogue. Longus has also avoided many of the faults into which his modern imitators have fallen, and which have brought this style of composition into so much disrepute; his characters never express the conceits of affected gallantry, nor involve themselves in abstract reasoning; he has not loaded his romance with those long and constantly recurring episodes, which fatigue the attention, and render us indifferent to the principal story. Nor does he paint that chimerical state of society, termed the golden age, in which the characteristic traits of rural life are erased, but attempts to please by a genuine imitation of Nature, and by descriptions of the manners, the rustic occupations, or rural enjoyments of the inhabitants of the country where the scene of the pastoral is laid. "The pastoral is in general very beautifully written;--the style, though it has been censured on account of the reiteration of the same forms of expression, and as betraying the sophist in some passages by a play on words, and affected antithesis, is considered as the purest specimen of the Greek language produced in that late period; the descriptions of rural scenery and rural occupations are extremely pleasing, and if I may use the expression, there is a sort of amenity and calm diffused over the whole romance. This, indeed, may be considered as the chief excellence in a pastoral; since we are not so much allured by the feeding of sheep as by the stillness of the country. In all our active pursuits, the end proposed is tranquillity, and even when we lose the hope of happiness, we are attracted by that of repose; hence we are soothed and delighted with its representation, and fancy we partake of the pleasure.