A fifth rule (which one may hope will not be contested) is, that the writer should show in his compositions some competent skill of the subject matter, that which makes the character of persons introduced. In this, as in all other points of learning, decency, and oeconomy of a poem, Virgil much excels his master Theocritus. The poet is better skilled in husbandry than those that get their bread by it. He describes the nature, the diseases, the remedies, the proper places, and seasons, of feeding, of watering their flocks; the furniture, diet, the lodging and pastimes, of his shepherds. But the persons brought in by M. Fontenelle are shepherds in masquerade, and handle their sheep-hook as aukwardly as they do their oaten reed. They saunter about with their _chers moutons_; but they relate as little to the business in hand, as the painter's dog, or a Dutch ship, does to the history designed. One would suspect some of them, that, instead of leading out their sheep into the plains of Mont-Brison and Marcilli, to the flowery banks of Lignon, or the Charante, they are driving directly _à la boucherie_, to make money of them. I hope hereafter M. Fontenelle will chuse his servants better. A sixth rule is, that, as the style ought to be natural, clear, and elegant, it should have some peculiar relish of the ancient fashion of writing. Parables in those times were frequently used, as they are still by the eastern nations; philosophical questions, ænigmas, &c.; and of this we find instances in the sacred writings, in Homer, contemporary with king David, in Herodotus, in the Greek tragedians. This piece of antiquity is imitated by Virgil with great judgment and discretion. He has proposed one riddle, which has never yet been solved by any of his commentators. Though he knew the rules of rhetoric as well as Cicero himself, he conceals that skill in his Pastorals, and keeps close to the character of antiquity. Nor ought the connections and transitions to be very strict and regular; this would give the Pastorals an air of novelty; and of this neglect of exact connections, we have instances in the writings of the ancient Chineses, of the Jews and Greeks, in Pindar, and other writers of dithyrambics, in the choruses of Æschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides. If M. Fontenelle and Ruæus had considered this, the one would have spared his critique of the sixth, and the other, his reflections upon the ninth Pastoral. The over-scrupulous care of connections makes the modern compositions oftentimes tedious and flat: and by the omission of them it comes to pass, that the _Pensées_ of the incomparable M. Pascal, and perhaps of M. Bruyère, are two of the most entertaining books which the modern French can boast of. Virgil, in this point, was not only faithful to the character of antiquity, but copies after Nature herself. Thus a meadow, where the beauties of the spring are profusely blended together, makes a more delightful prospect, than a curious _parterre_