What I have further to say of the
country life shall be borrowed from the poets, who were always the
most faithful and affectionate friends to it. Poetry was born among
the shepherds.
Nescio qua natale solum dulcedine musas
Ducit, et immemores non sinit esse sui.
The Muses still love their own native place,
'T has secret charms which nothing can deface.
The truth is, no other place is proper for their work. One might as
well undertake to dance in a crowd, as to make good verses in the
midst of noise and tumult.
As well might corn as verse in cities grow;
In vain the thankless glebe we plough and sow,
Against th' unnatural soil in vain we strive,
'Tis not a ground in which these plants will thrive.
It will bear nothing but the nettles or thorns of satire, which grow
most naturally in the worst earth; and therefore almost all poets,
except those who were not able to eat bread without the bounty of
great men, that is, without what they could get by flattering of
them, have not only withdrawn themselves from the vices and vanities
of the grand world (pariter vitiisque jocisque altius humanis
exeruere caput) into the innocent happiness of a retired life; but
have commended and adorned nothing so much by their ever-living
poems.
Pages:
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80