As one who long in populous city pent,
Where houses thick and sewers annoy the air,
Forth issuing on a summer's morn to breathe
Among the pleasant villages and farms
Adjoin'd, from each thing met conceives delight;
The smell of grain, or tedded grass or kine,
Or dairy, each rural sight, each rural sound.

Thou wilt not find my shepherdesses idly piping on oaten reeds; but milking the kine, tying up the sheaves; or, if the hogs are astray, driving them to their styes. My shepherd gathereth none other nosegays but what are the growth of our own fields; he sleepeth not under myrtle shades, but under a hedge; nor doth he vigilantly defend his flocks from wolves, because there are none; as Maister Spenser well observeth,

Well is known that since the Saxon King
Never was wolf seen, many or some,
Nor in all Kent nor in Christendom.

For as much as I have mentioned Maister Spenser, soothly I must acknowledge him a bard of sweetest memorial. Yet hath his shepherd's boy at sometimes raised his rustic reed to rhymes more rumbling than rural. Diverse grave points also hath he handled of churchly matter, and doubts in religion daily arising, to great clerks only appertaining. What liketh me best are his names, indeed right simple and meet for the country, such as Lobbin, Cuddy, Hobbinol, Diggon, and others, some of which I have made bold to borrow. Moreover, as he called his Eclogues, The Shepherd's Calendar, and divided the same into the twelve months; I have chosen (peradventure not over rashly) to name mine by the

days of the week, omiting Sunday, or the Sabbath; ours being supposed to be Christian Shepherds, and to be then at church-worship. Yet further of many of Maister Spenser's Eclogues it may be observed, though months they be called, of the said months therein nothing is specified; wherein I have also esteemed him worthy mine imitation.

That principally, courteous Reader, whereof I would have thee to be advertised, (seeing I depart, from the vulgar usage) is touching the language of my shepherds; which is, soothly to say, such as is neither spoken by the country maiden or the courtly dame; nay, not only such as in the present times is not uttered, but was never uttered in times past, and if I judge aright, will never be uttered in times future; it having too much of the country to be fit for the court: too much of the court to be fit for the country; too much of the language of old times to be fit for the present; too much of the present to have been fit for the old; and too much of both to be fit for any time to come. Granted also it is, that in this my language I seem unto myself as a London mason, who calculateth his work for a term of years, when he buildeth with old materials upon a ground-rent that is not his own, which soon turneth to rubbish and ruins. For this point no reason can I allege, only deep-learned ensamples having led me thereunto.

But here again much comfort ariseth in me, from the hopes, in that I conceive, when these words in the course of transitory things shall de

cay, it may so hap, in meet time, that some lover of simplicity shall arise, who shall have the hardiness to render these mine Eclogues into such more modern dialect as shall be then understood; to which end, glosses and explications of uncouth pastoral terms are annexed.

Gentle Reader, turn over the leaf, and entertain thyself with the prospect of thine own country, limned by the painful hand of

Thy loving countryman,

JOHN GAY.

PROLOGUE.

TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE THE

LORD VISCOUNT BOLINGBROKE

Lo I, who erst beneath a tree
Sung Bumkinet and Bowzybee,
And Blouzelind and Marian bright,
In apron blue or apron white,
Now write my sonnets in a book,
For my good Lord of Bolingbroke.

As lads and lasses stood around
To hear my boxen hautboy sound,
Our clerk came posting o'er the green
With doleful tidings of the Queen;
"That Queen, (he said) to whom we owe
Sweet peace, that maketh riches flow;
That Queen who eas'd our tax of late,
Was dead, alas!-and lay in state."

At this, in tears was Cic'ly seen,
Buxoma tore her pinners clean;
In doleful dumps stood every clown;
The parson rent his band and gown.

For me, when as I heard that death
Had snatch'd Queen Anne to El'zabeth,
I broke my reed, and sighing swore,
I'd weep for Blouzelind no more.

While thus we stood as in a stound,
And wet with tears, like dew, the ground;
Full soon by bonfire and by bell
We learnt our liege was passing well.
A skilful leach (so God him speed)
They say had wrought this blessed deed;

This leach Arbuthnot was yclept,
Who many a night not once had slept,
But watch'd our gracious Sovereign still;
For who could rest while she was ill?
Oh! may'st thou henceforth sweetly sleep:
Sheer, swains! oh! sheer your softest sheep
To swell his couch; for well I ween,
He sav'd the realm who sav'd the Queen.
Quoth I, "Please God, I'll hie with glee
To court, this Arbuthnot to see."-
I sold my sheep and lambkins too,
For silver loops and garment blue;
My boxen hautboy, sweet of sound,
For lace that edg'd mine hat around;
For Lightfoot and my scrip I got
A gorgeous sword, and eke a knot

So forth I far'd to court with speed,
Of soldier's drum withouten dreed;
For peace allays the shepherd's fear
Of wearing cap of granadier.
There saw I ladies all-a-row

Before their Queen in seemly show.
No more I'll sing Buxoma brown,
Like goldfinch, in her Sunday gown;
Nor Clumsilis, nor Marian bright,
Nor damsel that Hobnelia hight;
But Lansdown fresh as flower of May,
And Berkeley lady blithe and gay,
And Anglesey, whose speech exceeds
The voice of pipe or oaten reeds,
And blooming Hyde, with eyes so rare,
And Montague beyond compare.
Such ladies fair would I depaint
In roundelay or sonnet quaint.