EC'LOGUE, in the original meaning of the word, the select or choice pieces of an author; or extracts collected out of former works, such as were termed in Latin excerpta. It is not known how this title was originally given to the pas toral poems of Virgil ; but from the eir eninstance of their being so named, the wond eclogue in modern usage is applied to that species of poetry. The persons who are introduced conversing in ec logues, or whose adventures are recounted in them, are shepherds; that is, for the most part, imaginary personages, whose sentiments, and the external circum stances among which they live, rather to an ideal age of gold tban to the realities of modern life; and their loves constitute the main and proper subjects of the eclogue. Nevertheless various writers have endeavored, but with little success, to give an air of greater reality to pastoral poetry, and give their rustics more of the costume and diction of aetnal clowns; but the result has been a species of burlesque, not at all answering to our conceptions of pastoral poetry; nor can we easily imagine that the personages of Theoc•itus, although the ear'icst an therefore the simplest of pastoral poets, are correct resemblances of the Sicilian rustics among whom the writer lived.
The celogues of Virgil tire of various de scriptions: some of them only hove the true character of pastorals; others con tain occasional poems on public and pri vate events of that day, very slightly enveloped in the pastoral costume. The characteristics of this species of poetry, as assumed by the moderns, arc, first, the representation of nature in soft and quiet scenes of cultivation; secondly, a slightly dramatic turn either of action or narra tion ; thirdly, characters whose senti ments and language are confined within certain peculiar limits; thus, any strong emotion, virtue, or vice, would be an unfit topic for a pastoral poet to dwell upon. In English literature, Spenser, Philips, and a few others, may be named as pastoral poets in the strict sense of the word ; others, as Milton in his Lyci das, have assented the pastoral costume in order to convey a very different class of ideas. It is worthy of remark, that this species of composition is among those which have wholly disappeared in the present day ; the English hare had no pastoral poet since Gay and Collins ; and Gesner, in Germany, is the latest author who has acquired any degree of celebrity in this line.