"There are few images and sentiments in the Eclogues of Virgil, but what are drawn from the Idylliums of Theocritus: in whom there is a rural, romantic wildness of thought, heightened by the Doric dialect; with such lively pictures of the passions, and of simple unadorned nature, as are infinitely pleasing to such lovers and judges of true poetry as yourself. Theocritus is indeed the great store-house of pastoral description, and every succeeding painter of rural beauty (except Thomson in his Seasons) hath copied his images from him, without ever looking abroad upon the face of nature themselves."
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Joseph Warton, Prefatory Dedication of The Works of Virgil to Lord Lyttelton (1753).
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Theocritus
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Theocritus
Theocritus (fl. c. 270 BC) was a Greek poet of the 3rd century BC, probably a Syracusan who later lived in Kos and Alexandria. He invented the genre of pastoral poetry.
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