Except incidentally, a treatment of pastoral does not form a considerable part of discussions upon eighteenth-century literature. No doubt this is because the eighteenth century, for all the artificiality and futility that the term connotes, still is for us the period of revolutions; we desire to see in it first of all the beginning of the new order of social ideas; it is only natural that these ideas should be sought in those writings that would appear to be the farthest removed from literary tradition. But it is hardly reasonable to expect by this method to form a correct idea of the time; not only what a priori represents reaction, but also that which continues traditions soon to be entirely abondoned, must be studied, if we would form the right estimate, not only of the period as a whole, but even of those very ideas posited as representative of the trend of the time.