SOURCE: “The Eclogues” in The Roman Poets of the Augustan Age: Virgil, Clarendon Press, 1908, pp. 130-73.
In the essay below, Sellar discusses the order of composition of Vergil's Eclogues and maintains that Vergil's earlier poems are imitative of Theocritian poetry. After Vergil mastered the form, rhythm, and diction of the pastoral, Sellar notes, he increasingly demonstrated originality in his choice of subject and in the truthful manner in which he treated his subject.
