is more often simply wearisome. It is true of Dyer, as it was of Thomson, that his really excellent poetry of Nature was written when he was fresh from long and familiar knowledge of Nature in her wilder forms, and that travel and contact with men served to dull the power of these early experiences. “Grongar Hill” and “The Country Walk” were published the same year as Thomson’s “Summer,” and were doubtless written the year before. They could hardly have been a result of the impetus given by Thomson to the study of Nature. They are rather an original and independent contribution toward the same end. They were the expression of personal experience, and the direct outcome of native taste and singularly fortunate environment. Dyer’s life before his school days at Westminster was spent in the wild and romantic country in Carmarthenshire, and during the years immediately preceding the publication of these two poems he was wandering through other parts of South Wales as an “itinerant painter.” His previous study with Richardson had helped to develop that artistic sensitiveness to external impressions so apparent in his early work. He notes the colors and shapes of the trees grouped below him, the gloomy pine and sable yew, the blue poplar, the yellow beech, the fir with its slender, tapering trunk, the sturdy oak with its broad-spread boughs. The changing horizon line as he climbs the hill, the long level lines of the lawn, the various movements of rivers running swift or slow, through sun and shade, the streaks of meadow, the close, small lines of distant hedges, the curling spires of smoke, are observations that show the trained eye.[330] His colors seem to be rather carefully discriminated. Yellow receives unusual emphasis. The linnet’s yellow plumage, the yellow foliage of the beech, the mountain-tops shining yellow in the sun, and even the “yellow barn” catch his eye. This preference for yellow characterizes his later work. He speaks of “yellow corn,” “yellow tillages,” “yellowing plains,” and the “yellow Tiber.” He also liked the words “golden” and “sunny.” Purple is applied to evening and to the groves at evening, and seems to be used with some real sense of the modern specific meaning of the word. In later work the color purple became almost a stock epithet with him;
are typical phrases. He also notices the “thousand flaming flowers” in the fields, the silver and gold of the morning clouds, the shining of lakes, the evening colors reflected in slow streams, and the soft fair hues of distant mountain summits. He delights in the sounds of Nature, especially in the songs of birds. Not for many years after Dyer is there so effective a bit of bird-song poetry as the closing lines of “Grongar Hill.” Nor is he indifferent to odors, for he notes the perfumed breeze from the valley, the fragrant brakes, and the sweet-smelling honeysuckle. It is worthy of note that in these two short poems nearly a hundred natural facts are mentioned.
In this wide observation Dyer includes some features not hitherto counted as parts of a poetic landscape. The “windy summit wild and high,” naked rocks, and barren ground, are mingled with the softer details, and
He nowhere dwells upon mountains in his descriptions, but the slight touches here and there and the general tone of the poems are sufficient to show his great delight in mountain scenery. He represents himself as climbing slowly and looking back often so as not to miss a single phase of the view unfolding before him. Once on the top he gazes out over the lovely prospect and exclaims,
In “The Fleece” are further indications of this love of mountains and wide views. The passage beginning
is typical.
and
have something of the modern touch.
The prevailing interest in these poems is in Nature, but there are one or two charming pictures of homely life. The old man’s hut and garden on the edge of the wood, and the barnyard scene are as attractive as they are realistic. And surely the tattered old man digging up cabbage in the shade might have been expected to wait at least for Crabbe or Wordsworth to introduce him into the select company of the Muses. The same may be said of the tramp asleep by the roadside.[339]
In any tabulation Dyer’s use of Nature would seem to be much more abundant than it is for in “The Fleece” he of necessity used a large number of geographical details merely to mark out localities and with no more literary quality than there would be on a map. His chief use of Nature is twofold, and is best seen in the short poems, “Grongar Hill” and “The Country Walk.” He describes a landscape with loving minuteness for its own sake, and he regards it as the occasion for a strain of half-melancholy reflection on human life. This gentle, quaintly precise moralizing is unlike the typical classical didacticism in that it seems to spring inevitably from the effect of natural objects on the poet’s mind, instead of being itself a main thing and laboriously illustrated by such natural facts as came to hand.
The entire impression made by the two poems is that they were written by one who knew Nature better than books. The negative as well as the positive qualities of the poem show this. There are almost no conventional phrases.[340] Of the personified abstract qualities, two at least, Pleasure and Quiet, are so imaginatively conceived as not to belong to the category of cold classical personifications. The only classical allusion is significant as being to the “fair Castalian springs” “deserted now” by all but “slavish hinds.”[341] But the poems show something more than first-hand as opposed to bookish knowledge of Nature. Their author evidently loved to linger over the charms of Nature in solitude, to let them sink into his mind and heart. There is a power of quiet contemplation, of “wise passiveness,” such as Thomson never knew. The closing lines of “Grongar Hill,”
show a wonderfully true and delicate apprehension of the spiritual influences that speak through Nature’s forms. It is putting into plainer words what was the underlying conception in Parnell’s “Hymn to Contentment.”
As has been observed, Dyer speedily left his first love and devoted himself to laborious, didactic blank verse. We cannot find that his two short poems attracted much attention at the time. Thomson’s glory blazed forth so effulgently that lesser lights were but dimly seen. Now, however, as we go from poet to poet of the period, we cannot fail to be impressed by the unusual sincerity, simplicity, and truth with which Dyer wrote of Nature. And we feel that while he lacked Thomson’s power and fertility, he was nearly equal to him in originality, and superior to him in delicacy.
David Mallet’s (1705–65) chief poems in which there is use of external Nature are “A Fragment,” “The Excursion,” and “Amyntor and Theodora.” The undated “A Fragment” reads like a poetical exercise in the style of Dyer’s “The Country Walk” and “Grongar Hill.” The octosyllabic verse, the general plan of a walk at different times of day, the ascent of a hill for the view, the pleasure in the solitude of Nature, the moralizing invocations to Health and Freedom, are all suggestive of Dyer. The description of the noontide woodland retreat, of the forest sounds, and of the poet’s revery are like passages in “The Country Walk,” while both the spirit and form of some passages in “Grongar Hill” are paralleled by such lines as,
or,
“The Excursion” and “Amyntor and Theodora” are interesting because of their relation to the work of Thomson. Thomson and Mallet were students together at Edinburgh, and there was evidently a close literary comradeship between them, which lasted through the first years of their London life. During the summer of 1726 they were both engaged in literary work, the result of which was, on Thomson’s part, “Summer,” and on Mallet’s, about 300 lines of the first canto of “The Excursion.”[344] There was a vigorous interchange of letters concerning the two poems, each author giving advice and criticism on the passages sent him by the other.[345] A comparison of the poems shows numerous resemblances. As an illustration we may take the sunrise with which each poem opens. The order of occurrences is the same in each—night, faint gleams in the east, breaking clouds, rising mists, retreat of wild animals, song of birds, work of shepherds, full rising of sun, praise to God, reflections on the inspiration to be gained from Nature. There are also many curious verbal similarities. In Thomson the meek-eyed Morn, mother of dews, comes faint-gleaming in the east to destroy night’s doubtful empire, and before the lustre of her face the clouds break white away. In Mallet sacred Morn pale-glimmering comes with dewy radiance through the doubtful twilight and spreads a whitening lustre over the sky. In Thomson the powerful King of Day looks in boundless majesty abroad. In Mallet the King of Glory looks abroad on Nature. These are but suggestions of the many unmistakable but baffling and intricately interwoven similarities in the two poems. If we had but these two poems it would be, perhaps, impossible to say which poet exerted the stronger influence. Thomson’s deference to Mallet’s judgment is evident. “Winter” was submitted to him for correction,[346] and the splendid passage on precious stones in “Summer” was an addition proposed by him.[347] Thomson also greatly admired Mallet’s work.[348] Thomson’s work, on the other hand, bears the impress of a genuine enthusiasm and a manysided personal experience, while Mallet’s work reads like that of a facile versifier speaking out of a meager experience and with a forced enthusiasm. At any rate, when we come to “Amyntor and Theodora,” published years after the full edition of “The Seasons,” Mallet is clearly imitative in thought and phrase. The ocean, for instance, is described as “through boundless space diffused, magnificently dreadful.” Again it is “diffused immense,” and “magnificently various.” In its depths “immeasurably sunk,” “ten thousand thousand tribes endless range.” Its stormy waves are “mountains surging to the stars, commotion infinite” and they break in “boundless undulation.” Storms are presaged by “doubling clouds on clouds.” The earth glows with “the boundless blush of spring.” At sunset the sea shines with “an unbounded blush.” A comparison of these phrases with those quoted from Thomson on p. 92, will serve to show in how exaggerated and inartistic a form Thomson’s mannerisms reappeared in the later work of Mallet. Mallet’s work, if it had been first in the field, would have marked a distinct advance in the conception of Nature. As it is he is of real importance as indicating the influence of Dyer, and especially of Thomson.
“The Wanderer” by Richard Savage (1698–1743) appeared in 1729. Of this poem Dr. Johnson says that it was “never denied to abound with strong representations of nature,” but a study of the five long, confused, formless cantos hardly confirms such an opinion. Most of the descriptions, like those of Mallet’s “Excursion,” are of scenes too remote for damaging comparisons with the reality, as of sunrise at the north pole, or of wide prospects from unknown mounts. The various details are brought together with little sense of unity. He called the poem a vision, and he had perhaps a right to dreamlike combinations of facts, but the result is not a contribution to the study of external Nature. His diction is vague and inexpressive. There is large use of stock poetic words, and there are many Thomsonian echoes. Most of the descriptions are tame, classical imitations. They show almost no first-hand knowledge of the country. There is, however, one characteristic of his poetry that cannot fail to arrest the attention, and that is his use of color. Not even Thomson is so lavish with bright tints, and they are sometimes nicely discriminated. Illustrative passages are referred to in the note.[349] He observes the color of “crooked, sunny roads” that change “from brown, to sandy-red, and chalky hues.” He perceives the “green grass yellowing into hay.” His sunset sky has several colors that had not been noted in poetry. Some of the clouds had “the unripen’d cherry’s die;” others were “mild vermilion,” “streaked through white,” and there was in the sky a tinge of “floating green,” the result of the “blue veil’d yellow” of certain distant clouds. In a moonrise picture there are eight colors, besides twelve words indicative of brightness, and that in a description of thirteen lines. The best of these descriptions is that of the peas and beans in blossom. References such as those to the peas that with their “mixed flowers of red and azure” run in “colour’d lanes along the furrows,” and to the beans that after a rain “fresh blossom in a speckled flower” bear the mark of first-hand observation. The same may be said of his brief touches descriptive of the roads and the fields and the sunset sky already referred to. There is also fairly abundant reference to birds, though but a single line,
exhibits any special felicity in expression. On the whole, Savage is important in the history of the poetry of Nature merely for his detailed insistence on color.
Among the minor poets of this period was Stephen Duck (1705–1756). He spent most of his life on a farm where he early began to write verses which attracted much local attention and finally gained for their author substantial favor at Court. His “Thresher’s Labour” is interesting simply because it is a realistic treatment of a homely English theme.[350] Duck’s poems were popular in their own day, but his treatment of Nature is commonplace.
The poetry of these four years is interesting because it indicates how early Thomson’s influence made itself felt, as in the work of Mallet and Savage; and also because it shows a use of Nature quite unlike Thomson’s and equally significant of coming tendencies, as in the work of Dyer.
The choice of 1756 as the date to mark the close of this period is based on the appearance in that year of Joseph Warton’s “Essay on Pope.” In the twenty-six years between Thomson’s “Seasons” and this “Essay,” the most important literary works are in prose, as the novels of Fielding, Richardson, and Smollett, and the theological writings of Butler, Hume, and Warburton. The period is marked by the establishment of numerous periodicals, by the work of editors, and of compilers. The most important poetry of the period was the “Essay on Man,” “Moral Essays,” and “The Dunciad” by Pope. In writing of this sort there is, of course, little use of external Nature. And it has already been shown that the tragedies of Thomson and the later work of Armstrong, Mallet, and Dyer which appeared during these years, either ignore Nature or treat it in a stiff or simply imitative manner. But there are in the twenty-six years poems that are not only in accord with the changing attitude toward Nature, but that distinctly aid in the evolution of the new conception. The chief names are William Somerville (1675–1742), William Shenstone (1714–63), Matthew Greene, (1696–1737), William Collins (1721–59), William Hamilton (1704–54), Edward Young (1683–1765), Dr. Akenside (1721–70), Thomas Gray (1716–71), Joseph Warton (1722–1800), and Thomas Warton (1728–90). There are other authors whose works are not, as a whole, of importance in this study, but who have written single poems of some significance. Some of these minor poets are Samuel Boyse (1708–49), William Whitehead (1715–85), Dr. John Dalton (1709–63), R. Potter (1721–1804), William Mason (1724–97), Francis Coventry (d. 1759?), Richard Jago (1715–81), Moses Mendes (d. 1758), William Thompson (1712?–66?), Joseph Relph (1712–43), John Gilbert Cooper (1723–69), and Robert Blair (1699–1746).
Somerville, “a country gentleman and a skillful and useful Justice of the Peace,” was a mighty hunter in his day, and found, in leisure hours, great pleasure in throwing into blank verse the accumulated wisdom of years in the field. “The Chace” he calls his “bold, instructive song,” and it so well carries out the second epithet as to be of interest only to his “brethren of the couples” to whose kindness he commends it. There is the most minute description of the kinds of hounds, the breeding of dogs, the care of whelps, their habits, their diseases and the best remedies, and the most desirable kennels. In “Field Sports” we have almost as close a description of hawking. Both poems are, however, destitute of any real love of Nature. The diction, except for a free use of canine technicalities, is extremely limited and commonplace; and we look in vain for the occasional happy touch, the felicitous epithet or line, that would indicate any original or appreciative knowledge of the external world. When this vigorous squire went out to hunt he had eyes but for the dogs and the game. His few descriptions are of the conventional type, as:
They are weak imitations, lifeless and vague. “Hobbinol” is a disagreeable poem. Its very ugly rural pictures might perhaps rank as realistic studies of English country life, but so far as any country atmosphere is concerned they are of no importance. The smock-race, the wrestling match, the drunken affray, might as well have taken place in any city slums.
Somerville had a catholic taste in poetry. He greatly admired Homer, Virgil, Pope, Allan Ramsay, and Thomson. The last poet he not only admired, but imitated. The passage beginning,
is a pretty clear echo from Thomson’s “Hymn,” and the closing twenty-five lines of “The Chace” must have been studied from the closing twenty-two lines of “Autumn.” Somerville is noteworthy in the present study only because he wrote on country themes, and imitated Thomson.
Shenstone is a much more important figure in the history of the poetry of Nature. His sensitiveness to the new spirit and his reverence for the old form make him an interesting transitional influence. His “Prefatory Essay on Elegy” shows this Janus attitude and, what is more, his own consciousness of it. “If the author has hazarded throughout the use of English or modern allusions, he hopes it will not be imputed to an entire ignorance, or to the least disesteem, of the ancient learning. He has kept the ancient plan and method in his eye, though he builds his edifice with the materials of his own nation. In other words, through a fondness for his native country he has made use of the flowers it produced, though, in order to exhibit them to the greater advantage, he has endeavored to weave his garland by the best model he could find.”[353] This statement is interesting as being directly opposed to the thought in Gay’s experiment. Both poets mean to hold by the Latin form and use English materials, the one to show that the two are incompatible, the other to show that they may be united. Neither Gay nor Shenstone thought of discarding the Latin form. In the same “Essay” he claims that in his use of Nature he has drawn only on personal experience. “If he describes a rural landskip, or unfolds the train of sentiments it inspired, he fairly drew his picture from the spot; and felt very sensibly the affection he communicates. If he speaks of his humble shed, his flocks and his fleeces, he does not counterfeit the scene; who having (whether through choice or necessity, is not material) retired betimes to country solitudes, and sought his happiness in rural employments, has a right to consider himself as a real shepherd. The flocks, the meadows and the grottoes are his own, and the embellishment of his farm his sole amusement. As the sentiments, therefore, were inspired by Nature, and that in the earlier part of his life, he hopes they will retain a natural appearance.” This plea for first-hand observation is important because it is the most direct of the early critical remarks on the poetical treatment of Nature.
Shenstone’s delight in Nature was evidently genuine. He grants that men may be dazzled by the city;
and they learn again
He speaks with scorn of those “bounded souls” who enjoy in Nature only the satisfaction of present needs, or the prospect of future gain, and who cannot on “the mere landscape” feast their eyes, and apostrophizes them thus:
But to the true lover of Nature,
Shenstone also defends the doctrine that beauty is its own excuse for being.
Though Shenstone’s work is often undeniably tame and diffuse, and though his interests were bounded by his farm, he is of significance because of his thorough enjoyment of quiet country places, his indignant rejection of the utilitarian view of Nature, and his courageous plea for truth to English scenes.
Greene’s chief poem, “The Spleen,” was published in 1737, after his death. The subject is not one that would lead to much use of Nature, but there is at least one picture that cannot be passed over.[358] In his sketch of the ideal life he describes his ideal home. Its surroundings are most charming and natural, and the whole scene, in its unity and reality of effect, contrasts well with such fanciful combinations as the garden in Tickell’s “To a Lady before Marriage.” One line in this description,
is remarkable in that, in so few words, it not only presents a complete picture, but also awakens the feeling that would be excited by the scene itself.
Hamilton’s chief use of Nature is in gentle little allegories of life. “The Rhone and the Arar,” though a description of two rivers, is obviously didactic in all its details. Spring, summer, and winter in Ode III are but “moral shows,” spread out for man’s instruction. Though Hamilton’s scenes are usually of the soft, delicious, vaguely pleasing sort, and his diction largely classical, yet now and then in his rather monotonous spring poetry we find a fresh line or phrase, as when he comments on spring’s gift of beauty to “each nameless field.” He finds joy in the prickly briar rose, the bright-colored weed, the lion’s yellow tooth, in a thousand flowers never sowed by art.[360] He is filled with gratitude as he looks upon the smiling face of Nature and the radiant glories of the sky, or listens to the music of the opening year.[361] In “Contemplation” he exclaims,
More distinctive, however, than this love of the spring-time world, is Hamilton’s sense of communion with Nature. The lines,
and this address to the passions that tyrannize over him,
are new evidences of the spirit that animated Lady Winchilsea, Dyer, and Parnell.
Hamilton’s most important poem is “The Braes of Yarrow.” In this ballad there is a remarkable blending of external Nature with the tragedy of love and death. The use of the phrase, “the Braes of Yarrow,” in the refrain adds a curiously subtle touch to the pathos of the poem. Tradition had so closely associated the sloping hills and the winding stream of Yarrow with stories of unhappy love in far-off days that the name was in itself enough to strike the keynote of pathos in Hamilton’s ballad. The tone or color that human experience had once given to the scenery was carried on by that scenery so that it became the appropriate background for a new tale of grief. The one descriptive stanza,
and a single line in the maiden’s lament,
are an appropriate setting for the happy love of the bonny bride and her comely swain. But Nature is also compelled, as it were, to share in the grief, and is implicated in the crime. On Yarrow’s rueful flood floats the body of the slain knight; her doleful hills echo the cries of sorrow. And the desolate bride prays that rain and dew may forever forsake the fields where her lover was so basely slain. The descriptive element in Hamilton’s ballad is of further interest as having suggested some of the details in Wordsworth’s “Yarrow Unvisited.”
“The Deity,” a poem by Samuel Boyse, and much praised in its own day,[362] is of importance here merely because of its Thomsonian imitations, and because of its conception of God in Nature. This conception is, in the main, the typical classical one, as in “Omnipotence,” where the central idea is,
In “Providence,” however, the modified classical conception is apparent, the ever-working power of God being dwelt upon. All Nature is represented as being each moment derived from the Creator.
are characteristic lines.
That Boyse was an admirer of Thomson we know from the lines addressed to him,
In reading Boyse it is difficult to point out exact echoes from Thomson, but the impression remains that certain passages, especially in “Glory,” are, in spite of their couplets, but weak paraphrases of some portions of Thomson’s work, noticeably “The Hymn.”
Young’s literary career lasted from 1713 to 1762. His “Ocean” and “Sea Pieces” and the only book of the “Night Thoughts” (1742–45), in which there is much use of external Nature, have already been briefly characterized. They need little further discussion here. The preface to “Ocean” is more worthy of note than the poem itself. In this preface Young deprecates slavish following of the models of antiquity, declaring that “originals only have true life.” Due deference to the great standards of antiquity requires that “the motives and fundamental method of their working” should be imitated rather than the works themselves. He then defends his choice of the ocean as a subject, saying that it is, like the subjects chosen by the ancients, both national and great, and adds the significant phrase, “and (what is strange) hitherto unsung.” “The crude ore of romanticism” which Mr. Gosse finds in Young, has to do with his despairing attitude toward life and death, not with his attitude toward external Nature. His love of darkness, which seems at first thought akin to the sentimental melancholy of the romantic poetry, is really an unemotional choice of a fit background for his visions of gloom. His strongest lines on night represent not its beauty, nor its melancholy, but its divinity, or, rather, its theological import. The following are typical:
At night the sense of sacred quiet is “the felt presence of the deity.”[366] In occasional passages Young has more or less definite previsions of scattered ideas in later poetry,[367] but these are incidental, and of merely curious interest. Taken in the bulk, his work is so slightly and coldly concerned with the outer world as to offer no real contribution to the new feeling for Nature.
Collins possesses many of the qualities and the defects of the romantic spirit. He made plans almost as comprehensive and visionary as those of Coleridge. His indolence, his wavering, irresolute disposition, his morbid sensitiveness, the intensity of his emotions, his love of liberty, his passion for “high romance and Gothic diableries,” together with his new sense of the mystery of Nature, set him quite apart from the men who were his friends, from Dr. Johnson, Armstrong, Aaron Hill, from Garrick, Quin, and Foote, even from Thomson. His interests were not those of his day, for his admiration turned to Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, rather than to Virgil and Horace.[368] In English poetry he gave his allegiance to Spenser, Milton, and Shakspere, rather than to Dryden and Pope.[369] He was devoted to music. He was also deeply interested in the remote history of his own country, and in the legendary lore and superstitions of any land. Dr. Johnson says of him: “He loved fairies, genii, giants, and monsters; he delighted to rove through the meanders of enchantment, to gaze on the magnificence of golden palaces, to repose by the waterfalls of Elysian gardens.”
Collins was a town-bred poet and could have known little of the country at first hand. We might therefore expect all his imagery to be of the conventional sort in the “Eclogues” written in his early school days. But such is not the case. In the later poems the use of Nature, slight as it is, is marked by unusual originality and imaginative power. There is everywhere present a sense of delight in the wilder, freer, in the more remote and mysterious, aspects of Nature. He makes Fear sit
and listen to
His gifted wizard seers
Note also the description of the “wide, wild storm,” in the “Ode to Liberty,” and especially the skilful mingling of landscape details and superstitious terrors in the “Ode on Popular Superstitions.” The “bewitch’d, low, marshy, willow brake,” “the spot where hums the sedgy reed,” the “dim hill that seems up-rising near,” “Uist’s dark forest,” “the watery strath or quaggy moss,” “the damp, dark fen,” are slight touches, but they serve perfectly to suggest the fit home of the kelpie, the will-o’-the-wisp, the mischievous fairy folk, and the phantom train of gliding ghosts. But Collins’ most appreciative use of Nature is in the “Ode to Evening (1746).” That poem was doubtless the result of personal experience, for it notes facts, such as the rising of the beetle in the path at twilight, that were not yet stock poetical property. The lines,