could hardly have been written by one unfamiliar with the slow disappearance of a landscape as night comes on. More remarkable are the simplicity and directness of touch by which the few details are made to stand for complete pictures. The cloudy sunset, the silence of evening, the calm lake amid the upland fallows, the fading view, the windy day in autumn, are all excellent examples of the stimulative as opposed to the delineative description. But the final impression made on the mind is powerful mainly because in some way that escapes analysis the very mood and spirit of evening, its calm, its tender melancholy, breathe through the unpretending lines. We seldom find in the eighteenth century, personifications so high and spiritual, description so essentially poetical, or workmanship so perfect in its simplicity.

Dr. Akenside’s “The Pleasures of the Imagination,” though not published till 1744, was begun in 1738 when the author was but seventeen, and completed when he was twenty-one. In 1757 it was remodeled and many additions were made. In its first form the poem was essentially a product of the author’s precocious, brilliant youth. Yet it has little of the fire and passion of youth. It is a smooth, correct, rather frigid exposition of certain philosophical principles. The whole poem seems like an illustration of Akenside’s belief that poetry is true eloquence in meter.[370] It is not marked by any especially rich or faithful portrayal of Nature, nor is there much description. In point of fact, such descriptions as occur are often marred by eighteenth-century periphrases such as calling honey “ambrosial spoils;” the sun, “the radiant ruler of the year;” flowers, “the purple honors of the spring;” water, “a delicious draught of cool refreshment;” and frogs, “the grave, unwieldly inmates of the neighboring pond.” There is also frequent use of stock words and of worn-out similitudes. But in spite of its coldness, this poem is an important contribution to the development of the poetry of Nature because of its new conception of the relation between man and Nature.

When the poet endeavors to explore the “secret paths of early genius,” he imagines inspiration as coming to the lonely youth from some “wild river’s brink at eve,” or from “solemn groves at noon,”[371] and there is one passage that lays a Wordsworthian emphasis on the effect of Nature on the soul of a child:

But the great scene of Nature does not appear the same to all. It is only to the finer spirits that the true meaning of the outer world is revealed.[373] These nobler souls are all “naked and alive”[374] to the influences of Nature to which they respond as Memnon’s image to the touch of the morning.[375] Form, color, sound, motion, detain the enlivened sense, and soon the soul perceives the deep concord between these attributes of matter and the mind of man.[376] The passions are lulled to a divine repose. The intellect itself suspends its graver cares. Love and joy alone possess the soul

For the happy man whom neither sordid wealth nor the gaudy spoils of honor can seduce to leave the sweets of Nature,

If men feel themselves cramped by custom, by sordid policies, let them appeal

All these call us to beneficent activity.

But even the susceptible soul must come to Nature in an open, receptive mood. The sacred rites of the Naiads are sought in vain by the “eyes of care.” No vision is granted to the preoccupied guest.[380] There is also an independent life in Nature, or at least a spirit that is no reflection of man’s moods, but with qualities of its own whereby man is influenced.

The power of Nature over man is constant and varied. She is endowed with such enchantment, made up of forms so exquisitely fair, breathed through with such ethereal sweetness, that she can at will “raise or depress the impassioned soul.”[383] Her dark woods rouse him to solemn awe. Her gay landscapes with blue skies and silver clouds give an impression of winning mirth. There is in the rising sun something kindred to man’s spirit. At evening the “breath divine of nameless joy,” that steals through the heart, is but another message from the spirit of love that rules the world. All the forms of the external world are but visible expressions of such thoughts of God as the mind of man is fitted to receive. The soundness of this interpretation of Nature is not here in question. We are merely concerned with the fact that in the middle of the century we find a statement of poetical creed which, so far as the thought is concerned, might come from “The Excursion” or “The Prelude.” Akenside is one of the first of the poets of the age to insist on the beauty of all Nature,[384] and to show an abiding sense of the spiritual elements that give significance to the external forms of Nature. He was also the first one to emphasize the platonic doctrine of the identity of truth and beauty,

A minor poet, John Gilbert Cooper, must be mentioned because of one poem, “The Power of Harmony” (1745). In execution it is heavy and involved. It is a clumsy attempt to work out a theory of beauty. The preface is more interesting than the poem. In this preface he says: “It is the design of the poem to show that constant attention to what is perfect and beautiful in Nature will, by degrees, harmonize the soul to a responsive regularity and sympathetic order.” In the poem he ascribes to “each natural scene a moral power,” and traces even the song of birds and the frisking of cattle to the effect

He believes also that all parts of Nature are beautiful. Shagged rocks, barren heaths, precipices, sable woods, headlong rivers, all are examples of the principle of harmony and so of beauty.

Somewhat earlier in the period is another minor poet who would be today practically unknown had not Southey preserved his work. This is Joseph Relph, the son of a Cumberland statesman. He was born in Shergham, where he spent most of his unhappy life. His “Cumbrian Pastorals” were, Southey says, transcripts from real life. They are among the very earliest attempts to represent the Cumberland dialect, and they are a close record of Cumberland superstitions and games and customs. The poems show an original study of the scenery about Shergham, as in the following lines:

Blair’s one important poem is “The Grave” (1743). Its aim is a moral one, and it makes but slight use of the outer world. There is, however, one interesting realistic description of a row of ragged elms

These elms, the cheerless unsocial yew, the wan moon, the howling wind, the screech owl, the moss-grown stones skirted with nettles, are descriptive details that serve very well to add the desired “supernumerary horror” to the scene. “The Grave” is one of the earliest poems to give to melancholy reflections on man’s mortality the Nature setting that was later recognized as the conventionally appropriate one.

William Thompson is best known by his “Epithalamium” (1736), “Sickness” (1745) and especially his “Hymn to May,” written “not long after.” His poems were published in a volume in 1757. His “Milkmaid” is a stilted, artificial pastoral filled in with homely details. Colin begs politely and on his knees that Lucy will smile upon him;

Lucy, of course, sighed and blushed a sweet consent. This pastoral, together with his admiration of Pope’s Alexis, who was so

would hardly lead one to suspect much satisfactory study of Nature in Thompson’s poetry. But there is apparent in the “Hymn” and even in “Sickness,” through all the florid, exuberant diction and obscure forms of expression, a genuine delight in the beauty and freshness of the outer world. He was a great admirer of Thomson, who as

and his poems show Thomson’s influence in expression and general conception. Such phrases as the “boundless majesty of day,” the “sun’s refulgent throne,” the “vernant showery bow profusive,” clouds of “ten thousand inconsistent shapes,” are suggestive. Here is a typical Thomsonian passage:

Or take this one:

There are many other suggestions of Thomson in these “tender and florid” descriptions of “the beauties, the pleasures, and the loves” of spring. William Thompson is of importance in this study merely because he is one more poet who loved Nature, who wrote of her with enthusiasm, and who imitated Thomson. His chief use of Nature is in similitudes and in frequent enthusiastic summaries of the charms of Nature.

Moses Mendes published in 1751 four poems named in imitation of Thomson, “Spring,” “Summer,” “Autumn,” and “Winter.” There is some first-hand observation in such lines as,

or,

but more often the observations are of the conventional imitative sort, as in this couplet:

which is hardly true of an English scene. On the whole the passages in which Mendes treats of Nature, while rather fanciful and decorative, are not indicative of any real knowledge of Nature.

Jago’s most important poems are “Edge Hill” (1767), “The Swallow” (1748), “The Blackbirds” (1753), and “The Goldfinches.” The last two are love stories of the birds named, each love story being disastrously ended by the cruelty of man in taking innocent life. “The Swallow” is an allegory of life and death. “Edge Hill” is notable for its pleasure in wide views which are minutely traced, and, alas, made “generally interesting by reflections, historical, philosophical, and moral.” The new note is struck by the exceptional frequency and evident appreciation with which the poet notes the mountains in the different views. Of “Dafset’s ridgy mountain,” he says,

To the west

In 1750 appeared Francis Coventry’s “Pens-hurst,” a poem in rhymed octosyllabics, notable chiefly for its many imitations of Milton. Another poem written by Coventry to the Honorable Wilmot Vaughan indicates that the two friends had found some pleasure in mountain climbing:

In the “World,” April 12, 1753, Coventry also had an article entitled “Strictures on the absurd Novelties introduced in Gardening,” which was a plea for simplicity and naturalness.

William Mason, who is a poet known chiefly because he had insight enough to appreciate Gray, may, in this study, be lightly passed over. His dramas “Elfrida” (1752), and “Caractacus” (1759) were written on the model of the ancient Greek tragedy. They have little to do with external Nature, although in order to introduce “touches of pastoral description” such as had especially delighted him in “Comus” and “As You Like It” he had laid the scene of “Elfrida” in “an old romantic forest.” “Caractacus” is a Druid play the action of which takes place on or near “majestic Snowden,” but there is only a single passage in which the wild scenery is made effective in the poem, and that is the ode beginning,

Later on the ode allies itself with romantic work by its use of the supernatural but it makes slight use of Nature. Mason’s chief significance in this study is in what he had to say about gardens. In “To a Water Nymph” (1747), there is a protest against the elaborate Gothic fountains then fashionable, and also against shell work and mineral grottoes. His long work, “The English Garden,” will be spoken of later.

The greatest name in this period is that of Thomas Gray. His prose will be taken up under “Travels.” His poetry falls into three periods.[389] The first or classical period, in spite of an occasional good line, such as

is entirely conventional in its use of Nature, the prevailing tone being exemplified in such phrases as “the attic warbler,” “the purple year,” and “Venus’ train.” But in the two poems of 1742–50, we find close and appreciative study of the country about Windsor and Stoke Pogis. In the ode on “Eton College” the wistful pleasure with which the poet recalls his childhood is intensified by his memory of the beloved hills and fields, the silver-winding stream, and the pleasant paths inseparably associated with the care-free days of his youth. In the “Elegy” the use of Nature is highly artistic. The purpose of the poem is a human one—the sympathetic representation of the honorable labor, the innocent joys, the tender and wholesome affections of the poor, the general tone being that of a pensive melancholy induced by the thought of death. Nature is used in due subordination to the theme, and with exquisite fitness. Every detail of the opening twilight picture contributes its own touch to prepare the mind for the succeeding reflections on death. The sounds, the tinkling of the distant folds, the droning of the beetle, the complaining of the owl, are such as emphasize silence, which is itself an accompaniment and an emblem of death. The ivy-mantled tower, the rugged elms, the black yews, have been immemorially associated with death. There is also a subtle analogy in the withdrawal of light, the life of Nature. So, too, each detail in the first picture of morning, has its human purpose. The stirring sounds are interesting and of pathetic import because they once waked an answering throb of life in the hearts of men who now hear them no more. The enumeration of homely country tasks has its chief value in the suggested delight of the workman in his occupation and the resultant emphasis by contrast on the pathos of death.

In the last six stanzas of the poem we find the true romantic conception of the relation between man and Nature. The poet is represented as a shy, solitary being in communion with Nature, and drawing his inspiration from her. In the morning he hurries to some hillside that he may watch the sunrise; at noon he stretches himself at full length under some beech-tree by the side of a brook, and pores over the waters as they babble by; or he wanders through the woods, murmuring to himself his wayward fancies. This poet is certainly far enough removed from the typical town-bred poet of the classical régime. He is rather of the same race as Warton’s Enthusiast, and he at least suggests Wordsworth’s Poet who murmurs by the running brooks a music sweeter than their own.[390] In these stanzas Nature is not only the appropriate dramatic background. It is taken up into the mental action and becomes at least in part the occasion of the poet’s moods, and it is entirely through the relation of the poet to Nature that these moods are revealed to the reader.

Nature is thus throughout the poem made strictly subservient to the human theme, but the intrinsic beauty of the brief descriptions, quite apart from the context, cannot pass unnoticed. Separate lines have the power of suggesting whole pictures. For example in

the ringing blow of the ax, the crash of the falling tree, smite upon the ear. The stanza beginning

suggests several themes for the landscape artist. There is also a wide, peaceful landscape effect in

And the line

brings up all the details of a humble farmyard. These and other descriptions in the “Elegy” are distinctively English in spirit and detail. They are the result of first-hand knowledge, they are drawn with a firm hand, and they are used with an instinctive recognition of artistic fitness.

A new range of sympathies, however, appears in the poems of Gray’s third or purely romantic period. Here he writes of northern mythologies and superstitions or gives transcripts of Norse tales, and the pictures interwoven with the human elements are of a wild and savage character. In “The Bard,” mountain, precipice, and torrent form a setting without which the fiery denunciation of the poet would lose half its force. The storm and the whirlwind sweep through these poems. Rough and frowning steeps, foaming floods, warring winds, the heights of Snowdon and huge Plinlimmon, darkness, cold, make up the terrible but dramatically appropriate environment for the fierce, imprecatory elegy which the bard utters over his lost companions, for the fatal and dreadful song of the gigantic sisters weaving “the loom of Hell.”

In one or two other poems there is effective use of Nature. The joy of a convalescent able at last to go out of doors was not an uncommon subject through this period, but there is no better expression of it than in “A Fragment” by Gray. The feeling, and in passages, the phraseology, are almost Wordsworthian.

is an illustrative stanza. There are also some exquisite lines on birds, as,

and,

Though undated these lines in their spirit and workmanship ally themselves at once with the period of the “Elegy” rather than with the later work. They also accurately represent Gray’s dominant attitude toward Nature, his knowledge of sweet, homely things, and the delicate perfection of his literary touch.

The Rev. R. Potter’s chief poem is “A Farewell Hymn to the Country, Attempted in the Manner of Spenser’s Epithalamion” (1749). The poem shows much sympathetic knowledge of some parts of Nature, especially of birds and trees. He speaks of the quail that “runnes piping o’er the land,” of the “mavis-haunted grove,” and of the nightingale that delights “the stillness of the night.” He declares that his entire orchard, plums, pears, grapes, permains, and all, is at the service of these, his “fellow-poets.” At evening

He does not often refer to specific trees, but he gives little suggestive pictures as of “the uncertain shaded grove,” or

or of delightful resting places roofed with “inwoven branches.” The stream for which he cared most was “the gentle Tave” in Norfolk. He mentions many flowers, but in no new or finely descriptive manner. His sensitiveness to perfumes we may see in such lines as,

or in such phrases as “this flowre-perfumed aire.” The poem is rich in color, as in the descriptions of sunrise, and of various kinds of fruit.

Though it would be difficult to quote specific lines to prove the statement, it is nevertheless true that the whole poem conveys in a quite unusual degree a sense of warm, abiding affection for the simple scenes of the country. “Smit with the peaceful joys of lowly life,” he gives thanks for “the unmoved quiet of his silver daies,” and thinks with dread of “the cares and pains in mad cities.” His use of Nature is almost entirely in a running assemblage of sweet sights and sounds to justify his preference for country life.

Another of the minor poets of this period is Dr. John Dalton. In 1755 he wrote a “Descriptive Poem,” inscribed to “Two Ladies, the Daughters of Lord Lonsdale.” It is long, rambling, tedious, but it is of historical importance as being probably the first poetical tribute to the beauty of Westmoreland and Cumberland.

He speaks of the streams that

and says that

Of Keswick and Skiddaw he writes,

There are several passages in the poem indicative of Dr. Dalton’s unusually close study of streams, especially those near Lowther Castle, and in the picturesque valley of Borrowdale. With evident delight he traces the stream from its mountain source, over tuneful falls, under broad spreading boughs, along silent meadows, to the wide lake. There is also a fine passage descriptive of a patriarchal oak near Lowther. It is the first sustained description of a specific tree with anything like the modern feeling. It is represented as standing in a “sunny plain alone.” Its reverend age, its majesty, are especially dwelt upon. The poem shows some excellent first-hand observation. Dr. Dalton is ahead of Wordsworth in noticing the “azure roofs” of the lowly cottages. And he should have the credit of discovering the beauty of the vale of Derwentwater, and the majesty of giant Skiddaw, fourteen years before Gray made his famous tour, and nearly half a century before the Lake poets set up their monopoly.

The most important work of this period was doubtless that of the Warton brothers. Their father was also a poet, and he struck the romantic note in his hatred of city life and his longing for solitude in the country. Joseph Warton had a long literary career during which he edited books, wrote poems, and contributed articles to periodicals. Those of his poems that were of especial note in the history of Romanticism were written early in life, between 1740 and 1753. “The Enthusiast” (1740), “Odes on Various Subjects” (1746), and “Ode on Mr. West’s Translation of Pindar” (1744) are the chief ones to be studied. In these poems there are many summaries of such objects in Nature as give pleasure, but there is little actual description. In details and phraseology there are frequent echoes from Milton and Thomson.[393]

In general, though unoriginal in expression, the poems are marked by an unmistakably genuine love of Nature, and of Nature untouched by man. The poet dislikes Versailles whose fountains cast

Even Kent—

cannot design like Nature. No gardens however artfully adorned can charm like “unfrequented meads and pathless wilds.” The poet finds peculiar pleasure in all the wild, solitary, mournful aspects of Nature. He loves “hollow winds” and “ever-beating waves,” and hoary mountains where

He wishes for

He escapes from the hated city’s “tradeful hum” and seeks for solitude at “the deep dead of night” under the pale light of the moon. He is alive to all the mysterious, romantic suggestions of Nature. He is charmed by the little dancing fays that sip night-dews and “laugh and love” in the dales. In storms he hears demons and goblins shrieking through the dark air. He is also deeply conscious of the effect of Nature on man. He finds himself even oppressed by the boundless charms of “brooks, hill, meadow, dale,” and it is his belief that all Nature conspires

Nature can give happiness beyond that of luxury or gratified ambition. These poems mark a new phase in the feeling toward Nature, because, with little description, with no theory to propound, no moral to teach, no human interest to exemplify, the poet with a rapt fervor and intensity cries out for solitary communion with Nature as a necessity of his own being. Warton is also, I think, the first of the romantic poets to advocate a return to Nature in the sense in which Rousseau used the phrase:

Joseph Warton’s exceptionally strong love of Nature is emphasized by the testimony of Bowles who traces his own love of Nature to companionship with Dr. Warton, and by the testimony of his brother Thomas in a poem, “An Ode Sent to a Friend.” In this poem Thomas Warton tells of his brother’s delight in walks at morning and evening through unfrequented grassy lanes, or in the deep forest, or up steep hills “to view the length of landscape ever new.”

A part of the service which Warton rendered to the poetry of Nature rests in the fact that he led the attention from Pope to poets who had treated of Nature with imaginative power. He had only scorn for

“the courtly silken lay,” “the polished lyrics,” of his own day. But it is in his prose that we find the best evidence of his break with the classicists. In the dedication prefixed to the “Essay on Pope” (1756) he divided English poets into four classes, putting in the first class only Spenser, Shakspere, and Milton. Of Pope he said, “I revere the memory of Pope; I respect and honor his abilities, but I do not think him at the head of his profession.” He then proceeded to show the difference “betwixt a man of wit, a man of sense, and a true poet.” In the first and second sections of the “Essay” he minutely discusses Pope’s descriptive poetry showing that his idea of pastoral poetry as representing some golden age was but “an empty notion,” and commenting severely on his mixture of British and Grecian ideas. He condemns “Windsor Forest” because its images are “equally applicable to any place whatsoever.” In contrast with Pope he puts Thomson, of whose “Seasons” he gives a most discriminating eulogy. It is too long to quote entire, but a part of it must be given if only to show its remarkably modern tone.