of his native land. He finds all Nature full of joy.

Clouds arrested in their swift course by lofty mountains, lakes that hold a mirror to the sky, songsters twittering o’er their young, waters glowing beneath western clouds, hoary-headed Grampius clad in snow, are counted among his pleasures. He prefers life in the country, for there

He loved especially the Gairney, a stream that flows into Loch Leven, because, as a lad, he lay on its banks and composed poetry. He speaks with evident knowledge of other streams, the gulfy Po, “slow and silent among its waving reeds,” and the rapid Queech rushing impetuous over broken steeps. It is natural that Bruce should know, as he did, especially water birds. The “wild-shrieking gull,” “patient heron,” “dull bittern,” the “clamorous mew,” and the “slow-wing’d crane” moving heavily along the shore, were doubtless birds that he had often seen. Bruce’s pleasure in wide views is shown by this poem, “Lochleven,” for it is a description of the prospect spread out before him as he stands on “Mount Lomond.” Bruce’s “Elegy” was written when he felt himself dying of consumption. It represents his delight in all forms of Nature’s life and his deep melancholy at bidding farewell to the spring-time world.

By a process of selection we find in Bruce’s poems his real love for the outer world. This is not, however, the impression made by his poems as a whole. His knowledge of Nature was limited, and his expression was often rigid and formal. He died young, before he had really attained the mastery of his own thought, and his importance lies not so much in actual accomplishment as in scattered suggestions of his tendencies and possibilities.

Bruce’s most intimate friend was John Logan, who, in 1770, published an edition of Bruce’s poems and included some “wrote by other authors.” In 1781, when he published his own works, he laid claim to a number of the poems that had appeared in the edition of Bruce’s poems in 1770. Among these the most important was “The Cuckoo,”[443] a poem well worth the sharp controversy waged over it by the respective friends of the two authors. There is nothing else in this period that rings so fresh and clear as this little ode. One stanza may be quoted to illustrate its beauty, its simplicity, and naturalness. This stanza is also of peculiar interest because it so definitely foreshadows Wordsworth’s “To the Cuckoo.”

Logan’s other poems, though he has nothing equal to the cuckoo song in spontaneity and exquisite simplicity, are yet of real value. His “Braes of Yarrow” is an effective presentation of the ancient, sorrow-laden Yarrow motif. As is fitting in a ballad, the touches of description are of the briefest sort, but the forest, the bonny braes, and the sounding stream are felt through all the plaintive story. “Ossian’s Hymn to the Sun” is a poetical paraphrase of the famous apostrophe in “Balclutha.” It has some fine lines, but is inferior in strength to the original. The “Ode Written in Spring” is a laudation of a certain fair Maria in the true classical fashion, but the new note is struck in the first five stanzas descriptive of spring.

are lines showing fresh observation and easy, natural expression. Another passage characterizes autumn as “the Sabbath of the year.” Limited in compass as is Logan’s good work it is of value because marked by exceptional purity and sweetness.

Most of James Graeme’s poems were written before he was twenty. His tastes are thus referred to by his friend, Dr. Robert Anderson:

His chief poems of Nature are some descriptive elegies. Occasionally there is a fairly good line, as

or

showing at least a hint of first-hand observation. But on the whole the poems are a composite of phrases belonging to the typical poetry of sentimental melancholy. His characteristic attitude toward Nature is shown by his constant preference for chilly midnight when howlets scream and ravens croak, and when he, with pensive care, tunes the voice of woe and sheds “teary torrents” over grass-green graves. One poem, on “Curling,” is, however, quite different in tone, for it is a crudely realistic and technical description of the game and the peasants who engage in it. The tastes of Graeme and his attempts are of more significance than his actual work, which is of little value.

The bent of Goldsmith’s mind was toward the study of man in social relations. His use of Nature is accessory and limited. In “The Traveller” (1764) the real interest is in manners and customs.[444] When the pilgrim is in the Alps with a wide prospect before him, it is the thought of man’s grand heritage that impresses him. In the account of Switzerland there is only a vague general description of the country, but a full, sympathetic description of the peasant. So, too, in Italy, France, Holland, and even in England. In the few descriptions that do occur there are occasional lines indicative of first-hand observation, as in this picturesque couplet on the scenery in Holland:

We also find effective combinations of geographical names that give a certain charm of remoteness and melody; and there is a sense of space and movement conveyed by the rapidly presented and wide landscapes.

In “The Deserted Village” (1770) the central thought is still man, and the purpose didactic, but there is effective though not abundant use of Nature. Even here, however, it is only Nature inseparably associated with man. Nine-tenths of the poem has to do directly with human nature. The other tenth merely gives charming pictures of the country close about a village. Scattered lines are of perfect workmanship, as that one descriptive of the straggling fence,

and

In the picture of desolation the details are selected with delicacy and precision. Each touch helps the general impression. The value of such work becomes more apparent when put into contrast with the description of torrid climes. In Goldsmith and in Thomson what was seen at first hand had the grace and power of truth, but scenes in remote lands, known only through the distorting spectacles of books, were credited with an odd mixture of incongruous details. Except for one use of mountains in a simile there is no indication that Goldsmith knew any but tame scenery.

In general we may say that Goldsmith showed a direct, simple-hearted pleasure in the open-air world, that he was a sympathetic observer of the more obvious facts of Nature, and that he had a bright, easy way of recording those facts. The simplicity of his work is combined with a quick perception of artistic form. But he has hardly a touch of what Matthew Arnold calls “natural magic,” and he is in no sense a revealer. He was on the surface of things. Of the higher ministry of Nature to man’s spiritual needs he knew nothing.

In his prose works Goldsmith has several vigorous attacks on falseness and affectation in poetry. In 1759 he characterized Italian poetry at its lowest ebb, as “no longer an imitation of what we see, but of what a visionary might wish. The zephyrs breathe a most exquisite perfume; the trees wear eternal verdure; fauns, dryads, and hamadryads stand ready to fan the sultry shepherdess ... who is so simple and innocent as often to have no meaning.” This attack on the falseness and affectation of Italian poetry might be quoted verbatim by a modern critic of the popular eighteenth-century pastorals. Goldsmith also praised Gay’s poems saying that “he has hit upon the true spirit of pastoral poetry.” Goldsmith has other keen critical remarks that point in the direction of the new spirit but they do not bear directly on the study of Nature. He is important chiefly because of his interest in man as man, his close and sympathetic delineation of the poor and ignorant.

In 1766 James Beattie had written 150 lines of “The Minstrel.” The poem was then laid aside for the “Essay on Truth” and not taken up again till 1770. The first book was published anonymously in 1771. The second book appeared with the author’s name in 1774. The poem consists of 122 Spenserian stanzas. Its design is “to trace the progress of a poetical genius ... till that period when he may be supposed capable of appearing in the world as a minstrel,”[445] and its theme is really the effect of mountain scenery on a poetically sensitive mind. The child, Edwin, is brought up in a remote village among the Scotch hills, and his genius is developed through the varied influence of wild natural scenery until he becomes “itinerant poet and musician.” As a lad his chief pleasure was to follow

He loved to climb craggy cliffs

He was

He listened

When storms came up in black array

He visited haunted streams by moonlight and let his imagination dwell on graves and ghosts. His soul was possessed by the “mystic transports” born of “melancholy and solitude.” He scanned all Nature with a “curious and romantic eye,” and his imagination was stirred by “old heroic ditties,” by

The second stage of Edwin’s education comes through his companionship with a wise hermit, who, like Wordsworth’s Solitary, had “sought for glory in the paths of guile,” but finally, dissatisfied with success and stung with remorse, had hidden himself in a deep retired abode in the mountains, there to commune with Nature. From a lofty eminence Edwin chanced to look down one day upon this savage dell, shut in by mountains and rocks piled on rocks, and he saw the “one cultivated spot” with its garden of roses and herbs, and he heard the voice of the hermit soliloquizing on the vanity of human life. In subsequent interviews the hermit discoursed learnedly on history, art, and sciences.

The intrinsic value of this poem is not great. It is important because of the conception which it embodies. Edwin finds in Nature adequate instruction and inspiration; the hermit, adequate consolation. His words are,

Now the power of wild scenery over the plastic mind is exactly Wordsworth’s idea in his account of the Wanderer’s youth,[446] and the power of Nature to minister to a mind diseased is one of the leading thoughts in his account of the Solitary,[447] while the thought of tracing a child’s experiences with Nature until under her tutelage he becomes a poet is the fundamental idea of the “Prelude.”[448] It is certainly of more than merely curious interest thus to find in the rather vague, ineffective stanzas of the earlier poet general conceptions which afterward appear as the ruling ideas of the poet confessedly greatest in his treatment of Nature.

The character of Edwin was autobiographic and shows Beattie’s personal love of Nature. In a letter to the Dowager Lady Forbes, October, 1772, he wrote:

Beattie never lost this keen delight in Nature. When he was schoolmaster at Fordoun, at the foot of the Grampian Hills, his greatest pleasure was found in the neighboring mountains and wooded glens. His biographer also says that he would frequently “pass the whole night among the fields, gazing on the sky, and observing the various aspects it assumed till the return of day.” Beattie’s poems bear conclusive evidence of his love of Nature in all her forms. Mountains, and the sea, wild scenes of various sorts, storms, torrents, night, clouds, the sky, streams, meadows, groves, summer and winter, wide views, are regarded with genuine delight. But there are certain curious limitations. There are almost no specific flowers, birds, or trees mentioned in all this abundant study of the external world. This use of the general instead of the specific is one element of an effect too often perceived, an indefiniteness of outline, a vague blurring of edges, the result of which is not mysterious suggestiveness but simply dimness and confusion. There is also an unexpected feebleness of vocabulary and lack of direct observation. The old word “murmur,” for instance, is applied with wearisome insistence to springs, rills, water, the ocean, pines, woods, groves, and gales. So the interest in wild Nature, when analyzed, shows a rather monotonous and undiscriminating succession of cliffs and precipices. But it would be unfair to press these limitations too far. There are many true observations happily presented, as in the following lines which are selected as illustrative:

He finds pleasure in old oak trees that

In winter he watches

Lines such as these show knowledge both fresh and close, and the expression is marked by picturesque effectiveness.

But Beattie’s real contribution to the study of Nature lies, as has been indicated, in his own personal enthusiasm, and his steadfast belief in the effect of Nature on man. In one stanza he even set forth the doctrine, held to be sufficiently startling forty years later in Wordsworth’s day, that country rustics from their familiarity with Nature, gain a nicer sense of moral purity than is known among the poor of a city.[449] Upon all men he urged the study of Nature as a moral duty.

The message of Nature is one not to be ignored.

Though less popular than the “Essay on Truth,” Beattie’s “Minstrel” met with almost immediate favor. Lyttleton said to Mrs. Montagu who sent him the first book in 1771:

And Cowper wrote in 1784: “Though I cannot afford to deal largely in so expensive a commodity as books, I must afford to purchase at least the poetical works of Beattie.”[453] Mr. Dyce says that the success of “The Minstrel” (Book First) “was complete. The voice of every critic was loud in its praise; and before the second book appeared, four editions of the first had been dispersed throughout the kingdom.”[454]

“The Minstrel” is of importance in the historical development of the poetry of Nature because of the ideas it emphasizes, and because its immediate popularity is an indication of the change in taste since the beginning of the century.

Most of John Scott’s poems were on rural subjects,[455] and he is of especial interest because of his abundant and close observation of natural facts. Mr. Hoole says of him, “He was certainly no servile copyist of the thoughts of others; for living in the country, and being a close and accurate observer, he painted what he saw;” and again, “He cultivated the knowledge of natural history and botany, which enabled him to preserve the truth of Nature with many discriminating touches, perhaps not excelled by any descriptive poet since the days of Thomson.” It was Scott’s avowed purpose to enrich poetry by the use of many natural facts not before observed. In the introduction to the “Amoebaean Eclogues” he said, “Much of the rural imagery which our country affords, has already been introduced in poetry, but many obvious and pleasing appearances seem to have totally escaped notice. To describe these is the business of the following Eclogues.” After this explicit announcement, two gentle youths, in responsive verse, call attention to over two hundred rapidly stated natural facts. A fact to a line is about the average, as in these lines:

The second of these “Eclogues” has to do with the care of farms and is as minute as Cowper’s treatise on the cucumber. There is nowhere in these poems any poetical fusion of facts. They read rather like the notebooks of a professional observer. Yet it is certainly significant to find at this date so persistent and systematic a search for natural facts, and that not in the service of science but of poetry. In “Amwell” Scott calls on the Muse of Thomson, Dyer, and Shenstone for his inspiration. The poem is a description of the prospect from a certain “airy height” near Amwell. A single illustration will show the minute observation and catalogue style in this commemoration of “lonely sylvan scenes.”

There is a pleasant homely grace in these lines about the cottage, worth more than all the historical episodes “introduced to secure interest.” In the “Elegies” and “Odes” there is no use of Nature different from that observed in the other poems, unless, indeed, mention should be made of Scott’s belief that Nature gives her fairest smiles to those “who know a Saviour’s love.” One further characteristic is to be found in a large number of the poems, and that is enjoyment of a wide view. He describes views as seen from “Musla’s cornclad heights,” from “Grove Hill,” the cliff at Bath, from “Chadwell’s cliffs,” from “Widbury’s prospect-yielding hill,” from “Upton’s elm-divided plains,” from “Clifton’s rock,” from Amwell, and other spots. The poems read as if he had spent many days climbing hills and prospecting for views.

Richard Cumberland wrote in 1776 several “Odes,” something in the style of Gray’s “Bard,” in honor of the artist Romney. In the “Dedication to Romney” he spoke with enthusiasm of the Lake Region.

One of the poems, the “Ode to the Sun,” has Helvellyn, Skiddaw, the Derwent, Lodore, “Keswick’s sweet fantastic vale,” “stately Windermere,” “Savage Wyburn,” and “delicious Grasmere’s calm retreat” as its important scenic elements. He considers

as but “the spruce impertinence of art.” From them comes no rapture such as that excited by the “gigantic shapes” of mountains. The Thames is but a tame stream compared with “old majestic Derwent” forcing his independent course. In contrast to the grandeur and splendor of Nature man seems but “weak, contemptible, and vain, the tenant of a day.” Imperial Ulls-water is not only declared to be superior in charm to Loch Lomond or Killarney, but it can maintain its own even against “ought that learned Poussin drew” or anything painted by “dashing Rosa.” Eighteenth-century praise of scenery could go no farther.

William Blake’s “Poetical Sketches,” published in 1783, were written between 1769 and 1777.[457] The “Songs of Innocence” appeared in 1788–9; “Book of Thel,” 1789; “The Marriage of Heaven and Hell,” 1790; and “Songs of Experience” in 1794. In the first volume Nature was the leading subject; in the next human interests were in the ascendent, and Nature was used only in fresh, ballad-like touches. In the later work Nature is slightly used and for the most part in the form of mystical symbolism.

It was Blake’s theory that man is “imprisoned in his five senses,” and he counted it his mission to reveal to closed eyes the spiritual as the only real fact of existence. In his early work this theory, as yet unexaggerated in application, led to a treatment of Nature, not untrue to facts, but characterized especially by qualities of simplicity and vision such as are not found again before Wordsworth. In these years of his youth Blake was essentially the poet of childhood and spring in all their sweet, potent, indefinable charm.

gives the keynote to these songs of delight. The joy of Nature is everywhere insisted on. The sun makes the sky happy; the vales rejoice; spring cannot hide its joy when buds and blossoms come; the happy blossoms look on merry birds; groves are happy and green woods rejoice; dimpling streams, the air, green hills, meadows, and birds laugh with delight. Here is one exquisite example:

He contrasts the clamor and destruction of city streets with the true joy in Nature. In the silent woods, delights blossom around, numberless beauties blow. The green grass springs in joy, and the nimble air kisses the leaves. The brook stretches its arms along the silent meadow, its silver inhabitants sport and play. The youthful sun joys like a hunter roused to the chase.[460] In “Fragments” and “Couplets,” excerpts from his MS book, occurs this fine, though casual statement of the opposition between town and country:

Blake cared much for sleep as the time when man was most free from the tyranny of the senses. Many of his characters are represented as asleep, and the conception is transferred to many lovely scenes in Nature. He pictures summer as sleeping beneath oaks; flowers shut their eyes in sleep; the west wind sleeps on the lake; and dawn sleeps in heaven. With this is associated an evident pleasure in the silence of Nature, apparently the pathetic complement of its joys. There is a silent sleep over the deep of heaven; the evening star speaks silence to the lake. At night the moon is silent, and the earth, and the sea.

Occasional passages show the character of Blake’s own love of Nature, as,

His feeling toward flowers was as intimate, as tenderly protecting, as was that of Burns toward small animals. Sun and stars, winds, clouds, dew, and angels are represented as caring for the happy blossoms.

All of Blake’s poetry of Nature is as freshly beautiful as the dewy mornings, the spring-time green, the shining skies, as clear and transparent as the limpid, dimpling streams he loved. There are also frequent passages that besides their metrical flow and exquisite charm of external suggestion seem to reveal the essential spirit of the object described. One of the loveliest examples is the word of the Lily of the Valley.

For fine contrasts, each poem perfect of its kind, see “The Lamb” and “The Tiger.” The modest simplicity of the one is as adequately portrayed as the dread magnificence of the other. There is no description. There is interpretation of the most penetrating sort.

He has also frequent similes worked out with picturesque detail, as in this one from “The Couch of Death”:

One secret of the effectiveness of Blake’s best work is his recognition of the unity of all existence. The prefatory stanza to “Auguries of Innocence,”

is a brief poetic statement of the creed afterward elaborated in Wordsworth’s “Primrose on the Rock” and Tennyson’s “Flower in the Crannied Wall.” The thought back of the lines is the one in Wordsworth’s mind when he looked on “the meanest flower that blows.” It is this underlying consciousness of essential spiritual unity in all existence that gives to the work of both Blake and Wordsworth its subtle power.

There could hardly be two more dissimilar ways of approaching Nature than those of John Scott and William Blake. They stand at opposite poles, the one with no sense of unity, no power of poetic fusion or interpretation, but with a wide, accurate, and often picturesque assemblage of natural facts; the other with a prevailing tone of unreality and mysticism, a fine scorn of the actual, but with a swift recognition of the spirit of Nature, and an abiding sense of cosmic unity. Yet each represents a characteristic phase of the new feeling for Nature as seen in Wordsworth. On the one hand, the practiced eye and the inevitable ear; on the other, the vision and the faculty divine.

In its significance as a prophecy of Wordsworth and Shelley, the early poetry of William Blake is of especial importance.

Crabbe’s poetry falls into two periods, the first one closing with “The Newspaper” in 1785, and the second beginning with “The Parish Register” after an interval of twenty-two years. In the first of these periods we find but slight use of external Nature. The occasional similitudes are of a formal conventional type. The two longest descriptive passages are of a dismal winter scene,[462] and of some sterile summer fields that mock man’s need with profitless blooms.[463] There is no expression of pleasure in Nature. It is her pitiless, anti-human aspects that Crabbe sees. The charm of Nature independent of utility seems to have no meaning for him. He consciously repudiates

as unworthy poetic material.[464] Rough or barren Nature as the background or occasion of man’s misery is the thought of these early poems.

Crabbe’s second period does not properly belong in a study of development which has “The Lyrical Ballads” as its terminus ad quem, but it may be briefly spoken of here because of the interesting contrast it offers to the first period. A suggestive study might be made of the descriptive element in “The Village” (1783) as compared with that of “The Borough” (1810). The scene of each is a seaside village on the Suffolk coast, but we note many changes in the presentation. In the first place, in “The Borough” Nature plays a much more important part than in “The Village.” There is a leisurely elaborateness of description as if the poet enjoyed the work for its own sake. There is, to be sure, insistence on the ugly realistic details of the scenes about a country town, but there is in addition a recognition that even along this rocky coast and in these barren fields where Nature defies man’s industry there may be found her gift of beauty. The “greedy ocean” of “The Village” is now “a glorious page of nature’s book” on which the poorest may gaze with delight. The firm, fair sands on quiet summer evenings, the lovely “limpid blue and evanescent green” as shadows run over the waves on a fresh day, serene winter-views where strange effects of fog add mystery to the scene, the majesty of a storm at sea—all these are now reckoned a part of the pleasures of the poor in a seaside village. The sterile fields, too, have rare blossoms and curious grasses. There are pleasant walks with every scene rich in beauty. The evening twilight is sweet with jasmine odors.[465] “The Borough” is as realistic as “The Village,” but it has a broader outlook and depicts the attractive as well as the forbidding aspects of the Suffolk coast near Aldborough. In later poems the scope becomes still wider. Besides the frequent strong and truthful ocean pictures there are some beautiful descriptions of autumn days, moonlight nights, and soft, rich inland scenes. It is especially noteworthy that though there are seldom any gay or bright aspects of Nature presented, yet Nature is no longer represented as a force inimical to man. On the contrary, there is something in even her most useless forms that gives to man a strangely profound pleasure. The simple music of a cascade has in it a soothing power that words will not express. In the clear, silent night there is a quiet joy that lessens the sting of mortal pain. These positive expressions of pleasure in Nature are not numerous, but they are important as marking a distinct change of tone. They are the more significant because they occur chiefly in the poems after 1819.

Yet it must not pass unnoticed that what Crabbe wrote in these late poems, he had perceived and felt in his youth. In his description of Richard he gives an account of his own boyhood. Of the ocean he says,