JOHN DYER, of whom I have no other account to give than his own letters,
published with Hughes’s correspondence, and the notes added by the
editor, have afforded me, was born in 1700, the second son of Robert Dyer
of Aberglasney, in Caermarthenshire, a solicitor of great capacity and
note. He passed through Westminster school under the care of Dr. Freind,
and was then called home to be instructed in his father’s profession.
But his father died soon, and he took no delight in the study of the law;
but, having always amused himself with drawing, resolved to turn painter,
and became pupil to Mr. Richardson, an artist then of high reputation,
but now better known by his books than by his pictures.
Having studied a while under his master, he became, as he tells his
friend, an itinerant painter, and wandered about South Wales and the
parts adjacent; but he mingled poetry with painting, and about 1727
[1726] printed “Grongar Hill” in Lewis’s Miscellany. Being, probably,
unsatisfied with his own proficiency, he, like other painters, travelled
to Italy; and coming back in 1740, published the “Ruins of Rome.” If his
poem was written soon after his return, he did not make use of his
acquisitions in painting, whatever they might be; for decline of health
and love of study determined him to the Church. He therefore entered
into orders; and, it seems, married about the same time a lady of the
name of Ensor; “whose grandmother,” says he, “was a Shakspeare, descended
from a brother of everybody’s Shakspeare;” by her, in 1756, he had a son
and three daughters living.
His ecclesiastical provision was for a long time but slender. His first
patron, Mr. Harper, gave him, in 1741, Calthorp in Leicestershire, of
eighty pounds a year, on which he lived ten years, and then exchanged it
for Belchford, in Lincolnshire, of seventy-five. His condition now began
to mend. In 1751 Sir John Heathcote gave him Coningsby, of one hundred
and forty pounds a year; and in 1755 the Chancellor added Kirkby, of one
hundred and ten. He complains that the repair of the house at Coningsby,
and other expenses, took away the profit. In 1757 he published “The
Fleece,” his greatest poetical work; of which I will not suppress a
ludicrous story. Dodsley the bookseller was one day mentioning it to a
critical visitor, with more expectation of success than the other could
easily admit. In the conversation the author’s age was asked; and being
represented as advanced in life, “He will,” said the critic, “be buried
in woollen.” He did not indeed long survive that publication, nor long
enjoy the increase of his preferments, for in 1758 he died.
Dyer is not a poet of bulk or dignity sufficient to require an elaborate
criticism. “Grongar Hill” is the happiest of his productions: it is not
indeed very accurately written; but the scenes which it displays are so
pleasing, the images which they raise are so welcome to the mind, and the
reflections of the writer so consonant to the general sense or experience
of mankind, that when it is once read, it will be read again. The idea
of the “Ruins of Rome” strikes more, but pleases less, and the title
raises greater expectation than the performance gratifies. Some
passages, however, are conceived with the mind of a poet; as when, in the
neighbourhood of dilapidating edifices, he says,
“The Pilgrim oft
At dead of night, ’mid his orison hears
Aghast the voice of Time, disparting tow’rs
Tumbling all precipitate down dashed,
Rattling around, loud thund’ring to the Moon.”
Of “The Fleece,” which never became popular, and is now universally
neglected, I can say little that is likely to recall it to attention.
The woolcomber and the poet appear to me such discordant natures, that an
attempt to bring them together is to _couple the serpent with the fowl_.
When Dyer, whose mind was not unpoetical, has done his utmost, by
interesting his reader in our native commodity by interspersing rural
imagery, and incidental digressions, by clothing small images in great
words, and by all the writer’s arts of delusion, the meanness naturally
adhering, and the irreverence habitually annexed to trade and
manufacture, sink him under insuperable oppression; and the disgust which
blank verse, encumbering and encumbered, superadds to an unpleasing
subject, soon repels the reader, however willing to be pleased.
Let me, however, honestly report whatever may counterbalance this weight
of censure. I have been told that Akenside, who, upon a poetical
question, has a right to be heard, said, “That he would regulate his
opinion of the reigning taste by the fate of Dyer’s ‘Fleece;’ for, if
that were ill-received, he should not think it any longer reasonable to
expect fame from excellence.”