INDICATIONS OF A NEW ATTITUDE TOWARD NATURE
IN THE POETRY OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
In this chapter the method of work is quite unlike that in the
preceding study. The typical and the dominant are not regarded.
Attention is rather converged upon the significant exception. We are
led into nooks and corners and byways. The most famous author is not
necessarily the one on whom emphasis is placed. In searching for
legitimate proof of a tendency we may safely turn to the work of men
of unoriginal genius and moderate power. A study of this sort would
certainly give a distorted view if it were for a moment thought to
represent the period as a whole. But if it is held in mind that the
attitude toward Nature was in general through the eighteenth century
marked by indifference and artificiality, we may throw as high lights
as we please on the exceptions. This study will serve its purpose if,
in its following-out of the complexities and inconsistencies that
make a transition period interesting, it shall succeed in showing
that, along with the classical feeling toward Nature, there was also
a real and vital love for the out-door world, and that this new
attitude toward Nature is marked by first-hand observation, by artistic
sensitiveness to beauty, by personal enthusiasm for Nature, by a
recognition of the effect of Nature on man, and, occasionally, by an
imaginative conception of Nature somewhat in the Wordsworthian sense.
The new attitude toward Nature, of which Thomson is the first adequate
exponent, finds occasional and not ineffective expression during the
two decades before the publication of “Winter” in 1726. In the works of
John Philips (1676-1709), Ambrose Philips (1675–1749), Lady Winchilsea
(1661–1720), John Gay (1685–1732), Thomas Parnell (1679–1718), William
Pattison (1706–1727), Allan Ramsay (1686–1758), Robert Riccaltoun
(1691–1769), and Dr. Armstrong (1709–1779), we become more or less
definitely aware of a new outlook on the external world.
Dr. Johnson praised John Philips’ poem “Cyder”[199] because it had
the “peculiar merit” of being “grounded in truth.” On the whole this
poem is of the didactic classical order, but here and there among the
minutely accurate horticultural precepts we come upon indications that
the poet was not insensible to the charms of Nature in other than its
utilitarian aspects. His delight in color may be seen from his specific
descriptions of apples. The pippin is “burnish’d o’er with gold;”
the red-streak “with gold irradiate and vermilion shines.” “Plumbs”
are “sky-dyed.” He notes the “Ore, Azure, Gules,” and the blending
of colors in the rainbow. He observes the contrast between fields
yellow with grain, and green pasture land. And he sees the colored
edges of clouds when the sun breaks through. There is also apparent a
sensitiveness to odors. He speaks of cowslip-posies “faintly sweet,” of
odorous herbs, of the fragrance of apples on a dewy autumn morning, and
of “the perfuming flowery bean.” Mr. Shairp credits Thomson with being
the first poet to mention the fragrance of the bean fields,[200] but
Philips is at least twenty years ahead of Thomson in noting this fact.
We see further indication of Philips’ enjoyment of Nature in a few
lines,
Nor are the hills unamiable, whose tops
To heaven aspire, affording prospect sweet
To human ken,[201]
which were perhaps the earliest expression in the eighteenth century
of that pleasure in high hills and wide prospects that was so marked
a characteristic of later poetry. Philips’ explanation of the
satisfaction he found in an early morning walk, namely, that the
mind perplexed with irksome thought is calmed by the influence of
Nature,[202] seems like a prophecy of the thought afterward dominant
concerning man’s indebtedness to Nature.
In Ambrose Philips’ “Pastorals” we find a mingling of first-hand
observation and classical imitation. His references to the ancients,
his amoebean contests, the supposed effect of the death of Albino
on the external world, the emphasis on dangers from heat and the
nightly wolf, the frequent use of cumulative comparisons,[203] and,
in general, the form of his “Pastorals,” show how closely he was
held by conventional ideas. Furthermore, his facile use of Nature
is always determined by his attitude toward some pastoral nymph or
swain. He rejoices to paint an idyllic background for some Rosalind.
He heaps up images from Nature to express the amorous praises of some
Colinet. He has no conception of a relation between man and Nature
more intimate than the highly artificial one of his “Pastorals.”
What is of importance in his poetry is the fact that in the midst
of his imitations and conventionalities are many true and charming
observations drawn entirely from English country life and not found in
earlier eighteenth-century poetry. His work is, to be sure, rendered
weak and childish by two unpleasant mannerisms in diction: his use of
adjectives ending in “y,” as “bloomy,” “dampy,” “bluey,” “steepy,”
“purply,” and so on, and his use of diminutives such as “kidlings,”
“lambkins,” “younglings,” “firstlings,” and “steerlings.” But on the
whole we find in his poems a more full and accurate knowledge of Nature
than is at all common in the poetry of the time. He notes the fleeting,
dusky shadows cast by moving clouds, the glossiness of plums, the blue
color of mists, the sweet odors of morning, the moaning of the night
wind in the grove, the sportive chase of swallows, the loud note of
the cuckoo, the speckled breast of the thrush, and the song of the
blackbird “fluting through his yellow bill.” He usually calls flowers,
trees, birds, and other animals by their specific names, and he seldom
extends his list beyond his own probable observation. That Philips had
a genuine love for Nature in her milder forms is further seen from the
preface to his “Pastorals.” “As in Painting,” he says, “so in Poetry,
the country affords not only the most delightful scenes and prospects,
but likewise the most pleasing images of life.” He loved the songs of
birds because the “sedate and quiet harmony” of their simple strains
gives “a sweet and gentle composure to the mind.” And he was conscious
of an “unspeakable sort of satisfaction” when he saw “a little
country-dwelling, advantageously situated amidst a beautiful variety of
hills, meadows, fields, woods and rivulets.”
Lady Winchilsea is, in the study of the poetry of Nature, the most
significant of the minor poets before Thomson. She was a friend of Rowe
and Pope, and was honored by complimentary verses from them.[204] She
is known now chiefly because of Wordsworth’s reference to her,[205]
and through the poems published in Ward’s “English Poets.”[206] Three
of the poems there given, “The Nightingale,” “The Tree,” “A Nocturnal
Revery,” have to do with Nature. With these exceptions the eighty-one
poems in the collection of 1713[207] are thoroughly classical in their
form and spirit, though unmarked by any preponderance of artificial
fancies. But these three short poems are remarkable productions when
thought of in connection with their author’s poetical environment. They
are the earliest eighteenth-century poems in which Nature is frankly
chosen as the theme, and they show a personal knowledge that must have
been the accumulated result of many experiences.
The observation in “The Nightingale” is especially truthful and
sympathetic. That there is no attempt to describe the bird is an
omission justified by the fact that the nightingale is seldom
seen.[208] The two characteristics noted in the bird’s song are its
exceeding sweetness and its sadness, or rather, its sense of pain.[209]
A comparison of the phrases in the note will show that Lady Winchilsea
listened with the hearing ear of a true poet. But we cannot fail to
notice as well that the song is not fully heard or reported. In the
other poets we find represented a richness, a fulness, an ecstasy, a
tumult, not even hinted at in Lady Winchilsea’s poem.[210] Nor does she
mention the passion most poets have heard in the song.[211] But however
incomplete the impression received may have been, the poetical record
of what was perceived is both truthful and vivid. She seems to write as
she listens and the reader follows the variations of the song through
their effect on her own mind.
In the fifty-two lines of the poem on Night twenty-two natural facts
are recorded. Some of these would not escape the most careless, but
only close observation would discover such details as the sleepy
cowslip, the grass standing upright, the unusual strength of odors, the
clearer sound of falling waters, the horse’s audible cropping of the
grass, the waving moon seen in the stream, and the distant call of the
curlew. Lady Winchilsea’s love of Nature was of the most unambitious
sort. To have seen the stately tree, to have heard the nightingale,
to know all she did about night, would not have called her beyond
the gates of her own park. But her joy in Nature needed no strong or
novel stimulus. It is her distinction that she had fixed an “exquisite
regard” on the commonest facts of the external world, and that she
spoke quite clearly and simply from her own life. Hence her knowledge
had the new quality of being specific and local and accurately defined.
Still more noteworthy is Lady Winchilsea’s spiritual sensitiveness
to Nature. Such a phrase as “the mysterious face of heaven” marks a
new conception of the sky. Night is no longer “the parent of fears”
but a time whose solemn quiet suggests a strange and subtle sense of
something too high for syllables to speak. Nature is to her no mere
background for human life. Man is influenced by Nature. His rage is
disarmed. His spirit is led to feel a sedate content. And sometimes in
moments of especial insight there is revealed to him in the inferior
world an existence “like his own.” Not often before Wordsworth is there
so distinct a prevision of his way of looking at Nature.[212]
In the slow turning of English poetry from the artificial to the
natural John Gay was distinctly helpful, yet the reader of “Trivia,”
“The Fan,” “The Epistles,” the “Fables,” and even the “Eclogues” would
hardly suspect their author of knowing, in any close way, any life
outside the city. It is only in “Rural Sports,” written when he was
twenty-eight, and “The Shepherd’s Week,” when he was twenty-nine,
that we find any real study of Nature. In “Rural Sports” hunting and
especially fishing are described with the enthusiasm and technical
accuracy of an expert. There is no hint of the feeling toward animals
that made Thomson and Cowper abhor hunting. There is simply a
thoroughly sportsmanlike knowledge of details, a sense of pleasurable
excitement in the chase, and joy in victory. This delight in open-air
pursuits is often far enough removed from any real love of Nature, and
is here of much less significance than casual passages showing Gay’s
love of the world about him. He tells us that it was his habit to take
morning walks through the fields,[213] that at sunset he often strayed
out to the cliffs near Barnstaple, and lingered to watch the glowing
colors of the sunset, and the later beauty of an “unclouded sky” bright
with stars and a silver moon that marked a glittering path along the
sea.[214] Gay’s love of Nature was largely confined to the milder
aspects, but he seems not to have been entirely indifferent to hills.
In speaking of Cotton Hill in North Devonshire he said,
When its summit I climb, I then seem to be
Just as if I approached nearer heaven!
When with spirits depress’d to this hill I repair,
My spirits then instantly rally;
It was near this bless’d spot, I first drew vital air,
So--a hill I prefer to a valley.[215]
In six or seven unimportant passages Gay speaks of hills or mountains,
apparently using the words interchangeably, but not in a manner
indicating much knowledge of them. Yet such little pictures as that of
the dawn when the sun “strikes the distant eastern hills with light,”
or that of “the evening star shining above the western hill,” show
some recognition of hills as an attractive part of a landscape. Gay
knows flowers and birds and trees with some definiteness. He speaks of
many domestic animals. He notes colors and odors.[216] He observes the
lengthened shadows stretched across the meadows in the late afternoon,
the long flight of crows seeking the wood at sunset, the streams
“wrinkled”[217] by a fresh breeze, the yellow showers of leaves in
autumn. Abundant and varied as is this use of Nature, it is not marked
by especial delicacy of feeling or accuracy of observation. But for
all that “The Shepherd’s Week” is a notable piece of work, and it is
in these pastorals that we find Gay’s real service. Whether meant as
a friendly aid in Pope’s castigation of Ambrose Philips or not, these
poems were unquestionably meant as a good-humored satire on pastorals
that ventured to deal truthfully with English rustic life. The Latin
form was counted the ideal one for pastoral. To this form Gay held,
evidently with the conscious purpose of suggesting the Latin at every
turn. Then he filled in this mold with the homeliest, most realistic
details of English country life.[218] The plain, practical truth of
these details is simply amazing as will be seen from the passages
indicated in the note. See also the flowers brought in, the primrose,
kingcup, clover, daisie, gilliflower, mary-gold, butter-flowers,
cowslip, and others; and the animals, the witless lamb, frisking kid,
udder’d cow, clucking hen, waddling goose, squeaking pigs, worrying
cur, whining swine, paddling ducks, guzzling hogs, and others; and the
country sports, as romping in the fields, blindman’s buff, hot cockles,
swinging, and others.[219] In Pastoral IV is an assemblage of curious
country superstitions; in Pastoral I are given signs of rain; in
Pastoral V are funeral customs; and in Pastoral VI an account of the
favorite country songs. These poems are a veritable treasure-house for
the student of folklore. They might also serve as a diary of country
occupations. Take for example Bumkinet’s reminiscences of Blouzelinda’s
life in Pastoral V. In such a wood, he remembers, they gathered fagots.
There he drew down hazel boughs and stuffed her apron with brown nuts.
In another place he had helped her hunt for her strayed hogs, and as
they drove the untoward creatures to the sty had seized the opportunity
to tell his love. At the dairy he had often seen her making butter
pats, or feeding with floods of whey the hogs that crowded to the door.
In the barn as he plied the flail, he had watched her sift out food for
the hens. In the field she had ranged the sheaves as he pitched them on
the growing mow. The object of these pastorals was to show the absurd
incongruity between the Latin form with its suggestions of Arcadian
days, and the roughness of English country life. The result was
unexpected. Readers in general, indifferent to scholarly congruities,
were delighted with the novelty, the air of freshness and truth, in the
pictures scattered through the “Pastorals.” Poetry had suddenly and
without meaning to do it, gone from the city and the park to the very
plainest and most matter-of-fact sort of country people and country
occupations, and had somehow made them attractive. Blouzelinda and
Buxoma are not in the same order of beings as the traditional Phyllis
and Chloris, and they are equally far removed from the vulgar repulsive
country wenches in Swift’s coarse satires. They are real beings with a
charm of their own, and the love they inspire in Lobbin Clout and Cuddy
is an everyday, quite comprehensible affair.
The dirge for Blouzelinda indicates well the covert laugh with which
Gay wrote these descriptions of country life. The clergyman said
that Heaven would take her soul, no doubt,
And spoke the hour-glass in her praise--quite out.
After the funeral the men trudged
homeward to her mother’s farm,
To drink new cyder mull’d, with ginger warm,
For gaffer Tread-well told us, by the by,
“Excessive sorrow is exceeding dry.”
This sense of fun is everywhere apparent, and shows how unwittingly
Gay broke a lance in a new cause. Yet some parts of his Preface are
startlingly modern in their plea for truth to Nature. Here is a passage
which, so far as its spirit is concerned, might have been said by
either Crabbe or Wordsworth.
Thou wilt not find my shepherdesses idly piping on oaten reeds,
but milking the kine, tying up the sheaves, or, if the hogs are
astray, driving them to the styes. My shepherd gathereth none
other nosegays but what are the growth of our own fields; he
sleepeth not under myrtle shades, but under a hedge; nor doth he
vigilantly defend his flock from wolves for there are none.
Whatever Gay meant to do, he really did accomplish what his Preface
states as his aim. He turned poetry away from the “insipid delicacy”
of the conventional pastoral, and truthfully represented the “plain
downright hearty cleanly folk” of rustic England. And external Nature,
though nowhere dwelt upon for its own sake, is everywhere present and
so vividly portrayed, that the reader had what was certainly a poetic
novelty at that day, “a lively landscape of his own country, just as he
might have seen it, if he had taken a walk in the fields at the proper
season.”
The use of external Nature in Parnell’s poems has narrow limits.
There is no mention of winter, autumn, or summer. Mountains are
merely noted in passing as disagreeable features in the poet’s dreary
surroundings in Ireland. There is but one line about the sea. Wild
scenery of whatever sort is ignored. The only storm is described in
some conventional lines in “The Hermit.” There is almost no record
of specific knowledge of trees, or flowers, or birds. There are
few indications of openness to sensuous impressions from specific
forms, colors, odors, sounds. But in spite of these widely inclusive
negations, Parnell is of distinct importance as a poet of Nature. He
has, to begin with, some accurate first-hand observation. He speaks
once of the “differing green” of trees in spring. He describes a fern
with some minuteness. There are two charming descriptions of banks and
skies reflected in clear water.[220] Other fresh observations are,
Now early shepherds o’er the meadow pass
And print long footsteps in the glittering grass.[221]
When in the river cows for coolness stand
And sheep for breezes seek the lofty land;[222]
or this of the close of a storm,
But now the clouds in airy tumult fly;
The sun emerging opes an azure sky;
A fresher green the smelling leaves display,
And, glittering as they tremble, cheer the day.[223]
Such lines are of value for they indicate, though they are few
in number, some power of direct vision and of restrained, simple
expression.
Parnell’s distinctive excellence is, however, along different lines.
He records not facts but impressions. He is essentially a poet of the
spring; he felt intensely all the glad, abundant life of the early
year. But there is not a description of spring in his poems. He gives
instead curiously happy descriptive touches that suggest far more than
they say.
Note such lines as,
When spring came on with fresh delight,[224]
or
Green was her robe, and green her wreath,
Wher-e’er she trod ’twas green beneath,[225]
or
The planted lanes rejoice with dancing leaves.[226]
There is a lilt in such lines, a joyousness, an off-hand certainty of
touch, not in keeping with the customary cold and labored descriptions
of spring.
Of still greater significance is Parnell’s literary use of Nature.
In the “Night Piece” the external scene serves as an appropriate
background for the thought presented. The few natural facts are so
well chosen and so delicately touched that all the moral reflections
seem permeated with an appropriate out-of-doors atmosphere. The calm,
perfect beauty of the picture of night with its closing suggestions
of mystery and sadness, the fading of the pale moon, and the sounds
that come over the long lake, fit exactly the course of the poet’s
melancholy meditation and contribute to it. The gay, light pictures
in the “Hymn to Contentment” are equally well suited to the spirit of
joyous praise with which that poem concludes.
Bishop Jebb has pointed out for the enjoyment of the “classical and
pious reader” the similarity between the moral reflections in this
poem and those in Cardinal Bona’s “Divina Psalmodia.”[227] Parnell’s
close adherence to the thought of the cardinal in the didactic part of
the poem, and the fact that the last forty-two lines, the ones that
deal with Nature, are entirely Parnell’s own, give striking proof of
the originality of his thought concerning the external world and its
power over the human heart. It is in these lines that we find his
most subtly suggestive conception of Nature. He represents himself as
sad at heart. He seeks contentment in earthly pomp, in the paths of
knowledge, in solitary search after diverting scenes in Nature, but
in vain. At last he goes to a wood, and as he yields himself to the
influence of the place becomes suddenly aware that in this quiet spot
the true spirit of contentment is speaking to him wise lessons of
self-control and communion with God. In gratitude for the joy that has
come to him through Nature he utters a song of praise to the “source
of all Nature,” but as he looks about him on the glad world, he feels
that his song is merely an expression in words of the great chorus of
thanksgiving going always silently up from sun and moon and stars, from
seas, woods, and streams.
Such work as this is indeed remarkable before 1713; and for
spirituality and insight, for what has well been called “a sense of the
thing behind the thing,” it was many years before it was paralleled.
“The Morning Contemplation” is the only one of Pattison’s poems that
has much to do with Nature. It was written, his friend tells us, on the
banks of a river where the young poet used to wander, endeavoring to
attune his verses to the smoothness and harmony of the stream. He was
especially sensitive to the “sadly pleasing melancholy” of moonlight
nights and solitary walks, and he was one of the first poets to express
a longing for solitude with Nature. Gilded rooms of state, the purple
slavery of towns, rob him of the bliss he finds in the living forest.
When alone in the spacious fields he thinks himself almost a god. Even
little scrubby thorns are to him more pleasing objects than courts can
show. Nature charms his senses and soothes his soul; she is his best
teacher, and he trusts her plain instructions.
Tell me, all ye mighty wise,
Ye governors of colleges;
What deeper wisdom can you know
Than easy nature’s works here show,
reads like a crude prevision of Wordsworth’s “The Tables Turned.” The
“excellent morality” of “The Morning Contemplation” is much in the vein
of Dyer’s “Grongar Hill.” Every fact in Nature arouses some thought or
some emotion. By contrast or analogy it suggests human life, as in the
lines,
See this river as it goes,
With what eloquence it flows;
* * * * *
Believe me, life’s the very same,
The very image of this stream.
Pattison’s poem is of real importance, because its early date[228]
ranks it as probably the first of the eighteenth-century poems that
treat of Nature in the romantic, sentimental, fervid fashion afterward
brought to its culmination by the Wartons.
Allan Ramsay’s education was of the most limited sort, so that, in
early life at least, the development of his genius was unbiased by
a knowledge of Latin and Greek or even English models. After he was
fifteen he lived in Edinburgh and there began to be infected by the
pseudo-classicism of his day. The poems in which country scenes
and people were most fully represented were, however, pretty clear
and unadulterated records of his early experiences in the secluded
mountainous district of Lanarkshire where he was brought up. The best
poems of this sort are the pastoral dialogues, “Patie and Roger,” 1721,
and “Jenny and Meggy,” 1723, or rather, “The Gentle Shepherd,” 1725,
which is a combination of the two pastorals thrown into completer
dramatic form. A second edition of “The Gentle Shepherd” appeared in
the same year as Thomson’s “Winter.”[229] It is worthy of note that
the service rendered by Gay to English poetry is in many respects
paralleled by Allan Ramsay’s contributions to Scottish song. There are
in Ramsay’s pastorals similar closely studied scenes from peasant life,
wherein are minutely described the superstitions,[230] the household
customs,[231] the out-door occupations,[232] the trials,[233] and the
pleasures[234] of the homely folk among the hills of Scotland. But
there are important differences. What Gay did lightly and without
serious intent was with Ramsay a service of love. He was not laughing
in his sleeve at the very truth he so capitally portrayed. Throughout
his work there is, in general, an air of sincerity. It is as if Gay
wrote from the point of view of an outsider with an unfailingly keen
eye, and a quick sense of humor. But Ramsay wrote from a life that
he had known and loved, and that he thoroughly respected.[235] There
are occasional false notes in his pastorals. He gives his shepherds
flutes and reeds; his comparisons, especially his cumulative similes,
are conventional; he makes rather stiff use of personification; and
his desire to make his hero and heroine well born interferes with the
pastoral simplicity of the drama. But these are extraneous and hardly
affect the real texture of the work.
We find in Ramsay’s poems occasional hints that his presentation of
homely Scottish scenes and people was not merely instinctive, but that
it was in some measure a deliberate choice. In “Tartana,” written in
1721, he said that his chosen muses were those that wandered through
the clover meadows and the groves along the smooth meandering Tweed
or by the gentle Tay, or where the haughty Clyde roared over lofty
cataracts.
Phoebus, and his imaginary nine
With me have lost the title of divine;
To no such shadows will I homage pay,
These to my real muses shall give way.
And again, protesting against the narrowness of poetic rules and
customs, he said,
With more of Nature than of art
From stated rules I often start,--
Rules never studied yet by me.
My muse is British, bold and free,
And loves at large to frisk and bound,[236]
and he called a wide, wild garden where all sorts of plants grew in
wanton confusion, a paradise made by Nature herself. Even more emphatic
is his Preface to “The Evergreen” in 1724. In commendation of the poems
he had collected he said,
The morning rises as she does in the _Scottish_ horizon. We
are not carried to _Greece_ or _Italy_ for a shade, a
Stream, or a Breeze.... I find not Fault with these Things, as
they are in _Greece_ or _Italy_: But with a Northern
Poet for fetching his Materials from these Places, in a Poem, of
which his own Country is the Scene; as our _Hymners_ to the
_Spring_ and _Makers of Pastorals_ frequently do.
Ramsay’s use of external Nature is more charming than Gay’s. Scottish
poetry had never, in its attitude toward the out-door world, passed
through so barren and arid a period as that of the pseudo-classicism
in England, nor had the Scottish people ever lost their sense of the
beauty and especially of the mysterious power of glens and braes and
burns. So Ramsay’s love of Nature was not without a considerable
background in the way of national poetic spirit. He spoke out in fresh,
true words what everybody knew, and described scenes familiar to every
eye. There are, however, distinct limitations in Ramsay’s knowledge of
Nature and his power of sympathetic representation. His recognition
of colors is fresh and charming, but elementary, like that shown
in ballads. “Caledonian hills are green,” “beneath a green shade,”
“the simmer green,” “a green meadow,” “my native green plains,” are
characteristic phrases.
When corn-riggs wav’d yellow, and blue heather bells,[237]
and
To pu’ the rashes green with roots sae white,[238]
are almost the only instances of any other color than green. Such
phrases as “scented meadows,” “sweet scented rucks,” “new blown
scents,” “sweetest briar,” “blooming fragrance,” show the same simple,
undifferentiated recognition of odors. A few lines as,
How fast the westlin winds sough through the reeds,[239]
are more specific representations of sounds, but we do not often find
words so discriminating. His references to trees, flowers, and birds
are of the same general, limited sort. There are “bonny haughs” and
“bonny woods;” there are rising plants, primroses, daisies, and gowans;
there are “quiristers on high,” the merle, the mavis, and the lark.
But there is no subtle, detailed observation. It is the open, frank,
spontaneous joy of a child happy in the glad world about him. Ramsay’s
best lines are descriptive of shining days, clear heavens, dancing
streams. “The sun shines sweetly, a’ the lift looks blue,”[240] “ae
shining day,” “ae clear morn of May,” “the morning shines,” “the lift’s
unclouded blue,” “fair simmer mornings” indicate the general atmosphere
of the scenery introduced. Occasional closer touches are seen in such
lines as,
I’ve seen with shining fair the morning rise,
And soon the fleecy clouds mirk a’ the skies,[241]
and
For yet the sun was wading thro’ the mist.[242]
Best of all are the lines about streams;
A trotting burnie wimpling through the ground
Its channel pebbles, shining, smooth and round,[243]
A little fount
Where water poplin springs.[244]
I’ve seen the silver spring a while rin clear
And soon the mossy puddles disappear,[245]
Between twa birks out o’er a little lin
The water fa’s and makes a singan din,
A pool breast-deep, beneath, as clear as glass,
Kisses with easy whirles the bord’ring grass,[246]
are descriptions almost perfect of their kind. In their beauty and
freshness they show that the eye was on the object. Mr. Shairp says of
Habbie’s How, “A pool in a burn among the Lowland Hills could hardly be
more naturally described,” and one need not be a Scotchman to feel sure
that the same is true of the minor descriptive touches.
Though Ramsay was brought up in a rugged part of Scotland, he seems to
have had none of the modern feeling for mountains. But he speaks of
“black, heathery mountains,” of “northern mountains clad with snow,”
of “mountains clad with purple bloom,” and of hills that “smile with
purple heather.” Once he exclaims,
Look up to Pentland’s tow’ring top.
Buried beneath great wreaths of snaw,
O’er ilka cleugh, ilk scar, and slap,
As high as any Roman wa,’[247]
and he notes that
Speats aft roar frae mountains heigh.[248]
Such passages, though they show no love for the mountains, are yet
sufficiently picturesque and exact to save Ramsay from the imputation
of never having seen the wild country around him. To the ocean he gives
but a single line,
Along wild shores, where tumbling billows break.[249]
It is interesting to note that in Ramsay as in Gay, Nature is made
subordinate to man, in the sense that the pictures from Nature are
nowhere elaborated or dwelt upon ostensibly for their own sake. The
main interest is in the study of the characters.
The chief contribution of Gay and Ramsay to the growing love of Nature
in poetry had to do with the natural man in natural scenes, rather than
with the natural scene itself. Gay’s service in the way of external
Nature was largely the outcome of his fidelity to the fact. Ramsay did
more. He not only gave separate pictures both beautiful and true, but
he somehow fused them with the human elements of his pastoral in such a
way that we cannot think of the racy love-scenes apart from their fresh
and lovely surroundings.
In 1725, or shortly before, were written three poems on Winter.[250]
They are important as marking the first real turning from the softer
to the sterner aspects of Nature. Dr. Armstrong’s poem was inspired
by a winter spent among the wild romantic scenes about the River Esk.
His later poetry is not important so far as the use of Nature is
concerned. He became a great admirer of Thomson whose style he imitated
with some success, but he shows little of Thomson’s sensitiveness to
natural beauty. His point of view is that of the physician and his
hatred of the town is based on his objection to smoke and bad air,[251]
while his summons to the mountains rests on the value of exercise and
oxygen.[252] One of the most effective passages is his apostrophe to
the Liddal, that stream “unknown to song, where he played when life was
young.”[253] The only poem on which we need to dwell is the “Winter,”
which, though often unintelligible from its inflated and periphrastic
form of expression, has yet a rugged vigor and originality. It
shows occasionally a homely realism suggestive of Crabbe, as in the
description of the shivering clown. The observation is most of it
first-hand. The description of the birds that, when the storm comes on,
With domestic tameness, hop and flutter
Within the roofs of persecuting man,
suggest Thomson’s famous redbreast. Note also the truth of lines such
as these:
when the murk clouds
Roll’d up in heavy wreaths, low-bellying, seem
To kiss the ground, and all the waste of snow
Looks blue beneath them;
or these:
huge sheets of loosen’d ice
Float on their bosoms to the deep, and jar
And clatter as they pass;
or, to strike a lovelier note, this closing hint of the coming spring:
Hark! how loud
The cuckoo wakes the solitary wood!
The whole poem is characterized by a delight in the wildest phases of
winter weather and it shows an originality of conception, a fulness of
observation, and an occasional strength of expression remarkable in a
boy not yet sixteen.
Riccaltoun’s “A Winter’s Day” is chiefly remarkable because its
author was a friend of Thomson in his boyhood and doubtless helped to
cultivate his taste for Nature; because it was this poem that suggested
Thomson’s descriptions of winter; and because winter was at that time
a new poetic theme. The “masterly touches” of which Thomson speaks
are hard to find unless he referred merely to the rough truth in the
catalogue-like summaries of natural facts. A discussion of Thomson’s
“Winter” will come more naturally in the next section.
In this study of the period preceding Thomson we have still to notice
the indications that even Pope and Addison were not left untouched by
the new spirit. Such indications, however, show but faintly in their
poetry. Addison’s “Cursus Glacialis” (1699) was written in Latin, and
the few descriptive lines are purely conventional. It is simply an
attempt to show that the vigorous sports of winter
“New brace the nerves, and active life supply.”
Pope’s “Pastorals” appeared in Tonson’s “Miscellany” in 1709. They
were enthusiastically received, and apparently considered a charmingly
natural presentation of country life. Wycherley called Pope’s Muse
“a sprightly lass of the plains,” and said, that “in her modest and
natural dress she outshone all Apollo’s court ladies in their more
artful, laboured, and costly finery.”[254] But no assemblage of such
contemporary judgments could convince a modern reader that these poems
show any real traces of a conception of the outer world unlike that of
the classicists. “Windsor Forest” (1713) must be more carefully noted,
both because of Wordsworth’s implied commendation[255] in his reference
to the “passage or two” that contain new images of external Nature,
but chiefly because it is, as Courthope observes, the first “professed
composition on local scenery” since Denham, and Marvell.[256] The poem
was written at two different times. The first 290 lines have to do
with the country. They were written in 1704, at about the same time
as the “Pastorals.” Although this part of the poem purported to be
the outcome of daily rides in Windsor Forest, the descriptions are
so vague and general that most of them would fit any other spot as
well. The lines that show personal observation are certainly few. What
passages Wordsworth meant can only be surmised. He may have had in mind
the description of the pheasants. But more exact observation is shown
in the references to the doves flocking on the naked, frosty trees,
the flight of the clamorous lapwing, the trembling of trees reflected
in a stream, and the purple heather.[257] That Pope had some desire
to conform to the truth in representing English scenery is indicated
by his doubt as to the advisability of referring to the vintage in
describing an English autumn.[258] And when he revised his poems he
omitted “blushing,” as not being applicable to violets,[259] and
“wolves,” as not belonging to England.[260] Warton points out, also,
that in adapting a Latin description of the Eurotas to serve him in a
description of the Thames, he changed “laurels” to “willows”.[261]
In spite of these indications of a desire to be true to Nature, it
is to Pope’s prose rather than his poetry that we must turn for any
real influence in favor of simplicity and truth in the presentation
of natural facts. Though in reading Pope’s letters every statement
is instinctively taken _cum grano salis_, because of his known
insincerity and striving after effect, we now and then strike passages
that have a genuine tone of pleasure in such mild forms of Nature as
his physical condition enabled him to know.[262] Addison’s “Essays”
also show real delight in the milder forms of the external world.
“A beautiful prospect,” he says, “delights the soul as much as a
demonstration.” “A man of polite imagination often feels a greater
satisfaction in the prospect of fields and meadows than another does in
the possession.”[263] We note, too, his pleasure in wide views,[264] in
sunset,[265] and in spring.[266] He also deprecated the use of pagan
mythology as meaningless in the poetry of a Christian nation,[267]
and he heartily praised Ambrose Philips’ attempts to confine English
pastorals to English scenes.[268] And finally, both Pope and Addison
were strong influences in bringing about the change from the formal to
the natural school of gardening.[269]
SUMMARY
In a statement of the influences in this period that make for a new
spirit toward Nature we must not forget that it was in reality a
classical period, most of its tendencies and all of its best work
being classical. The indications of the new spirit are fugitive,
occasional, and usually unconscious. With this proviso, we may sum up
the new tendencies. The change from the formal to the natural school of
gardening was begun in this period, and owed much to Pope and Addison.
The artificial shepherds and shepherdesses of the conventional pastoral
were supplanted by real English and Scottish peasants, as in the work
of Ambrose Philips, Gay, and Ramsay. There was a growing sense of
the beauty and charm of the external world, as in Lady Winchilsea,
Parnell, and Ramsay. In most of the poets mentioned in this period
there was a new quickness and minuteness of observation leading to a
wider knowledge of natural facts. There was appreciative recognition
of new aspects of Nature, as night and winter. There was not lacking
a hint of the romantic note of melancholy which later became one
characteristic of the poetry of Nature. And there was recognition
of the spiritual potencies in the external world. There was also an
occasional self-conscious statement of new principles, as humorously in
Gay, seriously in Ramsay, and casually in Pope and Addison.
THE POETS BETWEEN 1726 AND 1730
James Thomson (1700–1748) is confessedly the most important figure
in the early history of Romanticism. He foreshadowed the new spirit
in various ways, as in his strong love of liberty, his constant
plea for the poor as against the rich, his preference for blank
verse, his imitation of older models, especially Spenser, and in his
tendency toward comprehensive schemes; but his chief importance is
in his attitude toward external Nature. If, however, we take into
consideration all his work, we shall find in more than three-fourths of
it the utmost apparent indifference to Nature. In the five tragedies
written between 1738 and 1748 there is no hint that their author knew
more of the world about him than the veriest classicist of them all. In
“Alfred” (1740), written by Thomson and Mallet, there are occasional
descriptive touches, but these are almost too slight to mention when
we think what effects might have been produced in a play the action
of which occurs on a beautiful wooded island inhabited only by a few
peasants. In the other tragedies Nature is drawn upon merely for
conventional similitudes, as in “Edward and Elenora” (1739), where
five of the eleven similitudes are the comparison of rage or fierce
passions to tempests; or in “Sophonisba,” an earlier play (1728), where
there is not a fresher or more forceful comparison than that of an
army to a torrent, passion to a whirlwind, the hero to a lion, and the
heroine to a blooming morn. In the 3,300 lines of the tedious poem,
“Liberty” (1734–36), not more than fifty refer to external Nature, and
of these the only passages that suggest, even remotely, the author of
“The Seasons” are the descriptions of the sullen land of Sarmatia[270]
and the shaggy mountain charms of the Swiss Alps.[271] “The Castle
of Indolence,” written in 1733, is the only one of the poems written
after 1730 that indicates any genuine love of Nature. The charm of this
poem for modern readers is perhaps largely due to its use of external
Nature, for, though there is little of the rich, elaborate description
characteristic of “The Seasons,” what there is, is so exquisitely
appropriate that all the listless, luxurious life of this land of soft
delights is seen through a romantic and picturesque setting of waving,
shadowy woods, sunny glades, and silver streams. Yet a closer study of
the descriptive stanzas shows little more than a musically felicitous
combination of the attributes conventionally recognized as belonging
to a pleasing landscape. The only lines really indicative of a love of
Nature such as the classicists had not known are the following from the
second canto:
I care not, Fortune, what you me deny:
You can not rob me of free Nature’s grace;
You can not shut the windows of the sky,
Through which Aurora shows her brightening face;
You can not bar my constant feet to trace
The woods and lawns, by living stream, at eve.[272]
It is to “The Seasons” (1726–30) that we must go if we wish to
understand Thomson’s work as a poet of Nature. A brief analysis of the
study of external Nature in these poems will serve to show both in what
respects Thomson’s work was the outcome of a new spirit, and in what
respects its affiliations are with the old.
An important part of Thomson’s poetical endowment was his quick
sensitiveness to the sights and sounds and odors of the world
about him. He looked on Nature with the eye of an artist, but not
of an artist in black and white. It was not form but color that
attracted him. There are occasional descriptions, as of the garden
in “Spring”[273] and of the precious stones in “Summer,”[274] where
the lines glow like a painter’s palette, and throughout “The Seasons”
there is a general impression of rich and varied coloring. That this
impression is stronger than a list of the color terms used would seem
to justify is due to two facts, both characteristic of Thomson’s work
in general. In the first place he did not care for nicely discriminated
shades or delicate tints. He loved broad masses of strong, clear
color. He dwells with ever new delight on blue as seen in the sky or
reflected in water, and on green, “smiling Nature’s universal robe.”
In the second place he is especially rich in such words as indicate
color in general without specification as to the kind. “The flushing
year,” “every-coloured glory,” “the boundless blush of spring,” “the
innumerous-coloured scene of things,” “unnumbered dyes,” “hues on
hues,” are typical phrases. Motion also caught his eye more quickly
than form. The dancing light and shade in a forest pathway, the waving
of branches, the flow of water, the rapid flight or slow march of
clouds, the golden, shadowy sweep of wind over ripened grain, count
for much in the pleasurable impression made upon his mind by different
scenes.
It is evident that Thomson received more through his eye than through
his ear, but he was very far from being indifferent to the sounds of
Nature. The hum of bees, the low of cattle, the bleating of sheep are
frequently noted. The songs of birds, while often represented by some
general phase, as “the music of the woods,” or “woodland hymns,” are
now and then more minutely specified, as in the fine description of
the “symphony of spring.”[275] There is also effective representation
of the sounds heard in storms, as in the summer thunderstorm.[276] The
most frequent sounds are, as is inevitable in an English poet whose
facts come from actual observation, those made by water, as the plaint
of purling rills, the thunder of impetuous torrents, or the growling of
frost-imprisoned rivers.
While Thomson was not the first poet to speak of the odor of the
bean-flower, his words show a keen appreciation of that perfume, and
certainly the “smell of dairy” was a country odor first poetically
noticed by him. His sensitiveness to odors is not especially marked,
yet it is safe to say that he was in this respect more observant than
his immediate predecessors or contemporaries.
In reading the poetry of Nature after Dryden in historical sequence,
there is, in coming to “The Seasons,” a sudden sense of freedom and
elation, a sense of having at last come upon a poet who writes freely
and spontaneously from a large personal experience, whose facts press
in upon him even too abundantly. He knows many kinds of Nature and
under varying aspects. His garden picture, though somewhat too much
in the floral catalogue style, shows how well he knew the cultivated
flowers he described, and he speaks with no less loving minuteness
of furze, the thorny brake, the purple heather, dewy cowslips, white
hawthorn, and lilies of the vale. It is a pleasure to see how much he
knew about birds. He describes their habits with remarkable accuracy
and minuteness. He shows their tender arts in courtship,[277] their
skill in nest-building,[278] and the “pious frauds” whereby they lure
away the would-be trespasser.[279] In no poetry between Marvell and
Thomson do we find birds so fully described, and Marvell has nothing so
charming and sympathetic as Thomson’s winter redbreast.[280] Thomson’s
scope is also wider in that he knew the birds of the seashore[281] as
well as those of wood and meadow. Equally close attention is given to
the various domestic fowl. The peacock had flaunted his painted tail
through poetry for a hundred years, and is now for the first time
outranked as an object of interested observation by the hen, the duck,
and the turkey.[282] The frequent descriptions of domestic animals,
especially the sheep,[283] the horse,[284] and the ox,[285] also
show minute knowledge such as could not have been gained from books.
It is, moreover, a significant fact that through these numerous and
varied studies there runs a genuine love for animals. Thomson was,
at least in poetic theory, a vegetarian, and he vigorously denounced
the killing of animals for food as conduct worthy only of wild
beasts.[286] His poetical invectives against hunting are as vigorous
as Cowper’s.[287] He objects to caging birds,[288] and his indignation
waxes high over the bees “robb’d and murder’d” by man’s tyranny.[289]
The only unoffending animal that escapes Thomson’s wide sympathy is the
fish.[290] The skill with which the monarch of the brook is lured from
his dark haunt and at last “gaily” dragged to land is described with
a gusto in curious contrast to the pity lavished on the tortured worm
that may have served for bait.[291]
As we have just seen, the animals that Thomson described were those
that any country lad might know rather than those that had been
canonically set apart for poetical service. The same independent
judgment is evident in his study of other neglected realms in the
world of Nature. He gloried in storms and winter. Though he now and
then falls into the conventional phraseology, and speaks of winter as
drear and awful, he yet in the same breath exclaims that he finds its
horrors congenial. The contrast of a first winter in London turns his
mind with full emphasis to the days of his youth when he wandered with
unceasing joy through virgin snows, and listened to the roar of the
winds and the bursting torrent, and watched the deep tempest brewing in
the grim sky. Such experiences he remembers with joy for they “exalt
the soul to solemn thought.”[292] Through all the descriptive portions
of the “Winter” there is a vigorous, manly enthusiasm as tonic and
bracing as the bright, frosty days themselves. Thomson’s pleasure in
the sterner phenomena of Nature is further shown by his evident delight
in tracing the progress of any storm, whether the thunder storm of
summer,[293] the devastating wind and rain of autumn,[294] or the black
gloom of a winter tempest.[295] These fierce tempests certainly are of
more comparative importance in “The Seasons” than they are in Nature.
Their frequent choice may be in part due to their dramatic qualities
of rapidity and force. The crashing and hurtling of the elements was a
subject not unsuited to Thomson’s splendid but ponderous and swelling
style. But in the main it is only fair to suppose that he wrote of
storms well because he had many times watched them with an interest
that had made him remember them.
With many other aspects of Nature was Thomson familiar. He knew much
of the sky both by day and by night. His few short descriptions
of the starry heavens are worth more than all Young’s far-sought
epithets.[296] One phrase concerning the radiant orbs
That more than deck, that animate the sky,[297]
seems a conscious turning away from the old artificial conception. One
of the finest moonlight passages[298] is reminiscent of Milton in two
lines,
Now through the passing cloud she seems to stoop,
Now up the pure cerulean rides sublime,
but the close,
The whole air whitens with a boundless tide
Of silver radiance, trembling round the world,
is Thomson’s own, and is a good example of the full sweet harmony that
marks his verse at its best. There are many passages and apparently
casual phrases indicative of the closeness with which he watched
clouds.[299] The doubling fogs that roll around the hills and wrap the
world in a “formless gray confusion” through which the shepherd stalks
gigantic is described with a Wordsworthian felicity and precision.[300]
The descriptions referred to below of early morning,[301] of
sunset,[302] of evening,[303] and of night[304] may be perhaps taken
as among the best examples of their sort in “The Seasons.” As a whole
they show conclusively from what long intimacy with Nature Thomson
wrote. The very freshness of morning breathes from the sunrise picture
in “Summer” and the little picture in “Autumn” is more delicately
suggestive than many a more pretentious description of the dawning
day. The sunset after the rain in “Spring” is one of the best examples
of Thomson’s power to paint word pictures. It would be difficult for
any canvas to present a scene at once so mellow and radiant, and so
transfused with the joy of a renovated earth. As exquisite in their way
are the descriptions of the slow approach of “Sober Evening” with her
circling shadows and the softly swelling breeze that stirs the stream
and wood; and the later description of the strange uncertain mingling
of light and darkness in a summer night in England. These passages and
others that might be quoted show to what fine issues Thomson’s pen was
sometimes touched, but it cannot be denied that his really intimate
and exact knowledge of Nature and her ways could not hold all his
descriptions subject to the charm of simplicity and truth.
As further illustrative of Thomson’s knowledge of all that pertained
to the country we have his admirably vivid and detailed accounts of
the homely labors of a farmer’s life, as plowing,[305] sowing,[306]
reaping,[307] hay making,[308] and sheep shearing.[309] Of these the
sheep shearing is the most simply charming and natural. It is also
the most noteworthy, because sheep and shepherds had long been the
very substance out of which pastorals were woven so that in such
descriptions the contrast between the new and the old way of looking
at country life is sharply defined. Thomson’s pastoral queen and
shepherd king are at the opposite pole from the sentimental, affected,
useless nymphs and swains who had before posed as the guardians of
English sheep. His shepherds are sturdy fellows, doing honest work
and plenty of it, and as such they had no predecessors in English
classical poetry. The sheep, too, are real animals. They have to be
watched with a vigilance of which no flower-crowned swain playing on
an oaten pipe would be capable. And they must be washed and sheared
and branded. In winter they must be housed and fed, no matter what the
dangers on the dark, stormy hills. It is this strong, refreshing air of
reality in Thomson’s poetry, and his unfeigned respect and admiration
for the actual country life in England that completed the work begun
by the ugly satire of Swift and the mock pastorals of Gay, and made
the old, conventional, pseudo-classic pastoral from that time on an
impossibility in English poetry.
The phrase, “dislike of boundaries,” is perhaps not very apt, but
it may serve to describe what is certainly a pervasive quality of
Thomson’s work, and a significant quality, for if there was one
thing more pleasing than another to an orthodox classicist it was a
well-defined limit. Thomson preferred the blank verse to the couplet
because the unrhymed, flowing lines gave a certain freedom. There is an
air of abundance, of even undue exuberance about much of his work. Even
his diction presents this idea of lavishness. There is a surprisingly
large number of such words as “effulgent,” “refulgent,” “effusion,”
“diffusion,” “suffusion,” “profusion,” from the roots “fundo” and
“fulgeo” with their idea of a liberal pouring out. “Luxuriant,”
“ample,” “prodigal,” “boundless,” “unending,” “ceaseless,” “immense,”
“interminable,” “immeasurable,” “vast,” “infinite,” are typical words.
Profusely poured around,
Materials infinite,
Infinite splendor wide investing all,
To the far horizon wide-diffused,
A boundless deep immensity of shade,
Night, a shade immense, magnificent and vast,
are typical phrases. In one short description the birds are
“innumerous;” they are “prodigal” of harmony; their joy overflows
in music “unconfined;” the song of the linnets is “poured out
profusely.”[310] In another short passage the stores of the vale are
“lavish,” the lily is “luxuriant” and grows in fair “profusion,”
the flowers are “unnumbered,” beauty is “unbounded,” and bees fly in
“swarming millions.”[311] When images come into his mind it is by the
ten thousand. In spring the country is “one boundless blush,” “far
diffused around.” He loves the “liberal air,” “lavish fragrance,” “full
luxuriance,” “extensive harvests,” “immeasurable,” or “exhaustless”
stores, “copious exhalations.” All is superlative, exaggerated,
scornful of limits. It was “the unbounded scheme of things” that most
appealed to him.
The same point receives illustration in his sense for landscape. He
rejoiced in a wide view.[312] He loved to seek out some proud eminence
and there let his eye wander “far excursive,” and dwell on “boundless
prospects.” Such scenes not only gave him a chance for picturesque
enumerations without any especial demand for minute discrimination, but
they satisfied his preference for grand, general effects.
Closely connected with the sense for landscape is the use of
geographical romance,[313] or the heightening of poetic effect by the
accumulation of sounding geographical names.[314] The finest example
of this device is in the lines descriptive of the thunder re-echoed
among the mountains.[315] In this passage the impression of sublimity
is due to the suggestions of mysterious elemental forces subtly
associated with such names as Carnarvon, Penmaenmawr, Snowdon, Thule,
and Cheviot.[316] This mental following of the thunder from peak to
distant peak, this endeavor to strengthen the impression by the use of
the remote and the unknown, show a mind set toward romantic rather than
classical ideals.
A further indication of Thomson’s defiance of limits is his curiosity.
His mind goes back of the present fact and restlessly strives after
causes and origins.[317] In imagination he seeks to penetrate to the
vast eternal springs from which Nature refreshes the earth.[318] The
most poetic example of this questioning spirit is in his address to the
winds that blow with boisterous sweep to swell the terrors of the storm.
In what far-distant region of the sky,
Hush’d in deep silence, sleep you when ’tis calm?[319]
The classical spirit held itself to useful questions that could have
some rational answer. It is the romantic spirit that pushes its
inquiries into the realms of the unknowable.
Throughout this study of Thomson’s work there has been an implicit
recognition of his strong love for Nature. This fact receives further
definite confirmation from his letters. It is interesting to note
that his early life was almost as fortunate in its environment as
Wordsworth’s. When he was a year old his father moved to Southdean, a
small hamlet near Jedborough. Here the lad remained till he entered
the university at Edinburgh at fifteen,[320] and here he apparently
passed most of his vacations till he went to London at twenty-five.
One of his especial friends was Dr. Cranston of Ancrum whose love of
Nature was equal to his own. Thomson’s letters to Dr. Cranston, though
somewhat stilted and high-flown, show clearly the eagerness with which
they had together explored the picturesque country along the Tiviot and
its tributary streams, the Ale and the Jed. In the first letter from
London, under the date April 3, 1725, was written, “I wish you joy of
the spring.” In September of the same year Thomson wrote from Barnet:
Now I imagine you seized with a fine romantic kind of melancholy
on the fading of the year; now I figure you wandering,
philosophical and pensive, ’midst the brown, wither’d groves,
while the leaves rustle under your feet, the sun gives a
farewell parting gleam, and the birds
Stir the faint note and but attempt to sing.
Then again when the heavens wear a more gloomy aspect, the winds
whistle, and the waters spout, I see you in the well-known
clough, beneath the solemn arch of tall, thick embowering trees,
listening to the amusing lull of the many steep, moss-grown
cascades, while deep, divine contemplation, the genius of the
place, prompts each swelling awful thought. I am sure you would
not resign your place in that scene at any easy rate. None ever
enjoyed it to the height you do, and you are worthy of it. There
I walk in spirit and disport in its beloved gloom. This country
I am in is not very entertaining; no variety but that of woods,
and them we have in abundance; but where is the living stream?
the airy mountain? or the hanging rock? with twenty other things
that elegantly please the lover of nature. Nature delights me in
every form.
Later in life Thomson was “more fat than bard beseems,” and
correspondingly indolent, and his biographers give the impression that
no beauty of the world about him could compete with the charms of an
easy chair. But his letters still bear witness to a love of Nature as
real if not as active as that of his youth. In July, 1743, he wrote to
Mr. Lyttleton promising to spend some weeks with him at Hagley:
As this will fall in Autumn, I shall like it the better, for I
think that season of the year the most pleasing and the most
poetical. The spirits are not then dissipated with the gaiety
of spring, and the glaring light of summer, but composed into
a serious and tempered joy. The year is perfect.... The muses,
whom you obligingly say I shall bring with me, I shall find with
you--the muses of the great, simple country, not the little,
fine-lady muses of Richmond Hill.
Again four or five years later, he wrote to Paterson, “Retirement and
nature are more and more my passion every day.”[321]
This passion for Nature finds frequent expression in the poems, but
no citation of specific instances can be so convincing as the general
impression of unforced personal enthusiasm made upon the reader of “The
Seasons.” Moreover, Thomson’s conception of the effect of Nature on
man, the next topic, may be fairly counted as but a transcript from his
own experience, and therefore as further illustrative of his love for
Nature.
In “The Seasons” as in preceding poetry both man and Nature have a
place, but there is a great transfer of emphasis. Nature had been
ignored or counted as the servant, the background, the accompaniment
of man. Now the human incidents are few and unimportant and are
used chiefly to lay additional stress by their tone on the spirit
characteristic of each season. Nature is loved and studied and
described purely for her own sake. There is very little use of natural
facts as similes for human qualities, and there is, practically, no use
of pathetic fallacy. The effect of Nature on the man sensitive to her
high ministration is represented as twofold. In the first place and
chiefly, she storms his senses with her ravishing delights. She gives
him pleasures of the most rich and varied sort. She enchants him with
color and harmony and perfume. These pleasures are, however, of the eye
and ear. They do not touch the deeper joys of the heart. Of the appeal
of Nature to the soul of man, in the true Wordsworthian sense, Thomson
knew little. Yet occasional passages indicate that he had received from
Nature gifts higher than that of mere external, sensuous enjoyment. He
attributes to Nature in at least a partially Wordsworthian sense, the
power of soothing, elevating, and instructing. He sings the “infusive
force” of spring on man,
When heaven and earth as if contending vie
To raise his being, and serene his soul.[322]
It is his delight to “meditate the book of Nature” for thence he hopes
to “learn the moral song.”[323] At the soft evening hour, he
lonely loves
To seek the distant hills, and there converse
With nature, there to harmonize his heart.[324]
Not only does he attend to Nature’s voice from month to month, and
watch with admiration her every shape, but he
Feels all her sweet emotions at his heart.[325]
While these and a few other similar passages would hardly be remarked
in the poetry of Nature after Wordsworth, they are of great historical
importance because they show the early beginning of that spirit which
received its final and perfect expression seventy years later in “The
Lyrical Ballads.”
Thomson’s two dominant conceptions in his thought of God in Nature were
as the almighty Creator and the ever-active Ruler. The whole tenor
of his poems goes to show that he saw in Nature not God himself but
God’s hand. Even his invocations to Nature, animate and inanimate, to
praise God in one general song of adoration, are but highly emotional
and figurative statements of the conception that God is not all, but
Lord of all. Now and then, however, in the midst of the old ideas
there comes the breath of a new thought. In one line we find the cold,
conventional idea; in the next, an intimation of divine immanence.
God’s beauty walks forth in the spring. His spirit breathes in the
gales. The seasons “are but the varied God.” God is the Universal
Soul of Heaven and earth. He is the Essential Presence in all
Nature.[326] Such sentences as these, whether uttered consciously, or
half unconsciously under the influence of poetic excitement, clearly
prefigure the modern conception of the union and inter-penetration of
the physical and spiritual worlds.
Of the two general points to be kept in view in the study of Thomson
as a poet of Nature the second was a consideration of his affiliations
with the classical spirit. It is surprising to observe in how few
respects such affiliations can be justly predicated. There are
occasional references to his Doric reed, and frequent invocations to
his muse. As preliminary justification of his choice of themes are
quotations from Virgil and Horace. The authority of the “Rural Maro”
and the example of Cincinnatus lend added dignity to the English plow.
Personifications of the conventional type often appear. There is one
purely didactic description of the cure for a pest of insects, and
another description of the method by which bees are robbed of their
honey, that are evidently framed on Latin models. Nor do we miss the
ever-recurring advice to read the page of the Mantuan swain beneath a
spreading tree on a warm noon.
We also find that toward mountains and the sea Thomson held almost
the traditional attitude. His nearness to the coast and his knowledge
of shore birds show that he could not have been entirely ignorant of
the ocean, but it apparently made little impression on him, for he
seldom mentions it even casually, and but once with any emphasis.
It is then one of the elements of a wild, fierce storm that sweeps
the coast. A few of his epithets for mountains, as “keen-air’d” and
“forest-rustling,” are new though not especially felicitous, and he
often mentions mountains by name, or as bounding some distant prospect.
But in general his conception and his phraseology are those of his
contemporaries. He speaks of the Alps as “dreadful,” as “horrid,
vast, sublime,” and again as “horrid mountains.” There is nowhere any
evidence of the modern feeling toward mountains, though there are
frequent expressions of appreciative love for green hills.
The point in which Thomson shows strongest traces of the old influence
is his diction. He often has the new thought before he has found the
appropriate dress for it. Birds are still the “plumy” or “feathery
people,” and fish are the “finny race.” “Shaggy” and “nodding” are used
of mountains and rocks and forests, and “deformed” and “inverted” of
winter, in true classical fashion. “Maze” is one of his most frequent
words. “Horrid” still holds a useful place. “Amusing” is five times
applied to the charms of some landscape. Leaves are the “honours” of
trees, paths are “erroneous,” caverns “sweat,” and all sorts of things
are “innumerous.” He also makes large use of Latinized words such as
“turgent,” “bibulous,” “relucent,” “luculent,” “irriguous,” “gelid,”
“ovarious,” “incult,” “concactive,” “hyperborean.” These words can
hardly be said to belong to any received poetic diction. They are
rather a mannerism of Thomson’s style, and an outgrowth of his delight
in swelling, sounding phrases.
From this summary we at once perceive how few and comparatively
unimportant were the characteristics held in common by Thomson and the
classicists in their treatment of external Nature.
This study of “The Seasons” shows that so far as intrinsic worth
is concerned the poems are marked by a strange mingling of merits
and defects, but that, considered in their historical place in the
development of the poetry of Nature, their importance and striking
originality can hardly be over-stated. Though Thomson talked the
language of his day, his thought was a new one. He taught clearly,
though without emphasis, the power of Nature to quiet the passions and
elevate the mind of man, and he intimated a deeper thought of divine
immanence in the phenomena of Nature. But his great service to the
men of his day was that he shut up their books, led them out of their
parks, and taught them to look on Nature with enthusiasm. This service
is of the greater historical value because it was so well adapted
to the times. To begin with, it was a necessary first step. People
cannot love what they do not know. Lead them to Nature, teach them to
observe with amazement and delight, and the other steps follow in due
course in accordance with the power of each soul to receive the deeper
influences of Nature. In the second place, men were just ready to take
this first decisive step away from the artificial to the natural. The
work of the poets who immediately preceded Thomson had been too slight
and fragmentary to count for much in the way of influence, yet they
were most clear indications of a tendency, a silent preparation of
the general poetic mind, for such work as Thomson’s. He was at once
and easily understood because, while his poems in their spontaneous
freshness and charm, their rich, easy fulness of description, their
minute observation, their sweep of view, their unforced enthusiasm,
must have come as a revelation, it was a revelation in no sense defiant
or iconoclastic. In the main it was a revelation of new delights, not
of disturbing theories, or vexing problems. A touch more of subtlety,
of vision, of mystery, of the faculty divine, and Thomson might have
waited for recognition as Wordsworth did.[327]
John Dyer’s (1700–1758) more ambitious poems, “The Ruins of Rome”
(1740) and “The Fleece” (1757), belong to a much later period than the
present. Of these the first may be passed over as containing hardly
a touch of Nature. The second is a long didactic poem showing much
technical knowledge of sheep-raising, weaving, dyeing, and home and
foreign trade. It has frequent panegyrics of liberty and simplicity.
It abounds with geographical details, and is notable as having so many
full and often exact descriptive references to the rivers of Great
Britain. The Avon, the Severn, the Thames, the Towy, the Vaga, the
Ryddol, the Ystwith, the Clevedoc, the Lune, the Coker, the Ouze, and
the Usk are chief among these. He is apparently always conscious of the
rivers, rills, streams, or waterfalls in any landscape. But in general
the poem is conventional in diction,[328] in the choice of similitudes,
and in the occasional descriptions. Its use of geographical details,
though sometimes suggestive and stimulating, as in the lines,
Tempestuous regions, Darwent’s naked peaks,
Snowden and blue Plynlymmon and the wide
Aërial sides of Cader-yddris huge,[329]
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;
Purple Eve
Stretches her shadows,[331]
When many-colour’d Evening sinks behind
The purple woods and hills,[332]
The purple skirts of flying day,[333]
When evening mild
Purples the valleys,[334]
Wide abroad
Expands the purple deep,[335]
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
Each gives each a double charm.
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,
Now, even now, my joys run high
As on the mountain turf I lie.
In “The Fleece” are further indications of this love of mountains and
wide views. The passage beginning
Huge Breaden’s stony summit once I climbed[336]
is typical.
Those slow-climbing wilds, that lead the step
Insensibly to Dover’s windy cliff,
Tremendous height![337]
and
By the blue steeps of distant Malvern walled,
Solemnly vast.[338]
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,”
Be full, ye courts; be great who will;
Search for Peace with all your skill:
Open wide the lofty door,
Seek her on the marble floor,
In vain you search, she is not there;
In vain ye search the domes of care!
Grass and flowers Quiet treads,
On the meads, and mountain heads,
Along with Pleasure, close-ally’d,
Ever by each other’s side:
And often, by the murmuring rill,
Hears the thrush, while all is still,
Within the groves 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,
On the brow of mountain high
In silence feasting ear and eye,[342]
or,
And then at utmost stretch of eye
A mountain fades into the sky;
While winding round, diffused and deep,
A river rolls with sounding sweep.[343]
“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,
The bullfinch whistles soft his flute-like note,
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 POETS BETWEEN 1730 AND 1756
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:
Hail, gentle Dawn! mild, blushing goddess, hail!
Rejoic’d I see thy purple mantle spread
O’er half the skies, gems pave thy radiant way,
And orient pearls from every shrub depend.[351]
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,
Justly supreme! let us thy power revere,[352]
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;
But soon the pageant fades away!
’Tis nature only bears perpetual sway,[354]
and they learn again
the simple, the sincere delight--
Th’ habitual scene of hill and dale,
The rural herds, the vernal gale,
The tangled vetch’s purple bloom,
The fragrance of the bean’s perfume.[355]
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:
Athirst ye praise the limpid stream, ’tis true:
But though, the pebbled shores among,
It mimic no unpleasing song,
The limpid fountain murmurs not for you.
Unpleas’d ye see the thickets bloom,
Unpleas’d the spring her flowery robe resume;
Unmov’d the mountain’s airy pile,
The dappled mead without a smile.
But to the true lover of Nature,
Lo! not an hedge-row hawthorn blows,
Or humble harebell paints the plain,
Or valley winds, or fountain flows,
Or purple heath is ting’d in vain:
For such the rivers dash the foaming tides,
The mountain swells, the dale subsides;
Ev’n thriftless furze detains their wandering sight,
And the rough, barren rock grows pregnant with delight.[356]
Shenstone also defends the doctrine that beauty is its own excuse for
being.
Let yon admir’d carnation own,
Not all was meant for raiment, or for food,
Not all for needful use alone.[357]
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,
Brown fields their fallow sabbaths keep,[359]
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,
Mark how Nature’s hand bestows
Abundant grace on all that grows,
Tinges, with pencil slow unseen,
The grass that clothes the valley green;
Or spreads the tulip’s parted streaks.
More distinctive, however, than this love of the spring-time world, is
Hamilton’s sense of communion with Nature. The lines,
As on this flowering turf I lie,
My soul conversing with the sky,
and this address to the passions that tyrannize over him,
This grove annihilates you all.
Oh power unseen, yet felt, appear!
Sure something more than nature’s here,
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,
Sweet smells the birk, green grows, green grows the grass,
Yellow on Yarrow’s banks the gowan,
Fair hangs the apple frae the rock,
Sweet the wave of Yarrow flowan;
and a single line in the maiden’s lament,
I sang, my voice the woods returning,
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,
What hand, Almighty Architect, but thine
Could give the model of this vast design?
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.
The sun from thy superior radiance bright
Eternal sheds his delegated light;
Thou shedd’st the tepid morning’s balmy dews,
are characteristic lines.
That Boyse was an admirer of Thomson we know from the lines addressed
to him,
When nature first inspired thy early strain
To paint the beauties of the flowery plain;
The charming page I read with soft delight,
And every lively landskip charmed my sight.[363]
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:
Let Indians ...
... the sun adore:
_Darkness_ has more divinity for me;
It strikes thought inward; it drives back the soul
To settle on herself.[364]
By night an atheist half-believes a God.[365]
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
in some hollow’d seat
’Gainst which the big waves beat,
and listen to
Drowning seamen’s cries in tempest brought.
His gifted wizard seers
view the lurid signs that cross the sky
Where in the west the brooding tempests lie,
And hear their first, faint, rustling pennons sweep.
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,
Thy dewy fingers draw
The gradual dusky veil,
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:
O ye Northumbrian shades, which overlook
The rocky pavement and the mossy falls
Of solitary Wensbeck’s limpid stream;
How gladly I recall your well-known seats
Beloved of old, and that delightful time
When, all alone, for many a summer’s day,
I wandered through your calm recesses, led
In silence by some powerful hand unseen.
Nor will I e’er forget you; nor shall e’er
The graver tasks of manhood, or the advice
Of vulgar wisdom, move me to disclaim
Those studies which possessed me in the dawn
Of life, and fix’d the color of my mind
For every future year.[372]
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
Whom nature’s aspect, nature’s simple garb,
Can thus command.[377]
For the happy man whom neither sordid wealth nor the gaudy spoils of
honor can seduce to leave the sweets of Nature,
Each passing hour sheds tribute from her wings:
And still new beauties meet his lonely walk,
And loves unfelt attract him....
... Nor thence partakes
Fresh pleasure only; for the attentive mind,
By this harmonious action on her powers,
Becomes herself harmonious; wont so oft
In outward things to meditate the charm
Of sacred order, soon she seeks at home
To find a kindred order, to exert
Within herself this elegance of love.[378]
If men feel themselves cramped by custom, by sordid policies, let them
appeal
to Nature, to the winds
And rolling waves, the sun’s unwearied course,
The elements and seasons.
All these call us to beneficent activity.
Thus the men
Whom Nature’s works can charm, with God himself
Hold converse; grow familiar, day by day,
With his conceptions, act upon his plan,
And form to his the relish of their souls.[379]
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.
Throned in the sun’s descending car,
What power unseen diffuseth far
This tenderness of mind?
What Genius smiles on yonder flood?
What God, in whispers from the wood,
Bids every thought be kind?[381]
Who can tell,
Even on the surface of this rolling earth,
How many make abode? The fields, the groves,
The winding rivers and the azure main,
Are rendered solemn by their frequent feet,
Their rites sublime.[382]
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,
For Truth and Good are one;
And Beauty dwells in them, and they in her.[385]
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
Of beauty beaming its benignant warmth
Through all the brute creation.
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:
A finer hay-day was never seen,
The greenish sops already luik less green
* * * * *
And see how finely striped the fields appear,
Striped like the gown ’at I on Sundays wear.
White show the rye, the big of blaker hue;
The bluimen pezz greenment wi’ reed and blue.
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
Long lash’d by the rude winds. Some rift half down
Their branchless trunks; others so thin atop,
That scarce two crows could lodge in the same tree.
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;
So may thy cows forever crown
With floods of milk thy brimming pail;
So may thy cheeze all cheeze surpass,
So may thy butter never fail.
Lucy, of course, sighed and blushed a sweet consent. This pastoral,
together with his admiration of Pope’s Alexis, who was so
Gently rural! without coarseness plain;
How simple in his elegance of grief!
A shepherd but no clown,
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
Nature’s bard the seasons on his page
Stole from the year’s rich hand,[386]
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:
What boundless tides of splendor o’er the skies,
O’er flowing brightness! stream their golden rays!
Heaven’s azure kindles with the varying dyes.[387]
Or take this one:
And what a prospect round
Swells greenly grateful on the cherish’d eye;
A universal blush, a waste of sweets![388]
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,
The pool-sprung gnat on sounding wings doth pass
And on the ramping steed doth suck his fill,
or,
The patient cow doth, to eschew the heat,
Her body steep within the neighboring rill;
but more often the observations are of the conventional imitative sort,
as in this couplet:
On every hill the purple-blushing vine
Beneath her leaves her racy fruit doth hide,
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,
Like the tempest-driven wave,
Irregularly great, his bare tops brave
The winds.
To the west
Braids lifts his scarry sides,
And Ilmington, and Campden’s hoary hills
Impress new grandeur on the spreading scene,
* * * * *
While distant, but distinct, his Alpine ridge
Malvern erects o’er Esham’s vale sublime.
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:
Dost thou explore Sabrina’s fountful source,
Where huge Plinlimmon’s hoary height ascends:
Then downwards mark her vagrant course
’Till mixed with clouds the landscape ends?
Dost thou revere the hallowed soil
Where Druids old sepulchred lie?
Or up cold Snowden’s craggy summits toil
And muse on ancient savage liberty?
Ill suit such walks with bleak autumnal air.
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,
Mona on Snowden calls;
Hear, thou King of Mountains, hear.
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
The untaught harmony of Spring,