is entirely conventional in its use of Nature, the prevailing tone

being exemplified in such phrases as “the attic warbler,” “the purple

year,” and “Venus’ train.” But in the two poems of 1742–50, we find

close and appreciative study of the country about Windsor and Stoke

Pogis. In the ode on “Eton College” the wistful pleasure with which the

poet recalls his childhood is intensified by his memory of the beloved

hills and fields, the silver-winding stream, and the pleasant paths

inseparably associated with the care-free days of his youth. In the

“Elegy” the use of Nature is highly artistic. The purpose of the poem

is a human one--the sympathetic representation of the honorable labor,

the innocent joys, the tender and wholesome affections of the poor,

the general tone being that of a pensive melancholy induced by the

thought of death. Nature is used in due subordination to the theme, and

with exquisite fitness. Every detail of the opening twilight picture

contributes its own touch to prepare the mind for the succeeding

reflections on death. The sounds, the tinkling of the distant folds,

the droning of the beetle, the complaining of the owl, are such as

emphasize silence, which is itself an accompaniment and an emblem of

death. The ivy-mantled tower, the rugged elms, the black yews, have

been immemorially associated with death. There is also a subtle analogy

in the withdrawal of light, the life of Nature. So, too, each detail

in the first picture of morning, has its human purpose. The stirring

sounds are interesting and of pathetic import because they once waked

an answering throb of life in the hearts of men who now hear them no

more. The enumeration of homely country tasks has its chief value

in the suggested delight of the workman in his occupation and the

resultant emphasis by contrast on the pathos of death.

In the last six stanzas of the poem we find the true romantic

conception of the relation between man and Nature. The poet is

represented as a shy, solitary being in communion with Nature, and

drawing his inspiration from her. In the morning he hurries to some

hillside that he may watch the sunrise; at noon he stretches himself

at full length under some beech-tree by the side of a brook, and pores

over the waters as they babble by; or he wanders through the woods,

murmuring to himself his wayward fancies. This poet is certainly far

enough removed from the typical town-bred poet of the classical régime.

He is rather of the same race as Warton’s Enthusiast, and he at least

suggests Wordsworth’s Poet who murmurs by the running brooks a music

sweeter than their own.[390] In these stanzas Nature is not only the

appropriate dramatic background. It is taken up into the mental action

and becomes at least in part the occasion of the poet’s moods, and it

is entirely through the relation of the poet to Nature that these moods

are revealed to the reader.

Nature is thus throughout the poem made strictly subservient to the

human theme, but the intrinsic beauty of the brief descriptions, quite

apart from the context, cannot pass unnoticed. Separate lines have the

power of suggesting whole pictures. For example in

How bowed the woods beneath their sturdy stroke,

the ringing blow of the ax, the crash of the falling tree, smite upon

the ear. The stanza beginning

Oft did the harvest to their sickle yield

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

peaceful landscape effect in

The lowing herds wind slowly o’er the lea.

And the line

The swallow twittering from its straw-built shed

brings up all the details of a humble farmyard. These and other

descriptions in the “Elegy” are distinctively English in spirit and

detail. They are the result of first-hand knowledge, they are drawn

with a firm hand, and they are used with an instinctive recognition of

artistic fitness.

A new range of sympathies, however, appears in the poems of Gray’s

third or purely romantic period. Here he writes of northern mythologies

and superstitions or gives transcripts of Norse tales, and the pictures

interwoven with the human elements are of a wild and savage character.

In “The Bard,” mountain, precipice, and torrent form a setting without

which the fiery denunciation of the poet would lose half its force. The

storm and the whirlwind sweep through these poems. Rough and frowning

steeps, foaming floods, warring winds, the heights of Snowdon and huge

Plinlimmon, darkness, cold, make up the terrible but dramatically

appropriate environment for the fierce, imprecatory elegy which the

bard utters over his lost companions, for the fatal and dreadful song

of the gigantic sisters weaving “the loom of Hell.”

In one or two other poems there is effective use of Nature. The joy

of a convalescent able at last to go out of doors was not an uncommon

subject through this period, but there is no better expression of

it than in “A Fragment” by Gray. The feeling, and in passages, the

phraseology, are almost Wordsworthian.

The meanest flowret of the vale,

The simplest note that swells the gale,

The common sun, the air, the skies,

To him are opening Paradise,

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

birds, as,

But chief, the Sky-lark warbles high

His trembling thrilling ecstacy;

And, lessening from the dazzled sight,

Melts into air and liquid light,[391]

and,

There pipes the wood-lark, and the song-thrush there

Scatters his loose notes in the waste of air.[392]

Though undated these lines in their spirit and workmanship ally

themselves at once with the period of the “Elegy” rather than with the

later work. They also accurately represent Gray’s dominant attitude

toward Nature, his knowledge of sweet, homely things, and the delicate

perfection of his literary touch.

The Rev. R. Potter’s chief poem is “A Farewell Hymn to the Country,

Attempted in the Manner of Spenser’s Epithalamion” (1749). The poem

shows much sympathetic knowledge of some parts of Nature, especially

of birds and trees. He speaks of the quail that “runnes piping o’er

the land,” of the “mavis-haunted grove,” and of the nightingale that

delights “the stillness of the night.” He declares that his entire

orchard, plums, pears, grapes, permains, and all, is at the service of

these, his “fellow-poets.” At evening

The slumb’ring trees seem their tall tops to bow

Rocking the careless birds that on them nest

To gentle, gentle rest.

He does not often refer to specific trees, but he gives little

suggestive pictures as of “the uncertain shaded grove,” or

the doubtfull shade

By quivering branches made,

or of delightful resting places roofed with “inwoven branches.” The

stream for which he cared most was “the gentle Tave” in Norfolk. He

mentions many flowers, but in no new or finely descriptive manner. His

sensitiveness to perfumes we may see in such lines as,

Sweet is the breath of heaven with day-spring born,

Where the fresh hay-cock breathes along the mead,

or in such phrases as “this flowre-perfumed aire.” The poem is rich in

color, as in the descriptions of sunrise, and of various kinds of fruit.

Though it would be difficult to quote specific lines to prove the

statement, it is nevertheless true that the whole poem conveys in a

quite unusual degree a sense of warm, abiding affection for the simple

scenes of the country. “Smit with the peaceful joys of lowly life,” he

gives thanks for “the unmoved quiet of his silver daies,” and thinks

with dread of “the cares and pains in mad cities.” His use of Nature is

almost entirely in a running assemblage of sweet sights and sounds to

justify his preference for country life.

Another of the minor poets of this period is Dr. John Dalton. In 1755

he wrote a “Descriptive Poem,” inscribed to “Two Ladies, the Daughters

of Lord Lonsdale.” It is long, rambling, tedious, but it is of

historical importance as being probably the first poetical tribute to

the beauty of Westmoreland and Cumberland.

Then change the scene: to Nature’s pride,

Sweet Keswick’s vale, the Muse will guide.

The Muse, who trod th’ enchanted ground,

Who sail’d the wonderous lake around,

With you will haste once more to hail

The beauteous brook of Borrodale.

He speaks of the streams that

rejoice to roar

Down the rough rocks of dread Lodore,

and says that

Horrors like these at first alarm,

But soon with savage grandeur charm,

And raise to noblest thoughts your mind.

Thus by thy fall, Lodore, reclin’d,

The cragged cliff, inpendent wood,

Whose shadows mix o’er half the flood,

The gloomy clouds, which solemn sail,

Scarce lifted by the languid gale

O’er the cap’d hill and darken’d vale

* * * * *

I view with wonder and delight,

A pleasing tho’ an awful sight.

Of Keswick and Skiddaw he writes,

Thy roofs, O Keswick, brighter rise!

The lake and lofty hills between,

Where giant Skiddow shuts the scene.

Supreme of mountains, Skiddow, hail!

To whom all Britain sinks a vale!

Lo, his imperial brow, I see

From foul usurping vapors free!

’Twere glorious now his side to climb,

Boldly to scale his top sublime.

There are several passages in the poem indicative of Dr. Dalton’s

unusually close study of streams, especially those near Lowther Castle,

and in the picturesque valley of Borrowdale. With evident delight he

traces the stream from its mountain source, over tuneful falls, under

broad spreading boughs, along silent meadows, to the wide lake. There

is also a fine passage descriptive of a patriarchal oak near Lowther.

It is the first sustained description of a specific tree with anything

like the modern feeling. It is represented as standing in a “sunny

plain alone.” Its reverend age, its majesty, are especially dwelt

upon. The poem shows some excellent first-hand observation. Dr. Dalton

is ahead of Wordsworth in noticing the “azure roofs” of the lowly

cottages. And he should have the credit of discovering the beauty of

the vale of Derwentwater, and the majesty of giant Skiddaw, fourteen

years before Gray made his famous tour, and nearly half a century

before the Lake poets set up their monopoly.

The most important work of this period was doubtless that of the Warton

brothers. Their father was also a poet, and he struck the romantic note

in his hatred of city life and his longing for solitude in the country.

Joseph Warton had a long literary career during which he edited books,

wrote poems, and contributed articles to periodicals. Those of his

poems that were of especial note in the history of Romanticism were

written early in life, between 1740 and 1753. “The Enthusiast” (1740),

“Odes on Various Subjects” (1746), and “Ode on Mr. West’s Translation

of Pindar” (1744) are the chief ones to be studied. In these poems

there are many summaries of such objects in Nature as give pleasure,

but there is little actual description. In details and phraseology

there are frequent echoes from Milton and Thomson.[393]

In general, though unoriginal in expression, the poems are marked by an

unmistakably genuine love of Nature, and of Nature untouched by man.

The poet dislikes Versailles whose fountains cast

The tortur’d waters to the distant heav’ns.[394]

Even Kent--

Though he, by rules unfettered, boldly scorns

Formality and method, round and square

Disdaining, plans irregularly great,[395]

cannot design like Nature. No gardens however artfully adorned can

charm like “unfrequented meads and pathless wilds.” The poet finds

peculiar pleasure in all the wild, solitary, mournful aspects of

Nature. He loves “hollow winds” and “ever-beating waves,” and hoary

mountains where

Nature seems to sit alone.[396]

He wishes for

some pine-top’d precipice

Abrupt and shaggy, whence a foamy stream

Like Anio, tumbling, roars; or some black heath

Where straggling stands the mournful juniper,

Or yew-tree scath’d.[397]

He escapes from the hated city’s “tradeful hum” and seeks for solitude

at “the deep dead of night” under the pale light of the moon. He is

alive to all the mysterious, romantic suggestions of Nature. He is

charmed by the little dancing fays that sip night-dews and “laugh and

love” in the dales. In storms he hears demons and goblins shrieking

through the dark air. He is also deeply conscious of the effect of

Nature on man. He finds himself even oppressed by the boundless charms

of “brooks, hill, meadow, dale,” and it is his belief that all Nature

conspires

To raise, to soothe, to harmonize the mind.

Nature can give happiness beyond that of luxury or gratified ambition.

These poems mark a new phase in the feeling toward Nature, because,

with little description, with no theory to propound, no moral to

teach, no human interest to exemplify, the poet with a rapt fervor and

intensity cries out for solitary communion with Nature as a necessity

of his own being. Warton is also, I think, the first of the romantic

poets to advocate a return to Nature in the sense in which Rousseau

used the phrase:

Happy the first of men, ere yet confin’d

To smoaky cities; who in sheltering groves,

Warm caves, and deep-sunk vallies liv’d and lov’d.

Yet why should man mistaken deem it nobler

To dwell in palaces and high-roof’d halls,

Than in God’s forests, architect supreme![398]

Joseph Warton’s exceptionally strong love of Nature is emphasized

by the testimony of Bowles who traces his own love of Nature to

companionship with Dr. Warton, and by the testimony of his brother

Thomas in a poem, “An Ode Sent to a Friend.” In this poem Thomas Warton

tells of his brother’s delight in walks at morning and evening through

unfrequented grassy lanes, or in the deep forest, or up steep hills “to

view the length of landscape ever new.”

A part of the service which Warton rendered to the poetry of Nature

rests in the fact that he led the attention from Pope to poets who had

treated of Nature with imaginative power. He had only scorn for

The fearful, frigid lays of cold and creeping Art,

“the courtly silken lay,” “the polished lyrics,” of his own day. But

it is in his prose that we find the best evidence of his break with

the classicists. In the dedication prefixed to the “Essay on Pope”

(1756) he divided English poets into four classes, putting in the

first class only Spenser, Shakspere, and Milton. Of Pope he said, “I

revere the memory of Pope; I respect and honor his abilities, but I

do not think him at the head of his profession.” He then proceeded to

show the difference “betwixt a man of wit, a man of sense, and a true

poet.” In the first and second sections of the “Essay” he minutely

discusses Pope’s descriptive poetry showing that his idea of pastoral

poetry as representing some golden age was but “an empty notion,” and

commenting severely on his mixture of British and Grecian ideas. He

condemns “Windsor Forest” because its images are “equally applicable

to any place whatsoever.” In contrast with Pope he puts Thomson, of

whose “Seasons” he gives a most discriminating eulogy. It is too long

to quote entire, but a part of it must be given if only to show its

remarkably modern tone.

Thomson was blessed with a strong and copious fancy; he hath

enriched poetry with a variety of new and original images,

which he painted from nature itself, and from his own actual

observations; his descriptions have, therefore, a distinctness

and truth, which are utterly wanting to those of poets who

have only copied from each other, and have never looked abroad

on the objects themselves. Thomson was accustomed to wander

away into the country for days, and for weeks, attentive to

“each rural sight, each rural sound,” while many a poet, who

has dwelt for years in the Strand, has attempted to describe

fields and rivers, and generally succeeded accordingly. Hence

that nauseous repetition of the same circumstances; hence that

disgusting impropriety of introducing what may be called a set

of hereditary images, without proper regard to the age, or

climate, or occasion in which they were formerly used.... And if

our poets would accustom themselves to contemplate fully every

object, before they attempted to describe it, they would not

fail of giving their readers more new and complete images than

they generally do.[399]

Wordsworth himself was hardly more emphatic in his scorn of vague

descriptions and hereditary images, and in his plea for simple truth

to Nature. The passages already quoted are sufficient to show how

self-conscious and theoretical was Warton’s romanticism. He was not,

however, so far as the study of Nature alone is concerned, the first

self-conscious worker in the new field. Ramsay and Shenstone had

already, apologetically to be sure, but none the less distinctly,

entered their protest against the conventional imitations of their day.

But Warton uttered no apology. His theory was fully established in his

own mind. He came down on the classicists with hammer and tongs, and

enunciated in 1756 at least two of the cardinal doctrines of the poets

of Nature who wrote forty years later.

Thomas Warton’s poems seem at first reading to be but a patchwork of

phrases from Milton.[400] “The Pleasures of Melancholy” (1745) was

written when he was but seventeen. The theme of this poem is a defense

of solitude against various social pleasures, and it has the customary

note of delight in darkness, tombs, pale shrines, “fav’rite midnight

haunts,” “pale December’s foggy glooms,” and “the pitying moon.” “The

First of April,” “Ode on the Approach of Summer,” and “Morning, an

Ode,” are of more importance so far as the love of Nature is concerned.

The lines on the opening spring show close observation.

Reluctant comes the timid spring.

Fringing the forest’s devious edge

Half rob’d appears the hawthorn hedge.

Scant along the ridgy land

The beans their new-born ranks expand.

The rooks swarm with clamorous call and

Wreathe their capacious nests anew.

The fisher “bursting through the crackling sedge”

Startles from the bordering wood

The bashful wild-duck’s early brood.

And so loud the blackbird sings

That far and near the valley rings.

He notes also the kite that sails above the crowded roof of the

dove-cote, the plumy crest of thistles, the russet tints and gleams

of light in the tops of trees at sunset, the faint, varying shades of

green when the new foliage appears on the trees, and the blue tint of

the unchanging pine standing in their midst. Warton’s pleasure in wide

views is indicated in several passages where he speaks of climbing a

hill for the sake of the broad prospect of field and stream. He had

also an appreciation of wild Nature, as we see from the descriptions

in “The Grave of King Arthur.” Warton’s work is of interest because of

the many attractive details scattered through his poems, but there is

little unity of effect. The general impression is that he saw Nature

first through Milton’s eyes, and that when he afterward made many

charming discoveries for himself he tried to express them in the “Il

Penseroso” manner.

His chief influence was through his “Observations on the Faerie Queen”

and in his “History of Poetry,” but except as attention was thus

directed to older writers, these works had no effect on the poetry of

Nature.

In Joseph Warton’s “Enthusiast” (1740) the love of solitary communion

with Nature was supreme. About fourteen years later appeared William

Whitehead’s “Enthusiast,” which is of interest here because it shows

so well the typical eighteenth-century view in contrast to the pure

romanticism of Warton. In Whitehead’s “Enthusiast” the poet yields

instinctively to the new spirit, but is suddenly recalled to himself,

is rendered sane by the wise admonitions of Reason. It is a bright day

in May. The poet, entranced by the beauty about him, walks forth,

With loit’ring steps regardless where,

So soft, so genial was the air,

So wond’rous bright the day.

And now my eyes with transport rove

O’er all the blue expanse above,

Unbroken by a cloud!

And now beneath delighted pass,

Where, winding through the deep-green grass,

A full-brim’d river flow’d.

These, these are joys alone, I cry;

’Tis here, divine Philosophy,

Thou deign’st to fix thy throne!

Here Contemplation points the road

Through Nature’s charms to Nature’s God!

These, these are joys alone!

Then Reason whispers “monitory strains,” and teaches the Enthusiast

that “light, and shade, and warmth, and air,” that the “philosophic

calmness,” the visionary sense of “universal love,” which come to man

from Nature, must sink into insignificance before the exalted joys of

Virtue, and reminds the poet that “man was made for man.” The intrinsic

value of this poem is slight, but it is noteworthy because we see the

two tendencies contending for mastery. Whitehead was no poet. He simply

reflected in a turbid fashion what more original men were saying. His

tolerably full statement of the romantic attitude toward Nature, with

his subsequent assertion of the triumphant good sense of classicism is,

therefore, valuable testimony to the twofold spirit of the age.

In general we may say that we find during this period, rural didactic

poetry treating of English subjects in the manner of John Philips in

“Cyder,” as in Somerville and Smart. There is good local color in some

descriptive poems as in Shenstone, Gray, Dr. Dalton, and Relph. There

is throughout the period first-hand observation, but it is not so

abundant, nor is the openness of the poet’s mind to sensuous impression

so apparent as in some preceding work. There is, however, delicate and

poetic handling of material as in the poems of Gray and Collins and

Greene. There is a self-conscious endeavor to break away from ancient

models, as in Ramsay’s “Preface” and Shenstone’s “Preface,” and from

existing poetic domination as in Warton’s protest against Pope.

Truth to Nature, independence of observation, as necessary poetic

qualities, are for the first time openly and theoretically insisted on

in Warton’s “Essay.” There is scorn of the utilitarian view of Nature,

as in Shenstone. The debt of man to Nature is dwelt upon with new

emphasis by Young, Shenstone, and especially Akenside. The sense of

a divine spirit in Nature is clearly expressed by Akenside, and less

clearly by Young. The purely romantic love of Nature in connection with

sentimental melancholy is fully exemplified in Joseph Warton. There

is strong personal enthusiasm for Nature in Shenstone, Akenside, and

Joseph Warton. There is love of animals in Shenstone and Jago. There

is notable representation of country people in Relph and Gray and

Somerville.

THE PERIOD FROM 1756 TO 1798

From the “Essay on Pope” to the “Lyrical Ballads” is a long period but

any subdivision would be purely arbitrary. It is chiefly characterized

by the development and emphasis of influences already manifestly

operant. The most valuable work is that of James Macpherson (1736–96),

James Beattie (1735–1803), Robert Burns (1759–96), William Cowper

(1731–1800), William Blake (1757–1827), and George Crabbe (1754–1832).

Oliver Goldsmith (1728–74) is of less importance. John Brown (1715–66),

John Langhorne (1735–79), Christopher Smart (1722–71), John Logan

(1748–88), and William Lisle Bowles (1762–1850), though minor poets,

are significant in their poetry of Nature. Of less note are William

Julius Mickle (1735–88), James Grainger (1724–66), Michael Bruce

(1746–67), James Graeme (1749–72), John Scott (1730–83), and Richard

Cumberland (1732–1811).

John Brown, otherwise unimportant, is interesting because of his

early appreciation of the scenery of the English lakes. He wrote a

description of Keswick[401] in a letter to Lyttleton, and his undated

“Fragment of a Rhapsody Written at the Lakes of Westmoreland” is

probably the outcome of the same visit. The “Fragment” is short and

may be quoted entire as well because of its beauty, as because of its

subject and early date:

Now sunk the sun, now twilight sunk, and night

Rode in her zenith; nor a passing breeze

Sigh’d to the groves, which in the midnight air

Stood motionless; and in the peaceful floods

Inverted hung; for now the billow slept

Along the shore, nor heav’d the deep, but spread

A shining mirror to the moon’s pale orb,

Which, dim and waning, o’er the shadowy cliffs,

The solemn woods and spiry mountain tops

Her glimmering faintness threw. Now every eye

Oppress’d with toil, was drown’d in deep repose,

Save that the unseen shepherd in his watch,

Propt on his crook, stood listening by the fold,

And gaz’d the starry vault and pendant moon.

Nor voice nor sound broke on the deep serene

But the soft murmur of swift gushing rills,

Forth issuing from the mountain’s distant steep

(Unheard till now, and now scarce heard) proclaimed

All things at rest, and imag’d the still voice

Of quiet whispering to the ear of night.

For a curious coincidence compare Wordsworth’s lines written thirty

years later:

The song of mountain streams, unheard by day,

Now hardly heard, beguiles my homeward way.

John Langhorne was born at Kirby-Stephen in Westmoreland. His best

poems were published in 1766, though his “Fables of Flora” did not

appear till 1771. Langhorne had an enthusiastic personal love for

Nature. He dwelt with rapture on stream and flower and field and

sky.[402] His wish was,

Oh let me still with simple nature live,

My lowly field flowers on her altar lay;

Enjoy the blessings that she meant to give

And calmly waste my inoffensive day.[403]

Or again,

Slow let me climb the mountain’s airy brow;

The green height gained, in museful rapture lie,

Sleep to the murmur of the woods below

Or look to nature with a lover’s eye.[404]

His preference for Nature untouched by art is seen in the charming

little “Fable”[405] showing the superiority of the wild rose to the

more splendid cultivated rose. And in another “Fable” he says,

Come let us leave the painted plain,

This waste of flowers that palls the eye;

The walks of nature’s wilder reign

Shall please in plainer majesty.[406]

That he had a tender feeling toward animals is shown by his poems on

birds and by his protest against the cruelty of confining birds in

cages. The most striking characteristic of Langhorne’s poems is his

direct expression of the excellence of the gift that Nature’s hand

bestows. A part of his excellent gift is the inspiration to poetry. The

young shepherd was inspired with “poetic charms” as he wandered through

the wild scenes

By Yarrow’s banks or groves of Endermay.

In his own experience

The nameless charms of high poetic thought,

were born of “spring’s green hours,” and the murmuring shore spoke to

him “divine words,”[407] while in earlier days “each lay that falter’d

from his tongue” had been “from Eden’s murmurs caught.”[408] In an

ode to the “Genius of Westmoreland,” he says that she kindled the

“sacred fire” in his heart, that she gave him “thoughts too high to be

exprest.” Again he speaks of an hour in his youth when

The woodland genius came

And touched me with his holy flame.[409]

Statements still more remarkable as foreshadowing later doctrines are

found in such lines as,

Whatever charms the ear or eye,

All beauty and all harmony,

If sweet sensations they produce,

I know they have their moral use.

I know that nature’s charms can move

The springs that strike to virtue’s love.[410]

Or these lines,

Has fair philosophy thy love?

Away! she lives in yonder grove.

If the sweet muse thy pleasure gives,

With her, in yonder grove, she lives.

And if religion claims thy care,

Religion fled from books is there.

For first from nature’s works we drew

Our knowledge and our virtue too.[411]

Langhorne’s perception of the power of Nature over man, and his

passionate sense of personal indebtedness to Nature are the keynotes

of his work. In a narrow way and with feeble speech he shows a mental

and spiritual experience of the same type as that which Wordsworth

records of his own youth. His motive in writing, “an unaffected wish to

promote the love of Nature and the interests of humanity,” is likewise

Wordsworthian.

In Christopher Smart’s one great poem, the “Song to David” (1763),

the use of Nature is of so strange a character that it refuses

classification under the customary categories. The chief thought of

the poem in the parts where Nature is used has to do with the creative

energy of God, the song of praise that is eternally his from all

existence, and the exceeding sweetness, strength, beauty, and glory of

the Spirit of God in man. These themes are not new with Smart in this

poem. In his prize poems ten years before he had taken the attributes

of God as his subject, and the general line of thought, and the method

of proof by the rapid accumulation of illustrative images drawn from

Nature are practically the same as in the “Song to David.” Here and

there are instances of the same noble conceptions and striking phrases,

as in this picture of a tree:

The oak

His lordly head uprears, and branching arms

Extends--behold in regal solitude

And pastoral magnificence he stands

So simple! and so great! The underwood

Of meaner rank an awful distance keep.[412]

Or this description of the Leviathan that,

The terror and the glory of the main,

His pastime takes with transport proud to see,

The ocean’s vast dominions all his own.[413]

It is, however, only in the “Song” that the early themes are treated

with sustained energy of thought and splendor of imagery. In this poem

each thought is abundantly illustrated from Nature. The details are

brought together from every clime and season. They are poured forth

with impetuous ardor. The excited imagination of the poet does not

hesitate and choose. The universe is laid under contribution. There is

a prodigal heaping-up of the treasures of Nature, an almost barbaric

splendor of images. Does the poet wish to say that all Nature praises

God? The earth passes before him as in a vision. The great song of

adoration swells upon his ear from every form of harmonious activity.

Seasons change, almonds glow, tendrils climb, fruit trees blossom,

birds build their nests, bell-flowers nod, the spotted ounce and her

cubs play, harvests ripen, wild carnations blow, the pheasant shows his

glossy neck, the squirrel hoards nuts, the map of Nature is crowded

with scenes of beauty, the crocus “burnishes alive” upon the snow-clad

earth, the bullfinch sings his flute note, the redbreast balances on

the hazel spray, silver fish glide through rivers, cataracts fall,

fruits are luscious, gums give out incense, all to “heap up the

measure, load the scales” with praise to the Lord who is great and

glad. In this rapid summary there is a pomp, an energy, an activity

that is indescribable. A later stanza on strength is almost terrifying

in its powerful imagery.

Strong is the lion--like the coal

His eyeball--like a bastion’s mole

His chest against the foes:

Strong the gier-eagle on his sail,

Strong against tide the enormous whale

Emerges as he goes.

Except Blake’s “Tiger” I recall no poem marked by the same tenseness

and abrupt energy.

Many of the details in Smart’s poems were drawn from his reading,

especially from the Hebrew Scriptures. They could not have come from

observation for they have little to do with the “old, oft catalogued

repository of things in sky and wave and land.” The images are fresh,

original, daring. They startle the mind out of passivity.

Another point to be noted is the peculiar combination of facts. Bears,

sleek tigers, ponies, and kids, are the beasts assembled to illustrate

God’s creative activity, and so in other combinations. Objects the

least likely to suggest each other are brought together. In the same

way facts from Nature and from human nature are strangely mingled.

Among beauteous things are reckoned a fleet before a gale, a host in

glittering armor, a wild garden, a moonlight night, and a virgin before

her spouse.

Amidst the prettinesses, decencies, timidities, of the

eighteenth-century poetry of Nature, this poem by Smart sounds out like

a trumpet. The marshaled facts move forward like a cohort of soldiers

with a splendid tread that shakes the earth. The whole effect is

Hebraic, apocalyptic.

Mickle’s chief poems are “Syr Martyn” (1767) “Pollio” (1762) and some

shorter pieces. In “Pollio” Mickle makes frequent references to his own

love of Nature. The country he knew best was that about Roslin Castle

where he was brought up, but he was not unfamiliar with other parts

of southeast Scotland as is shown by his references to the Forth, the

Annan, the Wauchope, the Ewes, to the dales of Tiviot, and to various

country seats. His interest in Nature was varied in character. In

“Almada Hill” (1781) and “May Day” there are frequent appreciative

lines on mountains, as:

Where Snowden’s front ascends the skies,

The tower-like summits of the mountain shore.

There are briefer references in such phrases as, “the hills of

Cheviot,” “the thyme-clad mountain,” “the mountains gray,” “Old

Snowden,” “Snowden’s hoary side,” “the curving mountain’s craggy brow,”

which serve at least to show that Mickle was not unconscious of the

scenery about him. One or two lines indicate the effect of the sea on

his mind. As he stood on Almada Hill and looked out over old Ocean,

By human eye untempted, unexplored,

An awful solitude,

it was

the last dim wave, in boundless space

Involved and lost[414]

that held his impatient imagination. Even so brief a passage serves to

illustrate the awakened curiosity, the new sense of pleasure in the

infinite and the unknown, that characterized the romantic impulse.

Another modern note in Mickle is his interest in moonlight and stars.

There are several picturesque descriptive lines, as,

When sudden, o’er the fir-crown’d hill

The full orb’d moon arose.[415]

How bright, emerging o’er yon broom-clad height

The silver empress of the night appears.[416]

While on the distant east

Led by her starre, the horned moone looks o’er

The bending forest, and with rays increast

Ascends.[417]

The star of evening glimmers o’er the dale

And leads the silent host of heaven along.[418]

In spite of the classical note in such a phrase as “silver empress”

these lines show not only genuine pleasure in the loveliness of

night, but also first-hand knowledge of its phenomena. Closeness of

observation is further indicated in the lines on birds, as in the

description of the “sootie black-bird,” that chants his shrill vespers

from the topmost spray of some tall tree, or of the eagle that sails

through the sky with “wide-spread wings unmov’d” till suddenly he

“sheer descends” on the brow of Snowdon.

In his representation of flowers Mickle notes the “daisie-whitened

plain,” and “the white and yellow flowers that love the dank,” but he

was especially attracted by flowers growing among rocks or upon cliffs.

One close observation is of the twinkling lines of gossamer that on

summer mornings hang from spray to spray.

Mickle’s poems show a genuine love of Nature. He abounds in

reminiscences of his happy youth

By the banks of the crystal-streamed Esk,

Where the Wauchope her yellow wave joins.[419]

His chief use of Nature is in the passages where he gives these early

associations, and in the many similitudes in his “Elegies.” He always

sees Nature in a pathetic or joyous union with past experiences in his

own life or in that of others.

Grainger’s chief poem, “The Sugar Cane,” appeared in 1764. The theme

and outline are presented in the first four lines:

What soil the cane affects; what care demands;

Beneath what signs to plant; what ills await;

How the hot nectar best to crystallize;

And Afric’s sable progeny to treat.

Grainger recognizes as his poetical masters, Maro, the “pastoral Dyer”

(“The Fleece”), “Pomona’s bard” (“Cyder”), Smart (“The Hop Garden”),

and Somerville (“The Chace”). “The Sugar Cane” is a purely didactic

poem and is no real contribution to the new feeling toward Nature. The

first part of the “Ode to Solitude,” a long ode beginning,

O Solitude, Romantic maid,

is another example of the sentimental view of Nature, with frequent and

obvious imitations of Milton; but the last half of the poem declares

that only the old and feeble should seek the solitude of the country,

that shades are no medicine for a troubled mind, and, in general, that

the proper business of mankind is man.

Chronologically Macpherson’s “Poems of Ossian” belong in the five

years before the publication of Percy’s “Reliques” (1765), and they

are a part of the same general stream of influence, the revival of

folklore. These poems are epic in character, their aim being the

celebration of the exploits of Celtic heroes. They are of importance

in this study because the adventures of Fingal, Ossian, Oscar, and

Gaul are throughout closely associated with natural scenery of a wild

and romantic sort.[420] Mist-covered mountains, storm-swept skies,

rough streams, desolate shores, dim moonlight nights, are the most

frequent scenic details, and they are so wrought into the story that

the human tragedy and the scene where it was enacted cannot be thought

of apart. The three ways in which Nature is used in these poems, as

dramatic background, in similitudes, and in apostrophes, will serve

to illustrate both the prominence given to Nature and the close union

between human emotions and the varying phenomena of the external world.

A fine example of a bright description to usher in a sudden contrasting

portent of disaster is in the opening lines of “Temora”:

The blue waves of Erin roll in light. The mountains are covered

with day. Trees shake their dusky heads in the breeze. Gray

torrents pour their noisy streams. Two green hills, with aged

oaks, surround a narrow plain. The blue course of a stream is

there.

The song that was “lovely, but sad, and left silence in Carric-Thura,”

has an autumn picture as its fit setting:

Autumn is dark on the mountains; gray mist rests on the hills.

The whirlwind is heard on the heath. Dark rolls the river

through the narrow plain. A tree stands alone on the hill and

marks the slumbering Connal. The leaves whirl round with the

wind and strew the graves of the dead.[421]

The description of the desolation of Balclutha is the prelude to the

song of mourning for the unhappy Moina.[422] The use of Nature in

apostrophes is characteristic of the Ossian poems. Of these the most

famous is the address to the sun.[422] There are frequent apostrophes

to winds, streams, and tempests, to stars, and especially to the moon.

Two good examples are the poet’s address to the evening star in “The

Songs of Selma,” and to the moon in “Dar Thula.” Of these the second

may be quoted as fairly typical:

Daughter of heaven, fair art thou! the silence of thy face is

pleasant! Thou comest forth in loveliness. The stars attend thy

blue course in the east. The clouds rejoice in thy presence, O

Moon! they brighten their dark-brown sides. Who is like thee

in heaven, light of the silent night? The stars are ashamed in

thy presence.... But thou thyself shalt fail one night, and

leave thy blue path in heaven. The stars will then lift their

heads.... Thou art now clothed with thy brightness. Look from

thy gates in the sky. Burst the cloud, O wind! that the daughter

of night may look forth; that the shaggy mountains may brighten,

and the ocean roll its white waves in light.

It will be observed that in almost every apostrophe there is beautiful

external description together with an underlying analogy to the thought

of the poem. In the passages quoted above, the triumphant brightness of

the moon in her blue path, and the suggestion of the coming night when

she shall fail in heaven, are but types of the beauty of Dar Thula and

of the day when, though the winds of spring shall be abroad, though the

flowers shall shake their heads on the green hills, and the woods shall

wave their growing leaves, the white-bosomed maiden shall not again

move in the steps of her loveliness.

Dr. Blair in his full study of the similitudes of Ossian admits that

they are too “thick-sown,” and that they are drawn from a narrow range

of objects. But he claims, on the other hand, that the similes have

the exceptional vividness that comes from first-hand observation,[423]

and that they show an imaginative perception of subtle analogies.[424]

Dr. Blair’s recognition of beauty and congruity was so quickened by

his partisanship of Ossian that his conclusions usually need to be

scrutinized in the cold light of facts. The subtlety of the analogies

certainly often escapes the ordinary reader, but no one can fail to

observe the pathetic beauty of the little pictures into which the

similitudes are often elaborated. Music, for instance, is compared to

“the rising breeze, that whirls at first the thistle’s beard, then

flies dark-shadowy over the grass.” Again a song is “like the voice of

a summer breeze, when it lifts the head of flowers and curls the lakes

and streams.” The heroes contended “like gales of spring, as they fly

along the hill, and bend by turns the feebly-whistling grass.” The

warriors are “bright as the sunshine before a storm; when the west wind

collects the clouds, and Morven echoes over all her oaks.” In these

and many similar comparisons we see how the beauty of the suggested

natural picture led the poet into a use of details not necessary for

his illustrations. The importance of the poetry of Ossian in the

evolution of the poetry of Nature rests on its early date, its close

interweaving of human emotions and natural scenes, and its abundant and

appreciative use of wild, free Nature.

Percy’s “Reliques” appeared in 1765. The publication of these ballads

was of great importance to the cause of the romantic revival in

general. The ballads were, however, of somewhat less significance in

their influence on the new feeling toward Nature. A ballad would never

interrupt the story for a description, and there would, of course,

never be any hint of a philosophy of Nature. But throughout the ballads

there are casual touches of description showing a genuine love for some

forms of Nature, especially the forest, green hills, and moors. “Upon

the wide moors,” “on moors so broad,” “over the fields so brown,” “over

the lea,” “over the downs,” are characteristic phrases. The castles are

usually on a hill and command a wide view.[425] The love of the hills

is indicated by such little pictures as

Robin sat on a gude grene hill,

Keipand a flock of fie.[426]

or,

Lord Thomas and fair Annet

Sate a’ day on a hill,

When night was cum and sun was sett

They had not talkt their fill.[427]

]But it is the forest that most often appears.

Until they came to the merry green wood,

Where they had gladdest bee,[428]

gives the fresh, open-air setting of most of these tales of love and

heroism;

Mery it was in the grene forest

Amonge the leves grene;[429]

All in the merrye month of May,

When greene buds they were swellin;[430]

And wee’ll away to the greene forest;[431]

Gil Morice sate in gude grene wode,

He whistled and he sang;[432]

In summer time when leaves grow greene

And blossoms bedecke the tree;[433]

To the greene forest so pleasant and faire;[434]

He myght have dwelt in grene foreste,

Under the shadowes greene;[435]

The woodweele sang, and wold not cease

Sitting upon the spraye,

Soe lowde, he wakened Robin Hood

In the greenwood where he lay;[436]

are typical forest pictures.[437] But the gude green wood is not always

fresh and blooming, as we see from occasional lines such as

Now loud and shrill blew the westlin’ wind,

Sair beat the heavy shower;[438]

About Yule quhen the wind blew cule;[439]

Oft have I ridden thro’ Stirling town

In the wind both and the weit;[440]

No shimmering sun here ever shone;

No halesome breeze here ever blew;[441]

Trees are not often mentioned individually except the oak and the

willow, the latter always representing sorrow.

There is occasional use of Nature in simple comparisons, as, “White as

evir the snaw lay on the dike,” “drye as a clot of claye,” “light of

foot as stag that runs in forest wild,” his “een like gray gosehawk’s

stair’d wyld.”

There are also some homely pictures of everyday country life, as in

“Take Thy Old Cloak about Thee,” “Plain Truth and Blind Ignorance”

(Somersetshire dialect), “The Ew-Bughts Marion,” and “The Auld Good

Man.”

The use of Nature in the “Ballads,” slight and limited as it is, gives

an impression of vivid reality. It is what Schiller would call the

simple as opposed to the sentimental love of Nature, the first being

characteristic of early races who _are_ Nature, and the last

of the moderns who _seek_ Nature.[442] On eighteenth-century

readers who, as a class, knew little about the external world outside

their parks and gardens, the effect of the descriptive touches in the

“Ballads” would be to lead them into lovely regions where Nature was as

spontaneous and free as the knights and fair ladies themselves.

Michael Bruce imitated Milton’s “Lycidas” in an elegy called “Daphnis”

and imitated Gray in some “Runic Odes,” which were lauded as “truly

Runic and truly Grayan.” In these poems the use of Nature is slight and

conventional. His “Lochleven” (1766) is more significant. In this poem

he celebrates

The pastoral mountains, the poetic streams

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

The vales, the vocal hills,

The woods, the waters, and the heart of man

Send out a general song; ’tis beauty all

To poet’s eye and music to his ear.

Clouds arrested in their swift course by lofty mountains, lakes that

hold a mirror to the sky, songsters twittering o’er their young, waters

glowing beneath western clouds, hoary-headed Grampius clad in snow, are

counted among his pleasures. He prefers life in the country, for there

All in the sacred, sweet, sequestered vale

Of solitude, the secret primrose-path

Of rural life, he dwells.

He loved especially the Gairney, a stream that flows into Loch Leven,

because, as a lad, he lay on its banks and composed poetry. He speaks

with evident knowledge of other streams, the gulfy Po, “slow and

silent among its waving reeds,” and the rapid Queech rushing impetuous

over broken steeps. It is natural that Bruce should know, as he did,

especially water birds. The “wild-shrieking gull,” “patient heron,”

“dull bittern,” the “clamorous mew,” and the “slow-wing’d crane” moving

heavily along the shore, were doubtless birds that he had often seen.

Bruce’s pleasure in wide views is shown by this poem, “Lochleven,”

for it is a description of the prospect spread out before him as he

stands on “Mount Lomond.” Bruce’s “Elegy” was written when he felt

himself dying of consumption. It represents his delight in all forms

of Nature’s life and his deep melancholy at bidding farewell to the

spring-time world.

By a process of selection we find in Bruce’s poems his real love for

the outer world. This is not, however, the impression made by his poems

as a whole. His knowledge of Nature was limited, and his expression was

often rigid and formal. He died young, before he had really attained

the mastery of his own thought, and his importance lies not so much in

actual accomplishment as in scattered suggestions of his tendencies and

possibilities.

Bruce’s most intimate friend was John Logan, who, in 1770, published an

edition of Bruce’s poems and included some “wrote by other authors.”

In 1781, when he published his own works, he laid claim to a number of

the poems that had appeared in the edition of Bruce’s poems in 1770.

Among these the most important was “The Cuckoo,”[443] a poem well worth

the sharp controversy waged over it by the respective friends of the

two authors. There is nothing else in this period that rings so fresh

and clear as this little ode. One stanza may be quoted to illustrate

its beauty, its simplicity, and naturalness. This stanza is also of

peculiar interest because it so definitely foreshadows Wordsworth’s “To

the Cuckoo.”

The schoolboy, wandering through the wood,

To pull the primrose gay,

Starts, the new voice of spring to hear,

And imitates thy lay.

Logan’s other poems, though he has nothing equal to the cuckoo song in

spontaneity and exquisite simplicity, are yet of real value. His “Braes

of Yarrow” is an effective presentation of the ancient, sorrow-laden

Yarrow _motif_. As is fitting in a ballad, the touches of

description are of the briefest sort, but the forest, the bonny braes,

and the sounding stream are felt through all the plaintive story.

“Ossian’s Hymn to the Sun” is a poetical paraphrase of the famous

apostrophe in “Balclutha.” It has some fine lines, but is inferior in

strength to the original. The “Ode Written in Spring” is a laudation of

a certain fair Maria in the true classical fashion, but the new note is

struck in the first five stanzas descriptive of spring.

The loosen’d streamlet loves to stray

And echo down the dale,

The hills uplift their summits green,

The cuckoo in the wood unseen,

At eve the primrose path along,

The milkmaid shortens with a song,

Her solitary way,

The sudden fields put on the flowers,

are lines showing fresh observation and easy, natural expression.

Another passage characterizes autumn as “the Sabbath of the year.”

Limited in compass as is Logan’s good work it is of value because

marked by exceptional purity and sweetness.

Most of James Graeme’s poems were written before he was twenty. His

tastes are thus referred to by his friend, Dr. Robert Anderson:

A passion for romantic fiction and fabulous history, appeared in

him very early in life.... Of the Gothic, Celtic and Oriental

mythology he was a warm admirer; and frequently attempted

imitations of the wild and flowery fictions of the northern and

eastern nations.... Like other votaries of the Muses, he was

passionately fond of rural scenery, and delighted in walking

alone in the fields.

His chief poems of Nature are some descriptive elegies. Occasionally

there is a fairly good line, as

The torrents, whiten’d with descending rain,

or

The blue-gray mist that hovers o’er the hill,

showing at least a hint of first-hand observation. But on the whole

the poems are a composite of phrases belonging to the typical poetry

of sentimental melancholy. His characteristic attitude toward Nature

is shown by his constant preference for chilly midnight when howlets

scream and ravens croak, and when he, with pensive care, tunes the

voice of woe and sheds “teary torrents” over grass-green graves. One

poem, on “Curling,” is, however, quite different in tone, for it is

a crudely realistic and technical description of the game and the

peasants who engage in it. The tastes of Graeme and his attempts are of

more significance than his actual work, which is of little value.

The bent of Goldsmith’s mind was toward the study of man in social

relations. His use of Nature is accessory and limited. In “The

Traveller” (1764) the real interest is in manners and customs.[444]

When the pilgrim is in the Alps with a wide prospect before him, it

is the thought of man’s grand heritage that impresses him. In the

account of Switzerland there is only a vague general description of the

country, but a full, sympathetic description of the peasant. So, too,

in Italy, France, Holland, and even in England. In the few descriptions

that do occur there are occasional lines indicative of first-hand

observation, as in this picturesque couplet on the scenery in Holland:

The slow canal, the yellow-blossomed vale,

The willow-tufted bank, the gliding sail.

We also find effective combinations of geographical names that give a

certain charm of remoteness and melody; and there is a sense of space

and movement conveyed by the rapidly presented and wide landscapes.

In “The Deserted Village” (1770) the central thought is still man, and

the purpose didactic, but there is effective though not abundant use of

Nature. Even here, however, it is only Nature inseparably associated

with man. Nine-tenths of the poem has to do directly with human nature.

The other tenth merely gives charming pictures of the country close

about a village. Scattered lines are of perfect workmanship, as that

one descriptive of the straggling fence,

With blossomed furze unprofitably gay,

and

The breezy covert of the warbling grove.

In the picture of desolation the details are selected with delicacy and

precision. Each touch helps the general impression. The value of such

work becomes more apparent when put into contrast with the description

of torrid climes. In Goldsmith and in Thomson what was seen at first

hand had the grace and power of truth, but scenes in remote lands,

known only through the distorting spectacles of books, were credited

with an odd mixture of incongruous details. Except for one use of

mountains in a simile there is no indication that Goldsmith knew any

but tame scenery.

In general we may say that Goldsmith showed a direct, simple-hearted

pleasure in the open-air world, that he was a sympathetic observer

of the more obvious facts of Nature, and that he had a bright, easy

way of recording those facts. The simplicity of his work is combined

with a quick perception of artistic form. But he has hardly a touch of

what Matthew Arnold calls “natural magic,” and he is in no sense a

revealer. He was on the surface of things. Of the higher ministry of

Nature to man’s spiritual needs he knew nothing.

In his prose works Goldsmith has several vigorous attacks on falseness

and affectation in poetry. In 1759 he characterized Italian poetry

at its lowest ebb, as “no longer an imitation of what we see, but of

what a visionary might wish. The zephyrs breathe a most exquisite

perfume; the trees wear eternal verdure; fauns, dryads, and hamadryads

stand ready to fan the sultry shepherdess ... who is so simple and

innocent as often to have no meaning.” This attack on the falseness

and affectation of Italian poetry might be quoted verbatim by a modern

critic of the popular eighteenth-century pastorals. Goldsmith also

praised Gay’s poems saying that “he has hit upon the true spirit of

pastoral poetry.” Goldsmith has other keen critical remarks that point

in the direction of the new spirit but they do not bear directly on the

study of Nature. He is important chiefly because of his interest in man

as man, his close and sympathetic delineation of the poor and ignorant.

In 1766 James Beattie had written 150 lines of “The Minstrel.” The

poem was then laid aside for the “Essay on Truth” and not taken up

again till 1770. The first book was published anonymously in 1771. The

second book appeared with the author’s name in 1774. The poem consists

of 122 Spenserian stanzas. Its design is “to trace the progress of a

poetical genius ... till that period when he may be supposed capable of

appearing in the world as a minstrel,”[445] and its theme is really the

effect of mountain scenery on a poetically sensitive mind. The child,

Edwin, is brought up in a remote village among the Scotch hills, and

his genius is developed through the varied influence of wild natural

scenery until he becomes “itinerant poet and musician.” As a lad his

chief pleasure was to follow

Where the maze of some bewilder’d stream

To deep untrodden groves his footsteps led.

He loved to climb craggy cliffs

When all in mist the world below was lost.

What dreadful pleasure! There to stand sublime

Like shipwreck’d mariner on desert coast

And view the enormous waste of vapour, toss’d

In billows, lengthening to the horizon round,

Now scoop’d in gulfs, with mountains now emboss’d.

And oft he traced the uplands, to survey,

When o’er the sky advanced the kindling dawn,

The crimson cloud, blue main and mountain gray.

He was

Fond of each gentle, and each dreadful scene.

In darkness and in storm he found delight.

He listened

with pleasing dread, to the deep roar

Of the wide-weltering waves.

When storms came up in black array

He hastened from the haunt of man,

Along the trembling wilderness to stray.

He visited haunted streams by moonlight and let his imagination dwell

on graves and ghosts. His soul was possessed by the “mystic transports”

born of “melancholy and solitude.” He scanned all Nature with a

“curious and romantic eye,” and his imagination was stirred by “old

heroic ditties,” by

What’er of lore tradition could supply

From gothic tale, or song, or fable old.

The second stage of Edwin’s education comes through his companionship

with a wise hermit, who, like Wordsworth’s Solitary, had “sought for

glory in the paths of guile,” but finally, dissatisfied with success

and stung with remorse, had hidden himself in a deep retired abode in

the mountains, there to commune with Nature. From a lofty eminence

Edwin chanced to look down one day upon this savage dell, shut in by

mountains and rocks piled on rocks, and he saw the “one cultivated

spot” with its garden of roses and herbs, and he heard the voice of

the hermit soliloquizing on the vanity of human life. In subsequent

interviews the hermit discoursed learnedly on history, art, and

sciences.

The intrinsic value of this poem is not great. It is important because

of the conception which it embodies. Edwin finds in Nature adequate

instruction and inspiration; the hermit, adequate consolation. His

words are,

Hail, awful scenes, that calm the troubled breast,

And woo the weary to profound repose!

Can passion’s wildest uproar lay to rest,

And whisper comfort to the man of woes?

Now the power of wild scenery over the plastic mind is exactly

Wordsworth’s idea in his account of the Wanderer’s youth,[446] and the

power of Nature to minister to a mind diseased is one of the leading

thoughts in his account of the Solitary,[447] while the thought of

tracing a child’s experiences with Nature until under her tutelage

he becomes a poet is the fundamental idea of the “Prelude.”[448] It

is certainly of more than merely curious interest thus to find in

the rather vague, ineffective stanzas of the earlier poet general

conceptions which afterward appear as the ruling ideas of the poet

confessedly greatest in his treatment of Nature.

The character of Edwin was autobiographic and shows Beattie’s personal

love of Nature. In a letter to the Dowager Lady Forbes, October, 1772,

he wrote:

I find you are willing to suppose that, in Edwin, I have

given only a picture of myself as I was in my younger days. I

confess the supposition is not groundless. I have made him take

pleasure in the scenes in which I took pleasure, and entertain

sentiments similar to those of which, even in my early youth, I

had repeated experience. The scenery of a mountainous country,

the ocean, the sky, thoughtfulness and retirement, and sometimes

melancholy objects and ideas, had charms in my eyes, even when

I was a school boy; and at a time when I was so far from being

able to express, that I did not understand my own feelings, or

perceive the tendency of my own pursuits and amusements.

Beattie never lost this keen delight in Nature. When he was

schoolmaster at Fordoun, at the foot of the Grampian Hills, his

greatest pleasure was found in the neighboring mountains and wooded

glens. His biographer also says that he would frequently “pass the

whole night among the fields, gazing on the sky, and observing the

various aspects it assumed till the return of day.” Beattie’s poems

bear conclusive evidence of his love of Nature in all her forms.

Mountains, and the sea, wild scenes of various sorts, storms, torrents,

night, clouds, the sky, streams, meadows, groves, summer and winter,

wide views, are regarded with genuine delight. But there are certain

curious limitations. There are almost no specific flowers, birds, or

trees mentioned in all this abundant study of the external world. This

use of the general instead of the specific is one element of an effect

too often perceived, an indefiniteness of outline, a vague blurring

of edges, the result of which is not mysterious suggestiveness but

simply dimness and confusion. There is also an unexpected feebleness

of vocabulary and lack of direct observation. The old word “murmur,”

for instance, is applied with wearisome insistence to springs, rills,

water, the ocean, pines, woods, groves, and gales. So the interest

in wild Nature, when analyzed, shows a rather monotonous and

undiscriminating succession of cliffs and precipices. But it would

be unfair to press these limitations too far. There are many true

observations happily presented, as in the following lines which are

selected as illustrative:

While waters, woods, and winds in concert join.

The wild brook babbling down the mountain side.

Torrents

Heard from afar amid the lonely night.

And now the storm of summer rain is over

And cool and fresh and fragrant is the sky.

When by the winds of autumn driven

The scatter’d clouds fly ’cross the Heaven.

Oft have we from some mountain’s head

Beheld the alternate light and shade

Sweep along the vale.

The scared owl on pinions gray

Breaks from the rustling boughs

And down the lone vale sails away

To more profound repose.

He finds pleasure in old oak trees that

from the stormy promontory tower

And toss their giant arms amid the skies.

In winter he watches

The cloud stupendous, from the Atlantic wave

High towering, sail along the horizon blue.

Lines such as these show knowledge both fresh and close, and the

expression is marked by picturesque effectiveness.

But Beattie’s real contribution to the study of Nature lies, as has

been indicated, in his own personal enthusiasm, and his steadfast

belief in the effect of Nature on man. In one stanza he even set forth

the doctrine, held to be sufficiently startling forty years later in

Wordsworth’s day, that country rustics from their familiarity with

Nature, gain a nicer sense of moral purity than is known among the poor

of a city.[449] Upon all men he urged the study of Nature as a moral

duty.

These charms shall work thy soul’s eternal health,

And love, and gentleness, and joy impart.[450]

The message of Nature is one not to be ignored.

O how canst thou renounce the boundless store

Of charms which Nature to her votary yields!

The warbling woodland, the resounding shore,

The pomp of groves, and garniture of fields;

All that the genial ray of morning gilds,

And all that echoes to the song of even,

All that the mountain’s sheltering bosom shields,

And all the dread magnificence of Heaven,

O how canst thou renounce and hope to be forgiven![451]

Though less popular than the “Essay on Truth,” Beattie’s “Minstrel” met

with almost immediate favor. Lyttleton said to Mrs. Montagu who sent

him the first book in 1771:

I read your “Minstrel” last night, with as much rapture as

poetry, in her noblest, sweetest charms, ever raised in my soul.

It seemed to me that my once most beloved minstrel, Thomson, was

come down from heaven, refined by the converse of purer spirits

than those he lived with here, to let me hear him sing again the

beauties of virtue.[452]

And Cowper wrote in 1784: “Though I cannot afford to deal largely in so

expensive a commodity as books, I must afford to purchase at least the

poetical works of Beattie.”[453] Mr. Dyce says that the success of “The

Minstrel” (Book First) “was complete. The voice of every critic was

loud in its praise; and before the second book appeared, four editions

of the first had been dispersed throughout the kingdom.”[454]

“The Minstrel” is of importance in the historical development of the

poetry of Nature because of the ideas it emphasizes, and because its

immediate popularity is an indication of the change in taste since the

beginning of the century.

Most of John Scott’s poems were on rural subjects,[455] and he is of

especial interest because of his abundant and close observation of

natural facts. Mr. Hoole says of him, “He was certainly no servile

copyist of the thoughts of others; for living in the country, and being

a close and accurate observer, he painted what he saw;” and again,

“He cultivated the knowledge of natural history and botany, which

enabled him to preserve the truth of Nature with many discriminating

touches, perhaps not excelled by any descriptive poet since the days

of Thomson.” It was Scott’s avowed purpose to enrich poetry by the

use of many natural facts not before observed. In the introduction to

the “Amoebaean Eclogues” he said, “Much of the rural imagery which

our country affords, has already been introduced in poetry, but many

obvious and pleasing appearances seem to have totally escaped notice.

To describe these is the business of the following Eclogues.” After

this explicit announcement, two gentle youths, in responsive verse,

call attention to over two hundred rapidly stated natural facts. A fact

to a line is about the average, as in these lines:

These pollard oaks their tawny leaves retain,

These hardy hornbeams yet unstripped remain;

The wint’ry groves all else admit the view

Through naked stems of many a varied hue.

Old oaken stubs tough saplings there adorn.[456]

Straight shoots of ash with bark of glossy gray,

Red cornel twigs, and maple’s russet spray.

There scabious blue, and purple knapweed rise,

And weld and yarrow show their various dyes.

In shady lanes red foxglove bells appear

And golden spikes the downy mullens rear.

The second of these “Eclogues” has to do with the care of farms and is

as minute as Cowper’s treatise on the cucumber. There is nowhere in

these poems any poetical fusion of facts. They read rather like the

notebooks of a professional observer. Yet it is certainly significant

to find at this date so persistent and systematic a search for natural

facts, and that not in the service of science but of poetry. In

“Amwell” Scott calls on the Muse of Thomson, Dyer, and Shenstone for

his inspiration. The poem is a description of the prospect from a

certain “airy height” near Amwell. A single illustration will show the

minute observation and catalogue style in this commemoration of “lonely

sylvan scenes.”

How picturesque

The slender group of airy elm, the clump

Of pollard oak, or ash, with ivy brown

Entwin’d; the walnut’s gloomy breadth of boughs,

The orchard’s ancient fence of rugged pales,

The haystack’s dusty cone, the moss-grown shed,

The clay-built barn; the elder-shaded cot.

Whose whitewashed gable prominent through green

Of waving branches shows; ...

... the wall with mantling vines

O’erspread, the porch with climbing woodbine wreath’d.

And under sheltering eaves the sunny bench

Where brown hives range, whose busy tenants fill

With drowsy hum the little garden gay,

Whence blooming beans, and spicy herbs, and flowers,

Exhale around a rich perfume! Here rests

The empty wain; there idle lies the plough.

There is a pleasant homely grace in these lines about the cottage,

worth more than all the historical episodes “introduced to secure

interest.” In the “Elegies” and “Odes” there is no use of Nature

different from that observed in the other poems, unless, indeed,

mention should be made of Scott’s belief that Nature gives her fairest

smiles to those “who know a Saviour’s love.” One further characteristic

is to be found in a large number of the poems, and that is enjoyment

of a wide view. He describes views as seen from “Musla’s cornclad

heights,” from “Grove Hill,” the cliff at Bath, from “Chadwell’s

cliffs,” from “Widbury’s prospect-yielding hill,” from “Upton’s

elm-divided plains,” from “Clifton’s rock,” from Amwell, and other

spots. The poems read as if he had spent many days climbing hills and

prospecting for views.

Richard Cumberland wrote in 1776 several “Odes,” something in the style

of Gray’s “Bard,” in honor of the artist Romney. In the “Dedication to

Romney” he spoke with enthusiasm of the Lake Region.

In truth a more pleasing tour than these lakes hold out to men

of leisure and curiosity cannot be devised. We penetrate the

Glaziers, traverse the Rhone and the Rhine, whilst our domestic

lakes of Ulls-water, Keswick, and Windermere, exhibit scenes

in so sublime a stile, with such beautiful colourings of rock,

wood, and water, backed with so tremendous a disposition of

mountains, that if they do not fairly take the lead of all the

views of Europe, yet they are indisputably such as no English

traveller should leave behind him.

One of the poems, the “Ode to the Sun,” has Helvellyn, Skiddaw,

the Derwent, Lodore, “Keswick’s sweet fantastic vale,” “stately

Windermere,” “Savage Wyburn,” and “delicious Grasmere’s calm retreat”

as its important scenic elements. He considers

The prim canal, the level green,

The close-clipt hedge, that bounds the flourish’d scene

as but “the spruce impertinence of art.” From them comes no rapture

such as that excited by the “gigantic shapes” of mountains. The Thames

is but a tame stream compared with “old majestic Derwent” forcing his

independent course. In contrast to the grandeur and splendor of Nature

man seems but “weak, contemptible, and vain, the tenant of a day.”

Imperial Ulls-water is not only declared to be superior in charm to

Loch Lomond or Killarney, but it can maintain its own even against

“ought that learned Poussin drew” or anything painted by “dashing

Rosa.” Eighteenth-century praise of scenery could go no farther.

William Blake’s “Poetical Sketches,” published in 1783, were written

between 1769 and 1777.[457] The “Songs of Innocence” appeared in

1788–9; “Book of Thel,” 1789; “The Marriage of Heaven and Hell,” 1790;

and “Songs of Experience” in 1794. In the first volume Nature was the

leading subject; in the next human interests were in the ascendent, and

Nature was used only in fresh, ballad-like touches. In the later work

Nature is slightly used and for the most part in the form of mystical

symbolism.

It was Blake’s theory that man is “imprisoned in his five senses,” and

he counted it his mission to reveal to closed eyes the spiritual as

the only real fact of existence. In his early work this theory, as yet

unexaggerated in application, led to a treatment of Nature, not untrue

to facts, but characterized especially by qualities of simplicity and

vision such as are not found again before Wordsworth. In these years of

his youth Blake was essentially the poet of childhood and spring in all

their sweet, potent, indefinable charm.

And I made a rural pen,

And I stained the water clear

And I wrote my happy songs,

Every child may joy to hear,[458]

gives the keynote to these songs of delight. The joy of Nature is

everywhere insisted on. The sun makes the sky happy; the vales rejoice;

spring cannot hide its joy when buds and blossoms come; the happy

blossoms look on merry birds; groves are happy and green woods rejoice;

dimpling streams, the air, green hills, meadows, and birds laugh with

delight. Here is one exquisite example:

The moon like a flower

In heaven’s high bower,

With silent delight,

Sits and smiles on the night.[459]

He contrasts the clamor and destruction of city streets with the true

joy in Nature. In the silent woods, delights blossom around, numberless

beauties blow. The green grass springs in joy, and the nimble air

kisses the leaves. The brook stretches its arms along the silent

meadow, its silver inhabitants sport and play. The youthful sun joys

like a hunter roused to the chase.[460] In “Fragments” and “Couplets,”

excerpts from his MS book, occurs this fine, though casual statement of

the opposition between town and country:

Great things are done when men and mountains meet;

These are not done by jostling in the street.

Blake cared much for sleep as the time when man was most free from

the tyranny of the senses. Many of his characters are represented as

asleep, and the conception is transferred to many lovely scenes in

Nature. He pictures summer as sleeping beneath oaks; flowers shut their

eyes in sleep; the west wind sleeps on the lake; and dawn sleeps in

heaven. With this is associated an evident pleasure in the silence of

Nature, apparently the pathetic complement of its joys. There is a

silent sleep over the deep of heaven; the evening star speaks silence

to the lake. At night the moon is silent, and the earth, and the sea.

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

as,

I love to rise on a summer morn,

I love the laughing vale,

I love the echoing hill.

His feeling toward flowers was as intimate, as tenderly protecting, as

was that of Burns toward small animals. Sun and stars, winds, clouds,

dew, and angels are represented as caring for the happy blossoms.

All of Blake’s poetry of Nature is as freshly beautiful as the dewy

mornings, the spring-time green, the shining skies, as clear and

transparent as the limpid, dimpling streams he loved. There are also

frequent passages that besides their metrical flow and exquisite charm

of external suggestion seem to reveal the essential spirit of the

object described. One of the loveliest examples is the word of the Lily

of the Valley.

I am a watry weed,

And I am very small and love to dwell in lowly vales:

So weak the gilded butterfly scarce perches on my head.

Yet I am visited from heaven; and He that smiles on all

Walks in the valley, and each morn over me spreads his hand.

Saying, Rejoice, thou humble grass, thou new-born lilly flower,

Thou gentle maid of silent valleys and of modest brooks;

For thou shalt be clothed in light and fed with morning manna.[461]

For fine contrasts, each poem perfect of its kind, see “The Lamb”

and “The Tiger.” The modest simplicity of the one is as adequately

portrayed as the dread magnificence of the other. There is no

description. There is interpretation of the most penetrating sort.

He has also frequent similes worked out with picturesque detail, as in

this one from “The Couch of Death”:

He was like a cloud tossed by the winds, till the sun shines,

and the drops of rain glisten, the yellow harvest breathes,

and the thankful eyes of villagers are turned up in smiles;

the traveller, that hath taken shelter under an oak, eyes the

distant country with joy.

One secret of the effectiveness of Blake’s best work is his

recognition of the unity of all existence. The prefatory stanza to

“Auguries of Innocence,”

To see a world in a grain of sand,

And a heaven in a wild flower;

Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,

And eternity in an hour,

is a brief poetic statement of the creed afterward elaborated in

Wordsworth’s “Primrose on the Rock” and Tennyson’s “Flower in

the Crannied Wall.” The thought back of the lines is the one in

Wordsworth’s mind when he looked on “the meanest flower that blows.”

It is this underlying consciousness of essential spiritual unity in

all existence that gives to the work of both Blake and Wordsworth its

subtle power.

There could hardly be two more dissimilar ways of approaching Nature

than those of John Scott and William Blake. They stand at opposite

poles, the one with no sense of unity, no power of poetic fusion or

interpretation, but with a wide, accurate, and often picturesque

assemblage of natural facts; the other with a prevailing tone of

unreality and mysticism, a fine scorn of the actual, but with a swift

recognition of the spirit of Nature, and an abiding sense of cosmic

unity. Yet each represents a characteristic phase of the new feeling

for Nature as seen in Wordsworth. On the one hand, the practiced eye

and the inevitable ear; on the other, the vision and the faculty divine.

In its significance as a prophecy of Wordsworth and Shelley, the early

poetry of William Blake is of especial importance.

Crabbe’s poetry falls into two periods, the first one closing with “The

Newspaper” in 1785, and the second beginning with “The Parish Register”

after an interval of twenty-two years. In the first of these periods we

find but slight use of external Nature. The occasional similitudes are

of a formal conventional type. The two longest descriptive passages are

of a dismal winter scene,[462] and of some sterile summer fields that

mock man’s need with profitless blooms.[463] There is no expression of

pleasure in Nature. It is her pitiless, anti-human aspects that Crabbe

sees. The charm of Nature independent of utility seems to have no

meaning for him. He consciously repudiates

Clear skies, clear streams, soft banks, and sober bowers,

Deer, whimpering brooks, and wind-perfuming flowers,

as unworthy poetic material.[464] Rough or barren Nature as the

background or occasion of man’s misery is the thought of these early

poems.

Crabbe’s second period does not properly belong in a study of

development which has “The Lyrical Ballads” as its _terminus

ad quem_, but it may be briefly spoken of here because of the

interesting contrast it offers to the first period. A suggestive study

might be made of the descriptive element in “The Village” (1783) as

compared with that of “The Borough” (1810). The scene of each is a

seaside village on the Suffolk coast, but we note many changes in the

presentation. In the first place, in “The Borough” Nature plays a

much more important part than in “The Village.” There is a leisurely

elaborateness of description as if the poet enjoyed the work for its

own sake. There is, to be sure, insistence on the ugly realistic

details of the scenes about a country town, but there is in addition

a recognition that even along this rocky coast and in these barren

fields where Nature defies man’s industry there may be found her gift

of beauty. The “greedy ocean” of “The Village” is now “a glorious page

of nature’s book” on which the poorest may gaze with delight. The

firm, fair sands on quiet summer evenings, the lovely “limpid blue and

evanescent green” as shadows run over the waves on a fresh day, serene

winter-views where strange effects of fog add mystery to the scene,

the majesty of a storm at sea--all these are now reckoned a part of

the pleasures of the poor in a seaside village. The sterile fields,

too, have rare blossoms and curious grasses. There are pleasant walks

with every scene rich in beauty. The evening twilight is sweet with

jasmine odors.[465] “The Borough” is as realistic as “The Village,”

but it has a broader outlook and depicts the attractive as well as

the forbidding aspects of the Suffolk coast near Aldborough. In later

poems the scope becomes still wider. Besides the frequent strong and

truthful ocean pictures there are some beautiful descriptions of

autumn days, moonlight nights, and soft, rich inland scenes. It is

especially noteworthy that though there are seldom any gay or bright

aspects of Nature presented, yet Nature is no longer represented as a

force inimical to man. On the contrary, there is something in even her

most useless forms that gives to man a strangely profound pleasure.

The simple music of a cascade has in it a soothing power that words

will not express. In the clear, silent night there is a quiet joy

that lessens the sting of mortal pain. These positive expressions of

pleasure in Nature are not numerous, but they are important as marking

a distinct change of tone. They are the more significant because they

occur chiefly in the poems after 1819.

Yet it must not pass unnoticed that what Crabbe wrote in these late

poems, he had perceived and felt in his youth. In his description of

Richard he gives an account of his own boyhood. Of the ocean he says,

I loved to walk where none had walked before

About the rock that ran along the shore.

* * * * *

Here had I favorite stations, where I stood

And heard the murmurs of the ocean flood,

With not a sound beside, except when flew

Aloft the lapwing, or the gray curlew.

* * * * *

Pleasant it was to view the sea-gulls strive

Against the storm, or in the ocean dive

With eager scream, or when they dropping gave

Their closing wings to sail upon the wave.

* * * * *

Nor pleased it less around me to behold

Far up the beach the yesty sea-foam rolled;

Or from the shore upborne, to see on high

Its frothy flakes in wild confusion fly:

While the salt spray that clashing billows form

Gave to the taste a feeling of the storm.[466]

He recalls how he explored every creek and bay, how he took long walks

over the hilly heath and mossy moors. Most of the scenery in “The

Borough” as well as that in “The Village” is a memory picture of the

country he knew so well in boyhood. It seems strange that this genuine

love and accurate knowledge of Nature should not have found fuller

expression in his early poetry. The explanation is perhaps twofold. His

interest was primarily in man. He said that the finest scenes in Nature

were less attractive to him than faces on a crowded street. He meant to

be the portrait painter of poor people as he had seen them in a seaside

village. His bitter pictures of country vice and ignorance and folly

had in them no touch of patronage or contempt. He simply gave a hard,

truthful representation of sordid life, and Nature had no meaning for

him except as it was brought into connection with that life. When in

after years his own lot was a happier one, and when a wider experience

had brought him into contact with thrifty country folk, the bitterness

of his early thought of man was greatly modified. With new views of

man came an openness of mind to the gentler aspects of Nature. The

real love of his boyhood, no longer crushed down by an over-mastering

sense of human misery, was allowed free play. Furthermore, his later

work was doubtless influenced by the new spirit of poetry about him.

His son says that while at first but a cool admirer of the Lake poets,

he came soon to love them and took no books oftener in his hands. All

of Crabbe’s work in which there is much use of Nature comes more than

ten years after the “Lyrical Ballads,” hence his growingly full use of

Nature might easily be due in part to the influence of the new school

of poetry. His free life, the different class of peasants he saw, the

new poetry he was reading, would all have their effect in turning his

attention to Nature. But the Nature he chose to write about was that

which he had known and loved as a boy.

William Cowper as a poet of Nature, is marked first by the narrowness

of the limits within which he writes. Mountains[467] are merely

mentioned. Night is nowhere described. Moonlight plays no part in

his poetry.[468] The stars are occasionally spoken of, but only in a

conventional manner as “shining hosts,” “fair ministers of light,” or

“beamy fires.” Of wild scenery there is none. The nearest approach to

it is in two brief descriptions of rocky bluffs on the seashore.[469]

His references to the ocean are brief and not of much importance; nor

are there any storms except in a few lines about “a driving, dashing

rain” with thunder and lightning used as an “apt similitude.”[470] The

one winter storm is merely a gentle fall of snow that comes after the

evening curtains are tight drawn.[471] The similitudes, though often

carefully elaborated, show little if any new use of Nature, and they

are drawn from a small number of natural facts.[472]

The explanation of this narrowness of limit is twofold. Cowper

described only what he had seen,[473] and he had seen no country but

his own, and only a very small and comparatively uninteresting portion

of that. The Downs about Bath, where he seems to have been for a short

time when he was about eighteen, was the nearest approach to wild

scenery that he had ever known. During the seventeen years before the

writing of “The Task” (1785) he had seldom left Olney, and never for

a fortnight together.[474] His knowledge was further limited by his

continued ill-health. He was ignorant of certain phases of the out-door

world simply because his physical infirmities kept him in the house.

This explanation of the narrow range of the Nature in Cowper’s poetry

is not entirely satisfactory, for when we come to his letters we find

suggestions of a wider experience and sympathy than the poems would

indicate. In a letter to Joseph Hill he wrote:

I was always an admirer of thunderstorms, even before I knew

whose voice I heard in them; but especially an admirer of

thunder rolling over the great waters. There is something

singularly majestic in the sound of it at sea, where the eye

and the ear have uninterrupted opportunity of observation, and

the concavity above, being made spacious, reflects it with more

advantage.... We have indeed been regaled with some of those

bursts of ethereal music.... But when the thunder preaches, an

horizon bounded by the ocean is the only sounding board.

To the Rev. William Unwin, September 26, 1781, he wrote:

I think, with you, that the most magnificent object under heaven

is the great deep; and can not but feel an unpolite species of

astonishment when I consider the multitudes that view it without

emotion, and even without reflection. In all its various forms

it is an object of all others the most suited to affect us with

lasting impressions of the awful power that created and controls

it. I am the less inclined to think this negligence excusable,

because, at a time of life when I gave as little attention to

religious subjects as any man, I yet remember that the waves

would preach to me, and that in the midst of dissipation I had

an ear to hear them. One of Shakespeare’s characters says, “I

am never merry when I hear sweet music.” The same effect that

harmony seems to have had upon him I have experienced from the

sight and sound of the ocean, which have often composed my

thoughts into a melancholy not unpleasing nor without its use.

He had also, during these years at Olney, made many an imaginary

evening journey to remote lands by means of books of travel, of which

he was especially fond. But when he came to write poems, only what he

had known at first hand and with long familiarity occurred to him.

Experiences merely casual, or remote in time, and facts gained from

books slipped away. He remembered only what he habitually saw. The

scenes about Olney he knew, literally, by heart, and of these he wrote.

A characteristic excellence of Cowper’s treatment of Nature is that,

within his narrow circuit, his knowledge is of unusual fulness and

accuracy. The charm of truthful description is everywhere apparent.

In pictures of homely country occupations, such as feeding the

hens,[475] foddering the cattle,[476] cutting wood,[477] plowing,[478]

threshing,[479] there are no false touches, no hasty work. All is

the result of first-hand, leisurely, sympathetic observation. His

description of the garden is from memory, but it almost seems as if he

were walking from flower to flower and taking notes, so minute is the

characterization, so exact each epithet in the representation of the

various colors, forms, odors, and ways of growth of the flowers in this

garden that the poet sees under the snows of winter.[480]

The same love of precise detail is illustrated in his descriptions of

trees. In noting their color he does not, like Thomson, enjoy general,

broadly inclusive words, but he gives the exact shade and tells to

what tree it belongs. When he takes a walk he sees that the trunks of

the ash, the lime, and the beech shine distinctly under their shadowy

foliage. The willow is a “wannish gray.” The poplar is likewise gray,

but there is a touch of silver in the lining of the leaves. The elm is

deeper green than the ash, and the oak of a deeper green still. The

maple, the beech, and the lime have glossy leaves that shine in the

sun. The sycamore changes from green to tawny, and then to scarlet,

according to the season.[481]

This highly differentiated knowledge is evident also in various

passages on the sounds of Nature. In a letter to Newton he wrote: “The

notes of all our birds and fowls please me, without one exception; ...

and as to insects ... in whatever key they sing, from the gnat’s fine

treble to the bass of the humble bee, I admire them all.”

Equally specific is his record of the sounds from winds and waters, as

in these lines:

Rills that slip

Through the cleft rock, and chiming as they fall

Upon loose pebbles, lose themselves at length

In matted grass that with a livelier green

Betrays the secret of their silent course.[482]

Or these about forest sounds:

Mighty winds

That sweep the skirt of some far-spreading wood

Of ancient growth, make music not unlike

The dash of ocean on his winding shore.[483]

In wider descriptions, as of extended views, there is absolutely no

blurring of edges. The picture is as clear, distinct, and exact as a

photograph. There is no inartistic mixing of foreground and background.

A good example is the view described in the first book of “The

Task.”[484] The eye travels over the landscape with its river shining

like molten glass; on its banks droop the elms, on either side are

level plains sprinkled with cattle, beyond is the sloping land covered

with hedgerows, groves, heaths, with here and there a square tower or

tall spire, and in the distance smoking towns; and at last the scene is

lost in the clouds on the horizon.

Many little pictures, complete in a few lines, serve even better to

illustrate the exquisite truth of Cowper’s work. Note this description

of the shifting lights in a forest pathway:

While beneath

The chequered earth seems restless as a flood

Brushed by the wind. So sportive is the light

Shot through the boughs, it dances as they dance,

Shadow and sunshine intermingling quick,

And darkening and enlightening, as the leaves

Play wanton, every moment, every spot.[485]

Or this of the squirrel just come from winter quarters in

some lonely elm:

Flippant, pert, and full of play:

He sees me, and at once, swift as a bird,

Ascends the neighboring beech; there whisks his brush,

And perks his ears, and stamps, and cries aloud,

With all the prettiness of feign’d alarm

And anger insignificantly fierce.[486]

Equally felicitous are the descriptions of tall grass fledged with icy

feathers on a frosty morning,[487] or of the redbreast in a sheltered

woodland path in winter.[488] These pictures and other similar ones

immediately take a permanent place in one’s mental picture gallery.

It would be difficult indeed for a painting to make the light dance

as it does in that forest path. The squirrel absolutely tingles with

life. The right word comes easily and the lines show exquisite deftness

of literary touch. It is rare in any poetry to find more excellent

examples of pure description than these and other passages in “The

Task.” Cowper had the mind that watches and receives. He looked about

him and wrote down in simple, sincere words the loveliness he found. He

took notes, but they were of the right sort, mental and unconscious,

the inevitable imprint on a sensitive mind of scenes that had

ministered to his deepest need.

The ministry of Nature to human needs is a cardinal principle in

Cowper’s poetry. Nor was this conception merely theoretic. It was

rather a transcript from his own experience. From childhood he had

loved Nature,[489] and poems about Nature,[490] and he had always

planned to live in the country.[491] After years of disappointment and

terrifying fears, comparative peace came to him amid quiet country

scenes. The instincts of his early days revived. Nature offered

him a paradise of rich delights. She enchanted him. She gave him

heart-consoling joys. She sweetened his bitter life, alluring him with

smiles from gloom to happiness. The glory of each new morning was a

lesson in hope. He found in Nature the nurse of wisdom, a power that

could compose his passions and exalt his mind. He felt that in the

country God spoke directly to his heart.[492]

The obverse of this genuine love of the country is an equally genuine

detestation of the town and town standards. The crowds that swarm to

city streets are the subjects of repeated invectives, and there is even

more emphatic scorn of sham lovers of Nature, as cockneys in suburban

villas; girls who but for the show and dress-parade of the country

would hurry back to the city; men who love hunting and fishing, and

call it a love of Nature; sentimentalists, who exclaim over Thomson’s

poetry, but prefer to read it in the city.[493] His own relationship

with Nature was too intimate and too sacred to admit of indifference or

profanation on the part of others.

Cowper’s literary use of Nature was largely determined by his purpose

in writing. His poetical thesis received its dogmatic summing-up in the

famous dictum,

God made the country and man made the town,[494]

and to the establishment of this thesis nearly all his use of Nature is

made more or less directly subservient.

This is clearly seen in his use of summaries. He has a habit of

analyzing Nature into separate facts and then classifying these facts

under topics. For instance, to make a list of his sounds one hardly

needs to search through the poems. They will be found already grouped

together. So, too, the garden flowers, the greenhouse flowers, the

colors of trees, country occupations, and country pleasures, are

arranged under heads instead of being scattered through various

descriptions. Then there are many summaries of miscellaneous facts.

Now the literary purpose of nearly every assemblage of details is the

establishment or illustration of some point connected with the general

conception of the superior attractions of the country. The catalogues

of facts have a definite argumentative value, and the artistic

selection of these facts out of the mass known is determined by the

especial point under consideration. In “Retirement” there is a rapid

enumeration of many phases of Nature in various seasons, the purpose

being to show that all forms of Nature are pleasing to a poet’s mind.

The following passage is a good example of a summary the purpose of

which is to present a concrete, picturesque, amplified statement of the

creed that Nature gives a wisdom higher than can come from books:

But trees, and rivulets, whose rapid course

Defies the check of winter, haunts of deer,

And sheep-walks populous with bleating lambs,

And lanes, in which the primrose ere her time

Peeps through the moss that clothes the hawthorn root,

Deceive no student. Wisdom there, and truth,

Not shy, as in the world, and to be won

By slow solicitation, seize at once

The roving thought, and fix it on themselves.[495]

Frequent summaries are used to show that in the country God gives

especial revelations of his power. The long flower catalogue is to

show that the beauty of the flushing spring but speaks to man of the

in-dwelling of God.[496] The ceaseless activity of Nature is attested

by another summary.[497] Still further summaries illustrate the power

of Nature over the man wearied with cares of state.[498] The beautiful

summary of rural sounds is to show the exhilarating effect of Nature

on the languid mind and heart.[499] It is this underlying purpose that

gives unity to passages which would otherwise be hardly more than

catalogues.

Another characteristic way in which Cowper presents Nature is in

descriptive passages used as a background for his own meditative

figure. The beautiful description of the sheltered path where he walked

in winter[500] would lose much of its meaning if we were not throughout

conscious of the poet’s presence and his delighted response to all the

influences about him. Nearly all the passages that might otherwise be

called pure description are given warmth and tone by the fact that we

go with the poet, and, as it were, hear him talk about the scene as one

he has long known and loved, until it takes an added interest from

his personality, or we seem to see him in semi-identification with the

scenes. It is the apparent equality, the comradeship, between the hare,

the squirrel, and the poet in the solitary winter retreat that adds to

the beauty of the spot the needed human touch. Nature is thus suffused

with human experience and takes on a new interest. But it usually

happens that these descriptions become, further, either the appropriate

setting for a certain train of reflections on the part of the poet, or

they directly suggest these suggestions. In the winter retreat just

spoken of the fearless, innocent animal life becomes the occasion of

a long disquisition on the lesson of benevolence taught by Nature to

man. In the sheltered walk the poet finds his mind soothed and prepared

for a Wordsworthian contemplation on Nature as the teacher of the

wise, so that ultimately many of Cowper’s descriptions, as well as his

summaries, become contributory to his main purpose.

Cowper’s knowledge of natural facts was not more remarkable than

John Scott’s. His range was much narrower than Thomson’s. Other men

had loved Nature with passionate intensity. To other minds Nature

had suggested deep thoughts of God and man. Cowper came when many

elements of the new attitude toward Nature had been clearly voiced.

What marks him out as holding a unique position is not only that he

gave body and emphasis to the new thought, but especially that he

became its propagandist. He analyzed the effect of Nature on man, he

translated his personal experiences into a theory which he set himself

to interpret and promulgate. He wrote with the zeal of a convert. Joy

such as had come to him late in life was man’s natural heritage. Men

must be called back from the perverted and ruinous life of towns to

the simplicity of Nature. His theme is stated abstractly, repeated in

concrete form, illustrated and amplified with the patience and ardor

of absolute conviction. He was the preacher of the new religion of

Nature.

Robert Burns was deeply sensitive to the charms of Nature. In a letter

to Mrs. Dunlop he said:

I have some favorite flowers in Spring, among which are the

mountain-daisy, the harebell, the foxglove, the wild brier-rose,

the budding birk and the hoary hawthorn, that I view and hang

over, with particular delight. I never hear the loud, solitary

whistle of the curlew in a Summer noon, or the wild mixing

cadence of a troop of grey-plover in an Autumnal morning,

without feeling an elevation of soul like the Enthusiasm of

Devotion or Poetry.[501]

Again he says:

I have various sources of pleasure which are in a manner

peculiar to myself.... Such is the peculiar pleasure I take

in the season of Winter more than in the rest of the year....

There is scarcely any earthly object gives me more--I don’t know

if I should call it pleasure, but something which exalts me,

something which enraptures me--than to walk in the sheltered

side of a wood or high plantation in a cloudy winter day, and

hear a stormy wind howling among the trees and raving o’er the

plain. It is my best season for devotion; my mind is rapt up in

a kind of enthusiasm to _Him_ who ... walks on the wings of

the wind.[502]

Note also what Mr. Walker, his companion on the border tour, says of

him:

I had often, like others, experienced the pleasures which arise

from the sublime or elegant landscape, but I never saw those

feelings so intense as in Burns. When we reached a rustic hut

on the river Tilt, where it is overhung by a woody precipice,

from which there is a noble waterfall, he threw himself on

the heathy seat, and gave himself up to a tender, abstracted,

and voluptuous enthusiasm of imagination.... It was with much

difficulty that I prevailed upon him to leave the spot.[503]

This susceptibility to Nature was one of the signs by which “Coila”

knew that Burns would be the poet of Scotland. He represents her as

saying to him:

I saw thee seek the sounding shore,

Delighted with the dashing roar;

Or when the North his fleecy store

Drove thro’ the sky

I saw grim Nature’s visage hoar

Struck thy young eye.

Or when the deep green-mantl’d earth

Warm cherish’d ev’ry flow’ret’s birth

And joy and music pouring forth

In ev’ry grove,

I saw thee eye the gen’ral mirth

With boundless love.[504]

In his “Commonplace Book,” Burns records his eager desire to write

verse that shall make “the fertile banks of Irvine, the romantic

woodlands & sequestered scenes on Aire, and the healthy, mountainous

source, & winding sweep of Doon emulate Tay, Forth, Ettrick, Tweed,

&c.” And his love of Nature was limited in scope to just these scenes

of which he speaks. He had no interest in mountains or the sea. Mr.

Douglas calls attention to the fact that, “living in full face of

the Arran hills he never names them.”[505] He was as narrow in his

limits and as vividly local in the Nature he chose to represent as was

Cowper, but what he loved he loved with intensity. In the beautiful and

picturesque scenery about Ayr he found poetic inspiration. To William

Simson he said,

The muse, nae poet ever fand her,

Till by himself he learn’d to wander,

Adown some trottin burn’s meander,

An’ no think lang;

and in “The Brigs of Ayr” he says the simple bard may learn his tuneful

trade from every bough.

Burns’ knowledge of the Nature about him was abundant and exact, and he

was keenly critical of any note of falsity in the poems of others. He

objected to the “Banks of the Dee” because of the line,

And sweetly the _nightingale_ sang from the _tree_.

“In the first place,” he said, “the nightingale sings in a low bush,

but never from a tree; and in the second place, there never was a

nightingale seen or heard on the banks of the Dee, nor the banks of any

other river in Scotland. Exotic, rural imagery is always comparatively

flat.”[506]

Again he said of another song, “It is a fine song, but for

consistency’s sake, alter the name ‘Adonis.’ Was there ever such

banns published, as a purpose of marriage between _Adonis_ and

_Mary_? These Greek and Roman pastoral appellations have a flat,

insipid effect in a Scot song.”[507] He gives especial praise to

Rev. Dr. Cririe, because “like Thomson,” the poet had “looked into

Nature for himself,” and had nowhere been content with a “copied

description.”[508]

When Burns wrote a descriptive poem of set purpose he was comparatively

commonplace and uninteresting as in “The Fall of Foyers” or “Admiring

Nature.” His best descriptions come in, by chance as it were, in the

midst of some vivid human interests. One of the most beautiful is a

stanza in “Halloween”:

Whyles owre a linn the burnie plays,

As thro’ the glen it wimpl’t;

Whyles round a rocky scaur it strays,

Whyles in a wiel it dimpl’t;

Whyles glitter’d ta the nightly rays,

Wi’ bickering, dancing dazzle;

Whyles cookit underneath the braes,

Below the spreading hazel,

Unseen that night.

Work so perfect as this is rare in any age. The beauty of the poem is

simply the beauty of the stream itself.

Burns’ chief use of Nature, however, is in connection with man.

External Nature is illustration, background, frame, for human emotions.

“The Lass of Cressnock Banks” was written at twenty-two and is the

first one of his poems in which there is any distinct use of Nature.

It is merely an assemblage of twelve formally drawn-out similes

to represent the beauty of the lassie. Some of these similes are

conventional and unmeaning, as when her hair is likened to curling

mist on a mountain side,[509] her forehead to a rainbow, her lips

to ripe cherries, and her teeth to a flock of sheep. In later poems

the similitudes are simpler and sweeter, but they are drawn from a

small number of facts and those of the more obvious sort, as the

“simmer morn,” “the flower in May,” “the opening rose.” A much more

effective use of Nature is as dramatic background either by congruity

or contrast. As fine examples of the use of Nature to give the keynote

of the human emotion it accompanies we have the opening lines of the

“Elegy,” “Farewell Song to the Banks of Ayr,” “Raving Winds around Her

Blowing,” and “Farewell to Ballochmyle.” The more usual form is to

represent a natural picture in contrast to the human emotion, as in

“The Chevalier’s Lament,” “The Lament of Mary, Queen of Scots,” or best

of all, “The Banks of Doon.”

Ye banks and braes o’ bonny Doon,

How can ye bloom sae fresh and fair?

How can ye chant ye little birds,

And I sae weary, fu’ of care!

It is characteristic of Burns that his knowledge was wider and his

sympathy keener in the realm of animate than of inanimate Nature. He

apparently thought of animals almost as if they had been human. The

address to a mouse is as tenderly and genuinely sympathetic as if it

had been to a hurt child. On winter nights he listens to the wind and

cannot sleep for thinking of the “ourie cattle” and “silly sheep” and

helpless birds that “cow’r” with “chittering wing.”[510] He scorned

hunting and said there was no warm poetic heart that did not inly bleed

at man’s savage cruelty.[511] He found it impossible to reconcile

so-called “sport” with his ideas of virtue.[512] He knew animals,

especially birds, in an intimate, friendly fashion. In the description

of their manners and habits there is the most minute realism. The

following phrases are illustrative: “Ye grouse that crap the heather

bud;” “Ye curlews calling thro’ a clud;” “Ye whirring paitrick brood;”

“Ye fisher herons watching eels;” “sooty coots;” “speckled teals;”

“whistling plover;”

Clam’ring craiks at close o’ day

’Mang fields o’ flow’ring clover gay;

and

Ye duck and drake, wi’ airy wheels

Circling the lake.[513]

In accurate first-hand observation, in abundant knowledge, in the use

of felicitous descriptive epithets, in great personal joy in Nature, in

delight in winter, in love for animals, and in a critical estimate of

the value of truthful portrayal, Burns represents the new spirit.

William Lisle Bowles is another of the reputed “fathers” of modern

poetry. His slender title to the distinction thus conferred upon him by

Rev. George Gilfillan,[514] rests on the admiration of Coleridge,[515]

Southey,[516] and Lovel for his early poems.[517] From 1798 to the end

of his life Bowles wrote constantly, so the list of his works is a long

one; but in the present study we are concerned only with the poems

before 1798, the ones that stirred Coleridge to abandon metaphysics for

poetry.

From fourteen to nineteen years of age Bowles was in Winchester School

under the tutelage of Dr. Joseph Warton, who won the boy’s confidence

and inspired him with his own tastes. In the “Monody on the Death of

Dr. Warton,” written eighteen years after these school days, Bowles

says of Warton,

Thy cheering voice,

O Warton! bade my silent heart rejoice,

And wake to love of nature; every breeze

On Itchen’s brink was melody; the trees

Waved in fresh beauty; ...

... And witness thou

Catherine, upon whose foss-encircled brow

We met the morning, how I loved to trace

The prospect spread around....

So passed my days with new delight.

Warton also taught him to love literature. He learned to read Greek

poets with “young-eyed sympathy,” and he went with “holier joy” to

The lonely heights where Shakespeare sat sublime.

Charmed, the lad bent his soul

Great Milton’s solemn harmonies to hear.

“Unheeded midnight hours” were beguiled by the wild song of Ossian, and

his fancy found a “magic spell” in the “Odes” of his master, Dr. Warton.

The influences of these early school days had awakened Bowles to love

of Nature and of poetry, and when sorrow came it was to Nature and

to poetry that he turned for relief. His “Sonnets” are the direct

and genuine expression of a personal grief. They were composed, he

says, during a tour in which he “sought forgetfulness of the first

disappointment in early affections,”[518] and they are pervaded by a

melancholy unmistakably real. But along with this deep sadness is a

frequent recognition of the power of Nature to give at least temporary

respite from grief. Not only does she “steep each sense in still

delight,”[519] but she bestows “a soothing charm.”[520] The lovely

sights and sounds of morning

Touch soft the wakeful nerve’s according string.[521]

The river Itchen brings “solace to his heart.”[522] After visiting the

Cherwell he says:

Whate’er betide, yet something have I won

Of solace, that may bear me on serene.[523]

In the midst of sorrow he is

Thankful that still the landscape beaming bright

Can wake the wonted sense of pure delight.[524]

What Bowles saw in Nature was largely determined by his state of

mind. His own sadness led him to a quick perception of the pensive or

melancholy suggestions in any scene. He loved sequestered streams,

romantic vales, the hush of evening. The sounds he heard were soft

and plaintive. The river Wainsbeck makes “a plaintive song among its

“mossy-scattered rocks.”[525] He listens to the wind and seems to hear

a plaint of sorrow.[526] Sea sounds are

Like melodies that mourn upon the lyre.[527]

There is strange music in the stirring wind

When lowers the autumnal eve.[528]

Of the bells at Ostend he says:

And hark! with lessening cadence now they fall;

And now, along the white and level tide,

They fling their melancholy music wide;

Bidding me many a tender thought recall

Of summer days, and those delightful years

When from an ancient tower, in life’s fair prime,

The mournful magic of their mingling chime

First waked my wondering childhood into tears.[529]

Again, his own striving after self-control leads him to look with

pleasure on such natural objects as have withstood the shock of

tempests. Rugged Malvern Hill, on which the “parting sun sits smiling,”

teaches him a lesson of victory over grief, and he exclaims,

Ev’n as thou

Dost lift in the pale beam thy forehead high,

Proud mountain! whilst the scattered vapours fly

Unheeded round thy breast--so, with calm brow

The shades of sorrow I may meet, and wear

The smile unchanged of peace, though pressed by care![530]

Some of the brief descriptions in these sonnets are not without a

certain beauty in themselves, as in this passage from “Dover Cliffs”:

On these white cliffs, that calm above the flood

Uprear their shadowing heads, and at their feet

Hear not the surge that has for ages beat,

How many a lonely wanderer has stood!

And, whilst the lifted murmur met his ear,

And o’er the distant billows the still eve

Sailed slow, has thought of all his heart must leave

Tomorrow.

But here, as elsewhere in the poems, the chief thought is human grief;

and the most important characteristic of the poems, taken as a whole,

is the intimate union between the spirit of a man and the spirit of

Nature. It was always Bowles’ theory, says Clark,[531] that Nature is

the true subject of poetry; but he does not, in his later work, strike

so true and simple a note as in these early sonnets.

Such general statements as are to be drawn from this study of specific

poets can be more advantageously made after the chapters on “Fiction,”

“Travels,” “Gardening,” and “Painting,” for these chapters offer facts

that modify or confirm the impressions gained from the poetry.