CHAPTER I THE TREATMENT OF NATURE IN ENGLISH CLASSICAL POETRY 1

II INDICATIONS OF A NEW ATTITUDE TOWARD NATURE IN THE POETRY OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 58

III FICTION 203

IV TRAVELS 223

V GARDENING 246

VI LANDSCAPE PAINTING 273

VII GENERAL SUMMARY 327

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL INDEX 369

GENERAL INDEX 378

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

FACING PAGE

LONG LEATE 249

“The House and gardens of the Rt. Hon. Thomas Lord Viscount Weymouth, Baron Warminster, L. Knyff, Del. I. Kip, Sculp.”

HAGLEY PARK 261

“A View in Hagley Park, belonging to Sir Thos. Lyttleton Bart., to whom this Plate is inscrib’d by his most obed’t. Serv’t. T. Smith. G. Vivares Sculp.” Published Oct. 1749.

JOHN MAITLAND, DUKE OF LAUDERDALE 275

“From the original of Sir Peter Lely in the Collection of the Right Hon. the Earl of Lauderdale. Drawn by Wm. Hilton, R.A. and Engraved with Permission by I. S. Agar.” The print here reproduced was published March 1, 1820.

MRS. CARNAC 280

By Sir Joshua Reynolds. In the Wallace Collection, London. From a photograph by the Muchmore Art Company, London.

SQUIRE HALLET AND HIS WIFE 283

By Thomas Gainsborough. Now in the possession of Lord Rothschild. From a photograph by Braun, Clement & Cie.

A CALM 286

By Willem van de Velde. In the Gallery at Dulwich, London. “Drawn, engraved and published by R. Cockburn, Dulwich, 1818.”

DUNNINGTON CLIFF 288

“A View of Dunnington Cliff. On the River Trent (Five Miles South East of Derby) belonging to the Right Honourable the Earl of Huntington, to whom this Plate is inscrib’d by his Lordships most Dutiful and most humble Serv’t. T. Smith. G. Vivares Sculp. Act of Parliam’t. Augt. 25, 1745.”

DERWENTWATER 291

“A View of Derwent-Water, Towards Borrodale. A Lake near Keswick in Cumberland. To Edward Stephenson Esq’r. of Cumberland. This Plate is inscrib’d by his most Obliged humble Servant Will’m. Bellers. Painted after Nature by William Bellers. Engraved by Messrs. Chatelin & Ravenet. Published according to Act of Parliament October the 10th 1752.”

MOUNT SNOWDON 293

“A View of Snowden, in the Vale of Llan Beriis, in Caernarvon Shire. I. Boydell. Del. & Sculp. Published according to Act of Parliament by J. Boydell at the Globe near Durham Yard in the Strand 1750.”

CADER-IDRIS 297

“The Summit of Cader-Idris Mountain in North Wales. Richard Wilson pinx’t. E. & M. Rooker sculpser’t. Published July 17, 1775 by John Boydell, Engraver in Cheapside London.”

KILGARREN CASTLE 300

“Kilgarren Castle in South Wales, Richard Wilson pinx’t. Will’m. Elliott sculp’t. Published July 17th 1775 by John Boydell Engraver in Cheapside London.”

SNOWDON 304

By Richard Wilson. In the Manchester City Art Gallery. From a photograph by Sherratt and Hughes, Manchester.

THE MARKET CART 307

Painted by Thomas Gainsborough. In the National Gallery.

PEMBROKE 311

“Engraved by I. Walker from an Original Picture by Paul Sandby Esq. R. A. Published May 1st 1797.”

LODORE WATERFALL 315

“Drawn by Jos’h. Farington. Engraved by W. Byrne and T. Medland. London. Published as the Act directs, April, 1785.”

THE WOOD CUTTERS 318

Painted by G. Morland. Engraved by W. Ward. Published by T. Simpson, St. Paul’s Church Yard, London, 1792.

The general theme of the treatment of Nature in literature is not a new one. Schiller’s essay entitled “Ueber die naive und sentimentale Dichtung” (1794), was the first attempt to state and explain the difference between the classical way of looking at Nature and the modern way. The externality in the classical attitude toward Nature, he attributed to the fact that the Greeks were in their thoughts and habits of life so a part of Nature that they felt no impulse to seek her with the passionate longing of the modern poet, whose ardent and heartfelt love of Nature is but the result of a mode of thought and life out of harmony with her. This essay, however inadequate as a presentation of the Greek attitude toward Nature,[1] determined the lines of much succeeding study.

Alexander von Humboldt in his “Kosmos” (1845–58), in the midst of his scientific generalization and his encyclopedic accumulation of natural facts, takes occasion to discuss the treatment of Nature in poetry and landscape painting. The chapter on landscape painting is chiefly confined to such topographical, botanical, and other pictorial representations as serve to add to our knowledge of distant lands. The boundaries of the whole question are enlarged by a representation of the profound feeling for Nature in Semitic and IndoEuropean races. There is a brief study of the mediaeval feeling for Nature as it appears in Dante, and finally of the treatment of Nature in some prose writers of the eighteenth century. The only English poets mentioned are Shakspere, Thomson, and Byron, the subject of English poetry being disposed of in less than a page.

In Ruskin’s “Modern Painters” (1843–60) are several most interesting chapters on landscape in classical, mediaeval, and modern times. “Of the Pathetic Fallacy” and “The Moral of Landscape” are also suggestive though misleading studies.

Victor de Laprade’s “La sentiment de la nature” (1866, 1868) contains in full the theories already suggested in the preface to his “Les symphones.” In the introductory chapters he outlines his conception of the development of art. He regards architecture as essentially the expression of man’s interest in religion; sculpture of his interest in the demi-god or hero; painting of his interest in the complex and varied life of man as man; while the characteristic art of the present age is music with which the love of Nature is closely allied, since both affect the mind indirectly through indeterminate and vaguely suggestive harmonies, and both tend by their complexity and subtlety to rouse sweet reveries, luxurious emotion, nameless longings, ineffectual aspirations, but leave the conscience and the will untouched. No one can read these critical studies by Laprade or his earlier poems without feeling his enthusiastic joy in the presence of Nature. But he feared this joy and counted it a part of the concupiscence of the flesh except as it became an avenue to communion with the divine spirit. His indictment against the passion for Nature in modern music, painting, poetry, fiction, science is that the material is everywhere exalted at the expense of the spiritual. To be of value the presentation of the external world in whatever realm of art should subordinate its appeal to the senses, and emphasize its appeal to man’s inner life. Laprade’s work is a plea for idealism as against realism. In all his brilliant presentation of the attitude toward external Nature of different races in different epochs, this point of view must be taken into account. In his rapid survey of English poetry the poets to receive closest attention are Shakspere, Spenser, and Milton. In later times the most significant of the poets who “gravitent autour de Lord Byron” are Wordsworth and Shelley, who, in their attitude toward Nature, are respectively moralist and metaphysician. Byron’s distinction is that he alone found “le juste équilibre entre l’exubérance de la nature et celle du pur esprit.” Thomson’s “Seasons” are of value because of good _genre_ pictures and vivid descriptions of English sports, but the initial force in the return to Nature is Burns.

Unquestionably the most important of the books that treat of Nature in the realm of art is Biese’s “Die Entwickelung des Naturgefühls im Mittelalter und in der Neuzeit” (1888).[2] The book is written with enthusiasm and is stimulating and suggestive. The subject-matter is well in hand, and so thoroughly organized that the great movements in the historical development of the love of Nature are easily grasped. The plan is comprehensive, including not only poetry, but, in briefer outline, landscape painting and gardening, and, incidentally, even fiction and philosophy. The least satisfactory portion of the book is the treatment of the love of Nature in English life and thought. There is some stress on the development of the English garden, but English landscape painting is not mentioned. In the casual mention of English fiction the emphasis is on Defoe. In poetry two epochs are recognized, that of Shakspere and that of Byron. The chapter on Shakspere is a close and valuable study. The work of Byron is estimated with justness and sympathy, as is also that of Shelley. But the study of Wordsworth as a poet of Nature is singularly inadequate. His genius is considered as essentially of the pastoral-idyllic order, with now and then glimpses of an “echte Liebe für die Natur,” and an unmistakable pantheism. He is chiefly important as having done for England what Scott did for Scotland and Moore for Ireland, and as sounding certain notes which rang again in Byron “in verstärkter Tonart.” Thomson is the only eighteenth-century poet studied. Here again is a failure to recognize the real importance of the poet’s work. Biese acknowledges the truth of Thomson’s separate pictures of Nature, and his genuine love of the country, but denies his importance as a “pathfinder,” saying that he but followed where Pope’s “Pastorals” and “Windsor Forest” had marked out the way.

In 1887 appeared John Veitch’s “The Feeling for Nature in Scottish Poetry.” The first volume begins with the early romances and national epics, and takes up the chief poets down to James VI. The second volume is devoted to the modern period from Ramsay to David Gray. Most of the authors treated belong to the nineteenth century, but there are admirable brief studies of Ramsay, Thomson, Hamilton of Bangour, Bruce, Fergusson, and Burns. There is also a short but interesting chapter on the rise of landscape painting, with especial attention to its development in Scotland. Veitch’s book is written out of a full knowledge and warm appreciation of Scottish poetry and of Scottish Nature, and his critical dicta are usually trustworthy, though he shows, perhaps, a tendency to overemphasize the influence of Scottish poetry on the love of Nature in succeeding English poetry.

In John Campbell Shairp’s “Poetic Interpretation of Nature” (1889) are to be found studies of Homer, Lucretius, and Virgil; of Chaucer, Shakspere, and Milton; and of Wordsworth. Two chapters are devoted to the eighteenth century. Ramsay is the poet to whom the reappearance of the feeling for natural beauty is traced. Thomson is praised for his minute faithfulness in description, and his genuine love of the country, but his tawdry diction and superficial conception of Nature are heavy indictments against him. The chapter on Collins, Gray, Goldsmith, Burns, Cowper, Ossian, and the Ballads is interesting, but from its brevity is necessarily inadequate. The most suggestive chapter in the book is the one in which there is a classification of the ways in which poets deal with Nature.[3] The whole subject of the treatment of Nature in poetry is an attractive one to Mr. Shairp, and he frequently recurs to it in his “Studies in Poetry and Philosophy” and “Aspects of Poetry.”

In many books, also, not devoted exclusively to the treatment of Nature in literature there are special studies and much running comment of a valuable sort. This is true of almost all essays on the early nineteenth-century poets, and especially so of the various essays on Wordsworth. There is something to be found in manuals of English literature, as in Gosse’s “Eighteenth Century” in the chapter, “The Dawn of Naturalism,” in various notes in Perry’s “English Literature of the Eighteenth Century,” Phelps’ “The English Romantic Movement,” and others; also, in some histories, as in Lecky’s “History of England in the Eighteenth Century;” in some philosophical studies, as in Leslie Stephen’s “English Thought in the Eighteenth Century” (“The Literary Reaction”), and in Stopford Brooke’s “Theology in the English Poets” (_passim_); in various literary studies, as in McLaughlin’s “Studies in Mediaeval Life and Literature” (“The Mediaeval Feeling for Nature”), Vernon Lee’s “Euphorion” (“The Outdoor Poetry”), Symonds’ “Essays Speculative and Suggestive” (“Landscape,” “Nature Myths and Allegories”), Burroughs’ “Fresh Fields” (“Birds and Poets”), and Fischer’s “Drei Studien zur Englischen Litteraturgeschichte” “Ueber den Einfluss der See auf die Englische Litteratur”).[4]

The books indicated show that there is much interest in the general theme of Nature as an element of art. The literary periods that have been most studied are, however, the Greek and Roman, the mediaeval, and the modern. The treatment of Nature in so barren a time as the eighteenth century in England has naturally received little close attention. In my own work on this period I have endeavored to discover what indications there are that the attitude toward Nature of the early nineteenth century is but the legitimate outcome of influences actively at work during the eighteenth century. This study is therefore one of origins.

I have divided my work into three parts. I have endeavored to give first a general statement of the chief characteristics that marked the treatment of Nature under the dominance of the English classical poets. Then follows a detailed study of such eighteenth-century poets as show some new conception of Nature. The third division is made up of briefer studies of the fiction, the books of travel, the landscape gardening, and the painting of the eighteenth century, the purpose being to determine in how far the spirit found in the poetry reveals itself in other realms in which the love of Nature might be expected to find expression.