CHAPTER VII

GENERAL SUMMARY

During the period from Waller to Pope the general feeling toward Nature was one of indifference. The whole emphasis was on man in his higher social relations, and only such parts of Nature as were easily subordinated to man were looked upon with pleasure. The facts of Nature were little known. They were stated in terms merely imitative and conventional. The new feeling toward Nature, as exemplified in the early nineteenth-century poets, especially Wordsworth, on the contrary, is marked by full and first-hand observation, by a rich, sensuous delight in form, color, sound, and motion; by a strong preference for the wilder, freer forms of Nature’s life, by an enthusiasm for Nature passionate in its intensity, by a recognition of the divine life in Nature, and finally by a consciousness of the inter-penetration of that life and the life of man. At the beginning of the eighteenth century, in poetry, travels, fiction, painting, and gardens, it was the classical feeling toward Nature that predominated. By the end of the century the new feeling had found abundant, varied, and original statement. The change is a great one. From Pope to Wordsworth, from Le Nôtre to Repton, from Kneller to Turner, from Richardson to Mrs. Radcliffe, from Brand to Gilpin, the pendulum swings. Whether men painted pictures or made gardens, or went on journeys, or told tales of love and adventure, or wrote poems, the new spirit was at work within them, sending them forth into the world of Nature and bidding them bear witness to her power and loveliness.

Early manifestations of the new spirit did not, however, find exactly contemporaneous expression in these various art-forms. Thomson’s “Seasons” and Pope’s “Fourth Epistle” are in 1726–31. Gainsborough and Wilson do not bring out their work until after 1755. Thomas Amory’s “John Buncle” is in 1756–66, and Brown’s “Keswick Letter” comes within the same period. Thus the decisive beginnings of the new spirit in painting, fiction, and travels are about contemporary, but are thirty years behind poetry and gardening. Furthermore, the time between the decisive beginnings and the final full expression is greatly varied. In poetry it is seventy-three years, in gardening about sixty-five, in painting about fifty, in fiction not over twenty-five, and in travels only about fifteen years.

In spite of these variations in date there seems to be in each art the same general order of development. First there is a dim period of tentative, unconscious, or apologetic indications of a new spirit. Then some original mind seizes upon the new idea and gives it consistency and at least partially adequate expression. After this there follows a period of less vigorous but widespread and varied efforts to find a statement for some portions of the new thought. Then a master mind seems to feel all these diffused, struggling, half-expressed conceptions and sums them up in the final perfect form. In the poetry of Nature these stages are clearly marked in the work before Thomson, in Thomson, in the period from Thomson to Wordsworth, and in Wordsworth. In painting are Wilson and Gainsborough on the one hand and Turner on the other. In gardening, travels, and fiction we find the periods marked respectively by Kent and Repton, Brown and Gilpin, Amory and Mrs. Radcliffe. In these three art-forms, especially in the last two, we do not find the period of development ending in the work of consummate genius. We go rather from a meager statement to a statement that is full, manysided, enthusiastic. The progress is in the love of Nature rather than in the power of adequate, final expression. The development in gardening is more in the nature of a series of experiments open to wide discussion, and the final outcome takes the form given it by the man whose study of past failures and successes has led him to the surest comprehension of the artistic and mechanical laws involved. A glance at the accompanying table will make the general statement clear, the main point being that in at least five of the ways in which men express their ideas it is possible to trace the growth of a complete change of attitude toward Nature. The poets who helped to bring about this change have already been studied in detail, but some further general statements may not be out of place here.

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As a rule, such significant poetry of Nature as appeared during the transition period was the work of men who had spent much of their youth in the country or in country villages; it was practically their earliest poetic venture, and usually the work of their youth; and, in most cases where there was an extended literary career, the poetry of Nature speedily gave way to work of a didactic or dramatic sort, in which Nature played but a small part. To any such general statement there would be of course important exceptions. Blake, for instance, was a town-bred poet. So was Collins, and his “Ode to Evening” is not his earliest work. Cowper was town-bred. He was old when he began to write, and his poetry of Nature is his latest rather than his earliest work. But, taken as a whole, the poetry of Nature during the eighteenth century bears out the statement as made. It is well illustrated by Armstrong, who was born and who apparently spent his youth in Castleton, a little village in the wildest part of the mountainous country around the Derbyshire peaks, wrote his “Winter” before he was fifteen, went to Edinburgh and then to London to study, and wrote as the work of his mature years a didactic poem on the “Art of Preserving Health.” Or by Dyer, who was brought up in South Wales, wrote “Grongar Hill” and “The Country Walk” at twenty-five, went up to London, and wrote as his mature work “The Ruins of Rome” and “The Fleece.” Or by Thomson, who lived until he was fifteen in Southdean, a little hamlet at the foot of the Cheviot Hills, the last of whose “Seasons” appeared when he was thirty and whose later work was a succession of dreary tragedies. Or by Akenside, who, though brought up in Newcastle-on-Tyne, made frequent visits to the country during his youth, wrote “The Pleasures of the Imagination” at seventeen during one of these visits, and in his after life wrote much prose and poetry in which there is no hint of the early enthusiasm. Allan Ramsay lived in a secluded spot among the Pentland Hills until he was fifteen, and his earliest important poem, “The Gentle Shepherd,” is really a memory picture. William Pattison spent his youth at Appleby, a village on the Eden, in Westmoreland, where he wrote his earliest poems. Mickel spent his youth at Langholme on the Esk, and his first important poem, “Pollio,” written at eighteen, was in memory of his life there. Bruce was brought up at Kinneswood, a village on Lochleven, and his early poetry had much to do with the scenery about that place. Beattie spent his youth at Lawrencekirk and Fordoun on the east coast of Scotland, and “The Minstrel,” his first important poem, is a record of his early life. It would certainly be a misreading of these facts to infer that to write well of Nature the poet must have been brought up in the country. Genius has the rare gift of seeing a very little and straightway knowing a great deal. It would be equally wrong to infer that poets write of Nature when they are young and give it up when they put away childish things. The import of these facts in this period seems to be merely that there was a genuine and widespread love of Nature on the part of many isolated poets, who, by the circumstances of their lives, knew Nature better than they did literature, but that this love was not sufficiently robust in individual cases to withstand the cramping influences of city life and literary coteries. The developing tradition was carried on not so much by the persistent influence of a few as by the constant springing up of the same spirit in many minds.

In a transition period the predominant spirit is self-conscious, authoritative, and full of maxims drawn from its own successes. The new spirit comes in, as it were, by chance. It is but slightly theoretic, following instinct rather than well-defined principles. In its first stages it is apologetic rather than aggressive. These characteristics, on the whole, mark the love of Nature in the early eighteenth-century poetry. There are, however, occasional indications that some poets, at least, not only wrote according to new canons of taste, but were distinctly conscious of their revolt from the old. So early as 1709 Ambrose Philips in the Preface to his “Pastorals” justified his choice of country themes by pointing out the pleasing effect of natural scenes on the mind. John Gay’s enunciation of a creed, though meant as a satire, was so just a condemnation of existing poetic conventions, and so apt a prophecy of one phase of the new spirit that it really deserves to rank among revolutionary statements of theory. Allan Ramsay’s Preface to “The Evergreens” is equally emphatic in its scorn of classical limitations, and it was meant in downright earnest. The thought of the Preface finds expression several times in his poems as well. Dyer gives utterance to a similar scorn of Parnassus in “The Country Walk.” Shenstone, in his “Prefatory Essay on Elegy,” shows a timid but perfectly clear recognition of the fact that he is breaking away from poetical canons. Mason in the Preface to “Elfrida” says that he has introduced descriptions with a purpose of rendering the drama more pleasing. Whitehead’s “Enthusiast” with its elaborate statement of both sides of the case in man versus Nature is an important indication of the clearness with which the points of the controversy were at that time recognized. The strongest and most detailed statement of a creed came about four years later in Joseph Warton’s “Essay on Pope” (1756). Nothing else so clear, direct, and full appeared before the Prefaces of Wordsworth. After Warton it is not so necessary to indicate all self-conscious statements. It will suffice briefly to indicate Langhorne’s statement of his purpose in writing, Goldsmith’s vigorous attacks on falseness and affectation in poetry, Beattie’s Wordsworthian Preface to “The Minstrel,” John Scott’s criticism on existing poetry and his statement of his own aim in the Preface to his “Amoebaean Eclogues,” Crabbe’s expressed determination to treat of Nature as it really is, Cowper’s pleasure in the fact that his knowledge and inspiration come straight from Nature and his persistent reiteration of his belief in the superiority of the country over the city, and finally Burns’ many critical remarks on the essential qualities of descriptive poetry.

The characteristics of the poetry of Nature that was growing up during the eighteenth century have been already indicated in one way and another, but it seems necessary here to gather them up into general statements. The easiest and clearest way will be to make a somewhat detailed summary of such traits of this poetry as seem to foreshadow the later treatment of Nature, especially as exemplified in Wordsworth. In the comparison I keep mainly to Wordsworth both for the sake of simplicity, and because, though in romantic periods each poet works out his own salvation along original and self-determined lines, yet Wordsworth more nearly than any other poet expresses the variety and complexity of interest in the new feeling toward Nature.

Wordsworth said that a part of his endowment as a poet was a peculiar openness to sense impressions, and that this endowment was cultivated by his environment in youth until the real facts of Nature were perceived by him with fulness and accuracy. In his wholesale condemnation of the period between “Paradise Lost” and “The Seasons” the chief count in the indictment is the absence of new images drawn from Nature. Full, accurate, first-hand knowledge of Nature is then with Wordsworth a _sine qua non_, a basis on which interpretation must rest. During the eighteenth century no one man had Wordsworth’s inevitable ear or practiced eye, but the whole impression made is that men were at last out of doors, looking and listening for themselves. Each man sees many facts not before noted, and collectively the poetry of the period presents a great body of natural phenomena of all sorts. Poets, artists, travelers, writers of fiction, unite to swell the stock of facts about the external world. Dorothy Wordsworth’s “Journals” show with what delight she and her brother dwelt upon the baldest statement of the actual facts of Nature. Gray in his “Letters,” John Scott in his “Eclogues,” show this same pleasure in simply cataloguing the lovely facts of the out-door world. Lady Winchilsea, Gay, Thomson, Dyer, Cowper, Burns, all the landscape painters from Wilson to Girtin, Mrs. Smith and Mrs. Radcliffe, are but leaders of the many who were striving to make report of what they found in waters and skies, in field, mountain, and plain. The wide range of these facts is astonishing. The knowledge of the poet is no longer confined to parks and gardens, to the mild and lovely aspects of Nature. His aroused curiosity pushes him out into new realms of inquiry. All kinds of Nature, animate and inanimate, wild and tame, remote and close at hand, attract interested attention.

The mere mass and variety of this accumulated knowledge is sufficiently significant in its bearing on the development of a new taste for Nature, but a further general question arises as to the accuracy and delicacy of the observation. There certainly was none of the scientific spirit that would feel the charm of bare exactness, and there was hardly any of Wordsworth’s feeling that to misrepresent a fact of Nature would be sacrilege. Facts were, indeed, often noted in a loose, careless way, as if of slight importance. But taken as a whole the observation bears the mark of the eye on the object. From Lady Winchilsea to Bowles every poet who has been esteemed noteworthy in the study of Nature gives the impression that he speaks from personal knowledge, and no poetry can make that impression unless it is in its main lines true. Delicacy of observation is another matter.

What the eighteenth-century poets did was to give truthful expression to very many natural facts of a kind fairly obvious to an age well versed in the lore of field and wood; but new to an age just emerged from the gates of a park. It is observation of this abundant, truthful, obvious sort that we find in Ambrose Philips, Gay, Ramsay, Shenstone, John Scott, and largely this even in Thomson. The commonest facts of Nature, the blue sky, wild flowers on a rocky ledge, rough little streams, were a wonder and a delight. Discrimination comes after general and obvious facts have been accepted and assimilated. It is inevitable, even setting aside their different temperaments, that Cowper should have more of it than Thomson. The strange thing is that in the early stages of the poetry of Nature we should find any observation so close and delicate as that in the study of night by Lady Winchilsea, of burns and mountain pools by Allan Ramsay, of winter skies and ice-burdened streams by Armstrong; or as that in Thomson’s sunset after rain, Dyer’s wide views and homely bits of country life, Collins’ evening, Gray’s skylark and song-thrush, Thomas Warton’s opening spring, Logan’s cuckoo, and Scott’s trees.

The fulness and accuracy of the eighteenth-century study of Nature may be further seen by a brief analysis of the sense impressions most frequently noted.

Wordsworth is said to have been physically deficient in the sense of smell, hence the noticeable absence of odors in his poems may be accounted for. But it is doubtless true of all poetry that fragrances are more scantily recorded than are other facts, and that there is seldom any delicate discrimination between various sorts of sweet odors. For this reason such slight study of odors as we find in the transition poetry is the more to be dwelt upon. There are certainly not infrequent observations showing close knowledge. J. Philips notes the faint sweetness of cowslips; Relph speaks of the odor of the “fresh prumrose on the furst of May;” Dyer and Shenstone of the fragrance of brakes; Dyer of sweet-smelling honeysuckles; Shenstone, Thomas Warton, and Cowper of the fragrant woodbine; J. Philips and Mickle of scented orchards; Cowper calls attention to the odor of limes and the fresh smell of turf; Lady Winchilsea speaks of the “aromatic pain” from the odor of a jonquil, the “potent fragrance” of which is recognized also by Thomson. Two odors frequently mentioned are of “the perfuming flowery bean” celebrated first by John Philips, then by Gay, Thomson, Savage, Shenstone, and Joseph Warton; and the fragrance of hay noted by Thomson, Gay, Ramsay, Savage, Potter, Relph, Thomas Warton, and Mickle. When homely, unusual odors, like that of the bean, are noticed there is often exceptional vividness of statement. What took rank in the poet’s mind as his own discovery brought out a natural freshness of phrase. One other fact frequently noted is that odors are strongest at morning or evening or after a rain. These specific references are of real importance in showing new powers of perception, but it must be admitted that in general the use of odors was of the conventional sort, referring rather vaguely to sweet breezes blowing over flowery fields.

The sensitiveness to sound so often remarked in Wordsworth’s poems is a characteristic of the poetry of Nature throughout the century before Wordsworth. The music of Nature was a source of widespread delight. The “pleasant noise of waters,” for instance, receives some notice from nearly every poet in the list, while in travels and fiction some of the most effective passages are on the sounds of rapid streams and waterfalls. In poetry the old words “warbling,” “tinkling,” and “murmuring,” are still much used, but Ramsay’s rill that “makes a singin din,” Thomson’s roused-up river that “thunders” through the rocks, Mallet’s river with its “sounding sweep,” Collins’ “brawling springs,” and Cowper’s “chiming rills” are a few of the phrases that mark a more individual and personal way of listening. One of Wordsworth’s often-quoted lines on sound has to do with the greater distinctness of the song of mountain streams by night. Mr. Heard gives this passage as an instance of Wordsworth’s peculiarly close observation. But the clearness with which falling or running water is heard at night had been noted at least six times in the literature before Wordsworth. Lady Winchilsea mentioned it in her “Revery.” Beattie speaks of waterfalls heard from afar amid the lonely night, and again of the quiet evening when naught but the torrent is heard on the hill. The lines in John Brown’s “Rhapsody” have already been quoted, as also his “Letter” in which he notes the variety of sounds from distant waterfalls as one of the attractions of a walk at night. And Gray also speaks of the murmur of many waterfalls not audible in the day time. Several other authors, as Dyer and Mallet, have practically the same idea when they mention the unusual clearness of the sound of falling water in a breathless noon, or in the depths of a silent forest.

The sounds made by winds are also often and particularly noted. They sigh through reeds, they make a remote and hollow noise in “wintery pines,” they murmur through the poplars, they rustle lightly over “deep embattled ears of corn,” they join in concert with woods and waters, or they sweep in mighty harmonies through ancient forests. The whispering breezes, and dying gales of the classical poetry do not often occur. Brown in his “Letter” shows how deeply he was impressed by the roaring of the winds through the mountains, and the one passage in which Dr. Johnson showed any appreciation of wild Nature is a description of the combined sounds of streams and wind on a stormy night in Scotland. A characteristic passage is Thomson’s fine description of thunder among the mountains. Wordsworth, from the peculiar delicacy of his perceptions and perhaps from his contemplative Nature, was deeply sensitive to the silences in the world about him. There is some though but little indication of a similar pleasure in preceding poetry. One of the best passages is Thomson’s description of the boding silence before a storm. This has, however, much less of the real Wordsworthian spirit than has Brown’s conception of the silence that spoke from the starry vault, the shadowy cliffs, the motionless groves, and the faint mirror of the placid lake.

Of sounds from animate Nature the emphasis is of course on birds. But the feathered choir of the classical period has been resolved into distinct species, each with a voice of its own. The nightingale is not supplanted but she is no longer a monopolist in the realms of the muses. In this transition poetry the cuckoo takes an interesting place. Wordsworth’s address to the bird as “the darling of the spring” gives the association of ideas found in most of the early poems. The cuckoo is the harbinger of spring. Armstrong and A. Philips have the loud note of the cuckoo as one of the first hints of the opening year, and Thomson’s symphony of spring is introduced by “the first note the hollow cuckoo sings.” Mendes says it is “the cuckoo that announceth spring,” and Gray speaks of the cuckoo’s note as part of “the untaught harmony of spring.” The peculiarity of the cuckoo’s note is also often mentioned. Other birds have many notes, says John Cunningham, “the cuckoo has but two.” Logan, as Wordsworth after him, records the fact that the bird is usually unseen, and both speak of the schoolboy’s surprise as the strange cry falls on his ear. The lark, the nightingale, and the linnet are frequently mentioned, but usually in terms somewhat conventional. They had been in poetry so long that a distinct effort would have been needed to think of them under new phrases. To be released from the captivity of a stock diction and conventional sentiment they waited for Shelley and Keats and Wordsworth. It is in observations on birds not counted poetical property that we find fresh and exact expression. A mark of the new spirit is the pleasure in such sounds as the call of the curlew, the boom of the bittern, the chattering of magpies, the caw of rooks, the piping of quails, the scream of jays, the clang of seamews, the shrill clamor of cranes, the shriek of the gull, the whistle of plovers, the whir of the partridge. To hear such sounds the poet must wander over moors, by sedgy lakes, along rough shores, far enough from trim parks. To bring such sounds into poetry marked a great revolution in taste from the days of the lorn nightingale and the plaintive turtle. As a whole we may say that the treatment of sound in eighteenth-century poetry is abundant, accurate, and often very effective.

The process of passing from general to specific statements as a result of increased knowledge shows itself again in the use of color. The universal paint of the classical school has been resolved into some of its constituent elements. These are not many, however, and there is not much nice discrimination into shades and tints. The colors most often observed are green, blue, yellow or gold, purple, red or crimson, and brown, the order given being the order of their frequency. Purple is used less frequently than in the classical poetry and usually has some real artistic significance. Yellow, a comparatively new word, is used often of harvests, of trees in autumn, of moonlight, and of various sunlight effects. Dyer gave early prominence to the word as an epithet applied to Nature. Brown is applied in somewhat the conventional manner to streams and shadows. Thomson, Dyer, Savage, and Cowper made the most effective use of color, and it is important to observe that their advance consisted not so much in seeing many more colors than had been seen before, as in discovering color in many more objects than formerly. They did not merely see that “all above is blue and all below is green.” They saw the blue heavens, but they saw, too, the blue of “sky dyed plumbs,” of mists, of distant hills, of streams and bays, of ice-films, of the halcyon’s wing, of curling smoke, of the lightning flash. The endive, the lavender, the lilac, the violet, the harebell, the heath-flower, are singled out as blue. And Dyer speaks of the blue color of the poplars, and Dalton of blue slate roofs. Not merely the general green of a summer landscape is commented upon, but there are closer observations concerning the varying shades of green as the trees are massed together. The russet tints brought out in green tree tops at sunset, the funereal green of yews, the yellow-green in a sunset sky, the yellow tinge in green grass almost ready for the scythe, the glossy green of the holly, the deep green of box, the contrasting green of elm, oak, and maple, are some typical observations.

The use of color, however, seems, on the whole, in spite of its abundance and picturesqueness, hardly so varied and individual as the use of sound.

A division into colors and sounds leaves many sorts of observation unnoted, and frequently these are of great importance as indicating close knowledge; but they have been so often commented upon in the study from author to author that even a suggestive recapitulation is hardly needed here. Enough has been called to mind to show that there was much knowledge of the external world, and that much of this knowledge was reported in words so direct and truthful that they must have come from personal experience.

In the classical period we have seen that only the milder forms of Nature were cared for. Wordsworth was, on the other hand, essentially the poet of mountains, lakes, and streams. It will be of interest to note the attitude of the transition poetry toward the various kinds of Nature. And first we may sum up the evidences of mountain enthusiasm.

In the first fifty years of the century we have only the expressions of pleasure in climbing mountains or hills by J. Philips, Gay, and Dyer; the various descriptive references in Ramsay and in Mallet; Boydell’s crude work in Wales, and Paul Sandby’s sketches in the Highlands. Ramsay and Mallet show a consciousness of mountains, and evidently regard them as noticeable and picturesque elements of a scene, and Dyer is of distinct importance because of his lingering pleasure in the beautiful views opening up before him as he climbs the mountain, and especially because of his poetic comprehension of mountain solitudes. But it is during the next thirty-five years (1750–85) that we find the most adequate eighteenth-century treatment of mountains. During this period Brown, Pennant, Young, Gray, and Gilpin visited Scotland, Wales, and the English Lakes, and wrote of mountains with an enthusiasm hardly equaled in the succeeding century. In fiction were Amory’s eulogy of Westmoreland, and his exaggerated pictures of Cumberland, and Smollett’s description of the country round Loch Leven. In painting, Boydell, Devis, Sandby, Bellers, Wilson, Barret, Farington, and John Cozens were studying mountain scenery in Scotland, in northern England, in Wales, Ireland, and in the Alps. In poetry we have Coventry’s address to Vaughan on mountain climbing; Dalton’s apostrophe to Skiddaw; Brown’s rhapsody on the mountains and lakes of Westmoreland; the mountain scenery in Gray’s “Bard” and the poems of “Ossian;” the many descriptive references in Dyer’s “Fleece,” Jago’s “Edge Hill,” Mickle’s “Almada Hill” and “May Day,” and Scott’s “Amwell;” and Beattie’s study of the influence of mountains on a poetic mind. During the last twenty-five years of the century there is, in poetry, a curious apparent cessation of mountain interest. The most highly poetic minds, Blake, Cowper, and Burns, have none of it. Crabbe does not touch upon mountains. Lesser poets, except Bowles at the very end of the century, are equally silent. This is not, however, true in other realms of art. Mountain scenery is still, during these years, a large element in romances, and in travels, and many artists are sketching in the picturesque regions opened up to them by earlier students of mountain landscapes.

Many lovers of Nature and of poetry have commented with surprise on the slow development of the poetic appreciation of mountains. It is, perhaps, even more strange that English poetry should have been still slower in its discovery of the ocean. It is as if English poets from Dryden to Byron had all lived inland. Even in Wordsworth, in spite of some wonderful lines, there is no treatment of the ocean at all comparable to his study of mountains. In the classical age the ocean was a dreary waste. In the transition poetry we do not find much more knowledge or appreciation. The one quality of the ocean that receives anything like adequate expression is its boundlessness. Characteristic lines are by John G. Cooper.

In unconfined perspective send thy gaze Disdaining limit o’er the green expanse Of ocean.

Armstrong says that the “floating wilderness”

Scorns our miles and calls Geography A shallow prier.

Mickle looks upon the awful solitude of ocean and his imagination is stirred by

the last dim wave in boundless space Involved and lost.

These are the best lines I have found. The chief expressions of pleasure in the ocean are Gay’s mild delight in a sunset across the sea, and subsequent moonlight effects, and Beattie’s pleasing dread as he seeks the shore to listen to the wide-weltering waves. We find in Cowper’s letters a more appreciative passage on the ocean than occurs in any of the poetry. The most sincere ocean enthusiasm is in Mrs. Radcliffe’s romances. Travelers, even those who went along the coast of Wales and among the Scottish islands or to the Isle of Wight, say little of the sea. The ocean was, in fact, much such a burden as Sterne’s plain. When the poet had once said that it was big and awful his stock of impressions was exhausted. In painting, the ocean was not entirely ignored, but in this province, too, there was meagerness of conception and expression. The ocean waited for Turner and Byron and Shelley.

One of the interesting characteristics of the love of Nature in the eighteenth century is a delight in wide views. What had in the classical period “tired the travelling eye,” with the dawning of the new spirit gave satisfaction. It was in accord with the mental revolt against close boundaries of any sort. From the day when John Philips ventured to express some pleasure in the view from a hill, and Gay climbed Cotton Hill to raise his mind nearer heaven, and Dyer spent days in studying with an artist’s eye the colors and forms of the view from Grongar Hill, to the time when Beattie eagerly climbed the rugged steeps of Scottish mountains so that he might see the morning mists rolling and tumbling over the rough hills beneath him, do we find this pronounced delight in wide views. Even poets who show no great love for mountains, as Thomson, Mallet, Collins, the Wartons, Langhorne, Mickle, and John Scott, and even poets of confessedly tame scenery as Cowper, love “green heights” and extended prospects. To the expression of this feeling Amory and Mrs. Radcliffe, Brown, Young, and Pennant make large contributions. This feeling shows itself also in gardening. The cutting-down of tall hedges, the opening-up of vistas, were a result of the change of taste and a contribution to it.

We have seen that during the classical poetry the skies in favor were cloudless and that of all sky phenomena the rainbow excited most attention. In the transition poetry we find much of this love of fair summer skies and expressed sometimes with a new freshness as when Dyer wishes nothing above his head but “the roof on which the gods do tread,” or when Ramsay looks with joy upon “the lift’s unclouded blue,” or when the clear gladness of heaven shines down from the lovely skies of Blake. But on the whole, references to the serene day-time sky are conventional. It is another illustration of the fact that such aspects of Nature as were already known and had come to be spoken of after a set fashion were slow to be emancipated into a new phraseology. Better work is done in describing what Coleridge calls the “goings-on” of the sky. Thomson knew the sky in all its phases. Parnell describes well the airy tumult of clouds after a storm. Mallet has one or two rather effective studies of a stormy sky. One of Beattie’s best descriptions is of a shifting cloudy sky on a windy autumn day, and he has other effective cloud studies. But taken in the mass the material is scanty and not of great value. It was Wordsworth and Shelley who first gave adequate expression to the mysterious and varied charm of the day-time sky.

The love of the night sky and of night itself is first found in Lady Winchilsea, and for close observation and delicate feeling there is nothing better throughout the century. There is, however, much use of night, moonlight, and stars in a new and appreciative fashion. In Gay’s “Dione” there are several attractive little moonlight pictures. Parnell was impressed by the depth, the serenity, and the silence of a starry sky on a clear night. Coventry observes how fast the moon travels through light clouds as if bent on a journey, while in clear weather she sits steady empress of the skies. Joseph Warton notes the shining of hills and streams under the light of a full moon. Mickle has some beautiful lines on both moon and stars as they rise from behind certain favorite hills. He walks much at night and loves to watch the trembling line of light from the moon as it shines across the lake, or the soft effect of the yellow moonlight sleeping on the hills. Beattie stays out all night to watch the aspects of the sky till the dawn of day. Morning and evening twilight are less often spoken of. There is certainly nothing else in the century to compare with Collins’ “Evening.” Sunset and sunrise are often described, but nowhere with more general effectiveness than in Thomson, or with more minute color study than in Savage.

Closely connected with the knowledge of the sky is the new feeling toward storms. In the classical poetry they had been ignored or used as similes for disaster. But one of the first evidences of a new spirit was in the appreciative description of winter storms, as in Riccaltoun, Armstrong, and Thomson. The early descriptions and the multiplicity of storms in Thomson and Mallet give at first the impression that this element held a larger place in poetry than it really did. Ramsay has some good lines on winter storms. There is an admirable stanza in Collins’ “Ode to Liberty,” and another in Thomas Warton’s “Grave of King Arthur.” In Beattie’s “Minstrel,” and in several of Burns’ poems there are expressions of delight in the fierce play of the elements, but that exhausts the list of notable passages. It is only in Beattie that we find any of the modern sense of kinship between the tumult of life and Nature’s fierce conflicts, and the imaginative force of a passage like that in “The Excursion” where the Wanderer longs to be a spirit and so mingle with primal energies in their mightiest activities, or the lyric passion of a cry like that in Shelley’s apostrophe to the West Wind, are not even hinted at.

The most pronounced change came with reference to these grander, wilder aspects of Nature. We have still to note the treatment of the gentle pleasant things of Nature, as birds, flowers, trees.

There was, through the classical period, abundant delight, in a general way, in meadows bursting into bloom, and in bright blossoms in the garden. The use of the words “flowery,” “adorned,” “decked,” “enameled,” etc., usually had reference to fields of flowers thought of in a vague, pleasant way. The changes that come during the transition poetry are a resolving of the general into the specific, a concentration of attention on English flowers, and a greatly increased knowledge of individual flowers. The rose and the lily often give place to homelier blooms as those of peas and beans, the bramble rose, butter flowers, clover, heath-bells, crowfoot, the tangled vetch, the mandrake, the thistle. The increased minuteness of observation shows itself in such garden studies as we find in Thomson and Cowper. A feeling of personal relationship toward flowers finds its highest and sweetest expression in Burns’ “Daisy.”

In the classical poetry trees in general are an important part of the stock-in-trade. The new feeling shows itself in a growing tendency to think of trees as individuals. In a landscape trees are mentioned by name. The thin leav’d ash, whispering poplars, the glossy rind’d beech, venerable oaks tossing giant arms, waving elms, quivering aspens, murmuring pines, hoary willows, sycamores green, tawny, or scarlet, according to the season, white-blossomed hawthorn, deep green hollies, elders with silver blossoms, stand out from the mass and are known for their own qualities. Minute observation is indicated by the descriptive phrases used. The color of the trunk, the spread of the branches, the changing hue of the leaves, the kind of blossoms, are severally noted. Two special studies of trees are by Lady Winchilsea and Dr. Dalton, and are of early date. Dyer and Cowper give the best studies of trees seen in a mass, and yet individually noted. While there is not a touch of the deep forest in this poetry, there are many lines describing woodland effects. Thomson, Potter, and Cowper find especial pleasure in the lovely interplay of light and shade in a pathway overhung by woven branches. The brown shadows and the softened light in a deeply wooded nook are observed. Gentle streams sing happily under a cooling covert of green boughs. The quiet of the woods is broken only by the plash of waters, the rustle of boughs, the whisper of leaves, the hum of insects, the song of birds, sounds from distant flocks and herds, or the stroke of the woodman’s axe. Trees also form an important part of every general landscape. But no poet has given so much of the real forest feeling as Mrs. Radcliffe. Of travelers Young has most to say about trees but his observations are largely scientific and utilitarian. On the whole we may say that trees are given abundant and discriminating attention, but that this attention seldom penetrates beyond external, artistic qualities. Personal friendship for trees such as we find in Lowell, for instance, has hardly yet reached expression.

Birds have already been discussed under sound, but it remains here to state that the habits of birds, their manner of flight, their nests, the trees they choose, their ways of protecting their young, were all topics on which much was known. Of minor poets, those who knew birds well, are Jago, Potter, and Bruce. Gray adds some perfect touches. Best of all for accurate description and real understanding are Thomson, Cowper, and Burns. The prominent place of the cuckoo has already been spoken of. The redbreast and the thrush with “speckly breast” rank not far behind in interest. The redbreast found early honor in Armstrong’s “Winter,” and then in Thomson’s, and is one of the pleasing elements in Cowper’s “Winter Walk.” On the whole, birds of the lakes and streams seem to be better known than birds of the tree and copse.

One phase of the literary treatment of birds is a recognition of their rights as free, living beings. This feeling, not toward birds alone but toward all animals, is one of the marks of the new spirit. There is even in Lady Winchilsea’s “Revery” a slight hint of the conception that animals would not suffer if man had not proved himself a tyrant, and Gay carries out the same thought in one of his “Fables.” Thomson’s protests against killing animals for food are the first strong statements of the new feeling. Shenstone, in “Rural Elegance” and “The Dying Kid,” shows some sympathetic regard for animals. Jago and Potter and Langhorne protested vigorously against cruelty to birds. Beattie had the strongest possible dislike toward so-called English sports. The feeling of close fellowship and almost human love toward animals, so marked in Wordsworth and Coleridge, did not find expression in the transition poetry until Burns and Cowper gave it full statement.

Throughout the poetry of the eighteenth century we have observed a turning from the general to the specific. There is likewise a similar tendency to localization. The classical poetry of Nature belonged to no special spot, hardly to any special country. The poetry of Wordsworth and of Walter Scott was, on the other hand, eminently local. They celebrated the mountains and islands and streams of the region they knew. Wordsworth complained that before his day no one had sung of British mountains. It is interesting to note the growth of this passion for certain spots definitely pointed out and named, certain natural scenes known and loved as a person might be. A brief survey of the mountains and streams thus celebrated in eighteenth-century poetry will serve as illustrative. After Dyer’s “Grongar Hill” come other mountains of Wales. The hoary heights of huge Plynlymmon; the wide, aërial side of Cader-ydris; the craggy summits of cold Snowdon, king of mountains; Clyder’s cloud-enveloped head; Caer-caraduc, and others are spoken of with evident pleasure and not a little artistic perception. In Scotland the hills of Cheviot, the Pentland Hills, the mountains in the Ossian country, and those around Lochleven, are chief. In England we have the scarry side of Braids, Dafset’s ridgy mountain, Edge-Hill, Almada Hill, Derwent’s naked peaks, huge Breaden, blue-topp’d Wrekin, giant Skiddaw, the solemn wall of Malvern, the Cambrian Hills, the hills of Ilmington, and others. The spirit of localization in its application to mountains does not often go beyond calling the mountain by its own name, and using some phrase showing that this mountain is known as separate from the general mass. In its application to streams the feeling is more detailed in expression. Ramsay’s streams and pools are closely localized. Dyer celebrates not only Towy’s flood, but the Vaga, the Ryddal, the Ystwith, the Clevedoc, the Lune, and especially the Usk. Dr. Dalton traces the course of the Borrowdale Beck from Lodore Falls to the lake. Langhorne follows the track of the Bela through solitary meads, and then through the rough realms of Stainmore. He also celebrates his joy as a child in the river Eden. Smollett, on his sick bed, writes an ode to Leven Water. Bruce sings of the Po, the Queech, the Severn, and especially of his youthful delight in the Gairney. Mickle writes of the Forth, the Annan, the Ewes, and the Wauchope, but dwells with most zest on his early love of the Esk. Of peculiar interest is Akenside’s apostrophe to the Wansbeck. Hamilton, Langhorne, and Logan wrote of the Yarrow, Cowper of the Ouse, Burns of the Ayr, the Doon, the Nith, the Afton, the Devon, and many another Scotch stream, while Bowles wrote of the Itchin, the Tweed, the Cherwell, and the Wansbeck. A map might be made on which should be represented only the mountains and streams spoken of with some particularity, with something more than a mere mention, in English poetry between 1650 and 1720, and a similar map of the period from 1720 to 1795. A comparison of the two would be an interesting commentary on the growth of knowledge and interest in British scenes.

All that has been so far presented goes to show that in the antithesis between town and country the balance of favor swung round during the eighteenth century to the country. Usually the preference is implicit, and is to be inferred from the change of theme, but occasionally the antithesis is sharply stated, as, to take types, in Thomson, the Wartons, and Cowper. It is Thomson who first gives adequate statement of the transfer of sovereignty from the “fine lady muses of Richmond Hill” to “the muses of the simple country.” It is his hatred of the noisome town, his delight in fields and woods untouched by man, that established the new canon of taste. In the Wartons, twenty years later, the breach between the city and the country is almost an impassable gulf. Combined with the love of Nature in her external forms there is that spirit of romantic melancholy by virtue of which the poet regards Nature as a refuge from the tormenting complexities that beset the life of men in communities. There is usually a touch, sometimes more than a touch, of morbidness in the passionate eagerness to escape not only from the city into Nature, but from man and all traces of his dominion into a solitude free from all human suggestiveness. Forty years after the Wartons, Cowper’s famous epigram, “God made the country and man made the town,” summed the matter up according to the new view. Cowper is as emphatic in his preferences as his predecessors, and much more detailed and minute in his expression. With him there is no vague generalizing, no morbid or passionate over-statement. His love of the country is a fundamental fact not only in his physical, but also and even especially in his moral and spiritual, life. It is a fixed principle, quiet, rational, inevitable. The anti-classical side of the city and country antithesis receives in Cowper’s poetry its most decisive and most reasonable eighteenth-century statement. We hardly find anything so conclusive in fiction or in travels. There is an occasional expression of regret at going back to towns after a trip through the mountains and lakes, but as a rule the preference for the country is left to be inferred from the general tenor of the traveler’s writings. Mrs. Brooke protests much against London, and declares her preference for Nature unadorned. Mackenzie’s Julia rejoices over her country birth and education, and Mrs. Radcliffe reiterates the desirability of living far from towns and as close as possible to the influence of Nature. Cowper, however, remains as having given the final, emphatic statement.

Through all this detailed study and wide knowledge of Nature there runs an undercurrent of personal enthusiasm which is quite a separate thing from the knowledge of Nature, but which led to that knowledge and was fed by it. Sometimes we are left to infer this enthusiasm from results, but oftener it finds clear statement. There is frequent expression of such “unspeakable joy” as Ambrose Philips felt when he gazed on a little country home, or of Ramsay’s “heartsome joy” on a bright spring morning

to see the rising plants, And hear the birds chirm o’er their pleasin’ rants,

or of Hamilton’s rapturous joy as he lies on the flowering turf, his soul “commercing with the sky.” In many passages Thomson expresses his passionate delight in the music, the color, the fragrances of the out-door world. Dyer’s joys run high as he lies on the mountain-turf. Shenstone says that the beauties of Nature alone bear perpetual sway, and he thinks with scorn of a soul so narrow that it cannot relish Nature’s calm delights. Joseph Warton cannot find words to express the ecstasy with which he looks on Nature. John Langhorne’s only wish is that he may enjoy the blessings Nature gives to those who love her, and says that her charm alone is unfading. Beattie says that the man who goes to Nature has rapture ever new. Cowper thinks that any man who turns away from Nature starves deservedly. Burns says that he looked upon Nature with boundless joy. This feeling of exhilaration, of rapturous delight, is pervasive. It is often inadequate, or vague, or extravagant in statement, but the delight is unfeigned, the enthusiasm real, and in poet after poet it demanded expression. That it seldom found the perfect statement only means that art is long and that much thinking and feeling in an age as in an individual must go before the final art-form.

Much of this delight in Nature is in kind though not in degree like that which Wordsworth in “Tintern Abbey” calls his second period of love for Nature, the time when the colors and forms of the external world were a sufficiently engrossing pleasure, and he felt no need of “a remoter charm by thought supplied.” But Wordsworth quickly passed from this stage of pleasure to another. In his best descriptions, as in “The Yew Trees,” he gives a few external details, and then at once penetrates to the inner spirit of the scene. He is like a portrait painter who represents the features with truth and simplicity but makes the face live because he has divined the qualities of soul behind it. Now whatever philosophical tenets Wordsworth held he certainly thought of this soul of Nature, whether of Nature as a whole, or in special parts, as in some way a manifestation of divinity. In other words he saw God immanent in Nature. The classical conception also saw God in Nature, but as the remote Architect, Artificer, Lawgiver. The universe was dead, cold, inert matter. For the difficulty with which it was made to serve men’s needs the defenders of Omnipotence felt apologetic explanations necessary. We have seen that during the eighteenth century there came a great and joyous awakening to the external charm of the world. Are there also indications that the divine life in Nature was felt?

Throughout the eighteenth century the usual thought of God in relation to Nature is the classical one. He is the author and controller of the universe; but there are some poems or passages or separate lines that seem to indicate a new conception. Lady Winchilsea recognizes a curious correspondence between Nature and her own heart, and says that in the quiet of a beautiful night she feels the presence of something too high for syllables to speak. There is a similar feeling in Hamilton’s description of a silent grove. In the “Nocturnal Revery” and in “Contemplation” the idea of divinity is not explicitly stated, but in Parnell’s “Hymn” the song of praise is professedly to the Source of all Nature, because through Nature the divine spirit had spoken peace to the poet’s troubled heart. The incessant and ever-present creative activity of God is clearly set forth in Thomson’s “Hymn.” Each ray of sunshine, every blossoming flower of spring, every leaping stream, every rolling orb, performs its function as a direct expression of divine energy. And some lines give a further suggestion of divine immanence. The rolling year is full of God. The seasons are but the varied God. The beauty of God walks forth in the flushing spring. Such expressions as these mark a half-involuntary poetic seizing of the new idea of Nature as the bodily presence of which God was the soul, but they do not indicate Thomson’s leading ideas. Mallet, imitative of Thomson in this as in other respects, usually speaks of God as the Creator, but in one passage touches on the full stream of universal Goodness that is ever-flowing through earth, air, and sea, and on the ceaseless song of praise going up from the great community of Nature’s sons. Boyse in his “Deity” thinks of God as an Almighty Architect, but has a few lines in which he represents all Nature as being momently derived from God. Young has a significant line when he says that night is the “felt presence of the Deity.” The theme of Akenside’s poem is to show the response which the imaginative mind finds in Nature, and this response is, he says, the voice of the divine spirit. His conception is usually, to be sure, that the divine spirit speaks through the forms of Nature, rather than that the form and the spirit have an essential union. Yet sometimes he speaks more clearly the new thought. He says that the man who loves Nature holds daily converse with God himself; the beauty of Nature flows directly from God; the order in Nature is sacred; the influence whereby Nature soothes and cheers and elevates man is really a divine influence. This is the fullest recognition of an in-dwelling God until we reach Cowper. In his poetry we find a clear statement of belief in the lines,

There lives and works A soul in all things, and that soul is God,

but the point is not one on which he dwells. These passages certainly foreshadow Wordsworth’s conception of God in Nature, but they are comparatively feeble and unimaginative in expression. There is nothing so Wordsworthian in Thomson’s sonorous lines or in Akenside’s ample statement as there is the feeling that penetrates the brief words of Lady Winchilsea and Parnell. Compared to these even Cowper seems cold and intellectual.

Wordsworth did not, however, lay special stress on his belief that the spirit he felt in Nature was divine. He rather took that for granted, or allowed it to be implied in the passionate fulness and intensity of his expressions of gratitude to that spirit for gifts of mind and heart. This sense of indebtedness to Nature found no place in the classical poetry. But in the transition period it receives surprisingly full and varied expression. Sometimes it takes the form of personal gratitude for special gifts; sometimes it is a general statement of what man owes to Nature. A brief review of the more significant passages will serve to show the characteristics of this feeling toward Nature.

To begin with, Nature gives peace. This is the gift most often spoken of. Even John Philips said that Nature calmed his mind. Ambrose Philips liked the songs of birds because they brought him into a mood of “sweet and gentle composure.” Lady Winchilsea enjoyed the night because its influence disposed her heart to silent musings and made her conscious of a “sedate content.” Parnell had long vainly sought contentment until at last his heart received the message of peace through the voices of Nature. Hamilton said that all the passions in the troubled breast of man could be calmed by the quiet of a grove. Thomson finds in Nature a power that can “serene his soul” and “harmonize his heart.” Dyer finds peace and quiet in “the meads and mountain-heads.” Mallet follows Thomson in thought and phrase when he represents that Nature has power to “serene the soul.” Akenside says that the spirit of Nature lulls man’s passions to a divine repose. Cooper says that a contemplation of the order and regularity in Nature’s life will induce a like harmonious action in the human heart, and that the fiercest passions of horror and revenge can be soothed by Nature. Joseph Warton says that all Nature conspires to soothe and harmonize the mind. William Whitehead speaks of the “philosophic calmness” that comes to man from Nature. Beattie’s hermit found in Nature a power that could subdue the wildest passions and give “profound repose.” Bruce found in Nature “harmony of mind.” Bowles felt a “soothing charm” that brought “solace to his heart” and “bore him on serene.” So, too, was it with Cowper. Nature gave him heart-consoling joys, and brought peace and quiet into his life. This power of Nature to soothe the mind of man and to modify his passions receives full expression also in Mrs. Radcliffe’s romances.

Nature gives not only peace and rest to man; she gives him joy. The sense of ecstasy and rapture in this joy has already been indicated in the passages expressive of personal enthusiasm for Nature. Sometimes it was a joy rising out of the delight of agreeable physical sensations, as when Lady Winchilsea felt in the odor of the jonquil a pleasure so keen that it was pain, or when Langhorne sank down oppressed by the boundless charms of field and wood, or such joy as Gray’s convalescent knew when he went out again into Nature. But here a more spiritual joy is referred to. It is rather the disturbing joy of elevated thoughts of which Wordsworth speaks. This uplift of soul in the presence of Nature is felt by Parnell when he seeks to give expression to the great chorus of thanksgiving to God from all existences. Lady Winchilsea and John Langhorne felt it when Nature gave them “thoughts too high to be express’t.” Akenside felt it, and in a truly Wordsworthian sense, when he said that in the presence of Nature the intellect is charmed into a suspension of its graver cares, while love and joy alone possess the soul. Burns finds that Nature exalts, enraptures him, making him conscious of an elevation of soul. And, finally, in Gilpin, we find, though awkwardly expressed, an exact statement of the enthusiastic calm, the visionary joy, with which Wordsworth looked on Nature.

A third gift of Nature is poetical inspiration, and that, too, in the sense in which Wordsworth believed that Nature set him apart for poetry and assisted him in his development. Akenside’s apostrophe to the Wansbeck along whose banks he wandered in childhood, “led in silence by some powerful hand unseen,” his assertion that these influences fixed the color of his life for every future year, his thought of Nature’s “tender discipline” when skies and streams and groves conspire to guide the predestined sons of Fancy, are strikingly Wordsworthian. Langhorne says that in his lonely youth “the woodland genius” came and touched him with the holy flame of poetry. To the “Genius of Westmoreland” he ascribes the sacred fire within his breast. The whole theme of Beattie’s “Minstrel” is, as has been pointed out, the effect of Nature on a poetically sensitive mind.

Nature also gives a wisdom such as books and schools cannot give. The earliest expression of this thought is in Pattison’s comparison of the deep wisdom drawn from Nature and the superficial knowledge of the schools. Gay in the contest between the shepherd who knew Nature and the philosopher who knew cities and books determined that Nature without the schools can make men wise. Langhorne says that “fair Philosophy,” like Poetry, must be sought for in Nature. There is, however, no other eighteenth-century statement of this idea so complete as Cowper’s eulogy of the wisdom of the heart that Nature gives.

Nature is also considered as inspiring to morality and virtue. Gay, in a fable already quoted from, says that Nature can make men “moral” and “good,” if they will learn her lessons. Thomson meditates on Nature because thence he hopes to learn lessons of morality. Mallet says that Nature inspires the soul with “virtuous raptures” and prompts man to forsake sin-born vanities and low pursuits. Akenside’s chief theme is the power of Nature to lead men from petty interests and hurried, sordid lives into a beneficent and ordered activity of the soul. Cooper ascribes to “every natural scene a moral power.” John Langhorne says that the sweet sensations of Nature move the “springs of virtue’s love,” and have a “moral use,” and that religion, fled from books, can be found in Nature whence we first drew both our knowledge and our virtue. Beattie says that the charms of Nature work “the soul’s eternal health.” They inspire love and gentleness. They incite to high living, and the man who neglects them can hardly hope to be forgiven. A pervading thought in Cowper’s poems is his moral and spiritual indebtedness to Nature.

Wordsworth not infrequently indicates his belief that the spirit of Nature consciously blesses man. This idea is sometimes found in the transition poetry, as in Hamilton’s “Contemplation,” and especially in Akenside and Cowper who represent Nature as making the happiness of man “her dear and only aim.”

So far we have discussed the knowledge of Nature and the feeling toward it rather than its use in literature. That this knowledge was abundant and varied, that this feeling was enthusiastic and often deeply reverential, may, perhaps, pass without further question. But a different problem presents itself when we ask what literary use the eighteenth-century poet made of Nature. It must be conceded at the outset that many references to natural facts are not literary at all. In Mallet’s “Excursion,” for instance, his journey through stellar spaces renders frequent mention of the sky and stars inevitable, but the references might as well be to macadamized roads. His purpose is merely to get from one point of vantage to another. Such brief, cold, unpicturesque use of details for purposes of transition are really non-literary. In any tabular statement of an author’s work some discount must be made to allow for this mechanical use of Nature, and in certain authors, as notably Mallet and Young, the discount is large. Another non-literary use of Nature is in the catalogue or summary. John Scott gives the extreme example of this unorganized accumulation of details. The instinct of the artist is wanting. The poet does not even attempt to make Nature a part of a well-fused literary product. He is encumbered by his material. He crowds his canvas. His full and realistic presentation is without artistic reservations. His record is prompted simply by interest in the separate facts. No literary purpose determines his selection or rejection of detail. A recognized theme, unity, proportion, are absent. Such summaries may be of the highest importance as showing the abundance and exactness of the author’s knowledge of Nature, and separate phrases may have real literary quality, but the passage as a whole is no more literary than an inventory.

When, however, a purpose is apparent in the use of Nature, when there is discrimination under the dominance of a central idea, then, however crude and feeble the actual result, there is at least an attempt to use Nature in a literary way.

This dominating purpose may be merely description for its own sake, an attempt to present aspects of Nature in successive, isolated, artistically composed pictures, each complete in itself and having its parts organically related. Such description is entirely objective. Its aim is the reproduction of sights and sounds by which Nature under given conditions appeals to the senses. When highly elaborated its obvious danger is that there will be, in spite of the most artistic management, a certain vagueness and heaviness of effect. There are, nevertheless, very beautiful examples of pure detailed description dissociated from any purpose except that of making a picture in words, in both Thomson and Cowper, and here and there less successful examples in other writers.

A more subtle use of Nature is when the poet assembles his details in order to reproduce not a scene or an aspect of Nature, but the typical impression they have made on his mind. Lady Winchilsea tells many facts about night, but her purpose is not the description of a single night; it is the reproduction of the loving delight and tender awe awakened in her own heart by many soft summer nights. The purpose of Parnell’s descriptive details is the reproduction of the mood of spiritual content induced by certain scenes. Passages such as these are often more or less detailed summaries, but they have literary quality because the motif produces unity of effect.

Again, the facts and descriptions may be adduced in support of a theory, as in Young’s “Night Thoughts,” Akenside’s “Pleasures of the Imagination,” Shenstone’s “Progress of Taste,” Beattie’s “Minstrel,” and Cowper’s “Task.” Here too, an organizing purpose is discernible, though there is the greatest possible difference in the various ways of using the material for the given purpose; Young’s facts, for instance, being used in a cold, argumentative fashion, while Beattie’s and Cowper’s are suffused with emotion.

Another use of Nature is based on the poet’s perception of the analogies between external Nature and human life or character. One outcome of this sense for analogies is in abundant similitudes, a literary use of Nature common in all languages, at all periods. In the pseudo-classical poetry of England we have seen that the similitudes were conventional and superficial. In a period of intimate knowledge and love of the outer world there is stress on the truth and beauty of the picture from Nature as well as on the human fact symbolized, and the analogy is subtly and sympathetically conceived. Wordsworth’s

A violet by a mossy stone Half hidden from the eye

is perfect in itself as a picture of Nature, and it is exquisitely apt in describing Lucy. He discovered in Nature that which in its inner significance was truly a counterpart of the human idea. With regard to the similitudes of the transition poetry I have noted two interesting facts. In the first place, in proportion to the whole use of Nature, the use of Nature in similitudes is very much less in the transition than in the classical poetry. In the second place, in no other way of using Nature was the changed conception of the outer world so slow to manifest itself. Stock similes persisted even in authors who, in other respects, gave clear evidence of the new spirit. It was apparently easier to be original and individual in a new realm, than to break away from the established conventions of an accepted literary form.

As another outcome of the recognized correspondence between Nature and life the facts of Nature become, as it were, an allegory of human experience. From Dyer on there is a strain of pensive, gently didactic moralizing drawn from the poet’s observation of Nature. A river, however beautiful in itself because of its ceaseless motion, its shifting colors, its varied banks, its progress to the sea, is transformed in the poet’s mind into a symbol of the vicissitudes and the final goal of life. Of the more obvious analogies of this sort we find many examples, but of the highly imaginative use of Nature whereby the external fact, however truly and beautifully perceived, seems hardly thought of except as a symbol of the hidden things of the spirit and of the life to come, we find almost no examples outside of Blake.

The use of Nature in connection with man’s joys or sorrows may be lyrical or it may be dramatic in tone. Under the lyrical use of Nature may be classed the numerous passages in which the poet dwells upon his youth and the early joy he had in forest, stream, and field. The homesick longing, the genuine human feeling, and the marks of local fidelity to fact make this use of Nature usually excellent. It often takes the form of an apostrophe to some specific river or grove or hill. This autobiographic use of Nature is well exemplified in Thomson, Akenside, Beattie, Langhorne, Mickle, Bruce, and Cowper. Again, the poet recounts with lyrical fervor his debt to Nature. He gives thanks for content, joy, peace, serenity, or he implores Nature to appease the longings of his sick heart, to restore his soul to health. In either case there is a mingling of human emotions and details from Nature. Such passages may easily be feebly hysterical, but sometimes as in Dyer, Beattie, Akenside, Langhorne, and Cowper, they are marked by genuine beauty and pathos as well as by directness of vision. Perhaps the best examples of scenes thus indissolubly connected with phases of spiritual experience are Bowles’ sonnets, and unquestionably the highest purely lyrical use of Nature is in Burns’ songs.

Nature is used dramatically when it is made the appropriate background or accompaniment of human life. This use of Nature may be merely to intensify the reader’s impression by certain effects of harmony or contrast. Night, for instance, is considered the appropriate setting for reflections on man’s mortality, as in Young and Parnell. A certain sort of scenery becomes the conventionally fit background for romantic aspirations and dejections, as in all the sentimental melancholy poets. But oftener Nature is not merely a background. It is mingled with the thought and action. This is true of most of the reflective, moralizing poetry, and is true in a more dramatic sense in such pastorals as Ramsay’s and Gay’s where it is impossible to think of the people and their doings apart from the Nature about them. A similar dramatic use of Nature is to be seen in Gray, in Collins, in Ossian, and, in a briefer form, in the Ballads. It is, however, in romantic fiction that this use of Nature is most abundant during the eighteenth century. As background, as accompaniment, and further, even as a force contributing to the progress of the story by its determining influence on mood and character, external Nature plays an important part. This background, indeed, sometimes becomes unduly important, almost usurping the place of the picture, as in Mrs. Radcliffe’s romances.

Nature may, finally, be regarded not only as making a sensuous appeal to man, or as entering in some way into relationship with him, but as having an independent and separate existence. The poet who thus conceives of Nature gives little detailed external description; nor does he think of a scene in its human connotations, but he goes through facts and perceives the spirit of the scene, the essential qualities that make it what it is. Of such use of Nature we find few eighteenth-century examples. It demands not only Wordsworth’s wise passiveness of mood, and clarity of vision, and depth of feeling, but likewise the power to speak the inevitable word.

The detailed study of a barren field in its most barren aspect would be inexcusably dull and dreary from any but the historical point of view. The moment that point of view is adopted interest begins. The study of literature as a growth, and evolution, gives a new significance to periods of transition. The pleasure of the biologist in the lower forms of life is paralleled by the delight of the student of literature in tracing out the first vague, ineffective attempts to express ideas that are afterward regnant.

The final effect of the present study is one of surprise to find how completely the ideas of the early nineteenth-century poetry of Nature were represented in the germ in the eighteenth century. The whole impression is that before the work of such men as Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Scott there was a great stir of getting ready. The love of Nature was awake in the hearts of men. Their eyes were open to her beauty. Their ears drank in her harmonies. Their spirits were conscious of her higher gifts. Before Wordsworth most of his characteristic thoughts on Nature had received fairly explicit statement.

We note also the vitality of the impulse toward Nature as indicated by the many directions in which it pushed out and demanded expression. With little self-conscious direction and independently of each other apparently, the various arts were irresistibly impelled to some sort of expression of the new interest in the external world. Nor can we ignore the fact that behind all forms of art expression there must have been the great impulsive force of a love of Nature active in the hearts of the mute inglorious many.

When at the end of such a period of preparation the great poet comes, he is great by virtue of his power to penetrate beneath literary conventions and to give free, vigorous, adequate expression to the struggling, half-articulate thoughts and feelings of his own age. He is not an inexplicable, isolated phenomenon. He has his natural place in the development. The profound significance of the work that marks an epoch in thought is that it not only directs the future, but it sums up the past.

INDICES

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL INDEX

COLLECTIONS

“British Novelists, An Edition with Essays and Lives.” Ed. Anne Letitia Barbauld. 50 vols. London, 1810.

“British Poets, Less-Known.” Ed. C. C. Clarke. 3 vols. Edinburgh, 1868.

“British Poets, Works of the.” Ed. Thomas Park. 42 vols. “Supplement.” 6 vols. London, 1805–1808.

“British Poets.” Ed. Robert Anderson. 13 vols. Edinburgh, 1794.

“Collection of Poems by Several Hands.” Ed. R. Dodsley. 6 vols. London, 1755–1758. “Supplement,” Ed. Pearch. 4 vols. 1783.

“Collection of Voyages and Travels in All Parts of the World.” Ed. John Pinkerton. 17 vols. London, 1809.

“English Poets, Later.” Ed. Robert Southey. 3 vols. London, 1807.

“English Poets, The Works of.” Ed. Dr. Samuel Johnson. 63 vols. London, 1779–1781.

“English Poets from Chaucer to Cowper.” Ed. Alexander Chalmers. 21 vols. London, 1810.

“Fugitive Poets, Classical Arrangement of.” Ed. John Bell. 8 vols. London, 1789.

TEXTS AND BOOKS OF REFERENCE

Addison, Joseph. “Works.” 6 vols. Bohn Ed., London, 1892.

Akenside, Mark. “Poetical Works.” Ed. Dyce. London, 1885.

Amory, Thomas. “Life of John Buncle.” 3 vols. London, 1825.

Armstrong, John. “Poems.” Park’s “British Poets,” Vol. 34.

Armstrong, Sir Walter. “Gainsborough and His Place in British Art.” Scribners, 1898.

Badeslade. “Views of Kent,” 1722.

Bage, Robert. “Hermsprong.” Mrs. Barbauld’s “British Novelists.”

Baily, J. T. Herbert. “George Morland” (“Connoisseur,” Extra Number), 1906.

Beattie, James. “Poetical Works.” Aldine Ed., London.

Beckford, William. “Vathek.”

Biese, Alfred. “Die Entwickelung des Naturgefühls im Mittelalter und der Neuzeit.” Leipzig, 1892.

Blackmore, Richard. “Poems.” Dr. Johnson’s “English Poets,” Vol. 23.

Blair, Robert. “Poems.” Chalmers’ “English Poets,” Vol. 15.

Blake, William. “Works.” Eds. Ellis and Yeats. 3 vols. London, 1893.

Blomfield, Reginald, and Thomas, Inigo. “The Formal Garden.” London, 1892.

Blümner, Hugo. “Die Farbenbezeichnungen bei den römischen Dichtern.” Berlin, 1895.

Boswell, James. “Life of Dr. Johnson.” Ed. Birkbeck Hill. 6 vols. Oxford, 1887.

Boulton, William B. “Thomas Gainsborough.”

Bowles, William Lisle. “Poetical Works.” Ed. C. C. Clarke. Edinburgh, 1868.

Boyse, Samuel. “Poems.” Chalmers’ “English Poets,” Vol. 14.

Brand, J. “Brief Description of Orkney, Zetland,” etc. Pinkerton’s “Collection,” Vol. 3.

“Britannia Illustrata.” Knyff and Kip. London, 1709.

Britton, John. “Fine Arts in England,” 1805.

Brooke, Henry. “The Fool of Quality.” 3 vols. New York, 1860.

Brooke, Mrs. “History of Lady Julia Mandeville.” Mrs. Barbauld’s “British Novelists.” “The History of Emily Montagu.” 4 vols. London, 1769.

Brooke, Stopford A. “Theology in the English Poets.” London, 1891.

Broome, William. “Poems.” Dr. Johnson’s “English Poets,” Vol. 43.

Brown, Dr. John. “Poems.” Anderson’s “British Poets,” Vol. 10. “Description of Keswick.” Bell’s “Fugitive Poets,” Vol. 2, Notes.

Browne, Isaac Hawkins. Bell’s “Fugitive Poets.”

Bruce, Michael. “Poems.” Anderson’s “British Poets,” Vol. 11, Pt. 1.

Bryan, Michael. “Dictionary of Painters and Engravers.” London, 1884.

Brydall, Robert. “Art in Scotland.” London, 1859.

Buckingham, Duke of. “Poems.” Dr. Johnson’s “English Poets,” Vol. 25.

Burnet, Thomas. “The Sacred Theory of the Earth.” 2 vols. London, 1759.

Burney, Fanny. “Evelina.” London, 1892. “Cecilia.” 2 vols. London, 1890.

Burns, Robert. “Works.” Ed. William Scott Douglas. London, 1891.

Burroughs, John. “Fresh Fields.” Boston, 1885.

Butler, Samuel. “Poems.” Dr. Johnson’s “English Poets,” Vols. 6 and 7.

Chambers, Sir William. “Dissertation on Oriental Gardens.” London, 1772.

Chapman, George. “Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey.” Ed. R. H. Shepherd. London, 1885.

Charlanne, Louis. “L’influence française en Angleterre au XVII^e siècle.” Paris, 1906.

Chaucer, Geoffrey. “Poetical Works.” 6 vols. Aldine Ed., London, 1883.

Collins, William. “Poetical Works.” Ed. M. M. Thomas. Aldine Ed., London.

Congreve, William. “Poems.” Dr. Johnson’s “English Poets,” Vol. 29.

Conway, W. M. “The Artistic Development of Gainsborough and Reynolds.”

Cooper, J. G. “Poems.” Chalmers’ “English Poets,” Vol. 15.

Coventry, Francis. “Poems.” Dodsley’s “Collection,” Vol. 4. “Pompey the Little.” Mrs. Barbauld’s “British Novelists,” Vol. 23.

Cowley, Abraham. “Poems.” Dr. Johnson’s “English Poets,” Vols, 1 and 2.

Cowper, William. “Poetical Works.” Ed. William Benham. New York, 1889.

Crabbe, George. “Poetical Works.” 8 vols. London, 1851.

Cunningham, Allen. “British Painters.” London, 1879.

Dalton, Dr. John. “Poems.” Bell’s “Fugitive Poets,” Vol. 2.

Davenport, Cyril. “Mezzotints.” Methuen, 1904.

Defoe, Daniel. “The Life and Strange Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe.” Ed. G. A. Aitken. London, 1895.

Denham, John. “Poems.” Dr. Johnson’s “English Poets,” Vol. 9.

Downing, A. J. “Landscape Gardening and Rural Architecture.” New York, 1860.

Dryden, John. “Works.” 9 vols. Eds. Scott and Saintsbury. Edinburgh, 1882.

Duck, Stephen. “Poems.” Southey’s “Later English Poets,” Vol. 2.

Dyer, John. “Poems.” Dr. Johnson’s “English Poets,” Vol. 53.

Evelyn, John. “The Diary of John Evelyn from 1641 to 1705.” Ed. William Bray. London, 1890.

Falconer, William. “Poetical Works.” Aldine Ed., London, 1882. “Famous Parks and Gardens of the World.” London, 1880.

Fenton, Elijah. “Poems.” Chalmers’ “English Poets,” Vol. 10.

Fielding, Henry. “Works.” 10 vols. Ed. Leslie Stephen. London, 1882.

Fielding, Sarah. “The Adventures of David Simple.” 2 vols. London, 1741.

Fischer, Ch. A. “Drei Studien zur englischen Litteraturgeschichte.” Gotha, 1892.

Fletcher, A. E. “Gainsborough.” Scribner’s Sons, 1904.

Fletcher, Beaumont. “Richard Wilson.” Scribner’s Sons, 1908.

Frankau, Julia. “Eighteenth-Century Colour-Prints,” 1900.

Fulcher, Thomas. “Life of Gainsborough,” 1856.

Garth, Sir Samuel. “Poems.” Dr. Johnson’s “English Poets,” Vol. 20.

Gay, John. “Poems.” Dr. Johnson’s “English Poets,” Vols. 41 and 42.

Gilpin, William. “Observations, Relative Chiefly to Picturesque Beauty.” 11 vols. 1783–1809.

Goodwin, Gordon. “British Mezzotinters. James McArdell.” London, Bullen, MCMIII.

Gosse, Edmund. “Seventeenth Century Studies.” London, 1885. “From Shakespeare to Pope.” New York, 1885. “A History of Eighteenth Century Literature.” New York, 1891.

Gower, F.S.A., Lord Ronald Sutherland. “Sir Joshua Reynolds, F.R.A.” Bell & Sons, 1902.

Grainger, James. “Poems.” Chalmers’ “English Poets,” Vol. 14.

Graves, Richard. “The Spiritual Quixote.” 3 vols., 1773.

Gray, Thomas. “Works.” Ed. Edmund Gosse. 4 vols. New York, 1890.

Green, Matthew Paris. Chalmers’ “English Poets,” Vol. 15.

Hamilton, Rev. Wm. “Letters from Antrim.” Pinkerton’s “Collection,” Vol. 3.

Hassel, J. “Tour to the Isle of Wight.” Pinkerton’s “Collection,” Vol. 2.

Hastings, Thomas. “Etchings from the Works of Wilson in the Ford Collection,” 1825.

Hawkesworth, John. “Almoran and Hamet.” Mrs. Barbauld’s “British Novelists.”

Hill, Aaron. “Poems.” Anderson’s “British Poets,” Vol. 8.

Howe, Walter. Ed. of “The Gardener: As Considered in Literature by Some Polite Writers.” G. P. Putnam’s Sons.

Howell, James. “Epistolae Ho-Elianae.” London, 1737.

Hughes, John. “Poems.” Dr. Johnson’s “English Poets,” Vol. 22.

Humboldt, Alexander von. “Kosmos.” 4 vols. Stuttgart, 1890.

Hutchinson, W. “An Excursion to the Lakes in Westmoreland and Cumberland.” London, 1776.

Inchbald, Mrs. “A Simple Story.” Mrs. Barbauld’s “British Novelists.”

Jago, Richard. “Poems.” Anderson’s “British Poets,” Vol. 11.

Jenyns, Soame. “Poems.” Bell’s “Fugitive Poets,” Vol. 1.

Johnson, Samuel. “Works.” 9 vols. Oxford English Classics, 1825.

King, William. “Poems.” Dr. Johnson’s “English Poets,” Vol. 20.

Knight, Richard Payne. “The Landscape, A Didactic Poem,” 1794.

Langhorne, John. “Poems.” “British Poets,” Vol. 11.

Langley, Batty. “New Principles of Gardening,” 1728.

Laprade, Victor de. “La sentiment de la nature chez les modernes.” Paris, 1870.

Lecky, W. E. H. “History of England in the Eighteenth Century.” 8 vols. New York, 1882.

Lee, Vernon. “Euphorion.” Boston, 1885.

Lennox, Mrs. “The Female Quixote.” Mrs. Barbauld’s “British Novelists.”

“Les délices de la Grande Bretagne et de l’Irlande.” Leyden, 1707.

Logan, John. “British Poets,” Vol. 11.

London, J. C. “Encyclopaedia of Gardening.” London, 1871.

Lyttleton, Lord. “Poems.” Dr. Johnson’s “English Poets,” Vol. 56.

Mackenzie, Henry. “The Man of Feeling.” “Julia de Roubigné.” Mrs. Barbauld’s “British Novelists.”

Macpherson, James. “Poems of Ossian.” Ed. Dr. Blair. Tauchnitz Ed. Leipzig, 1847.

McLaughlin, Edward T. “Studies in Mediaeval Life and Literature.” New York, 1894.

Mallet, David. “Poems.” Dr. Johnson’s “English Poets,” Vol. 53.

Manson, James A. “George Morland.”

Marriott, Mr. “Poems.” Dodsley’s “Supplement,” Vol. 4.

Martin, Mr. “Description of the Western Islands of Scotland.” Pinkerton’s “Collection,” Vol. 3.

Marvell, Andrew. “Works.” 4 vols. Ed. Grosart. Fuller Worthies’ Library, 1875.

Mason, William. “Poems.” London, 1764. “The English Garden.” Jencks’s “Rural Poetry.”

Mendes, Moses. “The Seasons.” Bell’s “Fugitive Poets,” Vol. 6.

Mickle, Wm. J. “Poems.” Park’s “British Poets,” Vol. 34.

Miller, Hugh. “Impressions of England and Its People.” London, 1847.

Milton, John. “Poetical Works.” 3 vols. Ed. Masson. New York, 1894.

Monkhouse, Cosmo. “The Earlier English Water-Colour Painters.” Suley & Co., 1897.

Montagu, Lady Mary Wortley. “Letters and Works.” 2 vols. London, 1887.

Moore, Dr. “Zeluco.” Mrs. Barbauld’s “British Novelists.”

Nettleship, J. T. “George Morland” (“Portfolio,” Dec. 1898).

Nichols, Rose Standish. “English Pleasure Gardens.”

Oliphant, Mrs. M. O. W. “The Reign of Queen Anne.” The Century Co., 1894.

Paltock, Robert. “The Life and Adventures of Peter Wilkins.” 2 vols. London, 1884.

Parnell, Thomas. “Poetical Works,” London, 1890.

Pattison, William. “Poems.” Anderson’s “British Poets.”

Pennant, Thomas. “Tours in Scotland.” Pinkerton’s “Collection,” Vol. 3.

Pennecuik, Alexander. “Works in Prose and Verse.” Leith, 1815.

Percy, Bishop. “Reliques of Ancient English Poetry.” 3 vols. Ed. H. B. Wheatley. London, 1891.

Perry, T. S. “English Literature in the Eighteenth Century.” New York, 1883.

Petrarca, Francesco. “Lettere Famigliari.” 5 vols. Florence, 1863.

Phelps, W. L. “The Beginnings of the English Romantic Movement.” Boston, 1893.

Philips, Ambrose. Dr. Johnson’s “English Poets,” Vol. 14.

Philips, John. Dr. Johnson’s “English Poets,” Vol. 21.

Pitt, Christopher. “Poems.” Dr. Johnson’s “English Poets,” Vol. 43.

Pope, Alexander. “Works.” 10 vols. Eds. Edwin and Courthope. London, 1671.

Potter, R. “Poems.” Bell’s “Fugitive Poets,” Vol. 6.

Price, Sir Uvedale. “An Essay on the Picturesque.” London, 1794.

Prior, Matthew. Dr. Johnson’s “English Poets,” Vols. 30, 31.

Radcliffe, Mrs. “Romance of a Forest.” 3 vols. London, 1803. “Mysteries of Udolpho.” 4 vols. London, 1803.

Ramsay, Allan. “Poems.” 2 vols. Paisley, 1877.

Redgrave, Gilbert. “Water-Color Painting in England.” New York, 1892.

Reeve, Cora. “Old English Baron.” Mrs. Barbauld’s “British Novelists,” Vol. 21.

Repton, Humphrey. “Landscape Gardening and Landscape Architecture.” Ed. J. C. Loudon. London, 1840.

Richardson, Samuel. “Works.” Ed. Leslie Stephen. 12 vols. London, 1883.

Robertson, David. “Tour through the Isle of Man.” Pinkerton’s “Collection,” Vol. 2.

Roscommon, Earl of. “Poems.” Dr. Johnson’s “English Poets,” Vol. 10.

Rouquet. “L’etat des arts en Angleterre et L’Irlande.”

Rowe, Nicholas. “Poems.” Dr. Johnson’s “English Poets,” Vol. 26.

Ruskin, John. “Modern Painters,” 2 vols. Brantwood Ed. London, 1891.

Salaman, Malcolm C. “Old Engravers of England.” London, Cassell & Co., 1907.

Sandby, Thomas. “Thomas and Paul Sandby.”

Savage, Richard. Dr. Johnson’s “English Poets,” Vol. 45.

Scott, John. “Poems.” Anderson’s “British Poets,” Vol. 11, Pt. 2.

Shairp, J. C. “On the Poetic Interpretation of Nature.” Boston, 1890.

Shaw, Rev. Mr. “Tour to the West of England.” Pinkerton’s “Collection,” Vol. 2.

Shenstone, William. “Poems.” Dr. Johnson’s “English Poets,” Vol. 52. “Unconnected Thoughts on Landscape Gardening,” in “Works.” 3 vols. London, 1764–1769.

Sieveking, Albert. “Gardens Ancient and Modern,” 1899.

Smart, Christopher. “Poems.” Chalmers’ “English Poets,” Vol. 16. “Song to David.” Clarke’s “Less Known British Poets,” Vol. 3.

Smith, Mrs. Charlotte. “The Old Manor House.”

Smollett, Tobias. “Works.” 6 vols. London, 1890.

Somerville, William. “Poems.” Dr. Johnson’s “English Poets,” Vol. 47.

Spratt, Thomas. “Poems.” Dr. Johnson’s “English Poets,” Vol. 9.

Stephen, Leslie. “English Thought in the Eighteenth Century.” 2 vols. London, 1887.

Stepney, George. “Poems.” Dr. Johnson’s “English Poets.”

Sterne, Laurence. “Works.” Ed. James P. Browne. 2 vols. London, 1885.

Swift, Jonathan. “Poems.” Dr. Johnson’s “English Poets,” Vols. 39 and 40.

Switzer, Stephen. “The Nobleman, Gentleman, and Gardener’s Recreation,” 1715 (as “Ichnographia Rustica” 1718).

Symonds, J. A. “Essays Speculative and Suggestive.” London, 1893.

Taine, H. A. “Voyage en Italie.” Paris, 1893.

Temple, Sir William. “Works.” 2 vols. Ed. Jonathan Swift. London, 1831.

Thompson, William. “Poems.” Anderson’s “British Poets,” Vol. 10.

Thomson, James. “Poetical Works.” 2 vols. Aldine Ed., London, 1867.

Tickell, Thomas. “Poems.” Dr. Johnson’s “English Poets,” Vol. 26.

Veitch, John. “The Feeling for Nature in Scottish Poetry.” 2 vols. Edinburgh, 1887.

Waller, Edmund. “Poems.” Dr. Johnson’s “English Poets,” Vol. 8.

Walpole, Horace. “Works.” 5 vols. London, 1789.

Warton, Joseph. “Poems.” Clarke’s “Less Known British Poets,” Vol. 3. Dodsley’s “Collection,” Vol. 3. “An Essay on the Genius and Writings of Pope.” 2 vols. London, 1806.

Warton, Thomas. “Poems.” Anderson’s “British Poets,” Vol. II, Pt. 2.

Watts, Isaac. “Poems.” Dr. Johnson’s “English Poets,” Vol. 46.

Whateley, Thomas. “Observations on Modern Gardening.” London, 1798.

Whitehead, William. Anderson’s “British Poets,” Vol. II, Pt. 2.

Whitman, Alfred. “The Print Collector’s Handbook,” George Bell, 1901.

Winchilsea, Lady (Anne Finch). “Miscellany Poems on Several Occasions. Written by a Lady,” 1713. “The Poems of Anne, Countess of Winchilsea.” Ed. Myra Reynolds. The University of Chicago Press, 1903.

Wordsworth, William. “Poetical Works.” New York, 1889.

Wright, Thomas, Esq. “The Life of Richard Wilson, Esq., R. A.” London, 1824.

Yalden, Thomas. “Poems.” Dr. Johnson’s “English Poets,” Vol. 10.

Young, Arthur. “Tour in Ireland.” Pinkerton’s “Collection,” Vol. 3. “Tour through Southern Counties.” London, 1772. “Tour in Ireland.” 2 vols. London, 1780. “A Farmer’s Tour.” 4 vols. London, 1771.

Young, Edward. “Poems.” Dr. Johnson’s “English Poets,” Vols. 50, 51, 52.

GENERAL INDEX

Addison, Joseph, 8, 21, 25, 31, 33, 45, 52, 80, 82, 83, 203–4, 252, 255, 264, 265.

Akenside, Mark, 12, 19, 30, 47, 112, 123–27, 147, 331, 350, 355–63 (_passim_).

Alexander, William, 322.

Allan, David, 314.

Amherst, The Hon. Alicia, 247, 256.

Amory, Thomas, 9, 208–9, 232, 235, 328, 342, 344.

“Anecdotes of Painting” (Walpole), 262, 274, 278, 284, 310, 322.

“Apollo’s Edict” (Swift), 35.

“Appleton House, Upon” (Marvell), 37, 38, 80.

Armstrong, John, 32, 45, 59, 78, 112, 121, 329, 339, 343, 346.

Armstrong, Sir Walter, 282, 298, 306, 308.

Arnold, Matthew, 62, 63.

Attiret, Père, 271.

Bacon, Francis, 248, 256, 264, 265.

Badeslade, Mr., 248.

Bage, Robert, 216.

Bailey, J. T. H., 320.

“Ballads,” 40, 159–61, 363.

“Bard, The” (Gray), 135, 342.

Barlow, Francis, 285.

Barret, George, 312, 313, 325, 342.

Barrington, Mr., 252.

Beattie, James, 147, 167–73, 222, 331, 333, 337, 342, 344, 345, 346, 349, 353, 356, 358, 359, 361, 363.

Becket, Isaac, 277.

Beckford, William, 215, 317.

Beechey, Sir Thomas, 284.

Bellers, William, 291–92, 310, 342.

Biese, Alfred, xv, xvii, 13, 14, 321.

Birch, W., 300.

Blackmore, Richard, 42.

Blair, Robert, 30, 44, 112, 128–29, 158.

Blake, William, 147, 152, 177–80, 222, 342, 344, 362.

Blomfield and Thomas, 247, 255.

Blümner, Hugo, 48.

Bol, Cornélius, 284.

Boswell, James, 241.

Boul, Philip, 284.

Boulton, William, 305, 306, 308.

Bowles, W. L., 142, 147, 199–202, 335, 342, 350, 363.

Boydell, John, 293, 300, 311, 312, 341, 342.

Boyse, Samuel, 112, 118–19, 354.

Brand, John, 224, 327.

Bray, Mr., 241, 242–43.

Bridgeman, Thomas, 259–60.

“Brief Description of the Orkneys” (Brand), 224–25.

“British Painters” (Cunningham), 294, 296.

Brooke, Henry, 212.

Brooke, Mrs., 211, 222, 352.

Brooke, Stopford, xx.

Brooking, Charles, 288.

Broome, William, 19, 20, 21, 26.

Brown, John, 147–48, 227, 232, 235, 240, 241, 323, 328, 337, 338, 342, 344.

Brown, Lancelot, 265–69.

Browning, Mrs., 62, 63.

Bruce, Michael, 147, 161–63, 331, 348, 350, 356.

Brydall, Robert, 294.

Buck, Samuel, 289.

“Buncle, Life of John,” 9, 208–9, 222, 328.

Burney, Fanny, 215.

Burns, Robert, 147, 179, 194–95, 222, 333, 334, 342, 347, 348, 349, 353, 357, 363.

Burroughs, John, xx.

Bushe, Mr., 225.

Butler, Samuel, 34.

Butts, John, 294.

Byrne, William, 300, 301.

“Caleb Williams” (Godwin), 216.

Canot, P. C., 288, 300.

“Castle of Indolence” (Thomson), 85, 322.

“Castle of Otranto” (Walpole), 212.

“Chace, The” (Somerville), 112, 113, 155.

Chambers, Sir William, 271–72.

Charlanne, Louis, 246.

Chaucer, Geoffrey, xix, 40, 62, 63.

Chinese Influence, 268, 271–72.

“Clarissa Harlowe,” 205.

Classical Period, subdivisions, 1–2; preference for city life, 2–7; dislike of grand or terrible in Nature, 7; mountains, 7–15; ocean, 15–18; winter, 18–19; dislike of remote or mysterious, 19; sky, 19–23; pleasure in gentler forms, 24; description traditional and bookish, 25–27; similitudes, 27–35; subordination of nature to man, 36–39; poetic diction, 39–46; imitative character of poetry, 46–53; man the supreme interest, 53–57; summary, 57.

Cleveley, John, 313, 322.

Cleveley, Robert, 314.

Coleridge, S. T., v, 62, 63, 120, 121, 199, 345, 349, 364.

Collins, William, xix, 112, 121–23, 146, 329, 335, 337, 344, 345, 346, 363.

Congreve, William, 19, 26, 30, 36.

Constable, John, vi, 294, 304, 307, 317, 321.

“Constable, Memoir of the Life of John” (C. R. Leslie), 304, 307.

Cooper, J. G., 112, 127–28, 343, 356, 358.

“Cooper’s Hill” (Denham), 32, 80.

“Country Walk, The” (Dyer), 102, 106, 107, 330, 332.

Coventry, Francis, 112, 132, 206, 261, 342, 345.

Cowley, Abraham, 1, 2, 7, 20, 21, 29, 30, 31, 32, 34, 37, 41, 42, 45, 55, 56.

Cowper, William, xix, xx, 62, 64, 88, 147, 173, 184–94, 196, 222, 266; in General Summary _passim_.

Cozens, Alexander, 292, 311.

Cozens, John Robert, 292, 317–18, 342.

Crabbe, George, 68, 79, 105, 147, 180–84, 333, 342.

Cradock, Joseph, 239, 323.

Cumberland, Richard, 147, 176–77, 241.

Cunningham, Allan, 294, 296, 314.

“Cyder” (J. Philips), 11, 20, 59, 60, 146, 155.

Dalton, Dr. John, 112, 138–39, 146, 226, 232, 240, 241, 340, 347, 350.

Danckerts, Hendrik, 284.

Davenport, Cyril, 277, 280.

“David Simple” (Sarah Fielding), 205.

Dayes, Edward, 316.

“Délices de la Grande Bretagne et de l’Irlande,” 248.

Denham, John, 1, 7, 11, 32, 80.

“Description of the Western Islands of Scotland” (Martin), 224.

“Descriptive Poem, A” (Dalton), 138, 226, 241.

“Deserted Village, The” (Goldsmith), 166.

Devis, Anthony, 300, 311, 312, 322, 342.

“Diary of John Evelyn,” 8, 9, 247.

Diction, 20–24, 39–49, 60, 92–93, 99–100, 101, 105, 109, 124.

Downing, A. J., 263.

Dryden, John, 1, 2, 4, 15, 19, 29, 30, 31, 33, 34, 40, 41, 42, 43, 45, 46, 47, 50, 51, 121, 342.

Duck, Stephen, 111.

Dyer, John, 30, 31, 33, 42, 45, 72, 101–4, 109, 111, 112, 117, 175; in General Summary _passim_.

“Eclogues” (Gay), 64, 66.

“Eclogues” (Virgil), 51, 66.

Edwardes, Edwards, 298.

“Eighteenth Century Colour Prints” (Frankau), 280.

“Eighteenth Century, English Literature of the” (Perry), xx, 12.

“Eighteenth Century, English Thought in the” (Stephen), xx.

“Eighteenth Century, History of England in the” (Lecky), xx, 14.

“Eighteenth Century Literature, A History of” (Gosse), xx, 64, 163.

“Elegy in a Country Churchyard” (Gray), 133–35.

Elliott, Mr., 300.

“Emily Montague” (Mrs. Brooke), 211–12, 222.

“England and English People” (Miller), 262.

“England, Fine Arts in” (Britton), 300.

“England, The Art of” (Ruskin), 303.

“Englischen Litteraturgeschichte, Drei Studien zur” (Fischer), xx.

“English Literature, An Illustrated History of” (Gosse and Garnett), 274.

“English Masters, Old” (Van Dyke), 282.

“English Poets” (Ward), 61.

“English Romantic Movement, The” (Phelps), xx, 133.

“English Water-Colour Painters, The Earlier” (Monkhouse), 290, 292, 313, 315, 317, 318.

“Engravers of England, Old” (Salaman), 28, 285.

Engravers. _See_ under Becket, Byrne, Canot, Elliott, Green, McArdell, Major, Mason, Ravenet, Reynolds, Rooker, Smith, Vivares, Watson, Watts, Woollett.

“Enthusiast, The” (Warton), 139, 140, 141, 145, 332.

“Entwickelung des Naturgefühls, Die” (Biese), xvii, 13, 14, 18, 21, 321.

“Epistle, Fourth” (Pope), 258, 272, 328.

“Essays Speculative and Suggestive” (Symonds), xx, 24.

“Etat des arts en Angleterre” (Rouquet), 287.

“Euphorion” (Lee), xx, 24, 160.

“Evelina” (Burney), 215.

Evelyn, John, 8, 55, 247, 265.

“Evergreen, The,” 75, 332.

Falconer, Robert, 16–18, 21, 44.

“Farbenzeichnungen bei den römischen Dichtern” (Blümner), 48.

Farington, Joseph, 311, 315, 316, 342.

“Ferdinand Count Fathom” (Smollett), 207.

Fielding, Henry, 118, 205.

Fielding, Sarah, 205.

“Fleece, The” (Dyer), 30, 31, 101, 102, 103, 104, 155, 331, 342.

Fletcher, A. E., 308.

Fletcher, Beaumont, 296, 298, 303.

“Fool of Quality” (Brooke), 212.

Ford Collection of Wilson’s pictures, 302.

“Forest Scenery” (Gilpin), 313.

Fox, Charles, 321.

Frankau, Julia, 280.

“Fresh Fields” (Burroughs), xx.

Fulcher, G. W., 305.

Gainsborough, Thomas, 278, 281–84, 304–9, 311, 315, 320, 328. For books on, _see_ under Sir Walter Armstrong, Boulton, Fulcher, Horne.

Galleries, Art: British Museum Print Room, 290, 292, 293, 300, 302, 311, 318; Dulwich, 274, 279, 286, 302; Glasgow, 302; Hampton Court, 275, 277, 286; Manchester, 302; National, 274, 279, 286, 288, 290, 296, 304, 306, 319; South Kensington, 281, 285, 288, 289, 291, 292, 302, 304, 313, 316, 317, 318, 319; Wallace, 282, 286; Whitworth Institute (Manchester), 289; Royal Academy, 296.

“Garden, Kensington” (Tickell), 42.

Gardening Exhibition, 249.

Gardens, xviii, 132, 133, 208, 231, 238, 242–43, 261–72.

Gardens, Books on. _See_ under Amherst, Attiret, Bacon, Barrington, Blomfield and Thomas, Chambers, Coventry, Downing, Evelyn, Goldsmith, Hazlitt, Howe, Langley, Lawson, London, Mason, Nichols, Repton, Shenstone, Sieveking, Switzer, Temple, Walpole, Whateley.

Gardens, Oriental, 271–72.

Gardens, Ruins in, 270–71.

Garth, Dr. Samuel, 21, 24, 25, 46.

Gay, John, 6, 20, 21, 29, 30, 45, 51, 59, 64–68, 73, 75, 77, 78, 83, 92, 114, 121, 167, 288; in General Summary _passim_.

Geikie, Sir Archibald, xx.

“Gentle Shepherd, The” (Ramsay), 73, 75, 76, 77, 314, 331.

Gilpin, Sawrey, 313.

Gilpin, William, 103, 227, 235–39, 241, 268, 269, 313, 316, 327, 328, 343, 357.

Girtin, Thomas, 318.

Goldsmith, Oliver, xix, 147, 165–67, 212, 262, 265, 271, 333.

Goodwin, Gordon, 280.

Gosse, Edmund, xx, 1, 61, 64, 120, 127, 163, 274.

Gower, Lord R. S., 279, 280, 281.

Graeme, James, 147, 155–56.

Graves, Algernon, 310.

Gray, Thomas, xix, 46, 52, 112, 121, 132, 133–36, 146, 147, 172, 176, 230–33, 235, 241, 310; in General Summary _passim_.

Green, Valentine, 280.

Greene, Matthew, 112, 116, 146.

Greenhill, John, 276.

“Grongar Hill” (Dyer), 42, 72, 102, 103, 104, 105, 106, 107, 349.

“Guardian, The,” 82, 253, 256, 259, 349.

Hagley Park, 261, 262.

Hamilton, Mr., 225, 262.

Hamilton, William, xviii, 112, 117–18, 350, 352, 354, 356, 359.

Hanscome, Elizabeth, xx.

Hassel, Mr., 244.

Hastings, Thomas, 298, 302.

Hawkesworth, John, 210.

Hazlitt, William, 2, 256.

Hearne, Thomas, 315, 322, 325.

“Hermsprong” (Bage), 216.

Highmore, Joseph, 277.

Hill, Aaron, 5, 121.

Hill, Joseph, 185.

“History of Lady Julia Mandeville” (Mrs. Brooke), 211.

Homer, xix, 17, 39, 54.

Hoppner, John, 284.

Horace, 49, 51, 98, 113, 121.

Horne, H. P., 283.

Houseman, Mr., 244.

Howe, Walter, 265.

Howell, James, 8.

Hudson, Thomas, 277.

Huet, D. P., 256.

Hughes, John, 19, 20, 21, 30, 32, 37.

Humboldt, Alexander von, xv, 12, 54, 321.

“Humphrey Clinker” (Smollett), 213–14, 289.

Hutchinson, Mr., 10, 227, 240–41, 324.

“Hymn” (Thomson), 113, 354.

Ibbetson, J. C., 316.

Inchbald, Mrs., 216.

“Influence française en Angleterre” (Charlanne), 246.

Ireland, 225, 228, 230, 294, 295.

Irwin, Viscount, 265.

Jago, Richard, 112, 131, 147, 269, 342, 348, 349.

Jameson, Mrs., 281.

Jervas, Charles, 277.

Johnson, Dr. Samuel, 3, 10, 109, 121, 122, 209–10, 224, 241, 242, 338.

“Johnson, Life of Dr.,” 3, 10.

“Jonathan Wild” (Fielding), 205.

“Joseph Andrews” (Fielding), 205.

“Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides” (Boswell), 241.

“Journey through England” (Macky), 225.

“Journey to the Hebrides” (Johnson), 241.

“Julia de Roubigné” (Mackenzie), 215.

Keats, John, v, 62, 63, 127, 339.

“Kent, Views of” (Badeslade), 248.

Kent, William, 140, 255, 256, 259, 260, 261, 264, 268, 328.

Kip and Knyff, 248, 249.

Klenze, Camillo von, xx.

Kneller, Sir Godfrey, 276–77, 278, 327.

Knight, R. P., 266–68, 317.

“Kosmos,” xv, 12, 55, 321.

Lake District, The English, 10, 14, 138–39, 148, 150, 176, 226–30, 231, 232, 234–35, 238, 241–42, 243, 244, 292, 295, 307–8, 310, 312, 315, 316, 321, 323, 324.

“Lakes, An Excursion to the” (Hutchinson), 10, 240–41.

“Lakes, A Guide to the” (West), 241.

“Lakes, A Journal in the” (Gray), 232, 241, 310.

Lambert, George, 290.

Lambert, James, 312.

Landscape Backgrounds. _See_ under artist’s names: Beechey, Gainsborough, Highmore, Hoppner, Hudson, Jervas, Kneller, Lely, Mytens, Oliver, Opie, Raeburn, Reynolds, Richardson, Romney, Vandyck, Wissing.

Landscape Painting from 1660 to 1800: period 1660–1707, 284–87; period 1707–1755, 287–95; period 1755–1800, 295–320; artists in foreign lands, 321–22; dominance of foreign models, 322–26. _See also_ under names of artists; Alexander, Allan, Barlow, Barret, Bellers, Bol, Boul, Boydell, Buck, Cleveley, Constable, Cozens, Danckerts, Dayes, Devis, Farington, Fox, Gainsborough, Gilpin, Girtin, Hearne, Ibbetson, Lambert, Lankrink, Looten, Lorraine, Loutherbourg, Mengs, Monamy, Morland, Norris, Pars, Pether, Place, Pocock, Poussin, Rogers, Rosa, Runciman, Ruysdael, Sandby, Scott, Serres, Smith, Streater, Sybrecht, Taverner, Turner, Van de Velde, Vandiest, Van Wyck, Vernet, Verzagen, Webber, Wilson, Wootten, Zucarelli.

Landscape Painting, Books on. _See_ under following authors; Armstrong (Sir Walter), Baily, Biese, Boulton, Brydall, Cunningham, Davenport, Fletcher (A. E.), Fletcher (Beaumont), Frankau, Fulcher, Goodwin, Gower, Graves, Hastings, Horne, Leslie, Manson, Monkhouse, Nettleship, Peter Pindar, Reynolds, Rouquet, Ruskin, Salaman, Sandby (William), Smith (J. T.), Thornbury, Van Dyke, Walpole, Whitman, Wright.

Langhorne, John, 147, 148–51, 344, 349, 350, 352, 357, 358, 363.

Langley, Batty, 257–58, 271.

Lankrink, Henry, 284.

Latin, Imitation of, 46–51, 60, 98.

Lawson, William, 248.

Leasowes, 262–63.

Lecky, W. E. H., xx, 14.

Lee, Vernon, xx, 24.

Lely, Sir Peter, 270, 275–76, 277, 281, 284, 285.

Le Nôtre, 246, 247, 248, 327.

Lennox, Mrs., 207.

Leprade, Victor de, xvi.

Leslie, C. R., 304, 307.

“Letter from Keswick” (Brown), 14, 226–27, 241, 323, 328, 337, 338.

“Letters from Antrim” (Hamilton), 225.

Letters quoted: Beattie, 170; Bolingbroke, 6; Brown, 14, 226; Burns, 194; Cowper, 173, 184, 185, 186; Gainsborough, 305, 307, 309; Goethe, 14; Gray, 172, 231; Howell, 8; Lyttleton, 172; Montagu, 4; Petrarch, 12; Pope, 2, 3, 6, 18, 19, 82, 256; Thomson, 85, 95, 96, 108; Walker, 195; Walpole, 255.

Linton, Sir James D., 304.

Logan, John, 147, 163–64, 336, 339.

London, George, 246, 247.

Longford, Mr., 325.

Lock, Rev. John, 313.

Lock, William, 296, 298.

Looten, John, 284.

Lorraine, Claude, 264, 287, 291, 294, 312, 322, 323, 324.

Loutherbourg, James de, 314, 315.

Lowell, J. R., 33, 348.

Lyttleton, Lord, 5, 7, 18, 26, 148, 172, 261.

McArdell, J., 277, 280.

MacClintock, W. D., 93.

Mackenzie, Henry, 213, 215, 352.

McLaughlin, Edward T., xx, 13, 19, 23.

Macky, Mr., 225.

Macpherson, James, xx, 147, 156–59.

Major, Thomas, 305.

Mallet, David, 3, 33, 45, 84, 85, 107–9, 111, 112, 224; in General Summary _passim_.

“Man of Feeling, The” (Mackenzie), 213.

Manson, James A., 320.

Marriott, Mr., 27.

Martin, Mr., 224.

Marvell, Andrew, 2, 10, 34, 37, 38, 80, 87.

Mason, I., 291, 300.

Mason, William, 112, 132–33, 240, 250, 255, 256, 263–64, 270, 323, 324.

“Mediaeval Life and Literature” (McLaughlin), xx, 13, 19, 24.

Mendes, Moses, 112, 130–31, 339.

Mengs, Raphael, 284.

Mickle, W. J., 147, 153–55; in General Summary _passim_.

Miller, Hugh, 262.

Milton, John, xvii, xix, 2, 11, 30, 31, 33, 44, 47, 62, 63, 89, 93, 121, 132, 140, 142, 144, 156, 162, 200, 254, 256, 264.

“Minstrel, The,” 167, 172, 173, 331, 333, 346, 358, 361.

“Modern Painters” (Ruskin), xvi, 23, 54.

Monamy, Peter, 288, 325.

Monkhouse, Cosmo, 289, 292, 313, 315, 317, 318.

Montagu, Lady M. W., 18, 19, 265.

Morland, George, 285, 318–20. For books on, _see_ under authors: Bailey, Manson, Nettleship.

Moor Park, 250.

Morel, Leon, 201.

Mountains, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 59, 65, 68, 77, 99, 104, 131, 132, 135, 138–39, 140, 153, 156, 162, 170, 176, 208–9, 213–14, 220–21, 226–27, 231, 237, 238, 239, 240, 301, 307–8, 311, 312, 315, 317–18, 321, 341–42, 349–50.

“Mysteries of Udolpho” (Radcliffe), 219, 222.

Mytens, Daniel, 275.

“Naive und sentimentalische Dichtung” (Schiller), xv.

“Nature in German Literature, Treatment of” (Batt), xx.

“Nature in Old English Poetry, Feeling for” (Hanscome), xx, 11.

“Nature in Scottish Poetry, Feeling for” (Veitch), xviii, 18, 55, 81.

“Nature in Works of Nicholas Lenau, Treatment of” (Von Klenze), xx.

Nettleship, J. T., 320.

Nichols, Rose S., 248, 251.

“Night Thoughts” (Young), 21, 30, 120, 361.

“Nocturnal Revery” (Winchilsea), 62, 337, 348, 354.

Norris, John, 293, 294.

“Observations on the Faerie Queen” (Warton), 145.

“Observations on Picturesque Beauty” (Gilpin), 268.

Ocean, 15–18, 69, 99, 119–20, 154.

“Ode to Evening” (Collins), 329, 345.

“Old English Baron, The” (Reeve), 214.

“Old Manor House” (Mrs. Smith), 217–19.

Oliphant, Mrs., 277.

Oliver, Isaac, 274.

Opie, John, 284.

Paltock, Robert, 206.

“Pamela” (Richardson), 304–5.

“Paradise Lost” (Milton), 30, 31, 44, 46, 254, 334.

Parnell, Thomas, 12, 21, 26, 31, 33, 45, 48, 59, 68–71, 83, 106, 117, 271; in General Summary _passim_.

Pars, William, 322.

Pasquin, Anthony, 324.

“Pastorals” (A. Philips), 51, 60, 61, 66, 67, 80, 332.

“Pastorals” (Gay), 66–68.

“Pastorals” (Pope), 51.

Pattison, William, 59, 71–72, 331, 358.

Pennant, Thomas, 233–35, 240, 241, 344.

Pennecuik, Alexander, 9, 73, 225.

Percy, Bishop, 40, 159–61.

“Peregrine Pickle” (Smollett), 207.

Perry, T. S., xx, 12.

Peter Pindar. _See_ Wolcot.

“Peter Wilkins” (Paltock), 206.

Pether, Abraham, 316.

Petrarch, 12.

Phelps, W. L., xx, 133.

Philips, Ambrose, 30, 35, 51, 59, 60–61, 66, 82, 83, 332, 335, 339, 352, 356.

Philips, John, 11, 20, 58, 59–60, 146, 336, 341, 344, 356.

Pitt, Christopher, 19, 20, 21, 42, 45, 50.

Place, Francis, 285.

“Pleasures of the Imagination” (Akenside), 12, 123, 124, 125, 126, 331, 361.

Pocock, Nicholas, 314.

“Poetic Interpretation of Nature” (Veitch), xix, 59, 93.

“Pompey the Little” (Coventry), 206.

Pope, Alexander, xviii, 2, 3, 5, 12, 16, 18, 26, 30, 32, 33, 39, 40, 47, 48, 50, 51, 52, 57, 61, 66, 80, 81, 82, 83, 98, 111, 113, 121, 142, 146, 253, 255, 256, 258, 259, 264, 265, 272, 327.

“Pope, Essay on” (Warton), 81, 142, 143, 147, 333.

Portraiture, Landscape in. _See_ Landscape Backgrounds.

Potter, Rev. R., 136–37, 336, 342, 348, 349.

Poussin, Nicholas, 176, 262, 287, 322, 323, 324.

Price, Sir Uvedale, 267–68.

Prior, Matthew, 20, 21, 22, 26, 30, 32, 33.

“Quixote, The Spiritual” (Lennox), 267, 270.

Radcliffe, Mrs., 219–22, 241, 327, 328, 334, 343, 344, 348, 357.

Raeburn, Sir Henry, 284.

Ramsay, Allan, xviii, xix, 32, 59, 72–77, 83, 113, 143, 146; in General Summary _passim_.

“Rasselas” (Johnson), 209–11.

Rathbone, John, 316.

Ravenet, S. F., 288.

Reeve, Clara, 209–11.

“Reliques of Ancient Poetry” (Percy), 41, 159.

Relph, Joseph, 112, 128–29, 146, 147, 241, 336.

Repton, Humphrey, 256, 268–69, 327.

Reynolds, Sir Joshua, 278, 279–81, 283, 303. For books on, _see_ under authors: Davenport, Frankau, Goodwin, Gower, Salaman, Whitman.

Reynolds, S. W., 280.

Riccaltoun, Robert, 59, 78, 79, 346.

Richardson, Jonathan, 277.

Richardson, Samuel, 102, 204, 205, 207, 327.

“Ride over Skiddaw” (Radcliffe), 241.

Robertson, Mr., 245.

“Robinson Crusoe” (Defoe), 204.

“Roderick Random” (Smollett), 205.

Rogers, Mr., 294.

“Romance of a Forest” (Radcliffe), 219, 222.

Romney, George, 284.

Rooker, E. and M., 300, 301.

Rosa, Salvator, 177, 262, 264, 287, 322, 323, 324.

Rouquet, M., 287, 288, 295.

Rousseau, J. J., 14, 141.

Rudworth, Mr., 244.

Runciman, Alexander, 293.

Ruskin, John, xvi, 23, 54, 303, 318.

Ruysdael, Jacob I., 264, 285, 287, 323, 324.

Salaman, M. C., 280, 286.

Sandby, Paul, 290, 293, 311–12, 313, 341, 342.

“Sandby, Thomas and Paul” (Sandby), 311.

Sandby, William, 311.

Savage, Richard, 19, 29, 109–11, 336, 340, 346.

Scotland, 224, 231, 233, 234, 241–42, 244, 285, 287, 293, 294, 295, 312, 315, 318, 320, 338, 349.

“Scotland, Second Tour in” (Pennant), 233.

Scott, John, 19, 147, 173–76, 180, 193, 222, 310; in General Summary _passim_.

Scott, Samuel, 288, 310, 325.

Scott, Sir Walter, v, xvii, xx, 262, 349, 364.

“Seasons, The.” _See_ Thomson.

“Sentiment de la nature, La” (Laprade), xvi.

“Sentimental Journey, A” (Sterne), 213.

Serres, Dominic, 313.

Serres, J. T., 314, 325.

Seymour, James, 288.

Shairp, J. C., xix, 59, 77, 93.

“Shakespeare to Pope, From” (Gosse), 1.

Shakspere, William, xvi, xvii, xviii, xix, 41, 121, 142, 200.

Shaw, Rev. Mr., 244.

Shelley, P. B., v, xvii, 15, 62, 63, 121, 180, 339, 345, 346.

Shenstone, William, 5, 7, 19, 21, 26, 37, 45, 47, 48, 112, 113–16, 143, 146, 147, 175, 262–63, 269; in General Summary _passim_.

“Shepherd’s Week, The” (Gay), 64, 66.

“Shipwreck, The” (Falconer), 17, 21, 45.

Sheridan, P. B., 28.

Sieveking, A. F., 249, 257.

“Simple Story, A” (Inchbald), 216.

“Sir Charles Grandison” (Richardson), 207–8.

“Sir Launcelot Greaves” (Smollett), 210.

“Sir Roger de Coverley” (Addison), 203.

Smart, Christopher, 146, 147, 151–53.

Smith, Mrs. Charlotte, 216–19, 334.

Smith, George (of Chichester), 291, 324.

Smith, J. R., 277, 280.

Smith, J. T., 319.

Smith, Thomas (of Derby), 290, 292, 310, 325.

Smollett, Tobias, 205, 207, 210, 213–14, 289, 342, 350.

Somerville, William, 21, 30, 32, 41, 42, 112–13, 146, 147.

“Song to David” (Smart), 151.

Southcote, Philip, 261.

Southey, Robert, 128, 199.

“Spectator, The,” 82, 252.

Spenser, Edmund, xvii, 83, 121, 136, 142, 264.

Stephen, Leslie, xx.

Sterne, Laurence, 210, 213, 343.

Streater, Robert, 285.

Stubbs, George, 288, 311.

“Studies in Poetry and Philosophy” (Shairp), xx.

Swaine, Francis, 325.

Swift, Jonathan, 35, 92.

Switzer, Stephen, 254, 260.

Sybrecht, John, 284.

Symonds, J. A., xx, 24, 29.

“Symphones, Les” (Laprade), xxi.

Taine, H. A., 56.

“Task, The” (Cowper), 184, 185, 187, 188, 189, 190, 191, 192, 266, 361.

“Tatler, The,” 251.

Taverner, William, 289–90.

Temple, Sir William, 249–50, 265.

Tennyson, Alfred, 66, 180.

Theocritus, 51, 55.

“Theology in the English Poets” (Brooke), xx.

“Theory of the Earth” (Burnet), 9, 22.

Thompson, William, 112, 129–30.

Thomson, James, xvi, xvii, xviii, xix, xx, 32, 45, 46, 58, 59, 61, 64, 73, 78, 79, 80, 81, 83–101, 106, 107, 108, 109, 111, 113, 119, 121, 130, 140, 141, 142, 143, 167, 172, 174, 175, 190, 193, 196, 210, 272, 320, 322; in General Summary _passim_.

“Thomson, James: La vie et ses œuvres” (Morel), 101.

Thornbury, Walter, 315.

Tickell, Thomas, 12, 21, 29, 42, 52, 116.

“Tom Jones” (Fielding), 118, 205–6.

Tours. _See_ under Boswell, Brand, Bray, Brown, Bushe, Cradock, Gilpin, Gray, Hamilton, Hassell, Houseman, Hutchinson, Johnson, Macky, Martin, Pennant, Pennecuik, Robertson, Rudworth, Shaw, Walker, West, Young (Arthur).

“Trees, Thirty-two Species of” (Alex. Cozens), 311.

“Tristram Shandy” (Sterne), 210.

Turner, J. M. W., vi, 304, 318, 320, 327, 328, 343.

“Types of Scenery and Their Influence on Literature” (Geikie), xx.

Unwin, Rev. William, 185, 186.

Van de Velde, the Elder, 284, 286.

Van de Velde, the Younger, 284, 286, 287, 288, 325.

Vandiest, Adrien, 285.

Vandyck, Sir Anthony, 274, 275, 276, 277, 278, 279.

Van Dyke, John, 282.

Van Wyck, Jan, 285.

“Vathek” (Beckford), 215.

Veitch, John, xviii, 11, 18, 55, 81.

Vernet, C. J., 284.

Verzagen, Henry, 284.

“Vicar of Wakefield” (Goldsmith), 212.

“Village, The” (Crabbe), 181, 182.

Virgil, 263.

Vivares, François, 291, 310.

“Voyage en Italie” (Taine), 56.

Wales, 236, 239, 244, 293, 295, 300, 301, 311, 312, 315, 316, 320, 323, 349.

Walker, Mr., 244.

Waller, Edmund, 1, 7, 10, 15, 20, 21, 27, 29, 30, 31, 36, 37, 39, 43, 48, 327.

Walpole, Horace, 212, 250, 254, 255, 256, 259, 260, 262, 265, 274, 275, 277, 278, 284, 306, 310, 322.

Warton, Joseph, 81, 111, 112, 134, 139–43, 146, 147, 199, 200; in General Summary _passim_.

Warton, Thomas, 112, 143–45, 344, 346, 351.

Watson, Caroline, 280.

Watts, Isaac, 7, 20, 21, 30, 36, 50.

Watts, W., 300.

Webber, John, 322.

West, Mr., 227, 241, 324.

Whately, Thomas, 265.

Whitehead, William, 112, 145–46, 332, 356.

Whitman, Alfred, 280.

“Wilson, Etchings after Richard” (Hastings), 302.

Wilson, Richard, 287, 296–304, 309, 310, 311, 314, 315, 316, 328, 342. For books on Wilson _see_ under authors: Beaumont, Fletcher, Ruskin, Wright.

“Wilson, Studies and Designs by,” 302.

“Wilson, Thirty-seven Sketches and Designs by,” 302.

Winchilsea, Lady, vi, 23, 59, 61–64, 83, 117, 249, 271; in General Summary _passim_.

Wissing, William, 276.

Wolcot, John, 314.

Woollett, William, 301, 302.

Wootten, John, 288, 325.

Wordsworth, William, v, xvii, xviii, xix, xx, 6, 7, 19, 23, 27, 33, 37, 38, 45, 50, 58, 61, 63, 64, 68, 72, 80, 81, 93, 97, 101, 105, 118, 121, 124, 125, 126, 134, 136, 139, 143, 148, 151, 165, 169, 172, 177, 180, 190, 191, 193, 239, 244, 301, 320; in General Summary _passim_.

Wright, Richard, 313.

Yalden, John, 11, 20, 31, 42.

Young, Arthur, 228–30, 232, 241, 344, 348, 355.

Young, Edward, 5, 15, 16, 20, 21, 22, 30, 31, 89, 112, 119–21, 147, 359, 361, 363.

“Zeitschrift für Litteraturgeschichte,” xvii.

“Zeluco” (Moore), 216.

Zucarelli, A., 297.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Humboldt was the first to attack Schiller’s view. He said that after a full reading of Greek and Roman authors he found himself unable to accept Schiller’s statement without many reservations. Later Biese spoke of Schiller’s essay as “jener bahnbrechende Aufsatz,” but showed that the statement of the case was inadequate because it was based on the poetry of a single period and thus failed to take account of many phases of Nature presented in the poetry after the brief “reflexionslose naive homerische Zeit.”

[2] Biese has two earlier important books: “Die Entwickelung des Naturgefühls bei den Griechen” (1882) and “Die Entwickelung des Naturgefühls bei den Römern” (1884). In “Zeitschrift für vergleichende Litteraturgeschichte,” Neue Folge, Siebenter Band (1894), p. 311, is a valuable annotated summary of recent (since 1882) German studies on “das antike und das deutsche Naturgefühl.”

[3] (_a_) They express childlike delight in the open-air world. (_b_) They use Nature as the background or setting for human action or emotion. (_c_) They see Nature through historic coloring. (_d_) They make Nature sympathize with their own feelings. (_e_) They dwell upon the inhuman or infinite side of Nature. (_f_) They give description for its own sake. (_g_) They interpret Nature by imaginative sympathy. (_h_) They use Nature as a symbol of spirit.

[4] For additions to this bibliography see “The Journal of Germanic Philology,” II, 239 (1898), in which is an article by Mr. Camillo von Klenze giving a comprehensive résumé of books and articles dealing with the Nature-sense. To these books should be added “Types of Scenery and Their Influence on Literature,” the Romanes lecture at Oxford, 1898, by Sir Archibald Geikie, a delightful, sketchy study of Cowper, Thomson, Burns, Macpherson, Scott, and Wordsworth in relation to their environment; “The Treatment of Nature in the Works of Nicholas Lenau” (The University of Chicago Press, 1902), by Mr. von Klenze, an admirably full and discriminating study of the attitude toward Nature as shown by one of the most important German contemporaries of Tennyson and Browning; “The Treatment of Nature in German Literature from Günther to the Appearance of Goethe’s ‘Werther,’” a careful presentation of the development of the love of Nature in the half-century before 1774 (Max Batt, The University of Chicago Press, 1902); “The Feeling for Nature in Old English Poetry,” by Elizabeth Deering Hanscom (“Journal of English and Germanic Philology,” V, 439).

[5] Gosse, “From Shakespeare to Pope.”

[6] Pope, “Letters,” I, 73.

[7] Pope, “A Farewell to London.”

[8] Hazlitt, “On Londoners and Country People.”

[9] Boswell, “Life of Dr. Johnson,” III, 178 and note.

[10] Pope, “Letters,” IV, 449.

[11] _Ibid._, III, 346.

[12] _Ibid._, I, 67.

[13] Pope, “Works,” III, 226.

[14] Dryden, “Works,” II, 74.

[15] Etherege, “The Man of Mode,” Act III, sc. 1; Act V, sc. 3.

[16] Shadwell, “Epsom Wells,” Act II, sc. 1.

[17] Montagu, “Letters and Works,” I, 72.

[18] _Ibid._, II, 505.

[19] Shenstone, “A Ballad.”

[20] Lyttleton, “Soliloquy of a Beauty in the Country.”

[21] Young, “On Women.”

[22] Aaron Hill, “Dialogue between Damon and Philemon.”

[23] Isaac Hawkins Browne, “From Celia to Chloe.”

[24] Pope, “Letters,” IV, 476; cf. “From Soame Jenyns in the Country to the Lord Lovelace in Town.”

[25] _Ibid._, IV, 253.

[26] _Ibid._, II, 113.

[27] _Ibid._, II, 133.

[28] Gay, “Fables,” First Series, No. 33.

[29] Gay, “Araminta.”

[30] Watts, “To David Polhill.” Cf. Shenstone, “The Progress of Taste,” iv, 172; Lyttleton, “To Mr. Poyntz.”

[31] Cowley, “The Country Mouse.”

[32] Denham, “On Mr. Abraham Cowley’s Death,” l. 79.

[33] James Howell, “Epistolae Ho Elianae,” Book I, sec. 1, Letters 23, 43.

[34] John Evelyn, “Diary” (1641–1706), pp. 36, 185–89.

[35] Addison, “Geneva and the Lake,” “Remarks on Italy.”

[36] Evelyn, “Diary,” p. 126; Addison, “Remarks on Italy.”

[37] Thomas Burnet, “Theory of the Earth,” chapter on “Mountains.”

[38] Pennecuik, “Description of Tweeddale,” p. 45.

[39] Thomas Amory, “Life of John Buncle,” I, 291; II, 97.

[40] Dr. Johnson, “Works,” IX, 35. Cf. also Dr. Johnson’s remark to Boswell, “He said, he would not wish not to be disgusted in the Highlands; for that would be to lose the power of distinguishing, and a man might then lie down in the middle of them. He wished only to conceal his disgust.” See also his answer to the question, “How do you like the Highlands?” “The question seemed to irritate him, for he answered, ‘How, Sir, can you ask me what obliges me to speak unfavorably of a country where I have been hospitably entertained? Who _can_ like the Highlands? I like the inhabitants very well.’”--Boswell’s “Life of Johnson,” V, 317, 377.

[41] Hutchinson, “Excursion to the Lakes,” pp. 11, 17.

[42] Waller, “To My Lord Admiral.”

[43] Waller, “Story of Phoebus and Daphne.”

[44] Marvell, “Upon the Hill and Grove at Billbarrow.”

[45] Milton, “A Paraphrase on Psalm CXIV.”

[46] Veitch calls attention to the fact that Shakspere showed little if any delight in mountains, and that Milton went over Switzerland without bringing back an image of the Alps which he thought fit to preserve.--“Nature in Scottish Poetry,” I, 107.

[47] Dryden, “The Indian Emperor.”

[48] Blackmore, “The Creation,” iii, 409.

[49] John Philips, “Cyder,” i, 106.

[50] Yalden, “To Sir Humphrey Mackworth.”

[51] Prior, “Solomon,” i, 52.

[52] Pope, “The Temple of Fame.”

[53] Pope, “On St. Cecilia’s Day.”

[54] Pope, “Windsor Forest,” l. 210.

[55] Tickell, “Oxford,” l. 441.

[56] Parnell, “To Mr. Pope,” l. 83.

[57] Dr. Akenside, “Pleasures of the Imagination,” ii, 274 (first version).

[58] This indifference to mountains or dislike of them was not a new thing. For further illustrations see Perry, “English Literature of the Eighteenth Century,” pp. 144–48. Humboldt, “Kosmos,” Book II, p. 16, says: “Von dem ewigen Schnee der Alpen, wenn sie sich am Abend oder am frühen Morgen röthen, von der Schönheit des blauen Gletscher-Eises, von der grossartigen Natur der schweizerischen Landschaft ist keine Schilderung aus dem Alterthum auf uns gekommen: und doch gingen ununterbrochen Staatsmänner, Heerführer, und in ihrem Gefolge Litteraten durch Helvetien nach Gallien. Alle diese Reisenden wissen nur über die unfahrbaren scheusslichen Wege zu klagen; das Romantische der Naturscenen beschäftigte sie nie.... Silius Italicus ... beschreibt die Alpengegend als eine schrecken-erregende vegetationslose Einöde, während er mit Liebe alle Felsen-schluchten Italiens und die buschigen Ufer des Liris (Garigliano) besingt.”

An interesting early exception to this general statement is Petrarch’s description of his ascent of Mt. Ventoux. In a letter dated April 26, 1335 (Petrarca, “Lettere Famigliari,” I, 481), he tells how this mountain ever before his eyes, had been from childhood a temptation to him, and how he was finally stimulated to make the ascent by an account of the wide view gained by Philip of Macedon from one of the highest mountains in Thessaly. The most significant passage in this letter is that in which are strangely mingled Petrarch’s pleasure in the magnificent prospect and his ascetic fear of a consequent undue subordination of the soul of man.

“At last I turned to the occasion of my expedition. The sinking sun and lengthening shadows admonished me that the hour of departure was at hand, and, as if started from sleep, I turned around and looked to the west. The Pyrenees--the eye could not reach so far, but I saw the mountains of Lyonnais distinctly, and the sea by Marseilles; the Rhone, too, was there before me. Observing these closely, now thinking on the things of earth, and again, as if I had done with the body, lifting my mind on high, it occurred to me to take out the copy of St. Augustine’s Confessions that I always kept with me; a little volume but of unlimited value and charm. And I call God to witness that the first words on which I cast mine eyes were these: ‘Men go to wonder at the heights of mountains, the ocean floods, rivers’ long courses, ocean’s immensity, the revolutions of the stars--and of themselves they have no care!’ My brother asked me what was the matter. I bade him not disturb me. I closed the book, angry with myself for not ceasing to admire things of earth, instead of remembering that the human soul is beyond comparison the subject for admiration. Once and again, as I descended, I gazed back, and the lofty summit of the mountain seemed to me scarcely a cubit high compared with the sublime dignity of man.” Translated and commented on by McLaughlin, “The Mediaeval Feeling for Nature.” See also Biese, “Die Entwickelung des Naturgefühls,” p. 151: “Und somit eröffnet uns dieser Brief, mit seiner Mischung reinen, modernen Naturgenusses und dogmatisch-asketischer Rückbesinnung, einen Blick in ein zwie-spältiges Herz eines an der Wende zweier Zeiten stehenden Menschen; es reagiert gleichsam der mittelalterliche Geist wider die aufkeimende moderne Empfindung.”

Another significant utterance comes in 1541 in a letter by Gessner quoted by Biese, p. 328. It shows a recognition of the greatness and majesty of the Alps, and has something of the modern feeling: “So lange mir Gott Leben schenken wird, habe ich beschlossen, jährlich einige Berge oder doch einen zu besteigen, teils um die Gebirgsflora kennen zu lernen, teils um den Körper zu kräftigen und den Geist zu erfrischen. Welchen Genuss gewährt es nicht die ungeheuren Bergmassen zu betrachten und das Haupt in die Wolken zu erheben! Wie stimmt es zur Andacht, wenn man umringt ist von den Schneedomen, die der grosse Weltbaumeister an dem einen langen Schöpfungstage geschaffen hat! Wie leer is doch das Leben, wie niedrig das Streben derer, die auf dem Erdboden umher kriechen, nur um zu erwerben und spiessbürgerlich zu geniessen! Ihnen bleibt das irdische Paradies verschlossen.“ Biese thinks that Rousseau’s “Nouvelle Héloise” (1761) “die Augen über die Herrlichkeiten der neuentdeckten Alpenwelt öffnete.” It is interesting to note in this connection that the beginning of enthusiastic interest in the mountains of the English Lake District found expression somewhat earlier in Dalton’s poem (1755), Amory’s novel (1756), and Brown’s “Letter” and “Rhapsody” (before 1766 and probably before 1760). The earliest of the Ossian poems belong in 1760. Goethe’s “Briefe aus der Schweiz vom Jahre 1779” are according to Biese the first full and enthusiastic recognition by a German poet of the romantic charms of the Alps (“Die Entwickelung,” etc., p. 393).

[59] Biese, “Die Entwickelung,” etc., pp. 353–55; Lecky, “History of England,” VI, 180–83.

[60] Biese, “Die Entwickelung,” etc., pp. 324, 328.

[61] Waller, “A Panegyric to My Lord Protector,” st. 11; “Instructions to a Painter,” l. 228; “On the Danger His Majesty Escaped,” ll. 5, 63, 156.

[62] Dryden under “Similitudes,” p. 31, and “Diction,” p. 43.

[63] Young, “The Merchant,” strain 2, st. 15; strain 3, st. 9; strain 8, sts. 13–17.

[64] For a Tempest take Eurus, Zephyr, Auster and Boreas and cast them together in one verse; add to these rain and lightning, _quantum sufficit_: mix your clouds and billows well together till they foam, and thicken your description here and there with a quicksand. Brew your tempest well in your head before you set it a blowing. “The Art of Sinking in Poetry.”

[65] See “Monthly Review,” XXVII, 197, where Falconer’s descriptions are said to be equal to “anything in the _Aeneid_.”

[66] Falconer, “The Shipwreck,” canto ii, ll. 157, 268, 346.

[67] _Ibid._, ll. 148–66.

[68] These descriptions rouse Dr. Clarke to a climax of admiration. “Homer has been admired by some for reducing a catalogue of ships into tolerably flowing verse; but who, except a poetical sailor, the nursling of Apollo, educated by Neptune, would ever have thought of versifying his own sea-language? What other poet would even have dreamt of _reef-tackles_, _haliards_, _clue-garnets_, _buntlines_, _lashings_, _laniards_, and fifty other terms equally obnoxious to the soft sing-song of modern poetasters.”--“Monthly Review,” XXVII.

[69] Biese notes the same fact with regard to German poetry (“Die Entwickelung,” p. 320).

[70] Cf. Veitch, “Feeling for Nature,” I, 117.

[71] Lyttleton, “An Epistle to Mr. Pope.”

[72] Pope, “Letters,” I, 178.

[73] For illustrative passages, see Montagu, “Letters and Works,” II, 464; Congreve, “Tears of Amaryllis,” l. 50; Broome, “Daphnis and Lycidas,” l. 47; Shenstone, “Upon a Visit in Winter;” Pitt, “Hymn to Apollo;” Hughes, “Myra;” Savage, “Wanderer,” i, 42, 52; John Scott, “Elegy on Winter;” Akenside, “On the Winter Solstice.”

[74] For a similar dislike of winter in mediaeval poetry see McLaughlin, “Studies in Mediaeval Life and Literature,” p. 20. He quotes as typical the following from a Latin student song: “The cold icy harshness of winter, its fierceness, and dull, miserable inactivity.”

[75] Blackmore, “Creation,” ii, 393. Cf. Wordsworth’s

The chasm of sky above my head Is heaven’s profoundest azure ... an abyss In which the everlasting stars abide.--“Excursion,” iii, 94–98.

Cf. also Dryden’s “The abyss of heaven, the court of stars” (“Works,” IV, 76).

[76] For illustrative passages, see Waller, “Of the Lady;” Cowley, “Davideis,” ii, 440; “Hymn to Light,” and “Shortness of Life,” st. 11; Young, “Ocean,” st. 23; Broome, “Paraphrase of Ecclesiastes;” Yalden, “Hymn to Morning;” John Philips, “Cyder,” ii, 293; Tickell, “Prospect of Peace;” Gay, “The Espousal;” Rowe, “The Queen’s Success;” Watts, “Disappointment;” Pitt, “Verses,” etc., etc.

[77] For descriptions of this sort, see Hughes, “Court of Neptune;” Prior, “Solomon,” iii, 557; Broome, “Poem on Death,” l. 151; Gay, “Rural Sports,” ii, 323; Gay, “Wine,” l. 141; Beattie, “The Minstrel,” i, 17; etc., etc.

[78] Cf. Biese, “Die Entwickelung,” etc., p. 307.

[79] The following are illustrative phrases: “Silver Cynthia lights the world,” Garth, “Claremont,” l. 284; “Pale Cynthia mounts the vaulted sky,” Shenstone, “Elegy VI;” “Cynthia came, riding on her silver car,” Beattie, “The Minstrel,” ii, 12; “Cynthia’s silver white,” Hughes, “The Picture;” “Cynthia, fair regent of the night,” Gay, “Trivia,” iii, 3; “Cynthia’s silver ray,” Addison, “Imitation of Milton;” “Cynthia, great Queen of Night,” Garth, “Dispensary,” v, 282; “Pale Cynthia’s melancholy light,” Falconer, “Shipwreck,” i, 311.

[80] The following are illustrative phrases: “Rich spangles,” Waller, “Of the Queen;” “Spangled nights,” Cowley, “Davideis,” i, 94; “Spangled sphere,” Cowley, “The Extasy;” “Burning spangles of sidereal gold,” Broome, “Paraphrase of Eccl.;” “Freezing spangles,” Tickell, “On the Prospect of Peace;” “The sky spangled with a thousand eyes,” Gay, “Fables,” i, 11; “Spangled pole,” Pitt, “On the Death of Mr. Stanhope;” “Heaven’s gilded troops,” Cowley, “Davideis,” i, 183; “Stars that gild the gloomy night,” Parnell, “Hymn to Contentment;” “Twinkling stars who gild the skies,” Watts, “Sun, Moon,” etc.; “Shooting star that gilds the night,” Somerville, “Hobbinol,” iii, 261; “Stars that gild the northern skies,” Pitt, “Congress of Cambray;” “Meteor that gilds the night,” Somerville, “Field Sports,” i, 139; “Globes of light in fields of azure shine,” Watts, “God’s Dominion;” “Orbs of gold in fields of azure lie,” Parnell, “Queen Anne’s Peace,” l. 38; “Yon blue tract enriched with orbs of light,” Parnell, “David,” l. 358.

[81] Some of Young’s phrases are “rolling spheres,” “tuneful spheres,” “revolving spheres,” “unnumbered lustres,” “sparks of night,” “lucid orbs,” “radiant choir,” “etherial fires,” “mathematic glories,” “aerial racers,” “midnight counselors,” “nocturnal suns,” “etherial armies,” “radiant lamps,” “splendours,” “ambient orbs,” “nocturnal sparks,” “night’s radiant scale,” etc.

[82] Burnet, “Theory of the Earth,” chapter on “Stars.” Cf. Prior, “Solomon,” i, 502–11.

[83] Wordsworth, “Peter Bell.”

[84] Ruskin (“Modern Painters,” III, 248) comments on Dante’s “intense detestation of all mist, rack of cloud or dimness of rain.” McLaughlin says of clouds, moonlight, etc.: “Let any reader of mediaeval poetry recall how imperceptible a part they play in it, even as plain facts of description. A line in one of the Latin songs expresses the feeling: their thought of clouds is how delightful not to see them. Moonlight, too, is seldom dwelt on as poetical; the most romantic touch that comes to my mind with it, is in Chrestien de Troyes where it shines over the reconciliation of estranged lovers. Just as we find little notice of sunrise, sunset, clouds, and moon, we find little feeling for the stars. They are mentioned occasionally in a facile way, though scarcely ever with manifest sentiment.”--“Studies in Mediaeval Life and Literature,” p. 21. Mr. Symonds says of the same period: “The earth is felt chiefly through the delightfulness of healthy sensations. The stars and clouds, and tempests of the heavens, the ever-recurring miracle of sunrise, the solemn pageant of sunsetting are almost as though they were not in this literature.”--J. A. Symonds, “Essays Speculative and Suggestive,” p. 300.

[85] In commenting on mediaeval out-door poetry Vernon Lee says (“Euphorion,” p. 120): “Spring, spring, endless spring--for three long centuries throughout the world a dreary green monotony of spring.... Moreover this mediaeval spring is the spring neither of the shepherd, nor of the farmer, nor of any man to whom spring brings work and anxiety and hope of gain; it is a mere vague spring of gentlefolk, or at all events of well-to-do burgesses, taking their pleasure on the lawns of castle parts.”

[86] Garth, “Dispensary,” iv, 309.

[87] Addison, “Rosamond,” Act I, sc. 1. Cf. a longer description in the same poem beginning, “O the soft, delicious view” (Act II, sc. 3).

[88] Broome, “On the Seat of War in Flanders.”

[89] Shenstone, “The Progress of Taste,” iii, 7.

[90] Lyttleton, “Eclogue IV.”

[91] Congreve, “The Birth of the Muse.”

[92] Parnell, “Health: An Eclogue.”

[93] Prior, “Solomon,” iii, 158.

[94] Pope, “Winter.”

[95] Marriott, “Rinaldo and Armida.”

[96] Sheridan, “New Simile for the Ladies.” (Dr. Johnson, “Life of Swift.”)

[97] For an interesting study of the rose in literature from Ausonius to Waller see Symonds, “Essays,” “The Pathos of the Rose in Poetry,” p. 368.

[98] Gay, “Fables,” i, 45.

[99] Dryden, “Works,” XI, 13; Waller, “To the Queen;” Savage, “To Bessy.”

[100] Tickell, “To Mr. Addison.”

[101] Cowley, “The Shortness of Life.”

[102] Somerville, “Field Sports.”

[103] Wycherley, “To Mr. Pope.”

[104] Dyer, “The Fleece.”

[105] Dryden, “Works,” IV, 202; IX, 162.

[106] _Ibid._, I, 214; V, 365; Congreve, “On His Taking of Namur;” st. 2.

[107] See as illustrative of the bee similitudes: Waller, “Battle of the Summer Islands,” canto iii, l. 24; Cowley, “The Inconstant,” st. 6; Milton, “Paradise Lost,” i, 768; Dryden, “Works,” IX, 145, 172; II, 463; Hughes, “The Triumph of Peace,” l. 118; Prior, “Alma,” iii, 171; Pope, “Dunciad,” iv, 79; Pope, “Temple of Fame;” Gay, “Trivia,” ii, 555; Congreve, “Ovid’s Art of Love Imitated,” l. 200; A. Philips, “To James Craggs,” l. 151; Stepney, “To the Earl of Carlisle,” l. 26; Buckingham, “Essay on Poetry,” l. 255; Young, “Night Thoughts,” ii, 462; vi, 516; Akenside, “Odes,” i, I, st. 2; Dyer, “Fleece,” ii, 496; iii, 413; iv, 317; Somerville, “To Allan Ramsay,” l. 24; Watts, “Divine Songs,” xx, etc.

[108] See as illustrative: Cowley, “Davideis,” iv, 728; “Isaiah, ch. 34,” st. 2; “Plagues of Egypt,” st. 9; Milton, “Paradise Lost,” i, 302; Dryden, “Works,” III, 354, 422; Prior, “The Turtle and the Sparrow,” l. 206; King, “Art of Love,” l. 1700; Pope, “Essay on Criticism,” ii, 109; “Temple of Fame,” l. 430; Young, “Night Thoughts,” v, 336; “The Last Day,” ii, 183; Blair, “The Grave,” l. 469, etc.

[109] See as illustrative: Waller, “On Repairing St. Paul’s,” l. 25; Cowley, “Davideis,” ii, 58; Milton, “Paradise Lost,” v, 215; Yalden, “To His Perjured Mistress,” l. 11; Parnell, “The Hermit,” l. 41; Young, “Satire IV,” l. 1; Dyer, “The Fleece,” ii, 648; Halifax, “On the Death of Charles II,” l. 77.

[110] See as illustrative Dryden’s use of the sun in “Works,” IV, 276; II, 148, 185, 215, 454, etc.

[111] See as illustrative: Waller, “To Amoret;” Addison, “An Account of the Greatest English Poets;” Spratt, “On the Death of the Lord Protector;” Dryden, “Works,” XI, 132; Cowley, “Clad All in White.”

[112] As illustrative of Dryden’s use of similitudes drawn from water note the following: Revenge and rage are sudden floods; joys are torrents that overflow all banks; contending passions are tides that flow against currents; fame is a swelling current; anger is a dammed up stream that gets new force by opposition; a ruined life, destroyed fortunes, are shipwrecks; love is like springtides, full and high, or like a flood that bursts through all dams, or like a stream that cannot return to its fountain, or like tides that do turn; the disappointed lover dies like an unfed stream; the mind of a capricious tyrant is like a vast sea open to every wind that blows; the army of the enemy comes like the wind broke loose upon the main; an obdurate foe is as deaf to supplication as seas and wind to sinking mariners; an open mind is a crystal brook; grief undermines the soul as banks are sapped away by streams; the voice of a mob is like winds that roar in pursuit of flying waves; unspeakable anger is like water choking up the narrow vent of the vessel from which it is poured; and so on through a long list.

[113] Prior, “Carmen Seculare,” st. 22.

[114] _Ibid._, st. 4.

[115] Pope, “Dunciad,” ii, 182.

[116] Cowley, “Davideis,” ii, 20.

[117] Halifax, “On the Death of Charles II,” l. 125.

[118] Armstrong, “Benevolence,” l. 152.

[119] Hughes, “Greenwich Park.”

[120] Roscommon, “Essay on Translated Verse,” l. 316.

[121] Somerville, “An Epistle to Allan Ramsay,” l. 5.

[122] Thomson. “To De La Cour.”

[123] Denham, “Cooper’s Hill.” The lines are,

O could I flow like thee, and make thy stream My great example, as it is my theme! Though deep, yet clear; though gentle, yet not dull: Strong without rage, without o’erflowing full!

Pope’s lines (“Dunciad,” iii, 169), beginning,

Flow, Welsted, flow! like thine inspirer, Beer, Tho’ stale, not ripe; tho’ thin, yet never clear,

* * * * *

Heady, not strong; o’erflowing, tho’ not full,

are a parody rather than an imitation. The same cannot be said of the line (“Temple of Fame,” l. 374),

So soft, though high, so loud, and yet so clear.

Prior has these lines (“Carmen Seculare,” st. 22),

But her own king she likens to the Thames, With gentle course devolving fruitful streams; Serene yet strong, majestic yet sedate, Swift without violence, without terror great.

Fr. Knapp addresses the sea on the Irish coast in the following lines (“To Mr. Pope”):

Let me ne’er flow like thee! nor make thy stream My sad example, or my wretched theme.

Mallet has the lines (cf. “Verbal Criticism,” l. 228):

Great without swelling, without meanness plain; Serious, not silly; sportive, but not vain; On trifles slight, on things of use profound, In quoting sober, and in judging sound.

In Dyer we have a fainter echo (“The Country Walk,” l. 69):

Methinks her lays I hear, So smooth! so sweet! so deep! so clear!

[124] Parnell, “David,” l. 49.

[125] Stanhope, “Progress of Dullness.”

[126] Addison, “An Account of the Greatest English Poets.”

[127] Dryden, “Works,” XI, 7.

[128] Marvell, “An Epitaph upon ----.”

[129] Cf. Cowley, “Davideis,” iii, 553, and Pope, “Spring,” l. 81.

[130] Dryden, “Works,” XI, 131; III, 390; II, 451.

[131] Butler, “Satire to a Bad Poet.”

[132] Ambrose Philips, “Epistle to a Friend.”

[133] Congreve, “The Mourning Muse of Alexis,” l. 89; cf. also Fenton, “Florelia.”

[134] Congreve, “The Tears of Amaryllis for Amyntas,” l. 143.

[135] Watts, “A Funeral Poem on Thomas Gunston,” ll. 252, 308. Compare the indifference of Nature to the death of Lucy whose body is

Rolled round in earth’s diurnal course With rocks, and stones and trees.--Wordsworth, “Lucy.”

[136] Cowley, “Constantia and Philetus,” sts. 5, 10.

[137] Shenstone, “Roxana.” For an interesting variation of this theme see Cowley, “The Spring.”

[138] Hughes, “Cupid’s Review,” l. 17.

[139] Marvell, “Upon Appleton House,” l. 661.

[140] Waller, “At Penshurst.”

[141] Marvell, “Upon Appleton House,” l. 689.

[142] Wordsworth, “Lucy.”

[143] Waller, “At Penshurst.”

[144] Virgil, “Eclogues,” iv, 28; Dryden, “Pastoral,” iv, l. 33.

[145] Virgil, “Georgics,” iv, 306; Dryden, “Georgics,” iv, 433.

[146] Virgil, “Georgics,” iii, 156; Dryden, “Georgics,” iii, 250.

[147] Dryden, “Works,” XII, 5; XI, 221.

[148] Percy, “Reliques,” II, 190.

[149] Somerville, “To Anne Coventry,” l. 25.

[150] Cowley, “The Shortness of Life,” st. 11; “The Muse;” “Davideis,” ii, 29; “The Plagues of Egypt,” st. 17.

[151] Blackmore, “Creation,” vi, 170; v, 101; Yalden, “The Insect.”

[152] Somerville, “Field Sports,” l. 161.

[153] Pitt, “Earl Stanhope;” “Ps. 144.”

[154] Tickell, “Kensington Garden;” Somerville, “Rural Games,” i, 94.

[155] Dyer, “Grongar Hill,” l. 65.

[156] Dryden, “Works,” VI, 228.

[157] Cowley, “Ode 2.”

[158] Many of these words occur in the translations by Dryden but in none of the instances quoted is there any justification in the Latin phrase for the adjective “watery.” For instance, “watery way” = _spumantibus undis_; “watery reign” = _altum_; “watery deep” = _pelago_, and so on through the list.

[159] Milton, “Paradise Lost,” iv, 239; vii, 302.

[160] Blair, “The Grave.”

[161] Falconer, “The Shipwreck,” i, 359.

[162] Gay, “Rural Sports,” i, 226.

[163] Dyer, “Ruins of Rome,” l. 86.

[164] Armstrong, “Art of Preserving Health,” ii, 7.

[165] Addison, “To the King,” l. 115.

[166] Thomson, “Autumn,” l. 626; cf. also “Summer,” l. 1574; “Autumn,” l. 628.

[167] Pitt, “Ode to John Pitt,” st. 5; Mallet, “Amyntor and Theodora,” i, 153; Shenstone, “To a Lady;” “Rural Elegance,” st. 17.

[168] See Thomson, “Spring,” ll. 215, 767; “Summer,” l. 1547.

[169] Parnell, “Hymn to Contentment.”

[170] Wordsworth, “Three Years She Grew.”

[171] Dryden, “Works,” II, 360; IX, 104.

[172] Fenton, “Florelio,” l. 43.

[173] Gray, “Progress of Poetry.”

[174] Thomson, “Autumn,” l. 843.

[175] Garth, “Dispensary,” ii, 3, 14; iv, 260.

[176] Virgil, “Georgics,” i, 329, “quo maxuma motu Terra tremit;” Dryden, “Georgics,” i, 430, “the mountains nod and earth’s entrails tremble.” Virgil, “Eclogue 6,” “rigidas motare cacumina quercus;” Dryden, “Pastoral 6,” “nodding forests to the numbers danced;” cf. Pope, “Messiah,” “nodding forests on the mountain dance,” and Milton, “Comus,” l. 38, “nodding horror of the wood.”

[177] Virgil, “Georgics,” iii, 243; “Aeneid,” iv, 525.

[178] Milton, “Paradise Lost,” vii, 434.

[179] Pope, “Windsor Forest,” l. 118; cf. note in Courthope edition.

[180] Shenstone, “Virtuoso.”

[181] Parnell, “Anacreontic.”

[182] Waller, “On a Brede of Divers Colors.”

[183] Hugo Blümner, “Die Farbenbezeichnungen bei den römischen Dichtern,” pp. 184–98. Blümner shows that πορφύρεος was used by the Greeks with widely varying meanings, and adds, “Ganz ähnlich ist der Gebrauch, den die römischen Dichter von _purpureus_ machen nur zweilfellos in viel weniger ursprünglicher Weise.” He says further that the Latin poetical use of “purpureus” did not follow the speech of daily life.

[184] This constant use of Latin and Greek names for English peasants was frequently satirized. Dryden makes Limberham say to Brainsick, “But why, of all names, would you choose a Phyllis? There have been so many Phyllises in song I thought there was not another to be had for love or money.”--“Works,” VI, 62. Cf. Watts, “Meditation in a Grove”:

No Phyllis shall infect the air With her unhallow’d name.

[185] Compare Ridley’s characteristic commendation of Christopher Pitt’s poems,

In every line, in every word you speak I read the Roman and confess the Greek,

and Pitt’s precept in Vida’s “Art of Poetry,” i, 102,

Explore the ancients with a watchful eye, Lay all their charms and elegancies by, Then to their use the precious spoils apply.

[186] Pope, “Discourse on Pastoral Poetry.”

[187] Dryden, “Works,” XV, 231.

[188] Compare especially Gay’s “Monday,” Pope’s “Spring,” and Virgil’s “Third Eclogue.” Also Gay’s “Thursday,” and Virgil’s “Eighth Eclogue.”

[189] Addison, “Letter from Italy” (1701).

[190] Tickell, “Oxford” (1707).

[191] Pope, “January and May,” l. 454.

[192] Pope, “Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot,” l. 149.

[193] William Thomson, “To the Author of Leonidas.”

[194] Pope, “Essay on Criticism,” i, 350.

[195] Gray, “Ode.”

[196] In this connection see the following passages from Ruskin, Humboldt, and Veitch on Nature in the poetry of the ancients:

“Thus, as far as I recollect, without a single exception, every Homeric landscape, intended to be beautiful, is composed of a fountain, a meadow, and a shady grove. This ideal is very interestingly marked, as intended for a perfect one, in the fifth book of the Odyssey; when Mercury himself stops for a moment, though on a message, to look on a landscape ‘which even an immortal might be gladdened to behold.’... Now the notable things in this description are, first, the evident subservience of the whole landscape to human comfort, to the foot, the taste, or the smell; and, secondly, that throughout the passage there is not a single figurative word expressive of the things being in any wise other than plain grass, fruit, or flower.... If we glance through the references to pleasant landscape which occur in other parts of the Odyssey, we shall always be struck by this quiet subjection of their every feature to human service, and by the excessive similarity in the scenes. Perhaps the spot intended, after this, to be most perfect, may be the garden of Alcinous, where the principal ideas are, still more definitely, order, symmetry, and fruitfulness.”--Ruskin, “Modern Painters,” chapter on “Classical Landscape.”

“Homer looks on nature as it affects man--its power of sustaining life, its subserviency to our physical wants. Hence the side of nature which is lovingly regarded by him is not mountain, or rock, or wild sea--all fruitless and barren--but flat soft meadow-land, diversified, it may be, with tree and fountain, filled with waving grass--good pasture-land for nourishing the useful ox, or cow, or sheep.... In Theocritus ... we do not go beyond the softer side ... the accessories of the shepherd’s life faithfully noted.... The aspect of nature which Virgil loved was the soft and pastoral side of Italian scenery. In so far as he has depicted free nature, it is seen almost wholly from the human side, and in its relation to man’s works, life and action.”--Veitch, “The Feeling for Nature in Scottish Poetry,” I, 88–91.

“Es is oftmals ausgesprochen worden, dass die Freude an der Natur, wenn auch dem Alterthume nicht fremd, doch in ihm als Ausdruck des Gefühls sparsamer und minder lebhaft gewesen sei denn in der neueren Zeit.... In dem hellenischen Alterthum ... das eigentlich Naturbeschreibende zeigt sich dann nur als ein Beiwerk, weil in der griechischen Kunstbildung sich alles gleichsam im Kreise der Menschheit bewegt.

“Beschreibung der Natur in ihrer gestaltenreichen Mannigfaltigkeit Naturdichtung als ein abgesonderter Zweig der Litteratur, war den Griechen völlig fremd. Auch die Landschaft erscheint bei ihnen nur als Hintergrund eines Gemäldes, vor dem menschliche Gestalten sich bewegen. Leidenschaften in Thaten ausbrechend fesselten fast allein den Sinn. Ein bewegtes öffentliches Volksleben zog ab von der dumpfen, schwärmerischen Versenkung in das stille Treiben der Natur; ja den physischen Erscheinungen wurde immer eine Beziehung auf die Menschheit beigelegt, sei es in den Verhältnissen der äusseren Gestaltung oder der inneren anregenden Thatkraft. Fast nur solche Beziehungen machten die Naturbetrachung würdig, unter der sinnigen Form des Gleichnisses, als abgesonderte kleine Gemälde voll objectiver Lebendigkeit in das Gebiet der Dichtung gezogen zu werden.”--“Kosmos,” II, 5, 6.

[197] In this connection compare the following significant passage from Taine: “Rien ne m’a plus intéressé dans les villas romaines que leurs anciens maîtres. Les naturalistes le savent, on comprend trés-bien l’animal d’aprés la coquille. L’endroit où j’ai commencé à le comprendre est la villa Albani.... Cette villa est un débris, comme le squellette fossile d’une vie qui a duré deux siècles, et dont le principal plaisir consistait dans la conversation, dans la belle représentation, dans les habitudes de salon, et d’antichambre. L’homme ne s’intéressait pas aux objets inanimés, il ne leur reconnaissait pas une âme et une beauté propre; ils ne servaient que de fond au tableau, fond vague et d’importance moins qu’accessoire. Toute l’attention était occupée par le tableau lui-meme, c’est-à-dire par l’intrigue et le drame humain. Pour reporter quelque partie de cette attention sur les arbres, les eaux, le paysage, il fallait les humaniser, leur ôter, leur forme et leur disposition naturelle, leur air ‘sauvage,’ l’apparence du désordre et du désert, leur donner autant que possible l’aspect d’un salon, d’un galerie à colonnades, d’une grande cour de palais.”--Taine, “Voyage en Italie,” I, 231, 232 (Paris, Librairie Hatchette et Cie, 1893).

[198] Cowley, “Of Agriculture.”

[199] “Cyder,” i, 248.

[200] Shairp, “The Poetic Interpretation of Nature,” p. 199.

[201] “Cyder,” i, 563.

[202] “Cyder,” ii, 65.

[203] “Pastorals,” i, 6; iii, 1, 6; iii, 41–44; iii, 69–74; i, 10; iv, 154; v, 8; i, 27; ii, 59; ii, 125–28; iii, 65–68; iv, 153–60.

[204] Rowe, “An Epistle to Flavia;” Pope, “An Impromptu to Lady Winchilsea.”

[205] Wordsworth, “Essay, Supplementary to the Preface.”

[206] The estimate of Lady Winchilsea here given was based on the 1713 edition of her poems. In 1903, through the kindness of Mr. Edmund Gosse and of the Earl of Winchilsea, I was enabled to bring out a complete edition of her works. In the Introduction to those poems I have endeavored to indicate Lady Winchilsea’s literary qualities and affiliations, and to give some idea of her life and personality. So far as her attitude toward Nature is concerned nothing is to be found in the scope of her voluminous verse that is of higher significance than the poems published by Ward. The new fact that does emerge from a fuller knowledge of her writings is the very interesting relation between her poetry of Nature and the events of her life. For an analysis of this relation I must refer to pp. cxxxiii-cxxxiv of the Introduction to my edition of her poems (“The Poems of Anne, Countess of Winchilsea,” The University of Chicago Press, 1903).

[207] “Miscellany Poems on Several Occasions,” Written by a Lady, 1713.

[208] In the references to the nightingale by Chaucer, Milton, Cowper, Wordsworth, Keats, Shelley, Matthew Arnold, and Mrs. Browning, the only approaches to description of the appearance of the bird are Matthew Arnold’s “tawny-throated,” Keats’ “full-throated,” and Coleridge’s “bright, bright eyes, their eyes both bright and full.”

[209] Cf. Milton’s, “sweetest, saddest plight;” or “most musical, most melancholy;” and Shelley’s, “melodious pain;” and Keats’ “plaintive anthem;” and Matthew Arnold’s, “Wild, unquenched, deep-sunken, old-world pain.” Coleridge speaks once of “pity-pleading strains,” but in another poem contends for the “merry nightingale,” and refuses to hear anything but “love and joyance” in the song.

[210] Cf. Matthew Arnold’s

“How thick the bursts come crowding through the leaves;”

and Chaucer’s “lusty nightingale” whose voice made a “loud rioting;” and Shelley’s “storm of sound;” and Wordsworth’s “tumultuous harmony;” and Keats’ “pouring forth thy soul abroad in such an ecstasy;” and Coleridge’s

The merry nightingale That crowds and hurries and precipitates With fast thick warble his delicious notes.

[211] Cf. Arnold’s “Eternal passion!” Milton’s “amorous power;” Shelley’s “voluptuous nightingale;” Coleridge’s “wanton song;” and all of Mrs. Browning’s “Bianca among the Nightingales.”

[212] Cf. Gosse, “Gossip in a Library,” p. 123; “Eighteenth Century,” p. 35.

[213] Gay, “Rural Sports,” i, 35.

[214] _Ibid._, i, 99.

[215] Gay’s “Chair.”

[216] See “Coquette Mother and Daughter” for a second reference to the fragrant bean-flower before Thomson.

[217] Compare Tennyson’s “wrinkled sea” in “The Eagle.”

[218] As illustrative of this point compare, Virgil, Eclogue viii, 27, 28, and Gay, Pastoral III, 59–62; Virgil, Eclogue i, 59–63, and Gay, Pastoral III, 67–72; Virgil, Eclogue v, 36–39, and Gay, Pastoral V, 83–87; Virgil, Eclogue v, 76–78, and Gay, Pastoral V, 153–58; Virgil, Eclogue iv, 1–3, and Gay, Pastoral VI, 1–3; Virgil, Eclogue vi, and Gay, Pastoral VI; Virgil, Eclogue viii, and Gay, Pastoral IV.

[219] Pastoral I.

[220] “Night Piece on Death;” “The Hermit.”

[221] “Health.”

[222] “The Flies.”

[223] “The Hermit.”

[224] “Anacreontic.”

[225] “Anacreontic.”

[226] “Health.”

[227] Parnell, “Poetical Works,” p. 77.

[228] Pattison died in 1727, and he was in college during the four preceding years. The records of his life are scanty, but he probably wrote this poem before 1723, when he left the region of his dear Ituna, that being the stream on whose banks he was accustomed to murmur out his verses.

[229] See Ramsay, “Poems,” I, xxvii.

[230] Cf. “Richy and Sandy,” l. 8; “Robert, Richy, and Sandy,” ll. 31–34; “Gentle Shepherd,” i, 1, 89; i, 1, 148; ii, 2, 17–40; ii, 3, 27–47; v, 1, 19–43.

[231] Cf. “Gentle Shepherd,” i, 2, 190–93, 207; i, 2, 200–204; ii, 1, 76–86; ii, 2, Prologue; ii, 1, Prologue; iii, 3, 111–16; v, 2, Prologue.

[232] Cf. “Gentle Shepherd,” i, 1, 205; i, 2, 1–4.

[233] Cf. “Richy and Sandy,” ll. 49, 50; “Gentle Shepherd,” i, 1, 43, 44, 67–70, 156; i, 2, 131–37; song viii.

[234] “Gentle Shepherd,” i, 2, 138–47; ii, 4, 43–66; iv, 2, 148–58.

[235] In the copious notes to the 1815 edition of Pennecuik’s “Tweeddale” is a full account of the country about New-Hall, accompanied by quotations from Ramsay’s poem, to show the accuracy of his descriptions.

[236] “Answer to the Foregoing” (to Somerville).

In the poems addressed to Allan Ramsay on the publication of his works in 1721 we find significant critical approval based on Ramsay’s avoidance of tame Nature, and his turning from the authority of the schools. The simile of a garden recurs in a poem by “C. T.” He planted trees in equal rows and arranged flowers in a parterre, but found his labor in vain. The narrow scene became daily more distasteful to him, and finally he went back to the fields where “Nature wantoned in her prime.” Here he found space, variety, surprise, and was content. Ja. Arbuckle praises Ramsay for roaming over hill and dale and leaving “carpet-ground” to “tender-footed beasts,” and for choosing to subsist on his native stock while other poets pilfered fame by picking the locks of their predecessors.--“Poems of Allan Ramsay,” I, 4–7.

[237] “The Gentle Shepherd,” ii, 4, 62.

[238] _Ibid._, 50.

[239] “The Gentle Shepherd,” ii, 4, 10.

[240] “To Mr. William Starrat,” l. 46.

[241] “The Gentle Shepherd,” iii, 3, 41.

[242] _Ibid._, i, 1, 137.

[243] _Ibid._, Prologue, i, 2.

[244] _Ibid._, Prologue, ii, 3.

[245] _Ibid._, iii, 3, 43.

[246] “The Gentle Shepherd,” i, 2, 7.

[247] “An Ode to the Ph--,” 1721, st. 1.

[248] “Answer to the Foregoing.”

[249] “Prospect of Plenty.”

[250] (_a_) Dr. Armstrong’s “Winter” in “Imitations of Shakespeare,” written in 1725, though not published till 1770.

(_b_) Riccaltoun’s “A Winter’s Day,” written before 1725, published in Savage’s “Miscellany” in 1726, and in “Gentleman’s Magazine,” 1740.

(_c_) Thomson’s “Winter,” written in fragments before 1725, but fused into one poem at Mallet’s suggestion in 1726.

[251] “The Art of Preserving Health,” i, 64–96.

[252] _Ibid._, i, 97–102; iii, 39–52.

[253] _Ibid._, iii, 71–96.

[254] Pope, “Works,” VI, 36, 37.

[255] Wordsworth, “Essay Supplementary to the Preface,” 1815.

[256] Pope, “Works,” I, 322; Denham, “Cooper’s Hill;” Marvell, “Upon the Hill and Grove at Billbarrow,” and “Upon Appleton House.”

[257] Veitch in “Feeling for Nature in Scottish Poetry,” II, 52, credits Thomson with being the first poet to mention purple heather, but this mention by Pope is more than twenty years earlier.

[258] Pope, “Works,” I, 346, n. 3; but compare “Autumn,” l. 74.

[259] _Ibid._, I, 269, n. 1.

[260] _Ibid._, I, 283, n. 3; 296, n. 9.

[261] _Ibid._, I, 293; cf. Warton, “Essay on Pope,” I, 6.

[262] (_a_) Description of moonshine walk. (This letter, perhaps a sincere expression when first written (1713), was a favorite of Pope’s. When he published his “Letters” he made an amusing blunder by transferring this passage to a letter dated February 10, 1715, at which time the park where he was supposed to have watched the moonshine and reflected on mortality, was under water from the great flood of February 9; see “Letters,” I, 367.)

(_b_) “Pleasure in Birds,” etc., I, 338.

(_c_) “Twickenham in Spring,” IV, 72, 74.

(_d_) “Autumn,” IV, 89.

[263] “Spectator,” June 21, 1712 (No. 411).

[264] _Ibid._, June 23, 1712 (No. 412); June 25, 1712 (No. 414).

[265] _Ibid._, June 23, 1712 (No. 412).

[266] _Ibid._, May 31 (No. 393).

[267] _Ibid._, October 30, 1712 (No. 523).

[268] _Ibid._, October 30, 1712 (No. 523); cf. “Guardian,” Nos. 22, 23, 28, 30, 32, 40.

[269] See further discussion under “Gardening.”

[270] “Liberty,” Part 3, ll. 514–26.

[271] _Ibid._, Part 4, ll. 348–62.

[272] “The Castle of Indolence,” canto ii, st. 3.

[273] “Spring,” ll. 529–55.

[274] “Summer,” ll. 140–59. Suggested probably by Mallet. See Letter, August 2, 1726: “Your hint of the sapphire, emerald, ruby, strikes my imagination with a pleasing taste, and shall not be neglected.”

[275] “Spring,” ll. 574–613.

[276] “Summer,” ll. 1116–68.

[277] “Spring,” ll. 614–30.

[278] _Ibid._, ll. 636–60.

[279] _Ibid._, ll. 690–701.

[280] “Winter,” ll. 245–56.

[281] “Spring,” ll. 21–25; “Winter,” ll. 144–47.

[282] “Spring,” ll. 770–85.

[283] “Summer,” ll. 371–422.

[284] “Spring,” ll. 808–20; “Summer,” ll. 506–15.

[285] “Spring,” ll. 362–71; “Summer,” ll. 489–93.

[286] “Spring,” ll. 336–73.

[287] “Autumn,” ll. 360–457; “Winter,” ll. 788–93.

[288] “Spring,” ll. 702–28.

[289] “Autumn,” ll. 1172–1207.

[290] “Spring,” ll. 394–442.

[291] _Ibid._, ll. 189, 388.

[292] “Winter,” ll. 1–14.

[293] “Summer,” ll. 1103–68.

[294] “Autumn,” ll. 311–48.

[295] “Winter,” ll. 72–201.

[296] See as illustrative, “Winter,” ll. 127, 738–41.

[297] “Summer,” l. 1704.

[298] “Autumn,” ll. 1088–1102.

[299] See as illustrative, “Spring,” ll. 30–31, 139–41, 145–51, 398–444; “Winter,” ll. 54–57, 77–80, 195–96, 202–3, etc.

[300] “Autumn,” ll. 710–31; cf. Wordsworth, “Prelude,” viii, 265.

[301] “Autumn,” ll. 151–52; “Summer,” ll. 47–66.

[302] “Spring,” ll. 189–202.

[303] “Summer,” ll. 1647–59.

[304] _Ibid._, ll. 1682–98.

[305] “Spring,” ll. 34–43.

[306] _Ibid._, ll. 44–47.

[307] “Autumn,” ll. 153–69.

[308] “Summer,” ll. 352–70.

[309] _Ibid._, ll. 371–442.

[310] “Spring,” ll. 589–608.

[311] “Spring,” ll. 494–509.

[312] “Spring,” ll. 107–13, 950–62; “Summer,” ll. 1406–41.

[313] W. D. McClintock, unpublished notes.

[314] “Summer,” ll. 819–29; “Autumn,” ll. 781–804; cf. Shairp, “Poetic Interpretation of Nature,” p. 191, for the geographical use of Nature in Milton.

[315] “Summer,” ll. 1161–68.

[316] Cf. Wordsworth, “To Joanna,” ll. 54–65.

[317] “Winter,” ll. 714–16; “Spring,” ll. 849–52.

[318] “Autumn,” ll. 773–76.

[319] “Winter,” ll. 116–17.

[320] In 1720 there appeared in the “Edinburgh Miscellany,” a poem entitled, “On a Country Life by a Student in the University.” The poem is interesting as being Thomson’s first poetical treatment of the theme which he was afterward to adopt. The verse is in somewhat stiff and formal heroic couplets, and the poem is marked by classicisms. But there are lines and phrases suggestive of Thomson’s later work and the plan and general tone are, as Sir Harris Nicholas has pointed out, strongly suggestive of “The Seasons.” The young poet’s love of country life is quite clearly genuine.

[321] Cf. also remarks in Preface to second, third, and fourth editions of “Winter”: “I know no subject more elevating, more amusing; more ready to awake the poetical enthusiasm, the philosophical reflection, and the moral sentiment, than the works of Nature. Where can we meet with such variety, such beauty, such magnificence? All that enlarges and transports the soul? What more inspiring than a calm, wide survey of them?”

[322] “Spring,” ll. 868–74.

[323] “Autumn,” ll. 670–72. Cf. Wordsworth, “The Tables Turned,” st. 6.

[324] “Summer,” ll. 1380–82.

[325] “Autumn,” l. 1309.

[326] Compare Pope’s rhetorical statement of the same speculative conception.

[327] Since the publication of this study of Thomson I have read with much interest Leon Morel’s “James Thomson: Sa vie et ses œuvres,” 1895. Chaps. iii and iv of Part II deal fully with Thomson’s attitude toward external Nature and with his technical excellences as a descriptive poet.

[328] Dyer uses almost as many words ending in “y” as Ambrose Philips. “Stenchy,” “towery,” “framy,” “sleeky,” “thready,” “cropsy,” “spiry,” are illustrative.

[329] “The Fleece,” i, 193.

[330] In “Observations on the River Wye,” by William Gilpin, pp. 103–8, Dyer’s “Grongar Hill” is, however, criticized for not accurately representing distance. The grove must be distant if it can be rightfully called purple, but the castle beyond it “is touched with all the strength of a foreground; you see the very ivy creeping upon the walls.”

[331] “The Fleece,” i, 577.

[332] _Ibid._, ii, 55.

[333] _Ibid._, 310.

[334] _Ibid._, 518.

[335] _Ibid._, 241.

[336] “The Fleece,” i, 555.

[337] _Ibid._, 59.

[338] _Ibid._, 41.

[339] “The Country Walk,” ll. 86–99; 33–40.

[340] He calls the sun “Phoebus” and “Apollo;” he occasionally uses such words as “swain,” “bloomy,” “sylvan,” “verdant,” “flowery;” and he speaks of “the wanton zephyr;” and he refers to a grove as the “haunt of Phyllis.”

[341] “The Country Walk,” ll. 58–63.

[342] Cf. “Grongar Hill,” l. 137.

[343] Cf. “The Country Walk,” l. 120.

[344] Thomson to Mallet, September, 1726.

[345] Thomson’s letters to Mallet in 1726.

[346] Letter to Mallet, July 10, 1725.

[347] _Ibid._, August 2, 1726.

[348] Letters to Mallet, June 13 and July 10, 1726.

[349] Cf. “The Wanderer,” v, 237, 238 (roads); v, 253–68 (fields and bushes); v, 230–35 (sunset); v, 363–74 (the rainbow); iv, 59–63 (morning); iii, 15–27 (moonrise); v, 8, 15–20 (foliage and flowers); v, 203–10 (bean fields); i, 195–98 (winter landscape); iv, 85–96 (sunrise).

[350] In 1730 appeared a parody entitled “The Thresher’s Miscellany” by “Arthur Duck.”

[351] “The Chace,” ii, 79–82.

[352] “To the Right Honorable Lady Anne Coventry.”

[353] An excellent example is “Nancy of the Vale” which takes as its model,

Nerine Galatea! thymo mihi dulcior Hyblae! Candidior cygnis! hedera formosior alba,

but compares Nancy to the “wild-duck’s tender young,” to the water-lily on Avon’s side, her eyes to the azure plume of the halcyon, etc.

[354] “Rural Elegance,” st. 20.

[355] _Ibid._, st. 19.

[356] “Rural Elegance,” sts. 4, 5, 6, 8.

[357] _Ibid._, st. 16.

[358] “The Spleen,” ll. 646–87.

[359] _Ibid._, l. 681.

[360] “The Epistle of the Thistle.”

[361] “Contemplation.”

[362] See Hervey, “Meditations,” ii, 239; Fielding, “Tom Jones,” VII, chap. i.

[363] “To Thomson on Sophonisba.”

[364] “Night Thoughts,” v, 126–30.

[365] _Ibid._, 176.

[366] _Ibid._, 171.

[367] See “Night Thoughts,” vi, where there is an interesting statement of the theory afterward expounded in Coleridge’s “Ode to Dejection.” Compare Young’s,

Objects are but th’ occasion; ours th’ exploit; Ours is the cloth, the pencil, and the paint, Which nature’s admirable picture draws (“Night,” vi, 431),

with Coleridge’s,

O Lady! we receive but what we give And in our life alone does nature live; Ours is her wedding garment; ours her shroud.

In the same passage by Young is the line concerning the power of our senses that

Half create the wondrous world they see,

from which Wordsworth took a line in “Tintern Abbey.” In Satire I, 249 there are some lines that sound absurdly like certain stanzas in “Peter Bell”:

On every thorn delightful wisdom grows; In every rill a sweet instruction flows. But some, untaught, o’erhear the whispering rill, In spite of sacred leisure, blockheads still.

The lines

In distant wilds, by human eyes unseen, She rears her flowers, and spreads her velvet green; Pure gurgling rills the lonely desert trace And waste their music on the savage race (Satire V, 229),

come between the similar passages by Gay and Gray.

Cf. also the simile of the eagle and the serpent (“Vanquished Love,” Book II, 226), with Shelley’s “Revolt of Islam,” i, sts. 8–10.

[368] “Ode to Fear,” “Ode to Simplicity,” “An Epistle to Sir Thomas Hanmer,” “Ode to Pity.”

[369] “Ode to Fear,” “On the Poetical Character,” “Popular Superstitions,” st. 11, “An Epistle to Sir Thomas Hanmer.”

[370] Mason, “Memoirs of Gray,” p. 261.

[371] “Pleasures of Imagination,” Book IV, 26 (1770).

[372] “Pleasures of Imagination,” Book IV, 38–51 (1770); cf. “Hymn to the Naiads,” ll. 243–49; cf. Wordsworth, “Prelude,” Book I, 402, and many other passages concerning the silent power of Nature over him in his youth.

[373] “Pleasures of Imagination,” Book I, 136–40 (1757).

[374] _Ibid._, 120 (1744).

[375] _Ibid._, 150 (1757).

[376] _Ibid._, 153–60 (1757).

[377] _Ibid._, 168–75 (1757); cf. Wordsworth, “Tintern Abbey,” ll. 41–49.

[378] “Pleasures of Imagination,” Book III, 591–6O5 (1744). This “sacred order” of the universe is one of the points on which Wordsworth dwells, and he refers frequently to the tranquilizing, steadying effect which the contemplation of this order and harmony will have on the mind of man. See “Excursion,” Book IV, 1198–1219, 1254–65.

[379] “Pleasures of Imagination,” Book III, 615–33 (1744).

[380] “Odes,” Book I, Ode 14, st. 4–6; cf. Wordsworth’s statement that Nature reveals herself to the heart that “watches and receives.”

[381] “Odes,” Book I, Ode 5, st. 8.

[382] “Pleasures of Imagination,” Book I, 670–75 (1757).

[383] “Pleasures of Imagination,” Book III, 484 (1757).

[384] _Ibid._, I, 576–89 (1757).

[385] _Ibid._, 432–37 (1757). Akenside’s presentation of this doctrine has led Gosse to call him a “sort of frozen Keats,” but Akenside’s pleasure in Nature was philosophical rather than sensuous. His scientific delight in the analyzed rainbow (“Pleasures of Imagination,” Book II, 103–20 [1744]) would have filled Keats with horror.

[386] “Sickness,” v, 5.

[387] “Hymn to May,” st. 20.

[388] “Sickness,” v, 17.

[389] Phelps, “The Beginnings of the English Romantic Movement.”

[390] Wordsworth, “A Poet’s Epitaph,” st. 10.

[391] “On the Pleasure Arising from Vicissitude.”

[392] “Couplet about Birds.”

[393] “All-beauteous Nature! by thy boundless charms,” “the vast, various Landscape,” “sight-refreshing green,” “the thousand-colored tulip,” are typical Thomsonian phrases.

“Liquid lapse of murm’ring waters”

--“Enthusiast,” l. 93, “Paradise Lost,” viii, 263;

“Mountain shagg’d with horrid shapes”

--“Enthusiast,” l. 75; “Comus,” l. 429;

“When young-eyed spring profusely throws From her green lap the pink and rose.”

--“Ode to Fancy,” l. 106; “Song on May Morning;”

“Then lay me by some haunted stream, Rapt in some wild poetic dream.”

--“Ode to Fancy,” l. 41; “L’Allegro,” l. 129;

are some of the characteristic instances of the echoes from Milton.

[394] “The Enthusiast.”

[395] _Ibid._

[396] “Ode to Fancy.”

[397] “The Enthusiast.”

[398] “The Enthusiast.” Cf. Thomson, “Liberty,” ii, 1–26, for a similar eulogy of a past golden age, but without Warton’s modern application.

[399] “An Essay on the Genius and Writings of Pope.”

[400] Note such lines as

Haste thee nymph, and hand in hand, With thee lead a buxom band; Bring fantastic-footed joy, etc.,

But ever against restless heat, etc.,

Let not my due feet fail to climb, etc.--“Approach of Summer.”

[401] See under “Travels.”

[402] “Hope.”

[403] “Vision of Fancy,” Elegy 3.

[404] _Ibid._

[405] “Fable IV.”

[406] “The Bee Flower.”

[407] “To the Rev. Lamb.”

[408] “Fable IV.”

[409] “Autumnal Elegy.”

[410] “Fable X.”

[411] “Inscription on the Door of a Study.”

[412] “The Immensity of the Supreme Being.”

[413] _Ibid._, l. 56. Cf. also the similar lines in “Hymn to the Supreme Being,” st. 16. It was apparently a favorite image. See Browning’s reference to it in his poem on Smart.

[414] “Almada Hill,” l. 330.

[415] “The Sorceress,” st. 4.

[416] “Elegy,” st. 4.

[417] “Syr Martyn,” ii, 31.

[418] “Pollio,” st. 3.

[419] “Eskdale Braes,” st. 1.

[420] See Bailey Saunders, “Life and Letters of James Macpherson,” p. 14.

[421] “Carric-Thura.”

[422] “Carthon.”

[423] Dr. Blair has a significant comment on the truth in the poems of Ossian. “The introduction of foreign images betrays a poet copying not from nature, but from other writers. Hence so many lions and tigers, and eagles and serpents which we meet with in the similes of modern poets; as if these animals had acquired some right to a place in poetical comparisons for ever, because employed by ancient authors. They employed them with propriety, as objects generally known in their country; but they are absurdly used for illustration by us, who know them only at second-hand, or by description.”

[424] Blair’s “Critical Dissertation,” in Tauchnitz ed. of the “Ossian Poems.”

[425] See “Child of Elle,” “Edom o’ Gordon,” “Hardyknute,” and others.

[426] “Robin and Makyne.”

[427] “Lord Thomas and Fair Annet.”

[428] “Robin Hood and Guy of Gisborne.”

[429] “Adam Bell.”

[430] “Barbara Allan’s Cruelty.”

[431] “The Marriage of Sir Gawaine.”

[432] “Gil Morice.”

[433] “King Edward IV and Tanner of Tamworth.”

[434] “The King and the Miller of Mansfield.”

[435] “Adam Bell.”

[436] “Robin Hood and Guy of Gisborne.”

[437] For the forest in mediaeval poetry see Vernon Lee, “Euphorion,” p. 122.

[438] “Hardyknute.”

[439] “Young Waters.”

[440] “Young Waters.”

[441] “The Heir of Linne.”

[442] Schiller, “Ueber die Naive und Sentimentale Dichtung.”

[443] The poem is quoted entire by Gosse in his “Eighteenth Century Literature.”

[444] In this poem about 16 per cent. of the lines have something to do with Nature. In Wordsworth’s “Descriptive Sketches” over 50 per cent. of the lines treat of Nature.

[445] “The Minstrel,” Preface.

[446] Wordsworth, “The Excursion,” i, 108–300.

[447] _Ibid._, iv, 466–600.

[448] Wordsworth, “The Prelude,” “Advertisement.”

[449] “The Minstrel,” i, 52.

[450] _Ibid._, 10.

[451] _Ibid._, 9. Of this stanza Gray said in a letter to Beattie, March, 1771: “But this, of all others, is my favorite stanza. It is true poetry; it is inspiration; only (to show it is mortal) there is one blemish; the word garniture suggesting an idea of dress, and, what is worse, of French dress.” Beattie said he had often wished “to alter this same word, but had not been able to hit upon a better.”--Dyce, “Memoir of Beattie,” p. xxxvii.

Gray’s praise of Beattie was faint compared to Beattie’s admiration of Gray. In 1765 he declared that he had “long and passionately admired” Gray’s writings. He thought Gray’s poems finer than those of his contemporaries in any nation. He thought his taste most exact, his judgment most sound, and his learning most extensive. See Dyce, “Memoir of Beattie,” pp. xvi, xviii.

[452] Dyce, “Memoir of Beattie,” p. xxxvi.

[453] Cowper, Letter to Rev. William Unwin, April, 1784.

[454] Dyce, “Memoir of Beattie,” p. xxxv.

[455] His chief poems are, “Four Moral Eclogues” (1778); “Four Elegies” (published 1760 but written earlier); “Amwell, A Descriptive Poem” (published 1776 but written 1768); and “Odes and Amoebaean Eclogues” (1782). His “Epistle on the Garden” and “Essay on Painting” will be spoken of later.

It is interesting to note the spirit of apology with which Scott’s friends and admirers comment on his choice of subjects. In such poetry there is little opportunity for genius, for, says Mr. Hoole, “A hill, a vale, a forest, a rivulet, a cataract, can be described only by general terms; the hill must swell, the vale sink, the rivulet murmur, and the cataract foam.” Mr. Hoole recognizes the “slight estimation” in which descriptive poetry is commonly held, but thinks there are devices to render it attractive and calls attention to the skill with which Mr. Scott has made his poems “interesting by the introduction of historical incidents, apt illusions, and moral reflections.”

[456] At this line Mr. Hoole’s admiration broke down. He could only regret that Mr. Scott’s desire for novelty had led him to admit such circumstances as no versification can make poetical.

[457] See “Advertisement” to “Poetical Sketches.”

[458] Introduction to “Songs of Innocence.”

[459] “Night.”

[460] “Contemplation.”

[461] “Book of Thel.”

[462] “Inebriety.”

[463] “The Village.”

[464] “The Choice.”

[465] “The Borough” especially Letters I and IX.

[466] “Tales of the Hall,” Book IV.

[467] In a letter to Newton, November 16, 1791, he wrote: “I would that I could see some of the mountains which you have seen; especially because Dr. Johnson has pronounced that no man is qualified to be a poet who has never seen a mountain. But mountains I shall never see, unless, perhaps, in a dream, or unless there are such in heaven.”

[468] See “Task,” i, 764; iv, 254–58. The best lines on the moon are in “Task,” iv, 3,

the wintry flood, in which the moon Sees her unwrinkled face reflected bright.

[469] “Task,” i, 520; vi, 495.

[470] “Truth,” l. 238.

[471] “Task,” iv, 322.

[472] Illustrative similitudes are those drawn from the thunderstorm “Truth,” l. 238), deer (“Task,” iii, 108), peacocks and pheasants (“Truth,” l. 58), elm and vine (“Retirement,” l. 129), moles (“Task,” i, 276), etc.

[473] In a letter to Rev. William Unwin, October, 1784, Cowper wrote, “My descriptions are all from nature; not one of them second-handed.”

[474] Letter to Lady Herbert, October 12, 1785.

[475] “Task,” v, 58.

[476] _Ibid._, 27.

[477] _Ibid._, 41.

[478] _Ibid._, i, 161.

[479] _Ibid._, 358.

[480] _Ibid._, vi, 147.

[481] _Ibid._, i, 304.

[482] “Task,” i, 195.

[483] _Ibid._, 185.

[484] _Ibid._, 159.

[485] _Ibid._, 346.

[486] “Task,” vi, 310.

[487] _Ibid._, v, 22.

[488] _Ibid._, vi, 77.

[489] _Ibid._, i, 109, 142.

[490] _Ibid._, iv, 700.

[491] _Ibid._, 695.

[492] See “Hope,” ll. 39–60; “Task,” iii, 721; iv, 780; iii, 301; and other passages. In the passage from “Hope” compare the line:

She spreads the morning over Eastern hills,

and Wordsworth’s

A boy I loved the sun ... for this cause that I had seen him lay His beauty on the morning hills.--“Prelude,” ii, 183.

[493] See “Retirement,” ll. 481, 563; “Task,” iii, 314, 306.

[494] “Task,” i, 749.

[495] “Task,” vi, 109; cf. ll. 84–117 of Wordsworth’s “The Tables Turned”:

Books! ’tis a dull and endless strife,

* * * * *

Come forth into the light of things, Let Nature be your teacher. She has a world of ready wealth Our minds and hearts to bless.

* * * * *

Sweet is the lore which Nature brings; Our meddling intellect Mis-shapes the beauteous forms of things.

See also, “To My Sister”:

One moment now may give us more Than years of toiling reason.

[496] “Task,” vi, 121–97.

[497] _Ibid._, i, 369.

[498] “Retirement,” l. 419.

[499] “Task,” vi, 181.

[500] _Ibid._, 59.

[501] Burns, “Works,” V, 185.

[502] _Ibid._, I, 28. Cf. lines in the “Epistle to William Simson”:

Ev’n winter bleak has charms to me When winds rave thro’ the naked tree; Or frosts on hills of Ochiltree Are hoary gray; Or blinding drifts wild-furious flee Dark’ning the day! O Nature! a’ thy shews and forms To feeling, pensive hearts hae charms, Whether the summer kindly warms Wi’ life an’ light; Or winter howls, in gusty storms, The lang, dark night.

[503] Burns, “Works,” IV, 272.

[504] “The Vision,” sts. 36, 37.

[505] Burns, “Works,” I, 18. In one poem Burns declares that he prefers “wild mossy moors” to “Forth’s sunny shores,” but a characteristic reason,

For there by a lanely sequestered stream Resides a sweet lassie, my thought and my dream,

forbids the use of the passage as a proof of real enjoyment of the wild in Nature.

[506] Burns, “Works,” VI, 242.

[507] _Ibid._, p. 241.

[508] _Ibid._, V, 165.

[509] Burns warmly admired Ossian, and this phrase sounds like an echo from one of the Ossian poems.

[510] Burns, “A Winter Night.”

[511] _Ibid._, “The Brigs of Ayr.”

[512] _Ibid._, “Works,” V, 231.

[513] Burns, “Elegy on Captain Henderson.”

[514] Bowles, “Poetical Works,” II, XII (ed. 1855).

[515] See sonnet by Coleridge.

[516] “After this third edition came out, my friend Mr. Crutwell, the printer, wrote a letter saying that two young gentlemen, strangers, one a particularly handsome and pleasing youth, lately from Westminster School, [Robert Southey] and both literary and intelligent, spoke in high commendation of my volume.”--Bowles, “Poems” (Introduction to ed. of 1837).

[517] “Fourteen Sonnets,” 1789. The same with additions, 1790. The same reproduced with illustrations, 1798.

[518] Bowles, “Poems,” Introduction to edition of 1837.

[519] “Hope.”

[520] “The Tweed Visited.”

[521] “Elegy Written at the Hotwells, Bristol.”

[522] “To the River Itchen.”

[523] “The River Cherwell.”

[524] “Elegy Written at the Hotwells, Bristol.”

[525] “The River Wainsbeck.”

[526] _Ibid._

[527] “At Tynemouth Priory.”

[528] “Absence.”

[529] “The Bells, Ostend.”

[530] “At Malvern.”

[531] Bowles, “Memoir.”

[532] I have been unable to find the exact date of this letter, but in all probability it antedates “The Life of John Buncle” and the “Descriptive Poem” by some years. It was probably before 1760, because at that time occurred the quarrel between Lyttleton and Brown. It seems also probable that it was before 1756, because at that time Dr. Brown took the living at Great Horkesley, near Colchester. The most natural period for the Letter is between 1748 and 1754, for at some time during that period, and apparently during the early part of it, Dr. Brown held the living of Morland, Westmoreland. (See “Brown,” “Osbaldiston,” “Lyttleton” in “Nat. Dict. of Biog.” and memoir of Brown in “British Poets.”)

[533] Young explains that he cannot find anyone to spell the names for him so he must spell them as they are pronounced.

[534] Cf. L. Charlanne, “L’influence française en Angleterre au XVII^e siècle,” p. 115.

[535] Alicia Amherst, “A History of Gardening in England,” p. 206.

[536] Few of these details, except the radiating avenues and the high jets of water characteristic of Le Nôtre’s gardens, were absolutely new after 1660. Topiary work was of Roman origin. “It is said to have been invented by Matius, a friend of the emperor Augustus. The chief gardener was known as the “topiarius” and it was his none too easy task to see that the evergreens were artistically shorn” (Nichols, “English Pleasure Gardens,” p. 39). The cutting of trees and shrubs into quaint forms was introduced into England in the early Tudor period and became very popular. The clipped garden at Heslington, near York, is said to date from about 1560. In 1618 Lawson in his “A New Orchard and Garden” wrote, “Your Gardiner can frame your lesser wood to the shape of men armed in the field, ready to give battell; or swift-running Grey Hounds to chase the Deere, or hunt the Hare.” There was also early protest against such work. Bacon in his “Essay on Gardens” said, “I, for my part, do not like images cut out in juniper or other garden stuff; they be for children.” Of figured and colored knots Bacon said, “They be but toys; you may see as good sights many times in tarts.” He also objected to fantastic fountains where the water spouted forth in “feathers, drinking glasses, canopies, and the like.”

[537] In the Arts and Crafts Museum at Hamburg there is a fine and perhaps unique historical collection of garden prints, a collection made by Professor Brinckmann, director of the Museum, and shown at the great Gardening Exhibition in Hamburg, 1897 (Albert Forbes Sieveking, “Gardens Ancient and Modern,” 1897).

[538] Sir John Thynne bought Longleat in 1541 and was occupied during 1567–79 in building the mansion. The baron Thynne who made the gardens became viscount in 1682 and Kip’s plans date sometime after that year. Lady Winchilsea, who visited often at Longleat, wrote, about 1690, a poem to Lady Worsley, the only daughter of Viscount Weymouth, in which she speaks of

Longleate that justly has all praise engross’d, The strangers wonder and our nations boast.

She comments on the finish in details and on the splendid effect of the whole. She describes labyrinths, flowery groves, smooth grass terraces, but she devotes her most eager lines to the fountains. Words are inadequate to

Paint her Cascades that spread their sheets so wide And emulate th’ Italian waters pride, Her Fountains which so high their streames extend Th’ amazed Clouds now feel the Rains ascend, Whilst Phoebus as they tow’rds his Mantion flow Graces th’ attempt and marks them with his Bow.

[539] Horace Walpole says of this description, “Any man might design and _build_ as sweet a garden, who had been born in, and never stirred out of Holburn.” In Mason’s “English Garden” is another scornful description of Temple’s idea of a perfect garden.

[540] This treatise is quoted almost entire in Nichols’ “English Pleasure Gardens” in the chapter on “French Fashions.”

[541] Mr. Barrington in “On the Progress of Gardening,” 1782 (“Archaeologia,” Vol. V) says that Lord Bathurst, at Ryskins, near Colebrook, was the first to make a winding stream through a garden. “So unusual was the effect that his friend, Lord Stafford, could not believe it had been done on purpose, and supposing it had been for economy, asked him to own fairly how little more it would have cost to have made the course of the brook in a straight direction.”

[542] “Paradise Lost,” Book IV, 299.

[543] Letter from Horace Walpole to Sir Horace Mann, June 20, 1760. For a description of Twickenham see “Famous Parks and Gardens” (Nelson and Sons, London, 1880), p. 134.

[544] Pope, “Works” (Elwin and Courthope), V, 182.

[545] Blomfield and Thomas, “The Formal Garden in England,” p. 80.

[546] William Mason, “The English Garden” (1772). In the edition of 1738 Dr. Burgh in his notes calls Bacon the prophet, Milton the herald, and Addison, Pope, and Kent the champions of the true taste in gardening.

[547] Horace Walpole, “Essay on Modern Gardening” (written in 1770, printed in 1785).

[548] William Hazlitt, “Gleanings in Old Garden Literature,” p. 66 (ed. 1882).

[549] Letter to Jervas, December 12, 1718. Pope, “Works” (Elwin and Courthope), IV, 494.

[550] In the very full bibliography (covering the years 1516–1836) given by Miss Amherst in “A History of Gardening in England” more than sixty books or articles are listed between 1700 and 1725. Most of these seem from the titles to be of purely horticultural interest and have to do with the kitchen garden or the fruit garden rather than with ornamental grounds. One popular sort of title in which the word “Recreation” is the keynote would seem to indicate something more than a collection of practical precepts, but on investigation “The Ladies’ Recreation” (1707), “The Clergyman’s Recreation” (1714), “The Gentleman’s Recreation” (1717), “The Lady’s Recreation” (1718), and the rest, prove to be severely technical, treating only of the planting and nurture of gardens.

[551] Quoted by Sieveking in “Gardens Ancient and Modern,” p. 122.

[552] There is a discriminating eulogy of Kent by Francis Coventry in “The World,” April 12, 1753. But see also Coventry’s “Strictures on the Absurd Novelties Introduced into Gardening, and a Humorous Description of Squire Mushroom’s Villa,” “The World,” November 15, 1753.

[553] In Mr. Dallaway’s “Supplementary Anecdotes” to Walpole’s “On Modern Gardening” (In Walpole’s “Anecdotes of Painting,” III, 819,) is the statement that Mr. Southcote at Wooburn Farm in Surrey, and the Hon. C. Hamilton at Pain’s Hill, Surrey, undoubtedly preceded Shenstone in priority of design.

[554] Sir Walter Scott said of this sketch, “I can trace, even to childhood, a pleasure derived from Dodsley’s description of Shenstone’s Leasowes, and I envied the poet much more for the pleasure of accomplishing the objects detailed in his friend’s sketch of his grounds, than for the possession of pipe, crook, flock, and Phyllis to boot.” For another full prose description of Leasowes and the neighboring place, Hagley, see Hugh Miller’s “Impressions of England and English People,” pp. 95–132, 147–69. See also “On the Tenants of the Leasowes,” Essay XXI in “Essays” (1758–65) by Goldsmith, for a description of Leasowes gone to decay. There is an interesting supposed conversation between Shenstone and a utilitarian cockney visitor in “Blackwood’s,” XIV, 262 (1823). Another early description is in “Letters on the Beauties of Hagley, Envil, and the Leasowes,” by Joseph Heeley, 1777. There are poetical descriptions in Woodhouse’s “Poems” and in Giles’ “Miscellanies.” In Shenstone’s “Works,” published by Dodsley in 1773 are collected nine poetical tributes to the place. In “The Spiritual Quixote” (1773) one of the noted exploits of Mr. Geoffry Wildgoose, the quixotic reformer, is an attempted defacement of the gardens at Leasowes in order thereby to save the soul of his friend Shenstone from being wedded to idols. The influence and fame of this garden are indicated by the fact that the Marquis de Giradin at Ermonville called his own place “The Leasowes of France.” Anderson, in his Preface to Shenstone’s “Works” says that the planning of pleasure grounds in the manner of Leasowes “seems to require as great powers of mind as those which we admire in the descriptive poems of Thomson, or in the noble landscapes of Salvator Rosa, or the Poussins.” For later descriptions see “Shenstone and the Leasowes” in “Once a Week,” 1862, by Edward Jesse.

[555] Downing, in “Landscape Gardening,” p. 20, says that the term “landscape gardening” was first used in this essay. The essay begins, “Gardening may be divided into three species ... kitchen-gardening ... parterre-gardening ... and landskip, or picturesque gardening.”

[556] For a full statement of Mason’s views on this point see the notes to the first book of “The English Garden.” Switzer had already made a similar claim in regard to Milton. It is interesting to note in this connection that Kent often referred his love of Nature in gardens to his study of Spenser’s “Fairy Queen.”

[557] Mason, “The English Garden,” “General Postscript.”

[558] In “The Garden: As Considered in Literature by Some Polite Persons,” edited by Walter Howe (“Knickerbocker Nuggets” series, G. P. Putnam’s Sons), may be found essays by Pliny the Elder, Pliny the Younger, Lord Bacon, Sir William Temple, Addison, Pope, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, Whateley, Goldsmith, Walpole, and Evelyn. A fine edition of Sir William Temple’s essay, “On the Gardens of Epicurus,” with illustrations, has been brought out by Chatto and Windus.

[559] Viscount Irwin, “The Rise and Progress of the Present Taste in Planting,” 1767.

[560] Cowper, “The Task,” Book III, “The Gardens,” l. 764.

[561] Richard Payne Knight, “The Landscape, A Didactic Poem,” 1794.

[562] Uvedale Price, “An Essay on the Picturesque” (1794–98).

[563] William Gilpin, “Observations ... Relative Chiefly to Picturesque Beauty.” Eleven separate volumes, 1783–1809.

[564] Richard Jago, “Edge Hill, or the Rural Prospect Delineated and Moralized,” 1767. In this poem Jago describes the country seats of fifty gentlemen. The most important are Farnborough, Packington, Shuckburgh, and Leasowes.

[565] There are many indications about the middle of the century of a widespread interest in all that pertained to China. In about 1750 Mrs. Montague remodeled her house in Hill Street and made a Chinese room of which she wrote, “Sick of Grecian elegance and symmetry, or Gothick grandeur and magnificence, we must all seek the barbarious goût of the Chinese; and fat-headed pagods and shaking manderins bear the prizes from the finest works of antiquity.... You will wonder I should condemn the taste I have complied with but in trifles I shall always conform to the fashion.” As early as 1750 appeared William Halfpenny’s “New Designs for Chinese Temples ... Garden Seats,” etc. In 1753 in “The World” for March, Coventry satirizes the rage for Chinese furniture. In April there is a protest against the excessive use of Chinese bridges and buildings in gardens. In February, 1754, and March, 1755, are pleas for an “anti-Chinese society.” Chippendale’s “Gentleman and Cabinet-Maker’s Directory” of 1753 and Sir William Chambers’ more influential “Book on Chinese Buildings,” 1757, did much to establish the taste for Chinese furnishings and for Chinese garden accessories, and also to render that taste more correct.

[566] As illustrative see Isaac Oliver’s (1566–1617) portrait of Sir Philip Sidney who is represented as seated on a turf-covered rock, leaning against a broad tree-trunk, while in the rear is a formal arcaded garden with a distant row of trees sending up slender green spires against a sunset sky. (Reproduced in Gosse and Garnett, “An Illustrated History of English Literature.”) Compare also Oliver’s portrait of himself where is seen through the open window a broad river flowing at the base of castle-crowned crags. (Reproduced in Horace Walpole, “Anecdotes of Painting,” III, 176.)

[567] Among Vandyck’s contemporaries in England the one who made most successful use of landscape was Mytens (in England after 1618), another foreigner, to whom is attributed the interesting portrait of “Sir Jeffrey Hudson, the Dwarf” at Hampton Court. The diminutive figure is represented as standing in a full landscape in which there is an admirable effect of distance and of clear, harmonious coloring.

[568] Now in William III’s State Bedroom at Hampton Court but formerly in the Queen’s Bedchamber at Windsor Castle.

[569] The ablest of Lely’s pupils was John Greenhill (1649–76). One of his portraits at the Dulwich Gallery is described by Mr. Cartwright as “My first wife’s pictur, Like a sheppardess.” It shows a charming lady in low satin bodice and pearls, her right hand resting on the head of a sheep, while behind her is a landscape of brown trees and rough tower-crowned hills under a gray and misty sky. William Wissing (1656–87), another pupil of Lely, and a rival of Kneller in popular favor, also made some attractive use of vaguely indicated stretches of landscape, but usually his portrait accessories were pillars, heavily draped curtains, stormy skies, with, as the loveliest point, a flowering rose-bush, an elaborately painted thistle, a vase of flowers, in the foreground. Two characteristic portraits are those of Mrs. Knott and Mrs. Lawson at Hampton Court.

[570] Reproduced from engraving by Isaac Becket in Cyril Davenport, “Mezzotints,” p. 94.

[571] Engraved by J. Smith. Reproduced in Davenport, “Mezzotints,” p.100.

[572] In William III’s Presence Chamber at Hampton Court. “Lady Middleton” is No. 54.

[573] Reproduced in Mrs. Oliphant’s “The Reign of Queen Anne.”

[574] Reproduced in Walpole, “Letters,” IX, 484, and II, Frontispiece.

[575] Engraved by J. McArdell, a famous example of his work. Reproduced in Davenport, “Mezzotints.”

[576] Horace Walpole, “Anecdotes of Painting,” II, 442.

[577] Lord Ronald Sutherland Gower, F.S.A., “Sir Joshua Reynolds, F.R.A.,” p. 23.

[578] The last four portraits mentioned are in the National Gallery.

[579] Reproduced in Lord Gower’s “Sir Joshua Reynolds.”

[580] These pictures of women and children are for the most part in private galleries. But no artist has been more fully and adequately represented in engravings than Reynolds. In the Print Room of the British Museum there are twelve large albums of prints after his paintings. There are also numerous reproductions in books such as Cyril Davenport’s “Mezzotints,” Lord Gower’s “Sir Joshua Reynolds,” Alfred Whitman’s “The Print Collector’s Handbook,” Gordon Goodwin’s “British Mezzotinters,” and Julia Frankau’s “Eighteenth-Century Colour-Prints.” The most important of the engravers of Reynolds’ pictures were James McArdell (1729–65), Valentine Green (1739–1813), S. W. Reynolds (1773–1835), John Raphael Smith (1752–1812) and Caroline Watson (1761?–1814). Valentine Green began in 1780 a series of Reynolds’ “Beauties of the Present Age” on the plan of Lely’s and Kneller’s “Beauties.” These engravings were originally issued at fifteen shillings each, but they have increased enormously in value. At a recent sale a proof of the “Duchess of Rutland” brought a thousand pounds, nearly five times as much as Reynolds received for the original picture (Salaman, “Old Engravers of England,” p. 138).

[581] It seems strange that Reynolds did not do more in the way of pure landscape. In the South Kensington gallery is a pleasing little brown landscape, “The Entrance to Mrs. Thrale’s Park at Streatham.” Lord Gower in “Sir Joshua Reynolds, R.A.” reproduces a landscape in the possession of Lord Northcote and entitled “A Study from Sir Joshua’s Villa at Richmond Hill.” We find mention, also, of other landscapes, but they form no significant part of his work.

[582] Sir Walter Armstrong, “Gainsborough and His Place in British Art,” p. 171

[583] John C. Van Dyke, “Old English Masters,” p. 58.

[584] In the Wallace Gallery, London. Reproduced in Sir Walter Armstrong’s “Gainsborough,” p. 88.

[585] Owned by the Lord Rothschild. Reproduced in Sir Walter Armstrong’s “Gainsborough,” p. 124.

[586] These two pictures are in the Dulwich Gallery, London.

[587] Owned by the Lord Rothschild. Reproduced by Braun, Clement & Cie.

[588] Owned by Sir Algernon Neeld. Reproduced in Sir Walter Armstrong’s “Gainsborough,” p. 140.

[589] For an account of the engravings from Gainsborough’s pictures see H. P. Horne, “Engraved Works of Gainsborough and Romney,” 1891.

[590] Aside from the works of the Van de Veldes English public galleries have very few examples of landscape painting in England during the years 1660–1707. From Walpole’s “Anecdotes of Painting” and from standard dictionaries of art and biography a partial list of the foreigners painting in England at this time may be compiled. Chief among them were Hendrik Danckerts who, after painting landscapes in Italy, came to England about 1667 and was engaged by Charles II to paint views; Cornélius Bol who, during the same reign, was painting views of the Thames; John Looten (d. 1680), whose chosen subjects were “glades, dark oaken groves, land-storms, and waterfalls;” Henry Lankrink (1628–92), a successful imitator of Salvator Rosa in the depiction of rough country, was especially commended for “the beauty and freedom” of his skies, and employed by Lely to paint some of his backgrounds; John Sybrecht (1630–1703), a painter of pictures of the Rhine, who was in England after 1680, and whose “Prospect of Longleat” was one of the pictures at Newstead Abbey, Lord Byron’s home; Philip Boul who left a pocketbook of sketches of Derbyshire and the Peak, “worked out in the Salvator Rosa style;” Henry Verzagen who devoted himself to “ruins and landscapes;” Adrien Vandiest (1655–1704), who came to England in 1672 and seven of whose landscapes were in Sir Peter Lely’s collection; Jan Van Wyck (d. 1702) who painted “excellent landscapes” from scenes in Scotland and the isle of Jersey; and Jan Griffier (1645–1718) who painted mixed scenes of river and rich country in the manner of Ruysdael, and who was so much of an enthusiast that he bought a yacht and, “embarking with his family and pencils passed his whole time on the Thames.”

[591] Streater’s “Boscobel House,” one of the pictures in James II’s collection, is at Hampton Court. At Dulwich a picture described in Cartwright’s catalogue as “A large Landschift done by Streeker” is now ascribed to Streater.

[592] Francis Place is noteworthy as one of the first Englishmen, if not the very first, to practice the newly discovered art of mezzotint engraving (M. C. Salamon, “The Old Engravers of England,” pp. 52, 66).

[593] There are fourteen sea-pieces by him in the National Gallery; eight in the Wallace collection at Hertford House; and several at Hampton Court. At Dulwich are two pictures by him, “A Calm” and “A Brisk Breeze” that are especially attractive examples of his style.

[594] M. Rouquet was a French enamel painter who came to England in 1725.

[595] Afterward brought together in Buck’s “Antiquities,” published in 1774.

[596] “Humphrey Clinker” was published in 1771 and the supposed time of Matthew Bramble’s visit to Bath is not much earlier. Taverner was sixty-eight in 1771.

[597] Cosmo Monkhouse, “The Earlier English Water-Colour Painters.”

[598] Bequeathed by Miss Haines in 1898.

[599] See Print Room, British Museum, for prints from his paintings.

[600] Cosmo Monkhouse, “The Earlier English Water-Colour Painters,” pp. 35, 36.

[601] Cozens had a curious way of getting hints for landscape composition. He taught his pupils to splash paint on the bottoms of earthenware plates and to stamp impressions therefrom on sheets of damp paper. The accidental forms thus struck out were counted a help to invention. The early exhibitions record many bizarre attempts at landscapes such as “A landscape done in needlework and human hair” (1772), “three drawings made upon a board with a hot iron“ (1777), “flowers cut in cork,” “three small landscapes made in oil with Trees and Shrubs in sea-weed” (1780). These were apparently exhibited in all seriousness. In 1770 there was “A landscape in colored wax.”

[602] In the Print Room of the British Museum are sixty-eight small sketches made by Paul Sandby in the neighborhood of Edinburgh, but most of these are of figures.

[603] Allan Cunningham, “The Lives of the Most Eminent British Painters” (1879), II, 210.

[604] Brydall, “Art in Scotland.”

[605] Zucarelli (1701–88) on a first visit to London painted some landscapes but he was chiefly occupied as scene painter at the opera. The great vogue of his pictures belongs in his second visit (1752–73). Jan Griffier’s sons should perhaps be mentioned. Jan (d. 1750) was especially noted as a copier of Claude’s pictures. Robert, who painted in his father’s style, died in 1760.

[606] There is in the National Portrait Gallery, one of the more important of Wilson’s portraits before his Italian visit, entitled, “The Two Princes and their Tutor,” a stiff, formal, but not uninteresting picture. The most admirable portrait by Wilson, that of the artist Mortimer, deserves the high praise it has won from competent critics, and shows what Wilson could do with a congenial subject and after the enfranchisement of his art by his work as a landscape painter. Except for a portrait of himself this portrait of Mortimer is the only one done by him after his return from Italy. It came into the possession of Mr. John Britton who, in 1842, wrote a pamphlet about it and the paintings and merits of Wilson in general (Cunningham’s “British Painters,” I, 153). The portrait of Mortimer is now in the Gibson Gallery of the Royal Academy, London. Reproduced in Beaumont Fletcher’s “Richard Wilson.”

[607] T. Wright, “The Life of Richard Wilson, R.A.,” p. 72.

[608] Beaumont Fletcher, “Richard Wilson, R.A.,” p. 90.

[609] Sir Walter Armstrong, “Gainsborough and His Place in English Art,” p. 63.

[610] In 1755 there had been an exhibition started by Hogarth for the benefit of the Foundling Hospital. It was the success of this enterprise that led to the establishment of public exhibitions in 1760.

[611] Reproduced in Beaumont Fletcher’s “Richard Wilson, R.A.”

[612] Reproduced in “Magazine of Fine Arts,” November, 1805.

[613] Engraved by W. Watts in 1786. Print Room of British Museum.

[614] Engraved by W. Birch in 1779. Print Room of British Museum.

[615] Quoted by Beaumont Fletcher in his “Life of Wilson,” p. 24.

[616] There are several landscapes by Wilson in the public galleries of London. Two large canvases in the National Gallery, “The Villa of Maecenas” and “Niobe,” were painted for Sir George Beaumont and by him presented to the nation in 1726. They are heavy and dark pictures and do not so satisfactorily represent Wilson’s genius as do some of the eight smaller landscapes in the same gallery, notably the charming little picture “On the River Wye.” In the South Kensington Gallery there are six landscapes by Wilson with several others “by or after” him. The most effective of these is a “Landscape Composition” in the Italian style. At Dulwich is a fine Italian picture, “The Cascatella and Villa of Maecenas near Tivoli.” A more nearly adequate idea of Wilson’s work may be found in the Manchester Art Gallery where, besides a fine example of his Italian pictures, a large canvas entitled “Cicero’s Villa,” are one of Wilson’s most triumphant Welsh pictures, the “Welsh Valley with Snowdon Hill,” and a magnificent English scene, a “Landscape with Ruins.” The Art Gallery at Glasgow has one of the loveliest and most mysteriously suggestive of Wilson’s pictures, called “The Convent Twilight;” and a delicate little Scotch landscape (exhibited 1762) entitled “View of Holt Bridge on the River Dee.” It is apparent that most of Wilson’s pictures are in private galleries. In 1814 there was an exhibition of his works but they have not been brought together in any great number since. Some of his sketches had been published at Oxford in 1811 under the title “Studies and Designs by Richard Wilson, done at Rome in the Year 1752.” In 1825 appeared a book of forty etchings made by Mr. Thomas Hastings after the pictures in the Ford collection, a notable collection that came into the possession of Lady Ford through her brother and her husband both of whom had been admirers of Wilson’s work. In 1863 there appeared “Thirty-seven Sketches and Designs in Crayon” by Richard Wilson, R.A. (London, William Tigg). Probably the best place to study Wilson’s pictures as a whole is the Print Room of the British Museum where there are forty-five engravings from his work, several of these engravings being exceptionally fine reproductions. Wilson has been fortunate in the fact that his landscapes have appealed to the best engravers and etchers. Besides the “Six Views in Wales” already spoken of there were “Twelve Original Views in Italy” published by Boydell in 1776, and very many single pictures have been reproduced. The prices brought by Wilson’s pictures have been in modern times fairly large. In 1875 his “View on the Arno” brought 1,800 guineas. “An Evening Scene in Wales” brought 380 guineas. Some of the engravings also bring high prices, especially those of Woollett.

[617] John Ruskin, “The Art of England,” Lecture VI, “George Robson and Copley Fielding.”

[618] Sir Joshua Reynolds, “The Fourteenth Discourse.”

[619] In the “Magazine of Fine Arts,” November, 1805.

[620] C. R. Leslie, R.A., “Memoirs of the Life of John Constable” (ed. 1845), p. 110.

[621] William Boulton, “Thomas Gainsborough,” p. 47.

[622] George William Fulcher, “The Life of Thomas Gainsborough,” p. 175.

[623] William Boulton, “Thomas Gainsborough,” p. 249.

[624] Sir Walter Armstrong, “Gainsborough and His Place in English Art.”

[625] C. R. Leslie, R.A., “Memoirs of John Constable” (ed. 1845), p. 354.

[626] A letter to Pearce at Bath. William Boulton, “Thomas Gainsborough,” p. 277.

[627] Sir Walter Armstrong, “Gainsborough and His Place in English Art,” p. 149.

[628] A. E. Fletcher, “Thomas Gainsborough, R.A.,” p. 161.

[629] William Boulton, “Thomas Gainsborough,” p. 278.

[630] In a letter to William Jackson written about 1768.

[631] Algernon Graves, F. S. A., “The Society of Artists and the Free Society,” 1907; “The Royal Academy Exhibitors,” 1906.

[632] Thomas Gray in his “Journal” for October 13, 1769, says, “At the ale-house where I dined in Malham, Vivares, the landscape painter, had lodged for a week or more; Smith and Bellers had also been there, and two prints of Gordale have been engraved by them.”

[633] Horace Walpole in “Anecdotes of Painting” (pub. 1762–71), II, 717 (ed. 1826), suggested hop-fields as new picturesque material for artists. Scott in his “Essay on Painting” reiterated the idea, giving Walpole credit as its originator. They apparently did not know George Smith’s picture.

[634] There is a fine collection of Sandby’s drawings in the Print Room of the British Museum. For particulars of his life see William Sandby, “Thomas and Paul Sandby: Their Lives and Works.”

[635] Cosmo Monkhouse, “The Earlier English Water-Colour Painters,” p. 24.

[636] It is said that Gilpin’s landscape backgrounds were frequently put in by other men, notably by Barret.

[637] Wolcot (“Peter Pindar”) in his verse comments on the exhibitions of 1782, 1783, 1785, 1786, says in an apostrophe to De Loutherbourg:

And Loutherbourg, when Heaven so wills To make brass skies and golden hills, With marble bullocks in glass pastures grazing, Thy reputation too will rise And people, gaping with surprise, Cry “Master Loutherbourg is most amazing.”

But thou must wait for that event; Perhaps the change is never meant; Till then with me thy pencil will not shine; Till then old red-nosed Wilson’s art Will hold its empire o’er my heart, By Britain left in poverty to pine.

But honest Wilson, never mind, Immortal praises thou shalt find, And for a dinner have no cause to fear. Thou start’st at my prophetic rhymes; Don’t be impatient for those times, Wait till thou hast been dead a hundred year.

[638] Walter Thornbury, “The Life of J. M. W. Turner, R.A.,” pp. 113–15.

[639] Cosmo Monkhouse, “The Earlier English Water-Colour Painters,” p. 62.

[640] Edmund Garvey, an inferior painter, had exhibited “Three Views of the Alps” in 1770, and an artist named Morris had in 1769 exhibited “A Waterfall in the Alps.”

[641] Cosmo Monkhouse, “The Earlier English Water-Colour Painters,” p. 38.

[642] Walter Thornbury, “The Life of J. M. W. Turner, R.A.,” p. 50.

[643] Of the twenty-seven pictures by Cozens in the South Kensington Gallery all but one or two are Italian scenes. Even more interesting for study is the fine collection of drawings by him in the Print Room of the British Museum.

[644] Cosmo Monkhouse, “The Earlier English Water-Colour Painters,” p. 86.

[645] Many of Girtin’s drawings are in the British Museum.

[646] J. T. Smith, “Nollekins and His Times,” II, 339 (London, 1828).

[647] James A. Manson, “George Morland,” p. 80.

[648] Many of Morland’s pictures have been engraved. There are numerous reproductions in “George Morland” by J. T. Herbert Baily (“Connoisseur,” Extra Number, 1906) and in “George Morland” by J. T. Nettleship (“The Portfolio,” December, 1898).

[649] Biese in “Die Entwickelung des Naturgefühls,” pp. 209–48, gives a brief résumé of the development of landscape painting in Germany. He calls Rubens and his school the first to make the painting of Nature an independent branch of art, while Ruysdael (1681) is the one in whom “die ganze Poesie der Natur” finds expression. His chapter closes with these words: “Alle diese grossen Niederländer eilen weit der Poesie ihrer Zeit voraus; Gebirge und Meer finden im Wort erst 100 Jahre später ihrer begeisterten Schilderer, und ein in sich stimmungsvoll, abgeschlossenes, lyrisches Landschaftsbild wird erst am Ende des achtzehnten Jahrhunderts in der deutschen Dichtung geboren.” In England, it will be observed, the love of Nature finds earlier and more abundant expression in poetry than in painting, and its completest expression in Wordsworth’s poetry precedes its complete expression in the great English landscape painters of the early nineteenth century. See also for brief résumé of “Landschaftsmalerei” as an indication mainly of the increasing knowledge of distant lands, new forms of vegetation, etc., Humboldt, “Kosmos,” II, 47–58.

Transcriber’s Notes:

1. Obvious printers’, punctuation and spelling errors have been corrected silently.

2. Some hyphenated and non-hyphenated versions of the same words have been retained as in the original.

3. Italics are shown as _xxx_.