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Title: The treatment of nature in English poetry between Pope and Wordsworth
Author: Myra Reynolds
Release date: December 17, 2025 [eBook #77487]
Language: English
Original publication: Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 1909
Credits: Jamie Brydone-Jack, Karin Spence and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE TREATMENT OF NATURE IN ENGLISH POETRY BETWEEN POPE AND WORDSWORTH ***
THE TREATMENT
OF NATURE IN
ENGLISH POETRY
BETWEEN POPE AND WORDSWORTH
_By_
MYRA REYNOLDS
CHICAGO
THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS
1909
COPYRIGHT 1909 BY
THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO
Composed and Printed By
The University of Chicago Press
Chicago, Illinois, U. S. A.
PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION
The eighteenth century is a period of transition and as such its
literature holds two elements, a vital impulse past its prime but still
dominant, and a new conception gradually emerging into dominance. It
is the interweaving of these elements, the slow fading of the old, the
slow gain of the new in fulness, definiteness, and ardor of statement,
that make this period peculiarly interesting for detailed study. The
interest persists even when the transition to be studied is limited to
so narrow a section of human experience as the attitude toward Nature.
The investigation, the results of which are embodied in this book, was
primarily undertaken to determine the place of Nature in the poetry
before Wordsworth. Every genius is, to be sure, more or less of a
miracle, and certainly not to be accounted for by any conditions of
literary heredity or even environment. But he cannot, on the other
hand, be justly thought of as an isolated phenomenon. Though not the
direct heir of any particular predecessors, he is, nevertheless, in a
vital and inescapable way, the heir of the general tone and temper of
his own and preceding times. In that fact lies the justification of a
study along historical lines of any recognized tendency in thought.
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. In the present study the final effect is one of surprise to
discover not only how early the new thought of Nature finds expression,
but how completely the ideas of the period of Wordsworth were
represented in the germ in the eighteenth century. The whole impression
is that before the work of such men as Wordsworth, Scott, Coleridge,
Shelley, Keats, and Byron, there was a great stir of getting ready. It
may fairly be said that before Wordsworth most of his characteristic
thoughts on Nature had received explicit statement.
In the pursuance of this study it soon became apparent that to confine
it to poetry was to limit the investigation unwarrantably. The interest
of the work was many times increased, and the deductions were rendered
much more certain, when the same transitions, the same periods of
change, the same tastes, the same emotions, revealed themselves side by
side in poetry, painting, fiction, travels, and gardens. Furthermore,
the vitality of the new impulse toward Nature is shown by the number
of directions in which it insistently demanded expression. Almost
independently of each other the various arts seem to have been pushed
forward from within to some sort of recognition of the growing interest
in the external world. In each art there seemed to be an unconscious
preparation for the master that was to come. Notably does this appear
from the chapter on painting. Constable and Turner were foreshadowed
and prepared for as evidently as was Wordsworth. When at the end of
such a period of preparation the great poet or artist comes, he is
great by virtue of his power to penetrate beneath literary conventions
and to give final literary form to the half-articulate thoughts and
feelings out of which the thoughts and feelings of his own epoch grow.
He has his natural place in the development. The significance of his
work rests in the fact that while it directs the future it also sums up
the past.
The first edition of this book has long been out of print. The natural
impulse, after an interval of ten years, is to subject a new edition
to a complete revision, with the rewriting of many portions. Revision
as drastic as might be desirable has not, however, proved practicable.
Various studies of special authors have been brought up to date in the
light of new material concerning them, as, notably, in the sketch of
Lady Winchilsea. Two chapters, the one on “Painting” and the one on
“Gardening,” are entirely new, and it has, fortunately, proved possible
to add a number of interesting illustrations of these chapters, mainly
from old prints. With these exceptions the book remains substantially
as it was ten years ago. In no case has further study made it
necessary to modify any of the general conclusions on the basis of the
earlier work. More intensive work in the different realms has happily
but reinforced these conclusions.
MYRA REYNOLDS
August, 1909
TABLE OF CONTENTS
PAGE
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS xi
INTRODUCTION xv
CHAPTER
I THE TREATMENT OF NATURE IN ENGLISH CLASSICAL POETRY 1
II INDICATIONS OF A NEW ATTITUDE TOWARD NATURE IN THE
POETRY OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 58
III FICTION 203
IV TRAVELS 223
V GARDENING 246
VI LANDSCAPE PAINTING 273
VII GENERAL SUMMARY 327
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL INDEX 369
GENERAL INDEX 378
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
FACING PAGE
LONG LEATE 249
“The House and gardens of the Rt. Hon. Thomas Lord
Viscount Weymouth, Baron Warminster, L. Knyff, Del. I.
Kip, Sculp.”
HAGLEY PARK 261
“A View in Hagley Park, belonging to Sir Thos.
Lyttleton Bart., to whom this Plate is inscrib’d by
his most obed’t. Serv’t. T. Smith. G. Vivares Sculp.”
Published Oct. 1749.
JOHN MAITLAND, DUKE OF LAUDERDALE 275
“From the original of Sir Peter Lely in the Collection
of the Right Hon. the Earl of Lauderdale. Drawn by Wm.
Hilton, R.A. and Engraved with Permission by I. S.
Agar.” The print here reproduced was published March 1,
1820.
MRS. CARNAC 280
By Sir Joshua Reynolds. In the Wallace Collection,
London. From a photograph by the Muchmore Art Company,
London.
SQUIRE HALLET AND HIS WIFE 283
By Thomas Gainsborough. Now in the possession of Lord
Rothschild. From a photograph by Braun, Clement & Cie.
A CALM 286
By Willem van de Velde. In the Gallery at Dulwich,
London. “Drawn, engraved and published by R. Cockburn,
Dulwich, 1818.”
DUNNINGTON CLIFF 288
“A View of Dunnington Cliff. On the River Trent (Five
Miles South East of Derby) belonging to the Right
Honourable the Earl of Huntington, to whom this Plate
is inscrib’d by his Lordships most Dutiful and most
humble Serv’t. T. Smith. G. Vivares Sculp. Act of
Parliam’t. Augt. 25, 1745.”
DERWENTWATER 291
“A View of Derwent-Water, Towards Borrodale. A Lake
near Keswick in Cumberland. To Edward Stephenson Esq’r.
of Cumberland. This Plate is inscrib’d by his most
Obliged humble Servant Will’m. Bellers. Painted after
Nature by William Bellers. Engraved by Messrs. Chatelin
& Ravenet. Published according to Act of Parliament
October the 10th 1752.”
MOUNT SNOWDON 293
“A View of Snowden, in the Vale of Llan Beriis, in
Caernarvon Shire. I. Boydell. Del. & Sculp. Published
according to Act of Parliament by J. Boydell at the
Globe near Durham Yard in the Strand 1750.”
CADER-IDRIS 297
“The Summit of Cader-Idris Mountain in North Wales.
Richard Wilson pinx’t. E. & M. Rooker sculpser’t.
Published July 17, 1775 by John Boydell, Engraver in
Cheapside London.”
KILGARREN CASTLE 300
“Kilgarren Castle in South Wales, Richard Wilson
pinx’t. Will’m. Elliott sculp’t. Published July 17th
1775 by John Boydell Engraver in Cheapside London.”
SNOWDON 304
By Richard Wilson. In the Manchester City Art Gallery.
From a photograph by Sherratt and Hughes, Manchester.
THE MARKET CART 307
Painted by Thomas Gainsborough. In the National Gallery.
PEMBROKE 311
“Engraved by I. Walker from an Original Picture by Paul
Sandby Esq. R. A. Published May 1st 1797.”
LODORE WATERFALL 315
“Drawn by Jos’h. Farington. Engraved by W. Byrne and T.
Medland. London. Published as the Act directs, April,
1785.”
THE WOOD CUTTERS 318
Painted by G. Morland. Engraved by W. Ward. Published
by T. Simpson, St. Paul’s Church Yard, London, 1792.
The general theme of the treatment of Nature in literature is not a
new one. Schiller’s essay entitled “Ueber die naive und sentimentale
Dichtung” (1794), was the first attempt to state and explain the
difference between the classical way of looking at Nature and the
modern way. The externality in the classical attitude toward Nature,
he attributed to the fact that the Greeks were in their thoughts and
habits of life so a part of Nature that they felt no impulse to seek
her with the passionate longing of the modern poet, whose ardent and
heartfelt love of Nature is but the result of a mode of thought and
life out of harmony with her. This essay, however inadequate as a
presentation of the Greek attitude toward Nature,[1] determined the
lines of much succeeding study.
Alexander von Humboldt in his “Kosmos” (1845–58), in the midst of
his scientific generalization and his encyclopedic accumulation of
natural facts, takes occasion to discuss the treatment of Nature in
poetry and landscape painting. The chapter on landscape painting is
chiefly confined to such topographical, botanical, and other pictorial
representations as serve to add to our knowledge of distant lands. The
boundaries of the whole question are enlarged by a representation of
the profound feeling for Nature in Semitic and IndoEuropean races.
There is a brief study of the mediaeval feeling for Nature as it
appears in Dante, and finally of the treatment of Nature in some prose
writers of the eighteenth century. The only English poets mentioned
are Shakspere, Thomson, and Byron, the subject of English poetry being
disposed of in less than a page.
In Ruskin’s “Modern Painters” (1843–60) are several most interesting
chapters on landscape in classical, mediaeval, and modern times. “Of
the Pathetic Fallacy” and “The Moral of Landscape” are also suggestive
though misleading studies.
Victor de Laprade’s “La sentiment de la nature” (1866, 1868) contains
in full the theories already suggested in the preface to his “Les
symphones.” In the introductory chapters he outlines his conception
of the development of art. He regards architecture as essentially the
expression of man’s interest in religion; sculpture of his interest
in the demi-god or hero; painting of his interest in the complex and
varied life of man as man; while the characteristic art of the present
age is music with which the love of Nature is closely allied, since
both affect the mind indirectly through indeterminate and vaguely
suggestive harmonies, and both tend by their complexity and subtlety to
rouse sweet reveries, luxurious emotion, nameless longings, ineffectual
aspirations, but leave the conscience and the will untouched. No one
can read these critical studies by Laprade or his earlier poems without
feeling his enthusiastic joy in the presence of Nature. But he feared
this joy and counted it a part of the concupiscence of the flesh
except as it became an avenue to communion with the divine spirit. His
indictment against the passion for Nature in modern music, painting,
poetry, fiction, science is that the material is everywhere exalted at
the expense of the spiritual. To be of value the presentation of the
external world in whatever realm of art should subordinate its appeal
to the senses, and emphasize its appeal to man’s inner life. Laprade’s
work is a plea for idealism as against realism. In all his brilliant
presentation of the attitude toward external Nature of different races
in different epochs, this point of view must be taken into account.
In his rapid survey of English poetry the poets to receive closest
attention are Shakspere, Spenser, and Milton. In later times the most
significant of the poets who “gravitent autour de Lord Byron” are
Wordsworth and Shelley, who, in their attitude toward Nature, are
respectively moralist and metaphysician. Byron’s distinction is that
he alone found “le juste équilibre entre l’exubérance de la nature et
celle du pur esprit.” Thomson’s “Seasons” are of value because of good
_genre_ pictures and vivid descriptions of English sports, but the
initial force in the return to Nature is Burns.
Unquestionably the most important of the books that treat of Nature
in the realm of art is Biese’s “Die Entwickelung des Naturgefühls im
Mittelalter und in der Neuzeit” (1888).[2] The book is written with
enthusiasm and is stimulating and suggestive. The subject-matter is
well in hand, and so thoroughly organized that the great movements in
the historical development of the love of Nature are easily grasped.
The plan is comprehensive, including not only poetry, but, in briefer
outline, landscape painting and gardening, and, incidentally, even
fiction and philosophy. The least satisfactory portion of the book is
the treatment of the love of Nature in English life and thought. There
is some stress on the development of the English garden, but English
landscape painting is not mentioned. In the casual mention of English
fiction the emphasis is on Defoe. In poetry two epochs are recognized,
that of Shakspere and that of Byron. The chapter on Shakspere is
a close and valuable study. The work of Byron is estimated with
justness and sympathy, as is also that of Shelley. But the study of
Wordsworth as a poet of Nature is singularly inadequate. His genius is
considered as essentially of the pastoral-idyllic order, with now and
then glimpses of an “echte Liebe für die Natur,” and an unmistakable
pantheism. He is chiefly important as having done for England what
Scott did for Scotland and Moore for Ireland, and as sounding certain
notes which rang again in Byron “in verstärkter Tonart.” Thomson is
the only eighteenth-century poet studied. Here again is a failure to
recognize the real importance of the poet’s work. Biese acknowledges
the truth of Thomson’s separate pictures of Nature, and his genuine
love of the country, but denies his importance as a “pathfinder,”
saying that he but followed where Pope’s “Pastorals” and “Windsor
Forest” had marked out the way.
In 1887 appeared John Veitch’s “The Feeling for Nature in Scottish
Poetry.” The first volume begins with the early romances and national
epics, and takes up the chief poets down to James VI. The second
volume is devoted to the modern period from Ramsay to David Gray. Most
of the authors treated belong to the nineteenth century, but there
are admirable brief studies of Ramsay, Thomson, Hamilton of Bangour,
Bruce, Fergusson, and Burns. There is also a short but interesting
chapter on the rise of landscape painting, with especial attention to
its development in Scotland. Veitch’s book is written out of a full
knowledge and warm appreciation of Scottish poetry and of Scottish
Nature, and his critical dicta are usually trustworthy, though he
shows, perhaps, a tendency to overemphasize the influence of Scottish
poetry on the love of Nature in succeeding English poetry.
In John Campbell Shairp’s “Poetic Interpretation of Nature” (1889)
are to be found studies of Homer, Lucretius, and Virgil; of Chaucer,
Shakspere, and Milton; and of Wordsworth. Two chapters are devoted to
the eighteenth century. Ramsay is the poet to whom the reappearance
of the feeling for natural beauty is traced. Thomson is praised for
his minute faithfulness in description, and his genuine love of the
country, but his tawdry diction and superficial conception of Nature
are heavy indictments against him. The chapter on Collins, Gray,
Goldsmith, Burns, Cowper, Ossian, and the Ballads is interesting,
but from its brevity is necessarily inadequate. The most suggestive
chapter in the book is the one in which there is a classification of
the ways in which poets deal with Nature.[3] The whole subject of the
treatment of Nature in poetry is an attractive one to Mr. Shairp, and
he frequently recurs to it in his “Studies in Poetry and Philosophy”
and “Aspects of Poetry.”
In many books, also, not devoted exclusively to the treatment of Nature
in literature there are special studies and much running comment
of a valuable sort. This is true of almost all essays on the early
nineteenth-century poets, and especially so of the various essays
on Wordsworth. There is something to be found in manuals of English
literature, as in Gosse’s “Eighteenth Century” in the chapter, “The
Dawn of Naturalism,” in various notes in Perry’s “English Literature
of the Eighteenth Century,” Phelps’ “The English Romantic Movement,”
and others; also, in some histories, as in Lecky’s “History of England
in the Eighteenth Century;” in some philosophical studies, as in
Leslie Stephen’s “English Thought in the Eighteenth Century” (“The
Literary Reaction”), and in Stopford Brooke’s “Theology in the English
Poets” (_passim_); in various literary studies, as in McLaughlin’s
“Studies in Mediaeval Life and Literature” (“The Mediaeval Feeling for
Nature”), Vernon Lee’s “Euphorion” (“The Outdoor Poetry”), Symonds’
“Essays Speculative and Suggestive” (“Landscape,” “Nature Myths and
Allegories”), Burroughs’ “Fresh Fields” (“Birds and Poets”), and
Fischer’s “Drei Studien zur Englischen Litteraturgeschichte” “Ueber den
Einfluss der See auf die Englische Litteratur”).[4]
The books indicated show that there is much interest in the general
theme of Nature as an element of art. The literary periods that have
been most studied are, however, the Greek and Roman, the mediaeval,
and the modern. The treatment of Nature in so barren a time as the
eighteenth century in England has naturally received little close
attention. In my own work on this period I have endeavored to discover
what indications there are that the attitude toward Nature of the early
nineteenth century is but the legitimate outcome of influences actively
at work during the eighteenth century. This study is therefore one of
origins.
I have divided my work into three parts. I have endeavored to give
first a general statement of the chief characteristics that marked the
treatment of Nature under the dominance of the English classical poets.
Then follows a detailed study of such eighteenth-century poets as show
some new conception of Nature. The third division is made up of briefer
studies of the fiction, the books of travel, the landscape gardening,
and the painting of the eighteenth century, the purpose being to
determine in how far the spirit found in the poetry reveals itself in
other realms in which the love of Nature might be expected to find
expression.
CHAPTER I
THE TREATMENT OF NATURE IN ENGLISH CLASSICAL POETRY
The poetry of the English classical period falls naturally into four
subdivisions:
1. The period of inception may be reckoned as beginning with Waller’s
first couplets in 1621 and including the work of his followers, Denham,
Davenant, and Cowley.[5]
2. The period of establishment includes the work between the
Restoration and about 1700. Dryden is the central figure.
3. The period of culmination is a brief period covering less than the
first quarter of the eighteenth century. Pope is the central figure.
4. The period of decadence extends from about 1725 to the end of the
century.
Any generalizations concerning the attitude of this classical period
toward Nature must be based on a large number of specific instances,
but in collecting and using these specific instances certain cautions
must be observed. Chief among these is the necessity of keeping in
mind the point of view from which the study should be made. It is not
the purpose to discover all that has been said about Nature by the
classical poets between 1623 and 1798. It is the purpose, rather, to
eliminate exceptions, and to dwell on the general, obvious qualities,
the typical features, of the classical poet’s conception of Nature.
This principle determines the relative importance of the periods noted
above. Illustrations drawn from a large number of poems in the second
and third periods would serve as the basis for a general statement.
Illustrations from periods one and four would need to be scrutinized,
for they might be purely classical, or they might be survivals of the
Elizabethan romantic age or prophecies of the modern romantic age.
Cowley, for instance, belongs to the first classical period because he
wrote in couplets, but his diction, his conceits, and in some respects
his attitude toward Nature are post-Elizabethan rather than classical.
Illustrations from his poems are of value, therefore, for the present
purpose, only when they are in accord with the spirit afterward found
in the time of Dryden and Pope. So, too, Milton and Marvell, though
coming chronologically within the first and second periods, stand in
the main quite aloof from any tendencies that can be called classical,
and their poetry is referred to only when it seems to illustrate the
dominant classical conception. Abundant and valuable illustration of
the classical conception may be drawn from the fourth period because
tendencies are nowhere more clearly shown than in the inevitable
exaggerations of a time of decadence, but the legitimacy of any
illustration is determined by its likeness to the dominating traits of
the preceding periods. While this study is confined in the main to the
poets of the period, journals, letters, travels, essays, and plays have
been quoted where they serve as proof that the poetry represents the
spirit of the age in which it was written.
Pope called Wycherley an “obstinate lover of the town,”[6] and the
phrase may well be taken to mark one characteristic of the orthodox
classicists. Poems, letters, journals, biographies, and essays bear
witness to the reluctance with which the men and women of this age bade
farewell to the “dear, damned, distracting town.”[7] Charles Lamb’s
lifelong devotion to Fleet Street and the Strand, and the sentiment of
the cockneys who, as Hazlitt said, preferred hanging in London to a
natural death out of it,[8] have their true prototypes in the classical
age. “When a man is tired of London he is tired of life,” is Dr.
Johnson’s dictum. Gibbon said that when he visited the country it was
to see his friends and not the trees. Boswell’s only justification of a
hastily expressed liking for the country was that he had “appropriated
the finest descriptions in the ancient Classicks to certain scenes
there.”[9] But not even the classics could reconcile most people to
a country life. It was dreary, monotonous, difficult. There was no
society, no news. The days went yawningly by with no vivid interests,
no stirring occurrences. “No person of sense,” exclaimed Mr. Mallet’s
sister, “would live six miles out of London.”[10] To live in the
country was to be buried. Lord Bathurst looked upon his sojourn in his
country home as a “sound nap”[11] preparatory to Parliament. “If you
wish to know how I live, or rather lose, a life in the country,” wrote
Pope, “Martial will inform you in one line:
Prandeo, poto, cano, ludo, lego, caeno, quiesco.”[12]
Pope found pure air and regular hours a physical necessity, but he
often rebelled at his banishment from town delights, as did his “fond
virgin” when compelled to seek wholesome country air.
She went to plain-work, and to purling brooks,
Old-fashioned halls, dull aunts, and croaking rooks,
She went from Opera, Park, Assembly, Play,
To morning walks, and prayers three hours a day;
To part the time ’twixt reading and bohea,
To muse, and spill her solitary tea,
Or o’er cold coffee trifle with the spoon,
Count the slow clock, and dine exact at noon.[13]
Isabella in Dryden’s “The Wild Gallant” speaks the general sentiment:
“He I marry must promise me to live at London. I cannot abide to be
in the country, like a wild beast in the wilderness.”[14] So, too,
Harriet, in “The Man of Mode,” counted all beyond Hyde Park a desert,
and said that her love of the town was so intense as to make her hate
the country even in pictures and hangings.[15] In “Epsom Wells” the
apostle of “a pretty innocent country life” is the boor, Clodpate, but
Lucia assures him that people really live nowhere but in London, for
the “insipid dull being” of country folk cannot be called life.[16] It
was in much the same spirit that Lady Mary Pierrepont responded to Lord
Montagu’s proposition that they should live at Wharnecliffe. “Very few
people,” she said, “that have settled entirely in the country but have
grown at length weary of one another.”[17] Her preference for town life
recurs in her poem, “The Bride in the Country.”
By the side of a half rotten wood
Melantha sat silently down,
Convinced that her scheme was not good,
And vexed to be absent from Town.
How simple was I to believe
Delusive, poetical dreams!
Or the flattering landscapes they give
Of meadows and murmuring streams.
Bleak mountains, and cold starving rocks,
Are the wretched result of my pains;
The swains greater brutes than their flocks,
The nymphs as polite as the swains.[18]
When Shenstone’s young squire went forth to London in search of a wife
the desired lady declared that she “could breathe nowhere else but in
town.”[19] Lyttleton’s fair maiden finds country life “supinely calm,
and dully innocent,” and affirms that
The town, the Court, is Beauty’s proper sphere.[20]
Young’s Fulvia had a similar passion for the town.
Green fields, and shady groves, and crystal springs,
And larks, and nightingales, are odious things;
And smoke, and dust, and noise, and crowds, delight,
And to be pressed to death, transports her quite.[21]
In Aaron Hill’s poems we find a characteristic contest over the
respective merits of city and country. Philemon exclaims,
Let rustic sports engage the lab’ring hind,
And cultivated acres plough his mind;
Let him to unfrequented woods repair,
And snuff, unenvy’d, his lean mountain air.
Damon endeavors to defend
Th’ unglorious preference of a country life
by calling in evidence Cowley’s retirement to the shades, but Philemon
triumphantly shows that Cowley’s dislike of the town was a clear case
of sour grapes. In the end Damon recognizes that it is weak and unmanly
to prefer the country.[22] Browne’s Celia explains to Chloe that
country life may become endurable if one does not give herself up to
“dull landscape,” but learns to think of the country as “the town in
miniature.”[23]
Such expressions as these are typical. They indicate the general
dislike for any life away from the city. And even those who loved the
country, or thought they did, were far enough from caring for any but
the tamest of its possible delights. Pope’s list of country pleasures,
though half humorous, is nevertheless suggestive. In contrast to Mrs.
M.’s devotion to “play-houses, parks, assemblies, London,” he depicts
his own “rapture” in the presence of “gardens, rookeries, fishponds,
arbours.”[24] When Bolingbroke “retired from the Court and glory to
his country-seat and wife”[25] he bravely insisted that he liked the
change. “Here,” he wrote from Dawley, “I shoot strong and tenacious
roots. I have caught hold of the earth and neither my enemies nor my
friends will find it an easy matter to transplant me again.”[26] But we
must join Pope in the laugh against such a catching hold of the earth
when we learn that Bolingbroke paid £200 to have his country halls
painted with rakes, prongs, spades, and other insignia of husbandry
in order to make it perfectly evident that he really did live on
a farm.[27] The genuine lover of the country in the classical age
expended his enthusiasm on the mild and easy pleasures of a well-kept
country house easily accessible from the city. That a sane man could
choose to live as Wordsworth did in the Lake District would have passed
belief. In general, the country was thought of but as a good place to
recruit one’s jaded energies, or as a refuge where disappointments
might be hidden and disgrace forgotten.
According to Gay,
Whene’er a Courtier’s out of place,
The country shelters his disgrace,[28]
and his deserted, lovelorn Araminta felt that only the melancholy
shades and croaking ravens of the country could suit her unhappy
fate.[29] Watts thought that none but “useless souls” should “to woods
retreat.”[30] On the whole, the words of the city mouse to his country
cousin expressed the prevailing sentiment:
Let savage beasts lodge in a country den;
You should see towns, and manners know, and men.[31]
The poet might sing the charms of the country if he chose, but he was,
after all, as Denham said of Virgil and Cowley, only “gilding dirt.”
[32]
The attitude toward Nature in the literature of any age may be tested
in two ways: by what is said, and by what is left unsaid, and of these
the second is perhaps the more significant. Certainly in the poetry
of the classical period the persistent ignoring of the grand and
terrible in Nature comes home to the mind as a convincing proof of the
prevailing distaste for wild scenery. And when we apply the other test
and find that the conspiracy of silence is broken only by expressions
indicative of positive dislike of such scenes, the case becomes a
strong one. This point may be clearly illustrated by a somewhat
detailed study of the poetical treatment of the mountains and the sea.
Rarely in the long period between Waller and Wordsworth do we find
any trace of the modern feeling toward mountains. If they are spoken
of at all it is to indicate the difficulty in surmounting them or to
express the general distaste for anything so savagely and untamably
wild. It is interesting to note that passages expressing the most
active dislike of mountains show really some close observation and a
good deal of picturesque energy of phrase. They were evidently the
outcome of a personal experience, the unpleasantness of which demanded
forcible epithets. They show that when men were compelled by the
exigencies of travel to go into a mountainous region there was not
wanting a perception of certain characteristic mountain qualities, but
that these qualities were only those exciting repulsion and terror.
In no case does a sense of the sublimity and beauty of mountains
find, or even apparently seek, expression. This is true in travels,
fiction, biography, and letters, as well as in poetry. A few typical
illustrations may be given. Howell, who went abroad twice before 1622,
strikes the keynote of the travelers who came later. He distinctly
objected to the “monstrous abruptness” of the “Pyereny Hills” and he
found the Alps even more “high and hideous.” He was obliged to admit
that the Welsh mountains were but mole-hills compared to the Alps, but
he thought the scale more than turned by the fact that those “huge,
monstrous excrescences of nature” were entirely useless, while “Eppint
and Penminmaur” at least furnished grass for the cattle.[33] John
Evelyn regarded the Alps chiefly as an unpleasant barrier between the
“sweete and delicious” gardens of France and the corresponding topiary
paradises of Italy, and his final conception of them is as the place
where Nature swept up the rubbish of the earth to clear the Plains
of Lombardy.[34] Addison was another of these early travelers, and
he, too, found the journey over the Alps most trying. The “irregular,
misshapen scenes” of a mountainous region gave him little pleasure.[35]
He preferred the safe monotony of plains. Both Evelyn and Addison
expended all the descriptive energy they had to spare for mountains
on Vesuvius, but it was, of course, its character as a striking and
curious natural phenomenon that attracted them.[36] Burnet of the
Charter House, the tutor of Lady Mary Pierrepont, in his “Theory of
the Earth” gives a theological reason for the existence of mountains.
He conceives the present world as a gigantic ruin, the result of
sin. Originally the earth was perfectly smooth. “It had the beauty
of youth and blooming nature, fresh and fruitful, and not a wrinkle,
scar, or fracture in all its body; no rocks nor mountains, no hollow
caves, nor gaping channels, but even and uniform all over. And the
smoothness of the earth made the face of the heavens so too; the air
was calm and serene; none of those tumultuary motions and conflicts
of vapours, which the winds cause in ours. ’Twas suited to a golden
age, and to the first innocency of nature.” But as a punishment for
sin the interior fluid of the earth was allowed to break through the
beautiful smooth crust, and in the ensuing chaos were piled up those
“wild, vast, and indigested heaps of stone and earth,” those “great
ruins” that we call mountains.[37] In 1715 Pennecuik said that the
swelling hills of Tweeddale were, for the most part, green, grassy, and
pleasant, but he objected to the bordering mountains as being “black,
craigie, and of a melancholy aspect, with deep and horrid precipices,
a wearisome and comfortless piece of way for travellers.”[38] In
1756 Thomas Amory commented on the “dreadful northern fells,” and
called Westmoreland a “frightful country,” and spoke of “the ranges
and groups of mountains horrible to behold.”[39] So late as 1773
Dr. Johnson said of the Highlands of Scotland: “An eye accustomed to
flowery pastures and waving harvests is astonished and repelled by
this wide extent of hopeless sterility. The appearance is that of
matter incapable of form or usefulness, dismissed by Nature from her
care.”[40] In the same year Hutchinson deprecates the “dreary vicinage
of mountains and inclement skies” in the Lake District. He describes
Stainmore thus: “As we proceeded Spittle presented its solitary edifice
to view; behind which Stainmore arises, whose heights feel the fury
of both eastern and western storms; ... a dreary prospect extended
to the eye; the hills were clothed in heath, and all around a scene
of barrenness and deformity.... All was wilderness and horrid waste
over which the wearied eye travelled with anxiety.... The wearied mind
of the traveller endeavours to evade such objects, and please itself
with the fancied images of verdant plains, purling streams, and happy
groves.”[41]
The attitude toward mountains in the passages already referred to
appears in the poetry of the period with the same general tone, though
with less insistence. Throughout Waller’s poetry the only epithets
applied to mountains are “savage”[42] and “craggy.”[43] Marvell, the
most genuine lover of Nature in this age, was yet of the age in his
feeling toward mountains, for he characterizes them as ill-designed
excrescences that deform the earth and frighten heaven, and he calls
upon them to learn beauty from the soft access and easy slopes of a
well-rounded hill.[44] The unpleasant phrase, “high, huge-bellied
mountains”[45] in one of Milton’s youthful poems is hardly atoned for
by the lines in “L’Allegro,”
Mountains on whose barren breast
The labouring clouds do often rest,[46]
and his poetry is, in general, marked by the absence of mountain
scenery. Dryden’s most famous mountains are “drowsy” and “seem to
nod.”[47] In Blackmore’s summary of the charges made by Lucretius
concerning the “unartful contrivance of the world,” mountains are
styled “the earth’s dishonor and encumbering load.” The only defense
made by the poet is that these incumbrances do nevertheless restrain
the tides, yield veins of ore, and bear forests of useful wood.[48] So
John Philips defends his comfortable hypothesis that nothing is made in
vain by the fact that even “that cloud-piercing hill Plinlimmon” is of
some value since it furnishes “shrubby browze” for the goats.[49] And
Yalden explains how erring Nature supplies her own defects by filling
with mines the “vast excrescences of hills” that distort the surface
of the earth.[50] Prior’s only mountain is Lebanon with “craggy
brow.”[51] Pope has some “bright mountains” that serve to prop the
incumbent sky,[52] and he occasionally mentions mountains with such
epithets as “hanging,”[53] “hollow,”[53] and “headlong.”[54] Tickell
showed his attitude toward mountains in his address to Lord Lonsdale
whom he proposed to visit at Lowther Castle near Penrith, declaring
that he did not dread the harsh climate and rude country, for the
Earl’s presence would be sufficient to “hush every wind and every
mountain smooth.”[55] Parnell instances in his catalogue of the horrors
of Ireland her hills that with naked heads meet the tempests.[56] Dr.
Akenside speaks of a “horrid pile of hills.”[57] Along with this frank
disapproval of mountains is a similar dislike for their concomitants
such as precipices, wildernesses, and even dense thickets.[58]
One cause of this antipathetic attitude toward mountains and wild
scenery is, doubtless, as has been often suggested, the hardships and
perils of travel before good roads were built. Biese quotes several
eighteenth-century letters from German travelers to show how much “die
schlechten Strassen” had to do with the failure to appreciate the
romantic beauty of the Alps.[59] He finds another partial explanation
of the small interest in mountain travel in the fact that scientific
study of natural phenomena such as glaciers, geological formations,
mountain flora and fauna, was as yet in its infancy and that thus one
whole class of motives for enduring fatigue and braving difficulties
was wanting.[60] But these two reasons do not sufficiently account for
the lack of mountain fervor. It is not merely good roads and scientific
enthusiasm that bid men seek mountain solitudes today. Preoccupation
with terror and fatigue were not the only nor the chief reason for this
general dislike of wild scenery. The two charges even more persistently
and definitely brought against mountains are that they are useless, and
that they are a deformity on the surface of the earth. Now the first of
these is but another expression of the dominant utilitarian standards
of value, and the second is an outcome of the prevailing desire for
orderly and systematic arrangement. Pronounced irregularity of outline
was as irritating to the artistic consciousness as was exceptional
license in verse forms. Mountains entered an inevitable protest
against the spirit that found its highest pleasure in the symmetrical
complexities of a typical eighteenth-century garden. That this protest
was on a great scale with accompanying suggestions of mystery and of
a remote irresistible power, gives an added reason why the age turned
thus decisively from forms of nature to which a romantic age yields
fullest homage. Thus the attitude toward mountains finds its real
explanation not so much in external conditions as in the spirit of the
times.
The place of the ocean in the classical poetry is likewise significant.
It awakened no sense of elation as in Byron, no sense of mysterious
kinship as in Shelley. It was simply a waste of waters, dangerous at
times, and always wearisome. Though more often mentioned than the
mountains, it received an even more narrow and conventional treatment.
Except in some elaborate similes there are few descriptions of more
than a line in length. We find merely casual mention by means of stock
epithets, or very short and unmeaning descriptive phrases. To Waller
the sea is “the world’s great waste,” “a watery field,” a “watery
wilderness,” or a “main,” liquid, or troubled, or angry, as the case
may be.[61] Dryden’s epithets are hardly more felicitous. He uses
“watery”[62] with an insistence that finally becomes ludicrous. He
has one or two little ocean pictures written apparently for their
own sake, but his best use of the ocean is in similitudes.[62] In
succeeding poets the treatment of the ocean is exceedingly commonplace
and unimaginative. Such small interest as the sea aroused was of a
prosaic, utilitarian sort. Young’s “Sea Pieces” and “Ocean” may serve
as examples, and they are little more than eulogies of England’s
commercial and naval prowess. It is for Britain that “the servant
Ocean” “both sinks and swells.” It is solely with reference to her
prosperity that soft Zephyr, keen Eurus, Notus, and rough Boreas ”urge
their toil.”
The main! The main!
Is Britain’s reign;
* * * * *
The main! the main!
Be Britain’s strain,[63]
is the unvaried theme. The few descriptive passages are of periods
when “storms deface the fluid glass,” and seem to have been composed
in accordance with Pope’s famous recipe for poetical tempests.[64]
The most popular sea poem of the eighteenth century was Falconer’s
“Shipwreck” written in 1762. It is a sufficiently remarkable production
when thought of as the work of a common sailor but it is difficult
for the modern reader to understand the extravagant praise bestowed
upon it in its own day.[65] Its tame and conventional love story,
its descriptions of the sylvan scenes where Palemon and Anna gave
pledges of undying affection, its moralizings on the beneficial effect
of poetry, the evils of war, the corrupting lust of gold, its long
digression on cities and heroes “renowned in antiquity,” its invocation
to the Muses, its mythology, its reverence for “sacred Maro’s art,”
are all of the commonplace, classical order. There is in the actual
shipwreck scene some vigorous writing, but it deals almost entirely
with the emotions of the sailors, and the management of the ship. It
would be difficult to find any really effective lines descriptive
of the storm itself. The following quotations may stand as fairly
representative of the best passages:
It comes resistless, and with foaming sweep
Upturns the whitening surface of the deep.
* * * * *
But with redoubling force the tempests blow,
And watery hills in dread succession flow.
* * * * *
A sea, upsurging with stupendous roll.[66]
One of the most striking characteristics of the descriptive parts of
the poem is the daring and novel use of technical sea terms. Such lines
as,
Reef top-sails, reef! the master calls again.
The halyards and top-bow-lines soon are gone,
To clue-lines and reef-tackles next they run.
* * * * *
Deep on her side, the reeling vessel lies:
Brail up the mizzen quick! the master cries,
Man the clue-garnets! let the main-sheet fly,[67]
are praised as minutely accurate but it certainly needs a specialist’s
training to understand them.[68] There is nothing new in Falconer’s
poem except his use of realism in describing the ship’s maneuvers. The
sea is, to be sure, more prominent than we have found it in preceding
poems, but it is the same “desert waste,” the same “faithless deep,”
the same “watery plain,” and is deformed by the typical classical
storm. Strange as it may seem, it is yet true that the poets of
sea-girt England were very slow in making the discovery of the
ocean.[69] The main points in the eighteenth-century conception of the
sea were its usefulness as a commercial highway and its destructive
power in storms. This impression of irresistible force is sometimes
vivid enough to result in strong phrasing, but the changing beauty, the
majesty, the mysterious suggestiveness of the sea found no expression
in English classical poetry. Even in the poems that mark the transition
spirit the adequate word for the sea is surprisingly slow to come.
In connection with the failure to understand or love the mountains
or the sea we may note the avoidance of winter[70] or the conception
of it as the “deformed wrong side of the year.” Lyttleton thoroughly
disliked “gloomy winter’s unauspicious reign,”[71] and Pope said that
its bleak prospects set his very imagination a-shivering.[72] Lady
Montagu called the glistening snows a painful sight, and said that the
whole country was in winter “deform’d by rains and rough with blasting
winds.” The “icy, cold, depressing hand” of winter, brought in a season
of privations, discomfort, and dangers. Throughout the classical
period the typical phrases are “shuddering winter,” “winter’s dreary
gloom,” “the sad, inverted year.” Storm and blasts “deface the year.”
Hailstorms “deform the flowery spring.” Clouds “sadden the inverted
year.” Winter’s “joyless reign” is a season marked by “dusky horrors.”
Fierce winter desolates the year,
Deserts of snow fatigue the eye,
Successive tempests bloat the sky
And gloomy damps oppress the soul,
is a typical description.[73] Another indication of the dislike of this
season is found in a curious “Pastoral” by Washbourne in which hell is
represented as a place where it is “alwaies winter.”[74] It will be
observed later that a sense of joy in winter scenes is one of the very
early indications of a reviving interest in the out-door world.
Correspondent with the dislike and neglect of the grand and the
terrible in Nature is a similar feeling toward such aspects of the
external world as especially suggest mystery, remoteness, unseen
forces. That this is true may be seen by a study of the sky phenomena
that appear, or fail to appear, in this classical poetry. The day-time
sky is but briefly and vaguely mentioned or it passes unobserved.
A phrase so imaginative as Blackmore’s “blue gulph of interposing
sky”[75] is rare. In general it is only the more striking aspects of
the sky that are noticed, such aspects as would catch the attention of
a child or of a mere casual observer. Fleeting, delicate effects are
unheeded. Clouds receive little attention except as they portend or
accompany a storm, and even then their chief use is in similitudes.
Apparently the best-known appearance of the day-time sky is the
rainbow. But though it is often mentioned there is singularly little
variety in the phrases used to describe it. A brief summary of those
phrases most frequently used is interesting: “Painted clouds;” “the
clouds’ gaudy bow;” “the gaudy heavenly bow;” “the watery bow;” “the
painted bow;” “painted tears;” “the gaudy drapery of heaven’s fair
bow;” “the showery arch;” the bow “painted by Iris;” the bow “deck’d
like a gaudy bride;” “the painted arch of summer skies,”[76] and so
on through a wearisome list of kaleidoscopic combinations of the same
words. The constant repetition of adjectives so unmeaning as “watery”
and “showery,” or so external and artificial as “gaudy” and “painted”
is as characteristic of the general attitude toward Nature as is the
fact that the attention of poets should have been concentrated on the
obvious beauties of the rainbow rather than on the finer, more subtle
charms of the sky. In the same way sunrise, and especially sunset, are
often mentioned and occasionally described. But there is practically
no discriminating and appreciative study of what was actually to be
seen in the heavens. It was more natural to sit at home and read the
classics, and then announce that the golden god of day “drives down
his flaming chariot to the sea.”[77]
Twilight had, as might be expected, little charm or suggestiveness.
Moonlight also plays a most subordinate part in this poetry.[78]
We seldom find anything more direct or vivid than the time-honored
statement that “fair” or “pale” Cynthia “mounts the vaulted sky,” and
“adorns the night” with her silver beams.[79]
The night sky was counted beautiful because of its stars. The recurrent
conception is that the azure heavens are adorned with these orbs of
gold. The favorite words are “spangled” and “gilded.”[80] In Young’s
“Night Thoughts” we might expect to find some faithful and sympathetic
study of the nocturnal heavens, but in the first eight books not
seventy-five lines refer even remotely to external Nature, and in the
ninth book the stress is laid on “the moral emanations of the skies.”
In his efforts to find a sufficiently varied star vocabulary, Young was
driven to the invention of some new phrases, but in no case do they
show imaginative power. They are perfunctory and stiff and indicate
that his mind was on the “system of divinity” he meant his stars to
teach rather than on the stars themselves.[81] In Burnet’s “Theory of
the Earth,” a work already quoted from, we find a striking, because an
exaggerated, example of the way an undue love of order could modify
one’s aesthetic perception. Burnet enjoyed the night sky but he felt
that the stars might have been more artistically arranged:
They lie carelessly scattered as if they had been sown in
the heaven like seed, by handfuls, and not by a skilful hand
neither. What a beautiful hemisphere they would have made if
they had been placed in rank and order; if they had all been
disposed into regular figures, and the little ones set with
due regard to the greater, and then all finished and made up
into one fair piece or great composition according to the rules
of art and symmetry! What a surprising beauty this would have
been to the inhabitants of the earth! What a lovely roof to our
little world! This indeed might have given us some temptation
to have thought that they had been all made for us; but lest
any such vain imagination should now enter into our thoughts
Providence (besides more important reasons) seems on purpose
to have left them under the negligence or disorder which they
appear unto us.[82]
The final impression from the study of these passages that refer to
stars or moonlight is that the poets of this period were not unlike
Peter Bell into whose heart “nature ne’er could find the way.”
Nor for the moon cared he a tittle,
And for the stars he cared as little.[83]
Night itself, aside from its starry glories, was thought of but to be
feared for its brown horrors and melancholy shades. The conception
of daylight as useful and safe was a part of classical good sense.
The earliest poem in which we find the beauty and something of the
spiritual power of night represented is by Lady Winchilsea. Later we
find the characteristic sentimental melancholy of the poets involved in
a tissue of moonlight and mystery, while the faint colors and pearly
dews of the dawn, and the gentle sadness of evening shades, or in
extreme cases, even midnight glooms, seem to be the only fit setting
for struggling emotions and vague aspirations. There are also, as we
shall see, throughout the romantic revival, not infrequent studies of
the sky, especially of sunrise and sunset, from what we may call the
artist’s point of view. But all this belongs to the new spirit and is
a very evident break from classical traditions. Poetry in which the
classical note is dominant shows the utmost coldness and barrenness in
all that has to do with the beauty and significance of the sky whether
by night or by day.[84]
In contrast to the general turning away from the grand or the
mysterious in Nature we find a certain friendly feeling toward the
gentler forms of out-door life. Spring and summer, blue skies, gently
sloping hills, flowery valleys, cool springs, and shady groves appear
in the poetry with a frequency indicative of some real delight in
them.[85] But real affection for Nature even in her idyllic forms,
an affection the evident outgrowth of personal experience, is the
exception rather than the rule. When such regard for Nature is
apparent, however narrow in scope, it is rightly to be regarded as an
indication of a new feeling toward the external world, for in general
these so-called idyllic descriptions are to the last degree artificial
and unreal. They show that what the poet really enjoyed was not so
much Nature itself, as the creation of fanciful pictures of Nature,
the flowing combination of attractive details into such scenes as he
would like to find in the country in case he should go there. Garth’s
description of the Fortunate Islands is typical. There
No blasts e’er discompose the peaceful sky,
The springs but murmur, and the winds but sigh.
The tuneful swans on gliding rivers float
And warbling dirges die on every note.
Where Flora treads, her Zephyr garlands flings,
And scatters odors from his purple wings;
Whilst birds from woodbine bowers and jasmine groves
Chant their glad nuptials and unenvy’d loves.
Mild seasons, rising hills, and silent dales,
Cool grottoes, silver brooks, and flowery vales,
Groves filled with palmy shrubs, in pomp appear,
And scent with gales of sweet the circling year.[86]
The details of this listless, luxurious description are such as are
combined and recombined in many a picture of supposedly English
scenes. The poet found his pleasure in the vague, highly generalized
representation of such scenery as might exist in some imagined Elysium
or Garden of Eden. The final effect on the mind of the reader is never
one of reality. All is traditional and bookish. Perhaps there is no
more effective way of showing the general characteristics of these
poetical descriptions than by an accumulation of examples. Since
there is no danger of spoiling the poetry, it may be permissible for
purposes of emphasis, to print in italics such phrases as belong to the
common poetical stock. The first passage is Rosamond’s description of
Woodstock Park:
_Flowery mountains,
Mossy fountains,
Shady woods,
Crystal floods._[87]
Here the union of phrases, all conventional in their character, is
entirely fortuitous and undiscriminating. It is impossible not to feel
that Addison picked up his items at random, according to the scheme of
his verse. Take next this invocation by Broome:
Hail ye soft seats! ye _limpid springs_ and _floods_!
Ye _flowery meads_, ye _vales_ and _woods_.
Ye _limpid floods_ that ever murmuring flow!
Ye _verdant meads_, where flowers eternal blow!
Ye _shady vales_, where _zephyrs_ ever play!
Ye woods where little _warblers_ tune their lay.[88]
Or Shenstone’s description of the place of his birth:
Romantic scenes of _pendent hills_
And _verdant vales_, and _falling rills_
And _mossy banks_, the fields _adorn_,
Where Damon, _simple swain_, was born.[89]
Or Lyttleton’s lines:
Here _limpid fountains_ roll through _flowery meads_,
Here _rising forests_ lift their _verdant heads_.[90]
Or Congreve’s description of the scenery along the Thames:
And soft and still the _silver surface glides_,
The _zephyrs fan the field_, the _whispering breeze_
With fragrant _breath remurmurs through the trees_.[91]
Or Parnell’s
High sunny summits, _deeply shaded dales_,
Thick _mossy banks_, and _flowery winding vales_.[92]
Or Prior’s
The _verdant rising_ of the _flowery hill_,
The _vale enamelled_ and the _crystal rill_.[93]
Or Pope’s
Her fate is _whispered_ by the _gentle breeze_,
And told in _sighs_ to all the _trembling trees_;
The _trembling trees_ in every plain and wood,
Her fate _remurmur_ to the _silver flood_.[94]
Or Marriott’s
The mimic voice repeats the _gales_,
That _sigh along_ the _flowery vales_;
The _flowery vales_, the _falling floods_,
The _rising rocks_, and _waving woods_,
To the _sighing gales_ reply
Redoubling all the harmony.[95]
Further quotation is useless. It is easy to see that these passages
have no individuality. They might be transposed from poet to poet
without injustice either to poem or poet. They are like ready-made
clothing, cut out by the quantity to fit the average figure, and never
having any niceness or perfection of fit for any individual form. They
are not specific. They have no local color. They are, furthermore,
absolutely superficial. There is no hint of anything deeper than the
conventional external details mentioned.
Throughout the classical age the most genuine interest in Nature had
to do with parks and gardens. The formal garden, however, which held
its own in England till early in the eighteenth century, makes but a
small figure in the poetry of the period. Its affinities were rather
with prose. In later poetry we find many references to the classical
garden, but they are of the nature of a scornful retrospect, and they
belong to the new spirit. The subject of gardening will be presented in
a separate section.
In the study of the evolution of the love of Nature from Waller to
Wordsworth we may perhaps mark out three stages in the attitude toward
the external world. The last of these stages is the one based on the
cosmic sense, or the recognition of the essential unity between man and
Nature. Of this Wordsworth stands as the first adequate representative.
The second stage is marked by the recognition of the world about us as
beautiful and worthy of close study, but this study is detailed and
external rather than penetrating and suggestive. Very much of the work
of the transition period is of this sort. In the first stage Nature is
counted of value chiefly as a storehouse of similitudes illustrative
of human actions and passions. This first stage represents the use of
Nature most characteristic of the classical poetry.
A study of the abundant similitudes of this period indicates that they
were drawn from a very narrow range of natural facts. The lily, the
rose, the lark, the nightingale, the wren, bees, stars, drops of dew,
the sea in a storm, the oak and the ivy, leaves, the Milky Way--these
are the most important sources of similitudes. The poet chose his
similes from facts already canonized by long literary service, or
from the obvious facts of the park or the town garden. There is,
in the second place, little apparent effort to secure accuracy or
picturesque effect in the statement of the illustrative side of the
simile. The entire emphasis is on the human fact to be illustrated.
There is, therefore, in the third place, a failure to perceive subtle
or delicately true analogies. In most comparisons the likeness is
superficial or it is far fetched. The similes from Nature were not the
literary expression of inner congruities. They were consciously sought
for as a part of the necessary adornment of poetry. Sheridan says:
I often try’d in vain to find,
A _simile_ for womankind,
A _simile_ I mean to fit ’em,
In every circumstance to hit ’em.
Through every beast and bird I went,
I ransack’d every element;
And after peeping through all nature,
To find so whimsical a creature,
A _cloud_ presented to my view,
And strait this parable I drew.[96]
It is this elaborate desire for similitudes, together with the small
knowledge of nature that led not only to wearisome iteration of the
same similes but also to the still more wearisome iteration of the same
points of comparison. A rose, for instance, is a perennially beautiful
source of comparisons,[97] but in the eighteenth-century poetry it
is used almost exclusively either with the lily in matters of the
complexion, or by itself as representative of a young maiden. If she is
overtaken by misfortune the rose is easily blasted by northern winds.
If she is neglected the rose withers on its stalk. If she weeps the
rose bends its head surcharged with dew. If she dies young, the rosebud
is blasted before it is blown. The words of the “Angry Rose” to the
poet gently satirize this prevalence of rose similes.
Of all mankind you should not flout us;
What can the Poet do without us?
In every love-song Roses bloom;
We lend you color and perfume.[98]
The nightingale also has a conventional use. He generally represents
the poet and is either singing with a thorn against his breast, or
is engaged in a musical contest with other birds, in which contest
he quickly silences all competitors, or is himself driven away by
the clamorous noise of a crowd of common birds. The lark has his own
established set of applications. Dryden, Waller, and Savage represent
the poet as a lark singing when the sun shines, and Waller suits the
figure to the times by making the Queen the Sun.[99] Tickell called
himself an artless lark.[100] Cowley professed himself emulous of
the lark.[101] Somerville is a morning lark.[102] Wycherley compares
both Virgil and Pope to larks.[103] Any Fair One has a voice like a
lark, and to Dyer’s delighted ear the maidens who spun English yarn
sang like a whole choir of larks.[104] Not infrequently comparisons
are drawn from the old custom of daring larks by mirrors or objects
that would excite terror.[105] The wren carried aloft on the eagle’s
back serves a variety of poetical purposes, but is especially apt when
representing a needy poet and some powerful patron.[106] Bees are
by far the most prolific source of similitude. Their number, their
activity, their stings, their honey-making are all recognized means of
illustration.[107]
To express great numbers the most useful similes are drawn from stars,
pearly drops of dew, and, most frequently, leaves in autumn.[108] An
exceedingly popular simile is that of the oak and ivy, or the elm
and the vine.[109] Its use is obvious. The rising and the setting sun
represent various forms of prosperity and adversity.[110] From Waller
on, the Milky Way typifies virtues so numerous that they shine in one
undistinguished blaze.[111] A large class of similitudes is drawn from
water in some form. In this respect Dryden is typical. It is surprising
to observe how many of his metaphors and similes are based on seas,
streams, and storms,[112] and his most excellent use of Nature is in
these similitudes, though after going over many of them one comes to
feel that they are all made upon much the same pattern. After Dryden
conventional comparisons based on floods and angry seas are frequent.
The customary form of the river simile of this period is the comparison
of some man’s character, or actions, or literary style to some historic
rivers with marked features. Prior uses the rapid Volga to represent
the impetuous “young Muscovite,” while he compares his own king to
the gentle Thames;[113] and he compares the Romans to the Tyber.[114]
Pope scornfully likens Curll to the Uridanus.[115] Cowley compares
Jonathan to the fair Jordan.[116] Halifax compares the reign of Charles
II to the Thames.[117] Armstrong wishes his own style to combine the
qualities of the Tweed and the Severn.[118] Hughes likened his Muse
to the wanton Thames.[119] Roscommon thought a dull style was like
the passive Soane.[120] Somerville compared Allan Ramsay’s poetry to
Avona’s silver tide.[121] Thomson said that De La Cour’s numbers went
gliding along in “trickling cadence” and were like the flow of the
Euphrates.[122] Chief among similes of this sort is Denham’s well-known
apostrophe to the Thames.[123] There is also frequent use of rivers
in a more general way, as when Parnell compares the strains of the
Psalmist to a rolling river,[124] and Stanhope compares Pope’s style
to a gliding river,[125] and Addison compares Milton’s poems to a
clean current showing an odious bottom,[126] and Dryden compares Sir
Robert Howard’s style to a mighty river.[127] The use of a river as a
simile for life is not infrequent. For various purposes the Nile was
often used. Its annual overflow and its unknown fountain-head are the
chief characteristics drawn upon. The river similes seem as a whole to
be more effectively worked out and more gracefully managed than most
of the other similes of the period, although they have in no case the
beauty and profound symbolism characteristic of the river similes of
Wordsworth, Matthew Arnold, and Lowell.
Another common form of comparison is that in which the seasons or the
various aspects of the day are used to describe some person. One of the
happiest examples is from Marvell.
She summ’d her life up ev’ry day,
Modest as morn, as midday bright,
Gentle as ev’ning, calm as night.[128]
Later similes are less graceful, but they usually have the antithetical
form of expression.[129]
Fairly numerous similes are drawn from trees. Dryden gives typical
examples, as,
And lofty cedars as far upward shoot
As to the nether heavens they drive their root.[130]
This equal spread of roots and branches, the heavy fall of a great
tree, and the superior height of some tall pine or cedar, are the chief
sources of similitudes.
The abundant commonplaces, the fluent ineptitudes, of these
eighteenth-century similes did not escape satire in their own day.
Now and then a critic looked with scorn upon the ingenious and
exhausting attempts of the poet lovers to devise comparisons adequately
expressive of the beauty, the fascination, the cruelty, the coldness,
the inconstancy, of their Cynthias of the minute. Butler thus notes
the tendency of poor and unmeaning metaphors to advance in a mob when
female charms were to be depicted:
In praising Chloris, moons, and stars, and skies,
Are quickly made to match her face and eyes--
And gold and rubies, with as little care,
To fit the colour of her lips and hair;
And, mixing suns, and flowers, and pearl, and stones,
Make them serve all complexions at once.[131]
This easy method of praising a mistress is also humorously described by
Ambrose Philips:
To blooming Phyllis I a song compose,
And, for a rhyme, compare her to the Rose;
Then, while my Fancy works, I write down Morn,
To paint the blush that does her cheek adorn,
And, when the whiteness of her skin I show,
With extasy bethink myself of Snow.
Thus, without pains, I tinkle in the close,
And sweeten into Verse insipid Prose.[132]
And Swift in his “Apollo’s Edict,” 1720, specifically prohibits the use
of some of the more wearisomely frequent similitudes. Some of the laws
he imposes on the poets of his realm are:
No simile shall be begun
With _rising_ or with _setting_ sun,
No son of mine shall e’er dare say,
_Aurora ushered-in the day_,
Or even name the _Milky-Way_.
The bird of Jove shall toil no more
To teach that humble wren to soar.
Nor let my votaries show their skill
By aping lines from Cooper’s Hill;
For know, I can not bear to hear
The mimicry of “deep, yet clear.”
In general we may say of the similitudes of this period that in
no other literary form was Nature so widely used, and in no other
form with so little beauty and spirit; that they were based on an
insufficient and inexact knowledge of Nature; and that they were used
without any sympathetic sense of inner fitness.
A further characteristic of the use of Nature in the classical period
is a personification of natural objects with the ulterior purpose
of making them conscious of the charms or emotions of some person.
When such personification arises out of an intimate identification
of man with Nature, a subjective recognition of the unity of all
existence, or when it is the outgrowth of a supreme passion compelling
the phenomena of Nature into apparent sympathy with its own joy or
grief, the expression is sure to bear the mark of inner conviction or
strong emotion. But when the personification is manifestly a laborious
artistic device, when it is based on neither belief nor passion, it
must be considered the mark of an age slightly touched by real feeling
for nature. And such, in general, were the personifications so freely
used in the English classical poetry. There is an artificiality, even
a grotesqueness, about some of them that forbids even temporary poetic
credence on the part of the reader. A good example is in Waller’s “At
Pens-hurst,” where the susceptible deer and beeches and clouds mourn
with Waller over the cruelty of his stony-hearted Sacharissa.[133] At
the death of any illustrious man or fair lady all Nature was convulsed
with grief. When Caelestia died the rivulets were flooded by the tears
of the water-gods, the brows of the hills were furrowed by new streams,
the heavens wept, sudden damps overspread the plains, the lily hung its
head, and birds drooped their wings. When Amaryllis had informed Nature
of the death of Amyntas all creation “began to roar and howl with
horrid yell.”[134] When Thomas Gunston died just before he had finished
his seat at Newington, Watts declared that the curling vines would in
grief untwine their amorous arms, the stately elms would drop leaves
for tears, and that even the unfinished gates and buildings would
weep.[135] In love poetry Nature is frequently represented as abashed
and discomfited before the superior charms of some fair nymph. Aurora
blushes when she sees cheeks more beauteous than her own. Lilies wax
pale with envy at a maiden’s fairness.[136] When bright Ophelia comes
lilies droop and roses die before their lofty rival.[137] So the sun,
when he sees the beautiful ladies in Hyde Park,
Sets in blushes and conveys his fires
To distant lands.[138]
And when that modest luminary is aware of the presence of the fair
Maria he
Seems to descend with greater care;
And, lest she see him go to bed,
In blushing clouds conceales his head.[139]
Nature is thus constantly compelled into admiring submission to some
Delia or Phyllis or Chloris. Even further than this do the poets go;
they make all the beauty of Nature a direct outcome of the lady’s
charms. In the gardens at Penshurst the peace and glory of the alleys
was given by Dorothea’s more than human grace.[140] No spot could
resist the civilizing effect of her beauty. The most charming example
of this sort of fanciful exaggeration is in Marvell’s verses on Maria
and the Nunappleton gardens.
’Tis she, that to these gardens gave
That wondrous beauty which they have;
She straightness on the woods bestows;
To her the meadow sweetness owes;
Nothing could make the river be
So crystal pure, but only she,
She yet more pure, and straight, and fair
Than gardens, woods, meads, rivers, are.[141]
If later examples of the subordination of Nature to man were so
graceful and quaintly tender as this poem of Marvell’s we might simply
regard them as permissible instances of pathetic fallacy. But even
taken at its best we cannot fail to see that this conception of Nature
in its relation to man is quite unlike the dominant conception in the
romantic school. In the one case we have the subordination of Nature;
in the other the ministry of Nature. A significant comparison might
be made between Marvell’s Maria, and Wordsworth’s Lucy.[142] The one
is the typical fair maiden ruling over her flower world and inspiring
to beautiful life all the gentle Nature forms about her. The other is
“Nature’s lady.” Her whole being is molded by her susceptibility to
the deeper influences of Nature untouched by art. Maria gives to the
external world the charm that it has. Lucy is graced by the spirit
of nature with all lovely qualities. But Marvell’s poem is really no
fair criterion of the use of Nature in the classical love and elegiac
poetry, for in most of that poetry the emotion, the passion, that would
justify extravagant or even impossible conceptions is conspicuously
absent. The extravagance of speech stood as the sign of an intensity of
feeling that did not exist. The poet was not swept away by overwhelming
passion. He worked out his verses with conscious deliberation. A
lady-love was one of the necessary poetical stage properties, so the
poet cast about him for a Phyllis or an Amoret, and then cast about him
for something to say to her. Such lines as Waller’s on Dorothea, who is
so much admired by the plants that
If she sit down, with tops all tow’rds her bow’d,
They round about her into arbours crowd:
Or if she walks, in even ranks they stand,
Like some well-marshal’d and obsequious band,[143]
are at once felt to be merely cold, tasteless hyperbole. The lines
do not win a second’s suspension of disbelief. Modes of speech, a
conception of Nature, such that high-wrought emotion might justify it,
or that might be natural and inevitable when the poet’s thought was
ruled by a living mythology, became mere frigid conventionalities when
there was no passion, and when the spirits of stream and wood no longer
won even poetic faith.
To speak of the poetic diction of the classical poetry has become
a commonplace of criticism. By universal consent certain words and
phrases seem to have been stamped as reputable, national, and present,
and to have formed the authorized storehouse of poetical supplies. If
one writer hit out a good word or phrase, it became common property
like air or sunshine, and other writers did not waste their time
beating the bush for a different form of words. Frequently words in
the accepted diction may be traced to some Latin author, but the
point to be noted here is that, whatever the origin of the word,
its use is incessant. The fatal grip with which certain words clung
to the poetical mind in the classical period receives interesting
exemplification from a comparison of Chapman’s and Pope’s translations
of Homer. It will be observed that in frequent passages Pope uses the
words “purple,” “deck,” “adorn,” and “paint,” chief words in the
classical poetic diction. But in the corresponding passages in Chapman
some other form of words is used. And in most cases Pope’s use of these
terms has no warrant in the original. Likewise, in Dryden’s translation
of Virgil the stock diction is used when there is no idea or picture
in the Latin to call for it and when the use of the stock phraseology
results in distinct loss of force or beauty. Compare, for instance,
Virgil’s vivid “flavescet” and Dryden’s tame “the fields adorned”[144]
used with reference to harvests of ripened grain. Or compare “novis
rubeant quam prata coloribus” and “painted meads;”[145] “noctem
ducentibus astris,” and “stars adorn the skies.”[146] We find the same
spirit illustrated in Dryden’s modernization of Chaucer. The fresh,
spontaneous simplicity of a poet like Chaucer serves exceptionally well
to show the comparatively insipid and feeble treatment of Nature on
the part of those poets who were content to take their expressions, as
well as their facts, at second hand. “The briddes” becomes “the painted
birds;” “a goldfinch” is amplified into a “goldfinch with gaudy pride
of painted plumes.” “At the sun upriste” becomes
Aurora had but newly chased the night
And purpled o’er the sky with blushing light.[147]
The same point is well exemplified in some of the changes made by Percy
in the Ballads. For instance,
As itt befell in Midsummer time
When burds singe sweetlye on every tree
was modernized to,
When Flora with her fragrant flowers
Bedeckt the earth so trim and gaye,
And Neptune with his daintye showers
Came to present the monthe of Maye.[148]
Full illustration would require much more space than is here at
command, but the point to be made is clear, namely, that even when the
poet had his natural facts furnished for him, he instinctively put them
into the molds of an accepted poetic diction.
By all odds the most frequent and significant words in this stock
poetic diction, so far as it has to do with the presentation of nature,
are indicative of dress or adornment in some form. The word “paint”
is everywhere. Snakes and lizards and birds; morning and evening;
gardens, meadows, and fields; prospects, scenes, and landscapes; hills
and valleys; clouds and skies; sunbeams and rainbows; rivers and
waves; and flowers from tulips to white lilies--nothing escapes. It is
little wonder that Somerville called God “the Almighty Painter.”[149]
The word “paint” is really an Elizabethan survival, and as such came
into the possession of Cowley, whose use of it is absolutely vicious.
A rainbow is “painted tears.” The wings of birds are “painted oars.”
David after the fight with the giant is “painted gay with blood,” and
the blood of the Egyptians lost in the Red Sea “new paints the waters’
name.”[150] “Gaudy” is another word of frequent occurrence. In general
the meaning was as now, “ostentatiously fine” as we see in Shakspere’s
phrase, “rich but not gaudy,” and in Dryden’s “gaudy pride of painted
plumes.” In that sense it was fitly applied to peacocks, and perhaps
even to rainbows, but such phrases as “a gaudy fly,”[151] the “gaudy
plumage”[152] of falcons; the “gaudy axles of the fixed stars,”[153]
the “gaudy month” of May,[154] the “gaudy opening dawn,”[155] the
“gaudy milky soil”[156] and the “gaudy Tagus”[157] seem to have no
exact meaning. “Bright” might often serve as a synonym, but not in
the application of the word to flies and falcons. The word “adorn” is
likewise eminently serviceable. Fruit adorns the trees, fleecy flocks
adorn the hills, flowers adorn the green, rainbows adorn clouds, blades
of grass adorn fields, vegetables adorn gardens, Phoebus adorns the
west and is himself adorned with all his light, and Emma’s eyes adorn
the fields she looks on. “Deck” is another favorite. Flora’s rich
gifts deck the field, herbs deck the spring, and corals deck the deep.
Vales, meadows, fields, mountains, rivers, shores, plains, paths, turf,
gardens--all are profusely “damasked” or “enamell’d” or “embroidered.”
The wings of butterflies and linnets are “gilded.” The rising sun
gilds the morn; the gaudy bow gilds the sky; gaudy light gilds the
heavens; lightning gilds the storm; meteors and stars gild the night;
and a duchess gilds the rural sphere when she condescends to visit the
country.
These milliner-like words were not, however, the only ones that the
poet could claim as lawful heritage. He knew, for instance, that he
could always call honey “a dewy harvest,” or “balmy dew,” or “ambrosial
spoils,” and have his hearers know what he meant. His birds, though
almost necessarily a “choir,” could be “feathered” or “tuneful” or
“plumy” or “warbling” according to his taste. His fish were easily
labeled as “finny,” “scaly,” or “watery.”
Breezes were “whispering,” “balmy,” “ambrosial;” zephyrs were “gentle,”
“soft,” and “bland;” gales were “odoriferous,” “wanton,” “Elysian;”
and no other kinds of winds blew except in storm similes. “Vernal” and
“verdant” come in at every turn. From Waller on, the epithet “watery”
seems eminently satisfactory to the poetic mind. Dryden may be taken
as illustrative. To him the ocean is a “watery desert,” a “watery
deep,” a “watery plain,” a “watery way,” a “watery reign.” The shore
is a “watery brink,” or a “watery strand.” Fish are a “watery line” or
a “watery race.” Sea-birds are “watery fowl.” The launching of ships
is a “watery war.” Streams are “watery floods.” Waves are “watery
ranks.”[158] The word occurs with wearisome iteration in succeeding
poets. It is applied not only to the sea but to rivers, clouds, and
rain, to glades, meads, and flowers, to landscapes, to mists, to the
sky, to the sun, and to the rainbow. The set phrases for the sky
are such as “azure sky,” “heaven’s azure,” “concave azure,” “azure
vault,” “azure waste,” “blue sky,” “blue arch,” “blue expanse,” “blue
vault,” “blue vacant,” “blue serene,” “aërial concave,” “aetherial
vault,” “aërial vault,” “vaulted sky,” “vaulted azure,” with such
other changes as may be rung on these words. The chief words applied
to stars, “spangle” and “twinkle,” have been already noted. The usual
adjectives for streams and brooks are pleasant, easy words like
“liquid,” “lucid,” “limpid,” “purling,” “murmuring,” and “bubbling.”
“Rural,” “rustic,” and “sylvan” are epithets applied to anything
belonging to the country, whether to the hours spent there, the songs
of the birds, or the charming country-maidens and their loves, their
bowers, their bliss, their toil. “Flowery” is so constantly used as
descriptive of brooks, borders, banks, vales, hills, paths, plains,
and meads, that it really has not much more meaning than the definite
article prefixed to a noun. “Vocal” is applied to vales, shades, hills,
shores, mountains, grots, and woodlands. “Pendent” and “hanging” belong
to cliffs, precipices, mountains, shades, and woods. “Headlong” and
“umbrageous” are favorite adjectives for groves or shades of any sort.
“Mossy” applies to grottos, fountains, streams, caves, turf, banks, and
so on. “Gray” is the usual descriptive word for twilight, and “brown”
for night. “Lawns” are usually “dewy.”
Some words in this poetic diction are no longer much used. “Breathing,”
is an example. It usually referred to the air in gentle motion, as
“breathing gales,” but we also find “breathing earth,” referring to
mists, and “breathing sweets,” and “breathing flowers” or “breathing
roses,” where the reference is to perfume. “Maze” and “mazy” are also
much used. The Thames and other streams lead along “mazy trains.” The
track of the hare is an “airy maze.” Paths meet in narrow mazes and
stars unite in a mazy, complicated dance. Milton’s stream flows with
“mazy error.” This word “error” is frequently used in its exact derived
meaning. In another place Milton speaks of streams that wander with
“serpent error.”[159] Blair has a stream that slides along in “grateful
errors.”[160] In Falconer the light strays through the forest with
“gay romantic error.”[161] In Gay the fly floats about with “wanton
errors.”[162] Dyer winds along a mazy path with “error sweet.”[163]
Armstrong’s “error” leads him through endless labyrinths.[164]
Addison’s waves roll in “restless errors,”[165] and Thomson treads the
“maze of autumn with cheerful error.”[166] “Amusive” is a word applied
by Pitt to the ocean, and by Mallet to clouds; Shenstone says that
country joys “amuse securely.”[167] It seems to be half apologetic
in tone in some cases; in others it merely means pleasing. Thomson
used the word as verb or adjective several times.[168] We also find
it in Parnell.[169] “Lawn” is used in the sense of an open glade in
the woods. Even so late as Wordsworth this meaning persists.[170] One
unpleasant but not uncommon word is “sweat.” It may be a survival from
the metaphysical conceits, for we find in Dr. Donne a reference to the
“sweet sweat of roses,” and Cowley has flowery Hermon “sweat” beneath
the dews of night. Dryden has flowers sweat at night.[171] Fenton’s
flowers
all pale and blighted lie,
And in cold sweats of sickly mildew die.[172]
Even Gray talks about the “sickly dews”[173] of night, and Thomson has
caverns “sweat.”[174] Garth, as a physician, may possibly be excused
for having the “sickening flowers” drink up the silver dew, and the
grass tainted with “sickly sweats of dew,” but when he has the fair
oak adorned with “luscious sweats,”[175] he has gone into the realm of
aesthetics, and no excuse can prevail.
The power of fashion in words in a conventional age is further shown
by the prevalence of adjectives ending in “y.” They are favorites with
Dryden, and hold their own steadily through the century that followed.
Beamy, bloomy, forky, branchy, flamy, purply, steepy, spumy, surgy,
foamy, blady, dampy, chinky, sweepy, sheltry, moony, paly, tusky,
heapy, miny, saggy, and many more, occur where at present there would
be no ending or the ending “-ing.”
The stock poetic diction may serve also to illustrate the indebtedness
of the English classical poets to their Latin masters in the matter of
phraseology. Compare, for instance, the use of the word “cavus” in its
application to “montes,” “cavernae,” “trunci,” “saxa,” “umbra,” and
“flumina,” and the English word, “hollow,” as applied to caves, rocks,
mountains, shores, valleys, and even to the dark. Or compare the Latin
use of “horridus,” meaning rough, rugged, wild, with “horrid,” in its
application to mountains, rocks, and thickets. “Savage mountains” and
“shaggy mountains” sound like an echo from Virgil’s “montes feri” and
“intonsi montes.” The fundamental conception is certainly the same.
Milton’s “hairy thickets” and bushes with “frizzled hair” and Dryden’s
“hairy honours of the vine” are suggestive of the Latin use of “comae”
as a trope for foliage. The word “honours,” as applied to foliage
or fruits, is also of Latin origin. The “tristis” or “dura hiems”
of Virgil finds its echo in the general epithets applied to winter
in English poetry. “Deform’d” and “inverted” seem to be mere Latin
transcripts. Dryden was fond of the word “nodding.” He used it twice
in translations in places where some other word would more accurately
represent the original.[176] In its application to mountains the word
may, perhaps, be traced to Virgil’s “nutantem mundum.” Its further use
by Dryden, Pope, Akenside, Shenstone, and others, with reference to
forests, rocks, and precipices, is apparently a later outgrowth from
its application to mountains. “Sylvan Muse” and “silvestris musa;”
“flowery plains” and “florea rura;” “liquid fountains” and “liquidi
fontes;” “mossy springs” and “muscosi fontes,” are but a few of the
many exact parallels between the English and Latin phrases descriptive
of scenery. So, too, the superficial conception of the various
beauties of Nature as “adornments” of the earth finds its prototype
in such expressions as “lucidum caeli decus,” applied to the moon, or
“pulla ficus, ornat arborem,” or “vitis ut arboribus decori est, ut
vitibus uvae.” An instructive example of the way in which borrowed
epithets lose their significance and become merely conventional is
the word “painted” in its application to birds. In Virgil “pictaeque
volucrae”[177] meant birds of many colors, or of bright colors. Milton
uses the phrase “painted wings,”[178] referring apparently to brilliant
birds in the Garden of Eden. But by Pope’s time the word “painted”
had become a stock epithet with its connotation so vaguely widened
that it would be difficult to give its exact meaning. It was simply
indefinitely associated with birds, hence Pope applied it to the brown
wings of a pheasant.[179] Shenstone uses it of the wings of a fly,[180]
and Parnell applies it to the eye of a peacock,[181] and Waller to the
peacock’s nest.[182] In the same way “painted,” in its application
to flowers, might easily be a picturesque descriptive adjective for
bright blossoms of any sort, but being gradually more and more closely
associated with flowers, it would lose its first meaning and come to
be applied to white lilies as well as tulips. “Purple” is another
borrowed word. It brought with it its whole train of Latin meanings. In
ordinary English speech “purple” had a fairly definite reference to a
specific color composed of red and blue, but in the English classical
poetry it was used in exactly the Latin sense. The fundamental idea
of “purpureus” was color, but a secondary meaning was brightness; in
its twofold application it was a descriptive epithet applicable to
light,[183] to flowers in general, to roses, spring, or morning. The
English phrases, “morning’s purple wings,” “the purple day,” “the
purple east,” “the purpled air,” “ground empurpled with roses,” “the
purple spring,” “purple daffodils,” are such as would serve the purpose
of a modern impressionist painter, but in eighteenth-century poetry
they chiefly indicate a knowledge of the classics. They were clearly
imitative phrases.
In individual cases the charge of imitation is a hazardous one to make
because so difficult to prove. However close the parallelism, it is
always possible to believe that two persons thought of the same thing
independently. Where a whole literary period is under consideration as
here, all that can be said is that the similarities between the English
and the Latin forms of expression are numerous and striking, that the
phrases are frequently such as would not naturally occur to an English
poet, that the English poets had little first-hand knowledge of Nature,
and that they knew their Virgil and Horace by heart. But after all, the
inner conviction of imitation with which one turns from a consecutive
reading of the two literatures is a more legitimate proof, perhaps,
than even a liberal assemblage of debatable specific cases.
The imitation is not confined to diction. Many of the favorite similes,
especially those drawn from trees, bees, leaves in autumn, the oak
and vine, angry seas, and streams, have a Latin cast. They seem to
be worked out on Virgilian models, and it is impossible not to feel
that the English poet owed more to his classical library than to his
knowledge of Nature. One striking mark of imitation is the prevalence
of the artificial cumulative simile so common in Virgil.
The details in the Latin pastoral poetry are also freely transferred
to descriptions of English scenes. The poet could not describe English
meadows without a desire to transplant therein some fairer blooms from
“the unenvious fields of Greece and Rome.” English rivers, skies, seas,
plains, hills, and valleys were presided over by classic deities.
Ceres, Pomona, and Bacchus, Dryads and Naiads, were as omnipotent
as if they were still believed in. The hardy English shepherd was
transformed into a languid swain eternally seeking mossy caves as a
refuge against burning heats. His chief occupation was to lie beside
some murmuring rill, or beneath some spreading beech, or under some
myrtle hedge, and charm the listening vale with love ditties played on
his pipe: or, for variety, to enter into some amoebean contest with
a neighboring swain concerning the rival beauty of their respective
nymphs. His chief troubles were the coyness, fickleness, and desertion
of this same much-praised Phyllis or Chloris,[184] and the occasional
incursion of nightly predatory wolves among his fleecy flocks. And
all this calmly in the face of the fact that there were no predatory
animals in English forests, that the chief enemies of the English
shepherd were cold and storm, and that he would be much more likely to
seek a sunny bank than a cooling grot. The classical English poets not
only knew nothing of the genuine English shepherd such as Wordsworth’s
Michael, but they did not wish to know of him. It was their ambition to
follow in the path marked out by the Mantuan swain. If they could write
so that every line would “confess Virgil”[185] they were satisfied.
Pope said that it was the poet’s office to represent shepherds not as
they are but as they may be conceived to have been in some past golden
age.[186] That golden age existed apparently in the Italy of Virgil and
the Greece of Theocritus. Dryden gave the acceptable advice,
For guides take Virgil and read Theocrite.
By them alone you’ll easily comprehend
How poets, without shame, may condescend
To sing of gardens, fields, of flowers, and fruit,
To stir up shepherds, and to tune the flute.[187]
Except in burlesque no poet of that day cared to change “Strephon and
Phyllis” into “Tom and Bess.” The great effort was to dignify humble
themes by constant reference to the great poems of the past.
The general structure of many English poems was evidently conformed to
Latin models. A comparison of the “Pastorals” of Pope, Gay, and Ambrose
Philips with Virgil’s “Eclogues” would sufficiently establish this
point.[188]
Throughout the classical poetry of Nature there is little reliance on
first-hand observation. There was safety and dignity in following Dick
Minim’s advice, “When you sit down to write think what your favorite
author would say under such and such circumstances,” and the favorite
authors were sure to be Virgil, and Horace, and Ovid.
The imitations were not, however, exclusively from the Latin authors.
Often the Latin borrowings came at second hand from other English
poets, and English poets borrowed freely from each other. A single
instance may be cited to show how an insipid and almost unmeaning
collocation of words could hold its own and be re-echoed from poet to
poet. Addison’s couplet,
My humble verse demands a softer theme,
A painted meadow, or a purling stream,[189]
was imitated by Tickell in,
By Nature fitted for an humble theme
A painted prospect, or a murmuring stream,[190]
and twice by Pope in,
Enough to shame the gentlest bard that sings
Of painted meadow and of purling springs,[191]
and
Like gentle Fanny’s was my flowery theme,
A painted mistress or a purling stream.[192]
Compare also,
Most of our poets choose their early theme
A flowery meadow or a purling stream.[193]
But one other sort of imitation can be noticed here, and that is a
natural outcome from the use of the rhymed couplet. It is what Pope
calls “the sure return of still expected rhymes.” The common rhyme of
“stream” and “theme” has already been noted. Pope calls attention to
others:
Whene’er you find the “cooling western breeze”
In the next line it “whispers through the trees.”
If crystal streams “with pleasing murmurs creep”
The reader’s threatened, not in vain, with “sleep.”[194]
The last reference is an ungracious hit at one of Wycherley’s poems
recommendatory of Pope’s “Pastorals,” but the rhyme of “breeze” and
“trees” is certainly of a bewildering frequency. There is a stanza in
point in one of the doubtful poems attributed to Gray:
First when Pastorals I read,
Purling streams and cooling breezes
I only wrote of; and my head
Rhimed on, reclined beneath the Tree-zes.[195]
One cause of the artificial and forced effect of the classical poetry
of Nature is undoubtedly the sameness of impression produced by this
frequent recurrence of the same rhymes.
In the foregoing study of the attitude of the classical poets toward
Nature certain dominant characteristics have been indicated, all of
them pointing to a lack of interest in Nature. The attention of the
age was concentrated elsewhere. Not Nature, but man was the supreme
interest. And the limitations must be drawn even more closely, for
the interest was not in man as man according to the democratic spirit
of the succeeding romantic age, nor in man as a creature of daring,
of wild passions, of lawless enthusiasms, of boundless energies, as
in the preceding Elizabethan age, but man as part of a well-organized
social system. Man in London was the central thought of the age.
This supremacy of the interest in man accounts for the acknowledged
preference for city life. In the country bad roads and poor conveyances
effectually separated men from each other. In the city the wits of
the coffee-house and the beaux and belles of the drawing-room were
able to gain the social converse and mutual admiration necessary to
their happiness. What they had to say to each other was incomparably
more interesting than any revelation from Nature’s solitary places.
Men feared and disliked mountains and the sea because these natural
features stood as obstacles to the easy pursuit of many pleasures,
and because in the presence of forces so vast and elemental men felt
themselves overawed and threatened. What they could not understand
and conquer was their foe. They turned uneasily from all forms of
Nature that suggest mysterious, unseen forces over which man has no
control. The limitless spaces of the sky, the “solemn midnight’s
tingling silentness,” the magical charm of moonlight, whatever is
infinite in its suggestiveness, drawing the spirit of man into the
vast, shadowy realms of the unknown, filled them with dismay. In
Nature as in everything else they instinctively confined themselves
to such portions of truth as they could clearly state and use. The
kind of Nature they loved was that in which man was easily supreme.
Their delight in cultivated rural England was largely based on its
power of ministering to man’s ease and physical well-being.[196] Their
delight in the formal garden grew out of their pleasure in seeing the
triumphal expenditure of human effort. There Nature was “rhymed and
twisted and harmonized” at pleasure. Man’s supremacy was nowhere else
more effectually acknowledged. Not art concealed but art manifest was
the ideal. Evelyn’s enjoyment of French and Italian gardens is almost
always based on his pleasure in some mechanical device whereby man had
conquered Nature.[197] What Cowley most enjoyed in the country was the
sense of his own skill and mastery. The “best natured” satisfaction
of all is, he says, the husbandman’s delight in “looking round about
him and seeing nothing but the effects and improvements of his own
art.”[198] The supremacy of the interest in man is further explanatory
of the facts already sufficiently commented upon that the most abundant
use of Nature was in similitudes for human qualities and passions,
that these similitudes were drawn from a surprisingly small number of
natural phenomena, and that the Nature side of the similitudes was
often carelessly and ignorantly handled. The dominance of man is also
back of the conception of Nature as stirred by man’s joys and woes, and
plunged into despair by his death. Nature is, at the utmost, but the
comparatively unimportant background against which man acts his part,
and there is seldom any effort to suit the background to the picture.
There is likewise significance in the twofold fact that in the set
poetic diction there are many words and phrases relating to Nature and
comparatively few relating to man. Where there was a concentration of
interest the vividness of the conception demanded new and original
forms of speech, while the stock diction, like cant in religious
expression, showed the absence of genuine feeling. It is in Pope’s
“Pastorals” not in “The Dunciad” that we find stock words, conventional
phrases, and hereditary similes.
In summary we may note that the characteristic attitude toward Nature
in the classical period is marked by:
_a_) Prevailing dislike or neglect of the grand or the terrible in
Nature as mountains, the ocean, storms, and winter.
_b_) A similar dislike or neglect of the mysterious or the remote,
as the various phenomena of the sky.
_c_) A certain apparent friendliness toward the gentle, pleasant,
serviceable forms of Nature as in rural cultivated England, in spring
and summer, in good weather, in various forms of horticulture.
_d_) An especial pleasure in Nature ordered and made symmetrical
by art, as in formal gardens and parks.
_e_) Descriptions of a highly generalized sort with almost no
touches of local color.
_f_) Full but conventional and superficial use of Nature in
similitudes for human passions and actions.
_g_) Narrow, uninterested, and hence frequently inaccurate
observation of natural facts.
_h_) Cold and lifeless imitation of the forms and details without
the spirit of Latin models.
_i_) A vocabulary restricted and imitative in character.
_j_) An underlying conception of Nature as entirely apart from
man, and to be reckoned with merely as his servant or his foe.
CHAPTER II
INDICATIONS OF A NEW ATTITUDE TOWARD NATURE
IN THE POETRY OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
In this chapter the method of work is quite unlike that in the
preceding study. The typical and the dominant are not regarded.
Attention is rather converged upon the significant exception. We are
led into nooks and corners and byways. The most famous author is not
necessarily the one on whom emphasis is placed. In searching for
legitimate proof of a tendency we may safely turn to the work of men
of unoriginal genius and moderate power. A study of this sort would
certainly give a distorted view if it were for a moment thought to
represent the period as a whole. But if it is held in mind that the
attitude toward Nature was in general through the eighteenth century
marked by indifference and artificiality, we may throw as high lights
as we please on the exceptions. This study will serve its purpose if,
in its following-out of the complexities and inconsistencies that
make a transition period interesting, it shall succeed in showing
that, along with the classical feeling toward Nature, there was also
a real and vital love for the out-door world, and that this new
attitude toward Nature is marked by first-hand observation, by artistic
sensitiveness to beauty, by personal enthusiasm for Nature, by a
recognition of the effect of Nature on man, and, occasionally, by an
imaginative conception of Nature somewhat in the Wordsworthian sense.
The new attitude toward Nature, of which Thomson is the first adequate
exponent, finds occasional and not ineffective expression during the
two decades before the publication of “Winter” in 1726. In the works of
John Philips (1676-1709), Ambrose Philips (1675–1749), Lady Winchilsea
(1661–1720), John Gay (1685–1732), Thomas Parnell (1679–1718), William
Pattison (1706–1727), Allan Ramsay (1686–1758), Robert Riccaltoun
(1691–1769), and Dr. Armstrong (1709–1779), we become more or less
definitely aware of a new outlook on the external world.
Dr. Johnson praised John Philips’ poem “Cyder”[199] because it had
the “peculiar merit” of being “grounded in truth.” On the whole this
poem is of the didactic classical order, but here and there among the
minutely accurate horticultural precepts we come upon indications that
the poet was not insensible to the charms of Nature in other than its
utilitarian aspects. His delight in color may be seen from his specific
descriptions of apples. The pippin is “burnish’d o’er with gold;”
the red-streak “with gold irradiate and vermilion shines.” “Plumbs”
are “sky-dyed.” He notes the “Ore, Azure, Gules,” and the blending
of colors in the rainbow. He observes the contrast between fields
yellow with grain, and green pasture land. And he sees the colored
edges of clouds when the sun breaks through. There is also apparent a
sensitiveness to odors. He speaks of cowslip-posies “faintly sweet,” of
odorous herbs, of the fragrance of apples on a dewy autumn morning, and
of “the perfuming flowery bean.” Mr. Shairp credits Thomson with being
the first poet to mention the fragrance of the bean fields,[200] but
Philips is at least twenty years ahead of Thomson in noting this fact.
We see further indication of Philips’ enjoyment of Nature in a few
lines,
Nor are the hills unamiable, whose tops
To heaven aspire, affording prospect sweet
To human ken,[201]
which were perhaps the earliest expression in the eighteenth century
of that pleasure in high hills and wide prospects that was so marked
a characteristic of later poetry. Philips’ explanation of the
satisfaction he found in an early morning walk, namely, that the
mind perplexed with irksome thought is calmed by the influence of
Nature,[202] seems like a prophecy of the thought afterward dominant
concerning man’s indebtedness to Nature.
In Ambrose Philips’ “Pastorals” we find a mingling of first-hand
observation and classical imitation. His references to the ancients,
his amoebean contests, the supposed effect of the death of Albino
on the external world, the emphasis on dangers from heat and the
nightly wolf, the frequent use of cumulative comparisons,[203] and,
in general, the form of his “Pastorals,” show how closely he was
held by conventional ideas. Furthermore, his facile use of Nature
is always determined by his attitude toward some pastoral nymph or
swain. He rejoices to paint an idyllic background for some Rosalind.
He heaps up images from Nature to express the amorous praises of some
Colinet. He has no conception of a relation between man and Nature
more intimate than the highly artificial one of his “Pastorals.”
What is of importance in his poetry is the fact that in the midst
of his imitations and conventionalities are many true and charming
observations drawn entirely from English country life and not found in
earlier eighteenth-century poetry. His work is, to be sure, rendered
weak and childish by two unpleasant mannerisms in diction: his use of
adjectives ending in “y,” as “bloomy,” “dampy,” “bluey,” “steepy,”
“purply,” and so on, and his use of diminutives such as “kidlings,”
“lambkins,” “younglings,” “firstlings,” and “steerlings.” But on the
whole we find in his poems a more full and accurate knowledge of Nature
than is at all common in the poetry of the time. He notes the fleeting,
dusky shadows cast by moving clouds, the glossiness of plums, the blue
color of mists, the sweet odors of morning, the moaning of the night
wind in the grove, the sportive chase of swallows, the loud note of
the cuckoo, the speckled breast of the thrush, and the song of the
blackbird “fluting through his yellow bill.” He usually calls flowers,
trees, birds, and other animals by their specific names, and he seldom
extends his list beyond his own probable observation. That Philips had
a genuine love for Nature in her milder forms is further seen from the
preface to his “Pastorals.” “As in Painting,” he says, “so in Poetry,
the country affords not only the most delightful scenes and prospects,
but likewise the most pleasing images of life.” He loved the songs of
birds because the “sedate and quiet harmony” of their simple strains
gives “a sweet and gentle composure to the mind.” And he was conscious
of an “unspeakable sort of satisfaction” when he saw “a little
country-dwelling, advantageously situated amidst a beautiful variety of
hills, meadows, fields, woods and rivulets.”
Lady Winchilsea is, in the study of the poetry of Nature, the most
significant of the minor poets before Thomson. She was a friend of Rowe
and Pope, and was honored by complimentary verses from them.[204] She
is known now chiefly because of Wordsworth’s reference to her,[205]
and through the poems published in Ward’s “English Poets.”[206] Three
of the poems there given, “The Nightingale,” “The Tree,” “A Nocturnal
Revery,” have to do with Nature. With these exceptions the eighty-one
poems in the collection of 1713[207] are thoroughly classical in their
form and spirit, though unmarked by any preponderance of artificial
fancies. But these three short poems are remarkable productions when
thought of in connection with their author’s poetical environment. They
are the earliest eighteenth-century poems in which Nature is frankly
chosen as the theme, and they show a personal knowledge that must have
been the accumulated result of many experiences.
The observation in “The Nightingale” is especially truthful and
sympathetic. That there is no attempt to describe the bird is an
omission justified by the fact that the nightingale is seldom
seen.[208] The two characteristics noted in the bird’s song are its
exceeding sweetness and its sadness, or rather, its sense of pain.[209]
A comparison of the phrases in the note will show that Lady Winchilsea
listened with the hearing ear of a true poet. But we cannot fail to
notice as well that the song is not fully heard or reported. In the
other poets we find represented a richness, a fulness, an ecstasy, a
tumult, not even hinted at in Lady Winchilsea’s poem.[210] Nor does she
mention the passion most poets have heard in the song.[211] But however
incomplete the impression received may have been, the poetical record
of what was perceived is both truthful and vivid. She seems to write as
she listens and the reader follows the variations of the song through
their effect on her own mind.
In the fifty-two lines of the poem on Night twenty-two natural facts
are recorded. Some of these would not escape the most careless, but
only close observation would discover such details as the sleepy
cowslip, the grass standing upright, the unusual strength of odors, the
clearer sound of falling waters, the horse’s audible cropping of the
grass, the waving moon seen in the stream, and the distant call of the
curlew. Lady Winchilsea’s love of Nature was of the most unambitious
sort. To have seen the stately tree, to have heard the nightingale,
to know all she did about night, would not have called her beyond
the gates of her own park. But her joy in Nature needed no strong or
novel stimulus. It is her distinction that she had fixed an “exquisite
regard” on the commonest facts of the external world, and that she
spoke quite clearly and simply from her own life. Hence her knowledge
had the new quality of being specific and local and accurately defined.
Still more noteworthy is Lady Winchilsea’s spiritual sensitiveness
to Nature. Such a phrase as “the mysterious face of heaven” marks a
new conception of the sky. Night is no longer “the parent of fears”
but a time whose solemn quiet suggests a strange and subtle sense of
something too high for syllables to speak. Nature is to her no mere
background for human life. Man is influenced by Nature. His rage is
disarmed. His spirit is led to feel a sedate content. And sometimes in
moments of especial insight there is revealed to him in the inferior
world an existence “like his own.” Not often before Wordsworth is there
so distinct a prevision of his way of looking at Nature.[212]
In the slow turning of English poetry from the artificial to the
natural John Gay was distinctly helpful, yet the reader of “Trivia,”
“The Fan,” “The Epistles,” the “Fables,” and even the “Eclogues” would
hardly suspect their author of knowing, in any close way, any life
outside the city. It is only in “Rural Sports,” written when he was
twenty-eight, and “The Shepherd’s Week,” when he was twenty-nine,
that we find any real study of Nature. In “Rural Sports” hunting and
especially fishing are described with the enthusiasm and technical
accuracy of an expert. There is no hint of the feeling toward animals
that made Thomson and Cowper abhor hunting. There is simply a
thoroughly sportsmanlike knowledge of details, a sense of pleasurable
excitement in the chase, and joy in victory. This delight in open-air
pursuits is often far enough removed from any real love of Nature, and
is here of much less significance than casual passages showing Gay’s
love of the world about him. He tells us that it was his habit to take
morning walks through the fields,[213] that at sunset he often strayed
out to the cliffs near Barnstaple, and lingered to watch the glowing
colors of the sunset, and the later beauty of an “unclouded sky” bright
with stars and a silver moon that marked a glittering path along the
sea.[214] Gay’s love of Nature was largely confined to the milder
aspects, but he seems not to have been entirely indifferent to hills.
In speaking of Cotton Hill in North Devonshire he said,
When its summit I climb, I then seem to be
Just as if I approached nearer heaven!
When with spirits depress’d to this hill I repair,
My spirits then instantly rally;
It was near this bless’d spot, I first drew vital air,
So--a hill I prefer to a valley.[215]
In six or seven unimportant passages Gay speaks of hills or mountains,
apparently using the words interchangeably, but not in a manner
indicating much knowledge of them. Yet such little pictures as that of
the dawn when the sun “strikes the distant eastern hills with light,”
or that of “the evening star shining above the western hill,” show
some recognition of hills as an attractive part of a landscape. Gay
knows flowers and birds and trees with some definiteness. He speaks of
many domestic animals. He notes colors and odors.[216] He observes the
lengthened shadows stretched across the meadows in the late afternoon,
the long flight of crows seeking the wood at sunset, the streams
“wrinkled”[217] by a fresh breeze, the yellow showers of leaves in
autumn. Abundant and varied as is this use of Nature, it is not marked
by especial delicacy of feeling or accuracy of observation. But for
all that “The Shepherd’s Week” is a notable piece of work, and it is
in these pastorals that we find Gay’s real service. Whether meant as
a friendly aid in Pope’s castigation of Ambrose Philips or not, these
poems were unquestionably meant as a good-humored satire on pastorals
that ventured to deal truthfully with English rustic life. The Latin
form was counted the ideal one for pastoral. To this form Gay held,
evidently with the conscious purpose of suggesting the Latin at every
turn. Then he filled in this mold with the homeliest, most realistic
details of English country life.[218] The plain, practical truth of
these details is simply amazing as will be seen from the passages
indicated in the note. See also the flowers brought in, the primrose,
kingcup, clover, daisie, gilliflower, mary-gold, butter-flowers,
cowslip, and others; and the animals, the witless lamb, frisking kid,
udder’d cow, clucking hen, waddling goose, squeaking pigs, worrying
cur, whining swine, paddling ducks, guzzling hogs, and others; and the
country sports, as romping in the fields, blindman’s buff, hot cockles,
swinging, and others.[219] In Pastoral IV is an assemblage of curious
country superstitions; in Pastoral I are given signs of rain; in
Pastoral V are funeral customs; and in Pastoral VI an account of the
favorite country songs. These poems are a veritable treasure-house for
the student of folklore. They might also serve as a diary of country
occupations. Take for example Bumkinet’s reminiscences of Blouzelinda’s
life in Pastoral V. In such a wood, he remembers, they gathered fagots.
There he drew down hazel boughs and stuffed her apron with brown nuts.
In another place he had helped her hunt for her strayed hogs, and as
they drove the untoward creatures to the sty had seized the opportunity
to tell his love. At the dairy he had often seen her making butter
pats, or feeding with floods of whey the hogs that crowded to the door.
In the barn as he plied the flail, he had watched her sift out food for
the hens. In the field she had ranged the sheaves as he pitched them on
the growing mow. The object of these pastorals was to show the absurd
incongruity between the Latin form with its suggestions of Arcadian
days, and the roughness of English country life. The result was
unexpected. Readers in general, indifferent to scholarly congruities,
were delighted with the novelty, the air of freshness and truth, in the
pictures scattered through the “Pastorals.” Poetry had suddenly and
without meaning to do it, gone from the city and the park to the very
plainest and most matter-of-fact sort of country people and country
occupations, and had somehow made them attractive. Blouzelinda and
Buxoma are not in the same order of beings as the traditional Phyllis
and Chloris, and they are equally far removed from the vulgar repulsive
country wenches in Swift’s coarse satires. They are real beings with a
charm of their own, and the love they inspire in Lobbin Clout and Cuddy
is an everyday, quite comprehensible affair.
The dirge for Blouzelinda indicates well the covert laugh with which
Gay wrote these descriptions of country life. The clergyman said
that Heaven would take her soul, no doubt,
And spoke the hour-glass in her praise--quite out.
After the funeral the men trudged
homeward to her mother’s farm,
To drink new cyder mull’d, with ginger warm,
For gaffer Tread-well told us, by the by,
“Excessive sorrow is exceeding dry.”
This sense of fun is everywhere apparent, and shows how unwittingly
Gay broke a lance in a new cause. Yet some parts of his Preface are
startlingly modern in their plea for truth to Nature. Here is a passage
which, so far as its spirit is concerned, might have been said by
either Crabbe or Wordsworth.
Thou wilt not find my shepherdesses idly piping on oaten reeds,
but milking the kine, tying up the sheaves, or, if the hogs are
astray, driving them to the styes. My shepherd gathereth none
other nosegays but what are the growth of our own fields; he
sleepeth not under myrtle shades, but under a hedge; nor doth he
vigilantly defend his flock from wolves for there are none.
Whatever Gay meant to do, he really did accomplish what his Preface
states as his aim. He turned poetry away from the “insipid delicacy”
of the conventional pastoral, and truthfully represented the “plain
downright hearty cleanly folk” of rustic England. And external Nature,
though nowhere dwelt upon for its own sake, is everywhere present and
so vividly portrayed, that the reader had what was certainly a poetic
novelty at that day, “a lively landscape of his own country, just as he
might have seen it, if he had taken a walk in the fields at the proper
season.”
The use of external Nature in Parnell’s poems has narrow limits.
There is no mention of winter, autumn, or summer. Mountains are
merely noted in passing as disagreeable features in the poet’s dreary
surroundings in Ireland. There is but one line about the sea. Wild
scenery of whatever sort is ignored. The only storm is described in
some conventional lines in “The Hermit.” There is almost no record
of specific knowledge of trees, or flowers, or birds. There are
few indications of openness to sensuous impressions from specific
forms, colors, odors, sounds. But in spite of these widely inclusive
negations, Parnell is of distinct importance as a poet of Nature. He
has, to begin with, some accurate first-hand observation. He speaks
once of the “differing green” of trees in spring. He describes a fern
with some minuteness. There are two charming descriptions of banks and
skies reflected in clear water.[220] Other fresh observations are,
Now early shepherds o’er the meadow pass
And print long footsteps in the glittering grass.[221]
When in the river cows for coolness stand
And sheep for breezes seek the lofty land;[222]
or this of the close of a storm,
But now the clouds in airy tumult fly;
The sun emerging opes an azure sky;
A fresher green the smelling leaves display,
And, glittering as they tremble, cheer the day.[223]
Such lines are of value for they indicate, though they are few
in number, some power of direct vision and of restrained, simple
expression.
Parnell’s distinctive excellence is, however, along different lines.
He records not facts but impressions. He is essentially a poet of the
spring; he felt intensely all the glad, abundant life of the early
year. But there is not a description of spring in his poems. He gives
instead curiously happy descriptive touches that suggest far more than
they say.
Note such lines as,
When spring came on with fresh delight,[224]
or
Green was her robe, and green her wreath,
Wher-e’er she trod ’twas green beneath,[225]
or
The planted lanes rejoice with dancing leaves.[226]
There is a lilt in such lines, a joyousness, an off-hand certainty of
touch, not in keeping with the customary cold and labored descriptions
of spring.
Of still greater significance is Parnell’s literary use of Nature.
In the “Night Piece” the external scene serves as an appropriate
background for the thought presented. The few natural facts are so
well chosen and so delicately touched that all the moral reflections
seem permeated with an appropriate out-of-doors atmosphere. The calm,
perfect beauty of the picture of night with its closing suggestions
of mystery and sadness, the fading of the pale moon, and the sounds
that come over the long lake, fit exactly the course of the poet’s
melancholy meditation and contribute to it. The gay, light pictures
in the “Hymn to Contentment” are equally well suited to the spirit of
joyous praise with which that poem concludes.
Bishop Jebb has pointed out for the enjoyment of the “classical and
pious reader” the similarity between the moral reflections in this
poem and those in Cardinal Bona’s “Divina Psalmodia.”[227] Parnell’s
close adherence to the thought of the cardinal in the didactic part of
the poem, and the fact that the last forty-two lines, the ones that
deal with Nature, are entirely Parnell’s own, give striking proof of
the originality of his thought concerning the external world and its
power over the human heart. It is in these lines that we find his
most subtly suggestive conception of Nature. He represents himself as
sad at heart. He seeks contentment in earthly pomp, in the paths of
knowledge, in solitary search after diverting scenes in Nature, but
in vain. At last he goes to a wood, and as he yields himself to the
influence of the place becomes suddenly aware that in this quiet spot
the true spirit of contentment is speaking to him wise lessons of
self-control and communion with God. In gratitude for the joy that has
come to him through Nature he utters a song of praise to the “source
of all Nature,” but as he looks about him on the glad world, he feels
that his song is merely an expression in words of the great chorus of
thanksgiving going always silently up from sun and moon and stars, from
seas, woods, and streams.
Such work as this is indeed remarkable before 1713; and for
spirituality and insight, for what has well been called “a sense of the
thing behind the thing,” it was many years before it was paralleled.
“The Morning Contemplation” is the only one of Pattison’s poems that
has much to do with Nature. It was written, his friend tells us, on the
banks of a river where the young poet used to wander, endeavoring to
attune his verses to the smoothness and harmony of the stream. He was
especially sensitive to the “sadly pleasing melancholy” of moonlight
nights and solitary walks, and he was one of the first poets to express
a longing for solitude with Nature. Gilded rooms of state, the purple
slavery of towns, rob him of the bliss he finds in the living forest.
When alone in the spacious fields he thinks himself almost a god. Even
little scrubby thorns are to him more pleasing objects than courts can
show. Nature charms his senses and soothes his soul; she is his best
teacher, and he trusts her plain instructions.
Tell me, all ye mighty wise,
Ye governors of colleges;
What deeper wisdom can you know
Than easy nature’s works here show,
reads like a crude prevision of Wordsworth’s “The Tables Turned.” The
“excellent morality” of “The Morning Contemplation” is much in the vein
of Dyer’s “Grongar Hill.” Every fact in Nature arouses some thought or
some emotion. By contrast or analogy it suggests human life, as in the
lines,
See this river as it goes,
With what eloquence it flows;
* * * * *
Believe me, life’s the very same,
The very image of this stream.
Pattison’s poem is of real importance, because its early date[228]
ranks it as probably the first of the eighteenth-century poems that
treat of Nature in the romantic, sentimental, fervid fashion afterward
brought to its culmination by the Wartons.
Allan Ramsay’s education was of the most limited sort, so that, in
early life at least, the development of his genius was unbiased by
a knowledge of Latin and Greek or even English models. After he was
fifteen he lived in Edinburgh and there began to be infected by the
pseudo-classicism of his day. The poems in which country scenes
and people were most fully represented were, however, pretty clear
and unadulterated records of his early experiences in the secluded
mountainous district of Lanarkshire where he was brought up. The best
poems of this sort are the pastoral dialogues, “Patie and Roger,” 1721,
and “Jenny and Meggy,” 1723, or rather, “The Gentle Shepherd,” 1725,
which is a combination of the two pastorals thrown into completer
dramatic form. A second edition of “The Gentle Shepherd” appeared in
the same year as Thomson’s “Winter.”[229] It is worthy of note that
the service rendered by Gay to English poetry is in many respects
paralleled by Allan Ramsay’s contributions to Scottish song. There are
in Ramsay’s pastorals similar closely studied scenes from peasant life,
wherein are minutely described the superstitions,[230] the household
customs,[231] the out-door occupations,[232] the trials,[233] and the
pleasures[234] of the homely folk among the hills of Scotland. But
there are important differences. What Gay did lightly and without
serious intent was with Ramsay a service of love. He was not laughing
in his sleeve at the very truth he so capitally portrayed. Throughout
his work there is, in general, an air of sincerity. It is as if Gay
wrote from the point of view of an outsider with an unfailingly keen
eye, and a quick sense of humor. But Ramsay wrote from a life that
he had known and loved, and that he thoroughly respected.[235] There
are occasional false notes in his pastorals. He gives his shepherds
flutes and reeds; his comparisons, especially his cumulative similes,
are conventional; he makes rather stiff use of personification; and
his desire to make his hero and heroine well born interferes with the
pastoral simplicity of the drama. But these are extraneous and hardly
affect the real texture of the work.
We find in Ramsay’s poems occasional hints that his presentation of
homely Scottish scenes and people was not merely instinctive, but that
it was in some measure a deliberate choice. In “Tartana,” written in
1721, he said that his chosen muses were those that wandered through
the clover meadows and the groves along the smooth meandering Tweed
or by the gentle Tay, or where the haughty Clyde roared over lofty
cataracts.
Phoebus, and his imaginary nine
With me have lost the title of divine;
To no such shadows will I homage pay,
These to my real muses shall give way.
And again, protesting against the narrowness of poetic rules and
customs, he said,
With more of Nature than of art
From stated rules I often start,--
Rules never studied yet by me.
My muse is British, bold and free,
And loves at large to frisk and bound,[236]
and he called a wide, wild garden where all sorts of plants grew in
wanton confusion, a paradise made by Nature herself. Even more emphatic
is his Preface to “The Evergreen” in 1724. In commendation of the poems
he had collected he said,
The morning rises as she does in the _Scottish_ horizon. We
are not carried to _Greece_ or _Italy_ for a shade, a
Stream, or a Breeze.... I find not Fault with these Things, as
they are in _Greece_ or _Italy_: But with a Northern
Poet for fetching his Materials from these Places, in a Poem, of
which his own Country is the Scene; as our _Hymners_ to the
_Spring_ and _Makers of Pastorals_ frequently do.
Ramsay’s use of external Nature is more charming than Gay’s. Scottish
poetry had never, in its attitude toward the out-door world, passed
through so barren and arid a period as that of the pseudo-classicism
in England, nor had the Scottish people ever lost their sense of the
beauty and especially of the mysterious power of glens and braes and
burns. So Ramsay’s love of Nature was not without a considerable
background in the way of national poetic spirit. He spoke out in fresh,
true words what everybody knew, and described scenes familiar to every
eye. There are, however, distinct limitations in Ramsay’s knowledge of
Nature and his power of sympathetic representation. His recognition
of colors is fresh and charming, but elementary, like that shown
in ballads. “Caledonian hills are green,” “beneath a green shade,”
“the simmer green,” “a green meadow,” “my native green plains,” are
characteristic phrases.
When corn-riggs wav’d yellow, and blue heather bells,[237]
and
To pu’ the rashes green with roots sae white,[238]
are almost the only instances of any other color than green. Such
phrases as “scented meadows,” “sweet scented rucks,” “new blown
scents,” “sweetest briar,” “blooming fragrance,” show the same simple,
undifferentiated recognition of odors. A few lines as,
How fast the westlin winds sough through the reeds,[239]
are more specific representations of sounds, but we do not often find
words so discriminating. His references to trees, flowers, and birds
are of the same general, limited sort. There are “bonny haughs” and
“bonny woods;” there are rising plants, primroses, daisies, and gowans;
there are “quiristers on high,” the merle, the mavis, and the lark.
But there is no subtle, detailed observation. It is the open, frank,
spontaneous joy of a child happy in the glad world about him. Ramsay’s
best lines are descriptive of shining days, clear heavens, dancing
streams. “The sun shines sweetly, a’ the lift looks blue,”[240] “ae
shining day,” “ae clear morn of May,” “the morning shines,” “the lift’s
unclouded blue,” “fair simmer mornings” indicate the general atmosphere
of the scenery introduced. Occasional closer touches are seen in such
lines as,
I’ve seen with shining fair the morning rise,
And soon the fleecy clouds mirk a’ the skies,[241]
and
For yet the sun was wading thro’ the mist.[242]
Best of all are the lines about streams;
A trotting burnie wimpling through the ground
Its channel pebbles, shining, smooth and round,[243]
A little fount
Where water poplin springs.[244]
I’ve seen the silver spring a while rin clear
And soon the mossy puddles disappear,[245]
Between twa birks out o’er a little lin
The water fa’s and makes a singan din,
A pool breast-deep, beneath, as clear as glass,
Kisses with easy whirles the bord’ring grass,[246]
are descriptions almost perfect of their kind. In their beauty and
freshness they show that the eye was on the object. Mr. Shairp says of
Habbie’s How, “A pool in a burn among the Lowland Hills could hardly be
more naturally described,” and one need not be a Scotchman to feel sure
that the same is true of the minor descriptive touches.
Though Ramsay was brought up in a rugged part of Scotland, he seems to
have had none of the modern feeling for mountains. But he speaks of
“black, heathery mountains,” of “northern mountains clad with snow,”
of “mountains clad with purple bloom,” and of hills that “smile with
purple heather.” Once he exclaims,
Look up to Pentland’s tow’ring top.
Buried beneath great wreaths of snaw,
O’er ilka cleugh, ilk scar, and slap,
As high as any Roman wa,’[247]
and he notes that
Speats aft roar frae mountains heigh.[248]
Such passages, though they show no love for the mountains, are yet
sufficiently picturesque and exact to save Ramsay from the imputation
of never having seen the wild country around him. To the ocean he gives
but a single line,
Along wild shores, where tumbling billows break.[249]
It is interesting to note that in Ramsay as in Gay, Nature is made
subordinate to man, in the sense that the pictures from Nature are
nowhere elaborated or dwelt upon ostensibly for their own sake. The
main interest is in the study of the characters.
The chief contribution of Gay and Ramsay to the growing love of Nature
in poetry had to do with the natural man in natural scenes, rather than
with the natural scene itself. Gay’s service in the way of external
Nature was largely the outcome of his fidelity to the fact. Ramsay did
more. He not only gave separate pictures both beautiful and true, but
he somehow fused them with the human elements of his pastoral in such a
way that we cannot think of the racy love-scenes apart from their fresh
and lovely surroundings.
In 1725, or shortly before, were written three poems on Winter.[250]
They are important as marking the first real turning from the softer
to the sterner aspects of Nature. Dr. Armstrong’s poem was inspired
by a winter spent among the wild romantic scenes about the River Esk.
His later poetry is not important so far as the use of Nature is
concerned. He became a great admirer of Thomson whose style he imitated
with some success, but he shows little of Thomson’s sensitiveness to
natural beauty. His point of view is that of the physician and his
hatred of the town is based on his objection to smoke and bad air,[251]
while his summons to the mountains rests on the value of exercise and
oxygen.[252] One of the most effective passages is his apostrophe to
the Liddal, that stream “unknown to song, where he played when life was
young.”[253] The only poem on which we need to dwell is the “Winter,”
which, though often unintelligible from its inflated and periphrastic
form of expression, has yet a rugged vigor and originality. It
shows occasionally a homely realism suggestive of Crabbe, as in the
description of the shivering clown. The observation is most of it
first-hand. The description of the birds that, when the storm comes on,
With domestic tameness, hop and flutter
Within the roofs of persecuting man,
suggest Thomson’s famous redbreast. Note also the truth of lines such
as these:
when the murk clouds
Roll’d up in heavy wreaths, low-bellying, seem
To kiss the ground, and all the waste of snow
Looks blue beneath them;
or these:
huge sheets of loosen’d ice
Float on their bosoms to the deep, and jar
And clatter as they pass;
or, to strike a lovelier note, this closing hint of the coming spring:
Hark! how loud
The cuckoo wakes the solitary wood!
The whole poem is characterized by a delight in the wildest phases of
winter weather and it shows an originality of conception, a fulness of
observation, and an occasional strength of expression remarkable in a
boy not yet sixteen.
Riccaltoun’s “A Winter’s Day” is chiefly remarkable because its
author was a friend of Thomson in his boyhood and doubtless helped to
cultivate his taste for Nature; because it was this poem that suggested
Thomson’s descriptions of winter; and because winter was at that time
a new poetic theme. The “masterly touches” of which Thomson speaks
are hard to find unless he referred merely to the rough truth in the
catalogue-like summaries of natural facts. A discussion of Thomson’s
“Winter” will come more naturally in the next section.
In this study of the period preceding Thomson we have still to notice
the indications that even Pope and Addison were not left untouched by
the new spirit. Such indications, however, show but faintly in their
poetry. Addison’s “Cursus Glacialis” (1699) was written in Latin, and
the few descriptive lines are purely conventional. It is simply an
attempt to show that the vigorous sports of winter
“New brace the nerves, and active life supply.”
Pope’s “Pastorals” appeared in Tonson’s “Miscellany” in 1709. They
were enthusiastically received, and apparently considered a charmingly
natural presentation of country life. Wycherley called Pope’s Muse
“a sprightly lass of the plains,” and said, that “in her modest and
natural dress she outshone all Apollo’s court ladies in their more
artful, laboured, and costly finery.”[254] But no assemblage of such
contemporary judgments could convince a modern reader that these poems
show any real traces of a conception of the outer world unlike that of
the classicists. “Windsor Forest” (1713) must be more carefully noted,
both because of Wordsworth’s implied commendation[255] in his reference
to the “passage or two” that contain new images of external Nature,
but chiefly because it is, as Courthope observes, the first “professed
composition on local scenery” since Denham, and Marvell.[256] The poem
was written at two different times. The first 290 lines have to do
with the country. They were written in 1704, at about the same time
as the “Pastorals.” Although this part of the poem purported to be
the outcome of daily rides in Windsor Forest, the descriptions are
so vague and general that most of them would fit any other spot as
well. The lines that show personal observation are certainly few. What
passages Wordsworth meant can only be surmised. He may have had in mind
the description of the pheasants. But more exact observation is shown
in the references to the doves flocking on the naked, frosty trees,
the flight of the clamorous lapwing, the trembling of trees reflected
in a stream, and the purple heather.[257] That Pope had some desire
to conform to the truth in representing English scenery is indicated
by his doubt as to the advisability of referring to the vintage in
describing an English autumn.[258] And when he revised his poems he
omitted “blushing,” as not being applicable to violets,[259] and
“wolves,” as not belonging to England.[260] Warton points out, also,
that in adapting a Latin description of the Eurotas to serve him in a
description of the Thames, he changed “laurels” to “willows”.[261]
In spite of these indications of a desire to be true to Nature, it
is to Pope’s prose rather than his poetry that we must turn for any
real influence in favor of simplicity and truth in the presentation
of natural facts. Though in reading Pope’s letters every statement
is instinctively taken _cum grano salis_, because of his known
insincerity and striving after effect, we now and then strike passages
that have a genuine tone of pleasure in such mild forms of Nature as
his physical condition enabled him to know.[262] Addison’s “Essays”
also show real delight in the milder forms of the external world.
“A beautiful prospect,” he says, “delights the soul as much as a
demonstration.” “A man of polite imagination often feels a greater
satisfaction in the prospect of fields and meadows than another does in
the possession.”[263] We note, too, his pleasure in wide views,[264] in
sunset,[265] and in spring.[266] He also deprecated the use of pagan
mythology as meaningless in the poetry of a Christian nation,[267]
and he heartily praised Ambrose Philips’ attempts to confine English
pastorals to English scenes.[268] And finally, both Pope and Addison
were strong influences in bringing about the change from the formal to
the natural school of gardening.[269]
SUMMARY
In a statement of the influences in this period that make for a new
spirit toward Nature we must not forget that it was in reality a
classical period, most of its tendencies and all of its best work
being classical. The indications of the new spirit are fugitive,
occasional, and usually unconscious. With this proviso, we may sum up
the new tendencies. The change from the formal to the natural school of
gardening was begun in this period, and owed much to Pope and Addison.
The artificial shepherds and shepherdesses of the conventional pastoral
were supplanted by real English and Scottish peasants, as in the work
of Ambrose Philips, Gay, and Ramsay. There was a growing sense of
the beauty and charm of the external world, as in Lady Winchilsea,
Parnell, and Ramsay. In most of the poets mentioned in this period
there was a new quickness and minuteness of observation leading to a
wider knowledge of natural facts. There was appreciative recognition
of new aspects of Nature, as night and winter. There was not lacking
a hint of the romantic note of melancholy which later became one
characteristic of the poetry of Nature. And there was recognition
of the spiritual potencies in the external world. There was also an
occasional self-conscious statement of new principles, as humorously in
Gay, seriously in Ramsay, and casually in Pope and Addison.
THE POETS BETWEEN 1726 AND 1730
James Thomson (1700–1748) is confessedly the most important figure
in the early history of Romanticism. He foreshadowed the new spirit
in various ways, as in his strong love of liberty, his constant
plea for the poor as against the rich, his preference for blank
verse, his imitation of older models, especially Spenser, and in his
tendency toward comprehensive schemes; but his chief importance is
in his attitude toward external Nature. If, however, we take into
consideration all his work, we shall find in more than three-fourths of
it the utmost apparent indifference to Nature. In the five tragedies
written between 1738 and 1748 there is no hint that their author knew
more of the world about him than the veriest classicist of them all. In
“Alfred” (1740), written by Thomson and Mallet, there are occasional
descriptive touches, but these are almost too slight to mention when
we think what effects might have been produced in a play the action
of which occurs on a beautiful wooded island inhabited only by a few
peasants. In the other tragedies Nature is drawn upon merely for
conventional similitudes, as in “Edward and Elenora” (1739), where
five of the eleven similitudes are the comparison of rage or fierce
passions to tempests; or in “Sophonisba,” an earlier play (1728), where
there is not a fresher or more forceful comparison than that of an
army to a torrent, passion to a whirlwind, the hero to a lion, and the
heroine to a blooming morn. In the 3,300 lines of the tedious poem,
“Liberty” (1734–36), not more than fifty refer to external Nature, and
of these the only passages that suggest, even remotely, the author of
“The Seasons” are the descriptions of the sullen land of Sarmatia[270]
and the shaggy mountain charms of the Swiss Alps.[271] “The Castle
of Indolence,” written in 1733, is the only one of the poems written
after 1730 that indicates any genuine love of Nature. The charm of this
poem for modern readers is perhaps largely due to its use of external
Nature, for, though there is little of the rich, elaborate description
characteristic of “The Seasons,” what there is, is so exquisitely
appropriate that all the listless, luxurious life of this land of soft
delights is seen through a romantic and picturesque setting of waving,
shadowy woods, sunny glades, and silver streams. Yet a closer study of
the descriptive stanzas shows little more than a musically felicitous
combination of the attributes conventionally recognized as belonging
to a pleasing landscape. The only lines really indicative of a love of
Nature such as the classicists had not known are the following from the
second canto:
I care not, Fortune, what you me deny:
You can not rob me of free Nature’s grace;
You can not shut the windows of the sky,
Through which Aurora shows her brightening face;
You can not bar my constant feet to trace
The woods and lawns, by living stream, at eve.[272]
It is to “The Seasons” (1726–30) that we must go if we wish to
understand Thomson’s work as a poet of Nature. A brief analysis of the
study of external Nature in these poems will serve to show both in what
respects Thomson’s work was the outcome of a new spirit, and in what
respects its affiliations are with the old.
An important part of Thomson’s poetical endowment was his quick
sensitiveness to the sights and sounds and odors of the world
about him. He looked on Nature with the eye of an artist, but not
of an artist in black and white. It was not form but color that
attracted him. There are occasional descriptions, as of the garden
in “Spring”[273] and of the precious stones in “Summer,”[274] where
the lines glow like a painter’s palette, and throughout “The Seasons”
there is a general impression of rich and varied coloring. That this
impression is stronger than a list of the color terms used would seem
to justify is due to two facts, both characteristic of Thomson’s work
in general. In the first place he did not care for nicely discriminated
shades or delicate tints. He loved broad masses of strong, clear
color. He dwells with ever new delight on blue as seen in the sky or
reflected in water, and on green, “smiling Nature’s universal robe.”
In the second place he is especially rich in such words as indicate
color in general without specification as to the kind. “The flushing
year,” “every-coloured glory,” “the boundless blush of spring,” “the
innumerous-coloured scene of things,” “unnumbered dyes,” “hues on
hues,” are typical phrases. Motion also caught his eye more quickly
than form. The dancing light and shade in a forest pathway, the waving
of branches, the flow of water, the rapid flight or slow march of
clouds, the golden, shadowy sweep of wind over ripened grain, count
for much in the pleasurable impression made upon his mind by different
scenes.
It is evident that Thomson received more through his eye than through
his ear, but he was very far from being indifferent to the sounds of
Nature. The hum of bees, the low of cattle, the bleating of sheep are
frequently noted. The songs of birds, while often represented by some
general phase, as “the music of the woods,” or “woodland hymns,” are
now and then more minutely specified, as in the fine description of
the “symphony of spring.”[275] There is also effective representation
of the sounds heard in storms, as in the summer thunderstorm.[276] The
most frequent sounds are, as is inevitable in an English poet whose
facts come from actual observation, those made by water, as the plaint
of purling rills, the thunder of impetuous torrents, or the growling of
frost-imprisoned rivers.
While Thomson was not the first poet to speak of the odor of the
bean-flower, his words show a keen appreciation of that perfume, and
certainly the “smell of dairy” was a country odor first poetically
noticed by him. His sensitiveness to odors is not especially marked,
yet it is safe to say that he was in this respect more observant than
his immediate predecessors or contemporaries.
In reading the poetry of Nature after Dryden in historical sequence,
there is, in coming to “The Seasons,” a sudden sense of freedom and
elation, a sense of having at last come upon a poet who writes freely
and spontaneously from a large personal experience, whose facts press
in upon him even too abundantly. He knows many kinds of Nature and
under varying aspects. His garden picture, though somewhat too much
in the floral catalogue style, shows how well he knew the cultivated
flowers he described, and he speaks with no less loving minuteness
of furze, the thorny brake, the purple heather, dewy cowslips, white
hawthorn, and lilies of the vale. It is a pleasure to see how much he
knew about birds. He describes their habits with remarkable accuracy
and minuteness. He shows their tender arts in courtship,[277] their
skill in nest-building,[278] and the “pious frauds” whereby they lure
away the would-be trespasser.[279] In no poetry between Marvell and
Thomson do we find birds so fully described, and Marvell has nothing so
charming and sympathetic as Thomson’s winter redbreast.[280] Thomson’s
scope is also wider in that he knew the birds of the seashore[281] as
well as those of wood and meadow. Equally close attention is given to
the various domestic fowl. The peacock had flaunted his painted tail
through poetry for a hundred years, and is now for the first time
outranked as an object of interested observation by the hen, the duck,
and the turkey.[282] The frequent descriptions of domestic animals,
especially the sheep,[283] the horse,[284] and the ox,[285] also
show minute knowledge such as could not have been gained from books.
It is, moreover, a significant fact that through these numerous and
varied studies there runs a genuine love for animals. Thomson was,
at least in poetic theory, a vegetarian, and he vigorously denounced
the killing of animals for food as conduct worthy only of wild
beasts.[286] His poetical invectives against hunting are as vigorous
as Cowper’s.[287] He objects to caging birds,[288] and his indignation
waxes high over the bees “robb’d and murder’d” by man’s tyranny.[289]
The only unoffending animal that escapes Thomson’s wide sympathy is the
fish.[290] The skill with which the monarch of the brook is lured from
his dark haunt and at last “gaily” dragged to land is described with
a gusto in curious contrast to the pity lavished on the tortured worm
that may have served for bait.[291]
As we have just seen, the animals that Thomson described were those
that any country lad might know rather than those that had been
canonically set apart for poetical service. The same independent
judgment is evident in his study of other neglected realms in the
world of Nature. He gloried in storms and winter. Though he now and
then falls into the conventional phraseology, and speaks of winter as
drear and awful, he yet in the same breath exclaims that he finds its
horrors congenial. The contrast of a first winter in London turns his
mind with full emphasis to the days of his youth when he wandered with
unceasing joy through virgin snows, and listened to the roar of the
winds and the bursting torrent, and watched the deep tempest brewing in
the grim sky. Such experiences he remembers with joy for they “exalt
the soul to solemn thought.”[292] Through all the descriptive portions
of the “Winter” there is a vigorous, manly enthusiasm as tonic and
bracing as the bright, frosty days themselves. Thomson’s pleasure in
the sterner phenomena of Nature is further shown by his evident delight
in tracing the progress of any storm, whether the thunder storm of
summer,[293] the devastating wind and rain of autumn,[294] or the black
gloom of a winter tempest.[295] These fierce tempests certainly are of
more comparative importance in “The Seasons” than they are in Nature.
Their frequent choice may be in part due to their dramatic qualities
of rapidity and force. The crashing and hurtling of the elements was a
subject not unsuited to Thomson’s splendid but ponderous and swelling
style. But in the main it is only fair to suppose that he wrote of
storms well because he had many times watched them with an interest
that had made him remember them.
With many other aspects of Nature was Thomson familiar. He knew much
of the sky both by day and by night. His few short descriptions
of the starry heavens are worth more than all Young’s far-sought
epithets.[296] One phrase concerning the radiant orbs
That more than deck, that animate the sky,[297]
seems a conscious turning away from the old artificial conception. One
of the finest moonlight passages[298] is reminiscent of Milton in two
lines,
Now through the passing cloud she seems to stoop,
Now up the pure cerulean rides sublime,
but the close,
The whole air whitens with a boundless tide
Of silver radiance, trembling round the world,
is Thomson’s own, and is a good example of the full sweet harmony that
marks his verse at its best. There are many passages and apparently
casual phrases indicative of the closeness with which he watched
clouds.[299] The doubling fogs that roll around the hills and wrap the
world in a “formless gray confusion” through which the shepherd stalks
gigantic is described with a Wordsworthian felicity and precision.[300]
The descriptions referred to below of early morning,[301] of
sunset,[302] of evening,[303] and of night[304] may be perhaps taken
as among the best examples of their sort in “The Seasons.” As a whole
they show conclusively from what long intimacy with Nature Thomson
wrote. The very freshness of morning breathes from the sunrise picture
in “Summer” and the little picture in “Autumn” is more delicately
suggestive than many a more pretentious description of the dawning
day. The sunset after the rain in “Spring” is one of the best examples
of Thomson’s power to paint word pictures. It would be difficult for
any canvas to present a scene at once so mellow and radiant, and so
transfused with the joy of a renovated earth. As exquisite in their way
are the descriptions of the slow approach of “Sober Evening” with her
circling shadows and the softly swelling breeze that stirs the stream
and wood; and the later description of the strange uncertain mingling
of light and darkness in a summer night in England. These passages and
others that might be quoted show to what fine issues Thomson’s pen was
sometimes touched, but it cannot be denied that his really intimate
and exact knowledge of Nature and her ways could not hold all his
descriptions subject to the charm of simplicity and truth.
As further illustrative of Thomson’s knowledge of all that pertained
to the country we have his admirably vivid and detailed accounts of
the homely labors of a farmer’s life, as plowing,[305] sowing,[306]
reaping,[307] hay making,[308] and sheep shearing.[309] Of these the
sheep shearing is the most simply charming and natural. It is also
the most noteworthy, because sheep and shepherds had long been the
very substance out of which pastorals were woven so that in such
descriptions the contrast between the new and the old way of looking
at country life is sharply defined. Thomson’s pastoral queen and
shepherd king are at the opposite pole from the sentimental, affected,
useless nymphs and swains who had before posed as the guardians of
English sheep. His shepherds are sturdy fellows, doing honest work
and plenty of it, and as such they had no predecessors in English
classical poetry. The sheep, too, are real animals. They have to be
watched with a vigilance of which no flower-crowned swain playing on
an oaten pipe would be capable. And they must be washed and sheared
and branded. In winter they must be housed and fed, no matter what the
dangers on the dark, stormy hills. It is this strong, refreshing air of
reality in Thomson’s poetry, and his unfeigned respect and admiration
for the actual country life in England that completed the work begun
by the ugly satire of Swift and the mock pastorals of Gay, and made
the old, conventional, pseudo-classic pastoral from that time on an
impossibility in English poetry.
The phrase, “dislike of boundaries,” is perhaps not very apt, but
it may serve to describe what is certainly a pervasive quality of
Thomson’s work, and a significant quality, for if there was one
thing more pleasing than another to an orthodox classicist it was a
well-defined limit. Thomson preferred the blank verse to the couplet
because the unrhymed, flowing lines gave a certain freedom. There is an
air of abundance, of even undue exuberance about much of his work. Even
his diction presents this idea of lavishness. There is a surprisingly
large number of such words as “effulgent,” “refulgent,” “effusion,”
“diffusion,” “suffusion,” “profusion,” from the roots “fundo” and
“fulgeo” with their idea of a liberal pouring out. “Luxuriant,”
“ample,” “prodigal,” “boundless,” “unending,” “ceaseless,” “immense,”
“interminable,” “immeasurable,” “vast,” “infinite,” are typical words.
Profusely poured around,
Materials infinite,
Infinite splendor wide investing all,
To the far horizon wide-diffused,
A boundless deep immensity of shade,
Night, a shade immense, magnificent and vast,
are typical phrases. In one short description the birds are
“innumerous;” they are “prodigal” of harmony; their joy overflows
in music “unconfined;” the song of the linnets is “poured out
profusely.”[310] In another short passage the stores of the vale are
“lavish,” the lily is “luxuriant” and grows in fair “profusion,”
the flowers are “unnumbered,” beauty is “unbounded,” and bees fly in
“swarming millions.”[311] When images come into his mind it is by the
ten thousand. In spring the country is “one boundless blush,” “far
diffused around.” He loves the “liberal air,” “lavish fragrance,” “full
luxuriance,” “extensive harvests,” “immeasurable,” or “exhaustless”
stores, “copious exhalations.” All is superlative, exaggerated,
scornful of limits. It was “the unbounded scheme of things” that most
appealed to him.
The same point receives illustration in his sense for landscape. He
rejoiced in a wide view.[312] He loved to seek out some proud eminence
and there let his eye wander “far excursive,” and dwell on “boundless
prospects.” Such scenes not only gave him a chance for picturesque
enumerations without any especial demand for minute discrimination, but
they satisfied his preference for grand, general effects.
Closely connected with the sense for landscape is the use of
geographical romance,[313] or the heightening of poetic effect by the
accumulation of sounding geographical names.[314] The finest example
of this device is in the lines descriptive of the thunder re-echoed
among the mountains.[315] In this passage the impression of sublimity
is due to the suggestions of mysterious elemental forces subtly
associated with such names as Carnarvon, Penmaenmawr, Snowdon, Thule,
and Cheviot.[316] This mental following of the thunder from peak to
distant peak, this endeavor to strengthen the impression by the use of
the remote and the unknown, show a mind set toward romantic rather than
classical ideals.
A further indication of Thomson’s defiance of limits is his curiosity.
His mind goes back of the present fact and restlessly strives after
causes and origins.[317] In imagination he seeks to penetrate to the
vast eternal springs from which Nature refreshes the earth.[318] The
most poetic example of this questioning spirit is in his address to the
winds that blow with boisterous sweep to swell the terrors of the storm.
In what far-distant region of the sky,
Hush’d in deep silence, sleep you when ’tis calm?[319]
The classical spirit held itself to useful questions that could have
some rational answer. It is the romantic spirit that pushes its
inquiries into the realms of the unknowable.
Throughout this study of Thomson’s work there has been an implicit
recognition of his strong love for Nature. This fact receives further
definite confirmation from his letters. It is interesting to note
that his early life was almost as fortunate in its environment as
Wordsworth’s. When he was a year old his father moved to Southdean, a
small hamlet near Jedborough. Here the lad remained till he entered
the university at Edinburgh at fifteen,[320] and here he apparently
passed most of his vacations till he went to London at twenty-five.
One of his especial friends was Dr. Cranston of Ancrum whose love of
Nature was equal to his own. Thomson’s letters to Dr. Cranston, though
somewhat stilted and high-flown, show clearly the eagerness with which
they had together explored the picturesque country along the Tiviot and
its tributary streams, the Ale and the Jed. In the first letter from
London, under the date April 3, 1725, was written, “I wish you joy of
the spring.” In September of the same year Thomson wrote from Barnet:
Now I imagine you seized with a fine romantic kind of melancholy
on the fading of the year; now I figure you wandering,
philosophical and pensive, ’midst the brown, wither’d groves,
while the leaves rustle under your feet, the sun gives a
farewell parting gleam, and the birds
Stir the faint note and but attempt to sing.
Then again when the heavens wear a more gloomy aspect, the winds
whistle, and the waters spout, I see you in the well-known
clough, beneath the solemn arch of tall, thick embowering trees,
listening to the amusing lull of the many steep, moss-grown
cascades, while deep, divine contemplation, the genius of the
place, prompts each swelling awful thought. I am sure you would
not resign your place in that scene at any easy rate. None ever
enjoyed it to the height you do, and you are worthy of it. There
I walk in spirit and disport in its beloved gloom. This country
I am in is not very entertaining; no variety but that of woods,
and them we have in abundance; but where is the living stream?
the airy mountain? or the hanging rock? with twenty other things
that elegantly please the lover of nature. Nature delights me in
every form.
Later in life Thomson was “more fat than bard beseems,” and
correspondingly indolent, and his biographers give the impression that
no beauty of the world about him could compete with the charms of an
easy chair. But his letters still bear witness to a love of Nature as
real if not as active as that of his youth. In July, 1743, he wrote to
Mr. Lyttleton promising to spend some weeks with him at Hagley:
As this will fall in Autumn, I shall like it the better, for I
think that season of the year the most pleasing and the most
poetical. The spirits are not then dissipated with the gaiety
of spring, and the glaring light of summer, but composed into
a serious and tempered joy. The year is perfect.... The muses,
whom you obligingly say I shall bring with me, I shall find with
you--the muses of the great, simple country, not the little,
fine-lady muses of Richmond Hill.
Again four or five years later, he wrote to Paterson, “Retirement and
nature are more and more my passion every day.”[321]
This passion for Nature finds frequent expression in the poems, but
no citation of specific instances can be so convincing as the general
impression of unforced personal enthusiasm made upon the reader of “The
Seasons.” Moreover, Thomson’s conception of the effect of Nature on
man, the next topic, may be fairly counted as but a transcript from his
own experience, and therefore as further illustrative of his love for
Nature.
In “The Seasons” as in preceding poetry both man and Nature have a
place, but there is a great transfer of emphasis. Nature had been
ignored or counted as the servant, the background, the accompaniment
of man. Now the human incidents are few and unimportant and are
used chiefly to lay additional stress by their tone on the spirit
characteristic of each season. Nature is loved and studied and
described purely for her own sake. There is very little use of natural
facts as similes for human qualities, and there is, practically, no use
of pathetic fallacy. The effect of Nature on the man sensitive to her
high ministration is represented as twofold. In the first place and
chiefly, she storms his senses with her ravishing delights. She gives
him pleasures of the most rich and varied sort. She enchants him with
color and harmony and perfume. These pleasures are, however, of the eye
and ear. They do not touch the deeper joys of the heart. Of the appeal
of Nature to the soul of man, in the true Wordsworthian sense, Thomson
knew little. Yet occasional passages indicate that he had received from
Nature gifts higher than that of mere external, sensuous enjoyment. He
attributes to Nature in at least a partially Wordsworthian sense, the
power of soothing, elevating, and instructing. He sings the “infusive
force” of spring on man,
When heaven and earth as if contending vie
To raise his being, and serene his soul.[322]
It is his delight to “meditate the book of Nature” for thence he hopes
to “learn the moral song.”[323] At the soft evening hour, he
lonely loves
To seek the distant hills, and there converse
With nature, there to harmonize his heart.[324]
Not only does he attend to Nature’s voice from month to month, and
watch with admiration her every shape, but he
Feels all her sweet emotions at his heart.[325]
While these and a few other similar passages would hardly be remarked
in the poetry of Nature after Wordsworth, they are of great historical
importance because they show the early beginning of that spirit which
received its final and perfect expression seventy years later in “The
Lyrical Ballads.”
Thomson’s two dominant conceptions in his thought of God in Nature were
as the almighty Creator and the ever-active Ruler. The whole tenor
of his poems goes to show that he saw in Nature not God himself but
God’s hand. Even his invocations to Nature, animate and inanimate, to
praise God in one general song of adoration, are but highly emotional
and figurative statements of the conception that God is not all, but
Lord of all. Now and then, however, in the midst of the old ideas
there comes the breath of a new thought. In one line we find the cold,
conventional idea; in the next, an intimation of divine immanence.
God’s beauty walks forth in the spring. His spirit breathes in the
gales. The seasons “are but the varied God.” God is the Universal
Soul of Heaven and earth. He is the Essential Presence in all
Nature.[326] Such sentences as these, whether uttered consciously, or
half unconsciously under the influence of poetic excitement, clearly
prefigure the modern conception of the union and inter-penetration of
the physical and spiritual worlds.
Of the two general points to be kept in view in the study of Thomson
as a poet of Nature the second was a consideration of his affiliations
with the classical spirit. It is surprising to observe in how few
respects such affiliations can be justly predicated. There are
occasional references to his Doric reed, and frequent invocations to
his muse. As preliminary justification of his choice of themes are
quotations from Virgil and Horace. The authority of the “Rural Maro”
and the example of Cincinnatus lend added dignity to the English plow.
Personifications of the conventional type often appear. There is one
purely didactic description of the cure for a pest of insects, and
another description of the method by which bees are robbed of their
honey, that are evidently framed on Latin models. Nor do we miss the
ever-recurring advice to read the page of the Mantuan swain beneath a
spreading tree on a warm noon.
We also find that toward mountains and the sea Thomson held almost
the traditional attitude. His nearness to the coast and his knowledge
of shore birds show that he could not have been entirely ignorant of
the ocean, but it apparently made little impression on him, for he
seldom mentions it even casually, and but once with any emphasis.
It is then one of the elements of a wild, fierce storm that sweeps
the coast. A few of his epithets for mountains, as “keen-air’d” and
“forest-rustling,” are new though not especially felicitous, and he
often mentions mountains by name, or as bounding some distant prospect.
But in general his conception and his phraseology are those of his
contemporaries. He speaks of the Alps as “dreadful,” as “horrid,
vast, sublime,” and again as “horrid mountains.” There is nowhere any
evidence of the modern feeling toward mountains, though there are
frequent expressions of appreciative love for green hills.
The point in which Thomson shows strongest traces of the old influence
is his diction. He often has the new thought before he has found the
appropriate dress for it. Birds are still the “plumy” or “feathery
people,” and fish are the “finny race.” “Shaggy” and “nodding” are used
of mountains and rocks and forests, and “deformed” and “inverted” of
winter, in true classical fashion. “Maze” is one of his most frequent
words. “Horrid” still holds a useful place. “Amusing” is five times
applied to the charms of some landscape. Leaves are the “honours” of
trees, paths are “erroneous,” caverns “sweat,” and all sorts of things
are “innumerous.” He also makes large use of Latinized words such as
“turgent,” “bibulous,” “relucent,” “luculent,” “irriguous,” “gelid,”
“ovarious,” “incult,” “concactive,” “hyperborean.” These words can
hardly be said to belong to any received poetic diction. They are
rather a mannerism of Thomson’s style, and an outgrowth of his delight
in swelling, sounding phrases.
From this summary we at once perceive how few and comparatively
unimportant were the characteristics held in common by Thomson and the
classicists in their treatment of external Nature.
This study of “The Seasons” shows that so far as intrinsic worth
is concerned the poems are marked by a strange mingling of merits
and defects, but that, considered in their historical place in the
development of the poetry of Nature, their importance and striking
originality can hardly be over-stated. Though Thomson talked the
language of his day, his thought was a new one. He taught clearly,
though without emphasis, the power of Nature to quiet the passions and
elevate the mind of man, and he intimated a deeper thought of divine
immanence in the phenomena of Nature. But his great service to the
men of his day was that he shut up their books, led them out of their
parks, and taught them to look on Nature with enthusiasm. This service
is of the greater historical value because it was so well adapted
to the times. To begin with, it was a necessary first step. People
cannot love what they do not know. Lead them to Nature, teach them to
observe with amazement and delight, and the other steps follow in due
course in accordance with the power of each soul to receive the deeper
influences of Nature. In the second place, men were just ready to take
this first decisive step away from the artificial to the natural. The
work of the poets who immediately preceded Thomson had been too slight
and fragmentary to count for much in the way of influence, yet they
were most clear indications of a tendency, a silent preparation of
the general poetic mind, for such work as Thomson’s. He was at once
and easily understood because, while his poems in their spontaneous
freshness and charm, their rich, easy fulness of description, their
minute observation, their sweep of view, their unforced enthusiasm,
must have come as a revelation, it was a revelation in no sense defiant
or iconoclastic. In the main it was a revelation of new delights, not
of disturbing theories, or vexing problems. A touch more of subtlety,
of vision, of mystery, of the faculty divine, and Thomson might have
waited for recognition as Wordsworth did.[327]
John Dyer’s (1700–1758) more ambitious poems, “The Ruins of Rome”
(1740) and “The Fleece” (1757), belong to a much later period than the
present. Of these the first may be passed over as containing hardly
a touch of Nature. The second is a long didactic poem showing much
technical knowledge of sheep-raising, weaving, dyeing, and home and
foreign trade. It has frequent panegyrics of liberty and simplicity.
It abounds with geographical details, and is notable as having so many
full and often exact descriptive references to the rivers of Great
Britain. The Avon, the Severn, the Thames, the Towy, the Vaga, the
Ryddol, the Ystwith, the Clevedoc, the Lune, the Coker, the Ouze, and
the Usk are chief among these. He is apparently always conscious of the
rivers, rills, streams, or waterfalls in any landscape. But in general
the poem is conventional in diction,[328] in the choice of similitudes,
and in the occasional descriptions. Its use of geographical details,
though sometimes suggestive and stimulating, as in the lines,
Tempestuous regions, Darwent’s naked peaks,
Snowden and blue Plynlymmon and the wide
Aërial sides of Cader-yddris huge,[329]
is more often simply wearisome. It is true of Dyer, as it was of
Thomson, that his really excellent poetry of Nature was written when
he was fresh from long and familiar knowledge of Nature in her wilder
forms, and that travel and contact with men served to dull the power
of these early experiences. “Grongar Hill” and “The Country Walk” were
published the same year as Thomson’s “Summer,” and were doubtless
written the year before. They could hardly have been a result of the
impetus given by Thomson to the study of Nature. They are rather an
original and independent contribution toward the same end. They were
the expression of personal experience, and the direct outcome of
native taste and singularly fortunate environment. Dyer’s life before
his school days at Westminster was spent in the wild and romantic
country in Carmarthenshire, and during the years immediately preceding
the publication of these two poems he was wandering through other
parts of South Wales as an “itinerant painter.” His previous study
with Richardson had helped to develop that artistic sensitiveness
to external impressions so apparent in his early work. He notes the
colors and shapes of the trees grouped below him, the gloomy pine
and sable yew, the blue poplar, the yellow beech, the fir with its
slender, tapering trunk, the sturdy oak with its broad-spread boughs.
The changing horizon line as he climbs the hill, the long level lines
of the lawn, the various movements of rivers running swift or slow,
through sun and shade, the streaks of meadow, the close, small lines
of distant hedges, the curling spires of smoke, are observations that
show the trained eye.[330] His colors seem to be rather carefully
discriminated. Yellow receives unusual emphasis. The linnet’s yellow
plumage, the yellow foliage of the beech, the mountain-tops shining
yellow in the sun, and even the “yellow barn” catch his eye. This
preference for yellow characterizes his later work. He speaks of
“yellow corn,” “yellow tillages,” “yellowing plains,” and the “yellow
Tiber.” He also liked the words “golden” and “sunny.” Purple is applied
to evening and to the groves at evening, and seems to be used with some
real sense of the modern specific meaning of the word. In later work
the color purple became almost a stock epithet with him;
Purple Eve
Stretches her shadows,[331]
When many-colour’d Evening sinks behind
The purple woods and hills,[332]
The purple skirts of flying day,[333]
When evening mild
Purples the valleys,[334]
Wide abroad
Expands the purple deep,[335]
are typical phrases. He also notices the “thousand flaming flowers”
in the fields, the silver and gold of the morning clouds, the shining
of lakes, the evening colors reflected in slow streams, and the soft
fair hues of distant mountain summits. He delights in the sounds of
Nature, especially in the songs of birds. Not for many years after
Dyer is there so effective a bit of bird-song poetry as the closing
lines of “Grongar Hill.” Nor is he indifferent to odors, for he notes
the perfumed breeze from the valley, the fragrant brakes, and the
sweet-smelling honeysuckle. It is worthy of note that in these two
short poems nearly a hundred natural facts are mentioned.
In this wide observation Dyer includes some features not hitherto
counted as parts of a poetic landscape. The “windy summit wild and
high,” naked rocks, and barren ground, are mingled with the softer
details, and
Each gives each a double charm.
He nowhere dwells upon mountains in his descriptions, but the slight
touches here and there and the general tone of the poems are sufficient
to show his great delight in mountain scenery. He represents himself as
climbing slowly and looking back often so as not to miss a single phase
of the view unfolding before him. Once on the top he gazes out over the
lovely prospect and exclaims,
Now, even now, my joys run high
As on the mountain turf I lie.
In “The Fleece” are further indications of this love of mountains and
wide views. The passage beginning
Huge Breaden’s stony summit once I climbed[336]
is typical.
Those slow-climbing wilds, that lead the step
Insensibly to Dover’s windy cliff,
Tremendous height![337]
and
By the blue steeps of distant Malvern walled,
Solemnly vast.[338]
have something of the modern touch.
The prevailing interest in these poems is in Nature, but there are one
or two charming pictures of homely life. The old man’s hut and garden
on the edge of the wood, and the barnyard scene are as attractive as
they are realistic. And surely the tattered old man digging up cabbage
in the shade might have been expected to wait at least for Crabbe or
Wordsworth to introduce him into the select company of the Muses. The
same may be said of the tramp asleep by the roadside.[339]
In any tabulation Dyer’s use of Nature would seem to be much more
abundant than it is for in “The Fleece” he of necessity used a large
number of geographical details merely to mark out localities and with
no more literary quality than there would be on a map. His chief use of
Nature is twofold, and is best seen in the short poems, “Grongar Hill”
and “The Country Walk.” He describes a landscape with loving minuteness
for its own sake, and he regards it as the occasion for a strain of
half-melancholy reflection on human life. This gentle, quaintly precise
moralizing is unlike the typical classical didacticism in that it seems
to spring inevitably from the effect of natural objects on the poet’s
mind, instead of being itself a main thing and laboriously illustrated
by such natural facts as came to hand.
The entire impression made by the two poems is that they were written
by one who knew Nature better than books. The negative as well as
the positive qualities of the poem show this. There are almost no
conventional phrases.[340] Of the personified abstract qualities, two
at least, Pleasure and Quiet, are so imaginatively conceived as not
to belong to the category of cold classical personifications. The
only classical allusion is significant as being to the “fair Castalian
springs” “deserted now” by all but “slavish hinds.”[341] But the poems
show something more than first-hand as opposed to bookish knowledge
of Nature. Their author evidently loved to linger over the charms of
Nature in solitude, to let them sink into his mind and heart. There is
a power of quiet contemplation, of “wise passiveness,” such as Thomson
never knew. The closing lines of “Grongar Hill,”
Be full, ye courts; be great who will;
Search for Peace with all your skill:
Open wide the lofty door,
Seek her on the marble floor,
In vain you search, she is not there;
In vain ye search the domes of care!
Grass and flowers Quiet treads,
On the meads, and mountain heads,
Along with Pleasure, close-ally’d,
Ever by each other’s side:
And often, by the murmuring rill,
Hears the thrush, while all is still,
Within the groves of Grongar Hill,
show a wonderfully true and delicate apprehension of the spiritual
influences that speak through Nature’s forms. It is putting into
plainer words what was the underlying conception in Parnell’s “Hymn to
Contentment.”
As has been observed, Dyer speedily left his first love and devoted
himself to laborious, didactic blank verse. We cannot find that his
two short poems attracted much attention at the time. Thomson’s glory
blazed forth so effulgently that lesser lights were but dimly seen.
Now, however, as we go from poet to poet of the period, we cannot fail
to be impressed by the unusual sincerity, simplicity, and truth with
which Dyer wrote of Nature. And we feel that while he lacked Thomson’s
power and fertility, he was nearly equal to him in originality, and
superior to him in delicacy.
David Mallet’s (1705–65) chief poems in which there is use of external
Nature are “A Fragment,” “The Excursion,” and “Amyntor and Theodora.”
The undated “A Fragment” reads like a poetical exercise in the style
of Dyer’s “The Country Walk” and “Grongar Hill.” The octosyllabic
verse, the general plan of a walk at different times of day, the ascent
of a hill for the view, the pleasure in the solitude of Nature, the
moralizing invocations to Health and Freedom, are all suggestive of
Dyer. The description of the noontide woodland retreat, of the forest
sounds, and of the poet’s revery are like passages in “The Country
Walk,” while both the spirit and form of some passages in “Grongar
Hill” are paralleled by such lines as,
On the brow of mountain high
In silence feasting ear and eye,[342]
or,
And then at utmost stretch of eye
A mountain fades into the sky;
While winding round, diffused and deep,
A river rolls with sounding sweep.[343]
“The Excursion” and “Amyntor and Theodora” are interesting because
of their relation to the work of Thomson. Thomson and Mallet were
students together at Edinburgh, and there was evidently a close
literary comradeship between them, which lasted through the first
years of their London life. During the summer of 1726 they were both
engaged in literary work, the result of which was, on Thomson’s part,
“Summer,” and on Mallet’s, about 300 lines of the first canto of “The
Excursion.”[344] There was a vigorous interchange of letters concerning
the two poems, each author giving advice and criticism on the passages
sent him by the other.[345] A comparison of the poems shows numerous
resemblances. As an illustration we may take the sunrise with which
each poem opens. The order of occurrences is the same in each--night,
faint gleams in the east, breaking clouds, rising mists, retreat
of wild animals, song of birds, work of shepherds, full rising of
sun, praise to God, reflections on the inspiration to be gained from
Nature. There are also many curious verbal similarities. In Thomson
the meek-eyed _Morn_, mother of _dews_, comes _faint-gleaming_ in the
east to destroy night’s _doubtful_ empire, and before the _lustre_
of her face the clouds break _white_ away. In Mallet sacred _Morn
pale-glimmering_ comes with _dewy_ radiance through the _doubtful_
twilight and spreads a _whitening lustre_ over the sky. In Thomson the
powerful _King of Day looks_ in boundless majesty _abroad_. In Mallet
the _King of Glory looks abroad_ on Nature. These are but suggestions
of the many unmistakable but baffling and intricately interwoven
similarities in the two poems. If we had but these two poems it
would be, perhaps, impossible to say which poet exerted the stronger
influence. Thomson’s deference to Mallet’s judgment is evident.
“Winter” was submitted to him for correction,[346] and the splendid
passage on precious stones in “Summer” was an addition proposed by
him.[347] Thomson also greatly admired Mallet’s work.[348] Thomson’s
work, on the other hand, bears the impress of a genuine enthusiasm and
a manysided personal experience, while Mallet’s work reads like that
of a facile versifier speaking out of a meager experience and with a
forced enthusiasm. At any rate, when we come to “Amyntor and Theodora,”
published years after the full edition of “The Seasons,” Mallet is
clearly imitative in thought and phrase. The ocean, for instance,
is described as “through boundless space diffused, magnificently
dreadful.” Again it is “diffused immense,” and “magnificently various.”
In its depths “immeasurably sunk,” “ten thousand thousand tribes
endless range.” Its stormy waves are “mountains surging to the stars,
commotion infinite” and they break in “boundless undulation.” Storms
are presaged by “doubling clouds on clouds.” The earth glows with “the
boundless blush of spring.” At sunset the sea shines with “an unbounded
blush.” A comparison of these phrases with those quoted from Thomson
on p. 92, will serve to show in how exaggerated and inartistic a form
Thomson’s mannerisms reappeared in the later work of Mallet. Mallet’s
work, if it had been first in the field, would have marked a distinct
advance in the conception of Nature. As it is he is of real importance
as indicating the influence of Dyer, and especially of Thomson.
“The Wanderer” by Richard Savage (1698–1743) appeared in 1729. Of
this poem Dr. Johnson says that it was “never denied to abound with
strong representations of nature,” but a study of the five long,
confused, formless cantos hardly confirms such an opinion. Most of
the descriptions, like those of Mallet’s “Excursion,” are of scenes
too remote for damaging comparisons with the reality, as of sunrise
at the north pole, or of wide prospects from unknown mounts. The
various details are brought together with little sense of unity. He
called the poem a vision, and he had perhaps a right to dreamlike
combinations of facts, but the result is not a contribution to the
study of external Nature. His diction is vague and inexpressive. There
is large use of stock poetic words, and there are many Thomsonian
echoes. Most of the descriptions are tame, classical imitations.
They show almost no first-hand knowledge of the country. There is,
however, one characteristic of his poetry that cannot fail to arrest
the attention, and that is his use of color. Not even Thomson is so
lavish with bright tints, and they are sometimes nicely discriminated.
Illustrative passages are referred to in the note.[349] He observes the
color of “crooked, sunny roads” that change “from brown, to sandy-red,
and chalky hues.” He perceives the “green grass yellowing into hay.”
His sunset sky has several colors that had not been noted in poetry.
Some of the clouds had “the unripen’d cherry’s die;” others were “mild
vermilion,” “streaked through white,” and there was in the sky a tinge
of “floating green,” the result of the “blue veil’d yellow” of certain
distant clouds. In a moonrise picture there are eight colors, besides
twelve words indicative of brightness, and that in a description of
thirteen lines. The best of these descriptions is that of the peas
and beans in blossom. References such as those to the peas that with
their “mixed flowers of red and azure” run in “colour’d lanes along
the furrows,” and to the beans that after a rain “fresh blossom in a
speckled flower” bear the mark of first-hand observation. The same may
be said of his brief touches descriptive of the roads and the fields
and the sunset sky already referred to. There is also fairly abundant
reference to birds, though but a single line,
The bullfinch whistles soft his flute-like note,
exhibits any special felicity in expression. On the whole, Savage
is important in the history of the poetry of Nature merely for his
detailed insistence on color.
Among the minor poets of this period was Stephen Duck (1705–1756).
He spent most of his life on a farm where he early began to write
verses which attracted much local attention and finally gained for
their author substantial favor at Court. His “Thresher’s Labour” is
interesting simply because it is a realistic treatment of a homely
English theme.[350] Duck’s poems were popular in their own day, but his
treatment of Nature is commonplace.
The poetry of these four years is interesting because it indicates how
early Thomson’s influence made itself felt, as in the work of Mallet
and Savage; and also because it shows a use of Nature quite unlike
Thomson’s and equally significant of coming tendencies, as in the work
of Dyer.
THE POETS BETWEEN 1730 AND 1756
The choice of 1756 as the date to mark the close of this period is
based on the appearance in that year of Joseph Warton’s “Essay on
Pope.” In the twenty-six years between Thomson’s “Seasons” and this
“Essay,” the most important literary works are in prose, as the novels
of Fielding, Richardson, and Smollett, and the theological writings of
Butler, Hume, and Warburton. The period is marked by the establishment
of numerous periodicals, by the work of editors, and of compilers. The
most important poetry of the period was the “Essay on Man,” “Moral
Essays,” and “The Dunciad” by Pope. In writing of this sort there is,
of course, little use of external Nature. And it has already been
shown that the tragedies of Thomson and the later work of Armstrong,
Mallet, and Dyer which appeared during these years, either ignore
Nature or treat it in a stiff or simply imitative manner. But there
are in the twenty-six years poems that are not only in accord with
the changing attitude toward Nature, but that distinctly aid in the
evolution of the new conception. The chief names are William Somerville
(1675–1742), William Shenstone (1714–63), Matthew Greene, (1696–1737),
William Collins (1721–59), William Hamilton (1704–54), Edward Young
(1683–1765), Dr. Akenside (1721–70), Thomas Gray (1716–71), Joseph
Warton (1722–1800), and Thomas Warton (1728–90). There are other
authors whose works are not, as a whole, of importance in this study,
but who have written single poems of some significance. Some of these
minor poets are Samuel Boyse (1708–49), William Whitehead (1715–85),
Dr. John Dalton (1709–63), R. Potter (1721–1804), William Mason
(1724–97), Francis Coventry (d. 1759?), Richard Jago (1715–81), Moses
Mendes (d. 1758), William Thompson (1712?–66?), Joseph Relph (1712–43),
John Gilbert Cooper (1723–69), and Robert Blair (1699–1746).
Somerville, “a country gentleman and a skillful and useful Justice
of the Peace,” was a mighty hunter in his day, and found, in leisure
hours, great pleasure in throwing into blank verse the accumulated
wisdom of years in the field. “The Chace” he calls his “bold,
instructive song,” and it so well carries out the second epithet as to
be of interest only to his “brethren of the couples” to whose kindness
he commends it. There is the most minute description of the kinds of
hounds, the breeding of dogs, the care of whelps, their habits, their
diseases and the best remedies, and the most desirable kennels. In
“Field Sports” we have almost as close a description of hawking. Both
poems are, however, destitute of any real love of Nature. The diction,
except for a free use of canine technicalities, is extremely limited
and commonplace; and we look in vain for the occasional happy touch,
the felicitous epithet or line, that would indicate any original or
appreciative knowledge of the external world. When this vigorous squire
went out to hunt he had eyes but for the dogs and the game. His few
descriptions are of the conventional type, as:
Hail, gentle Dawn! mild, blushing goddess, hail!
Rejoic’d I see thy purple mantle spread
O’er half the skies, gems pave thy radiant way,
And orient pearls from every shrub depend.[351]
They are weak imitations, lifeless and vague. “Hobbinol” is a
disagreeable poem. Its very ugly rural pictures might perhaps rank as
realistic studies of English country life, but so far as any country
atmosphere is concerned they are of no importance. The smock-race, the
wrestling match, the drunken affray, might as well have taken place in
any city slums.
Somerville had a catholic taste in poetry. He greatly admired Homer,
Virgil, Pope, Allan Ramsay, and Thomson. The last poet he not only
admired, but imitated. The passage beginning,
Justly supreme! let us thy power revere,[352]
is a pretty clear echo from Thomson’s “Hymn,” and the closing
twenty-five lines of “The Chace” must have been studied from the
closing twenty-two lines of “Autumn.” Somerville is noteworthy in the
present study only because he wrote on country themes, and imitated
Thomson.
Shenstone is a much more important figure in the history of the poetry
of Nature. His sensitiveness to the new spirit and his reverence
for the old form make him an interesting transitional influence.
His “Prefatory Essay on Elegy” shows this Janus attitude and, what
is more, his own consciousness of it. “If the author has hazarded
throughout the use of English or modern allusions, he hopes it will
not be imputed to an _entire_ ignorance, or to the _least_ disesteem,
of the ancient learning. He has kept the ancient plan and method in
his eye, though he builds his edifice with the materials of his own
nation. In other words, through a fondness for his native country he
has made use of the flowers it produced, though, in order to exhibit
them to the greater advantage, he has endeavored to weave his garland
by the best model he could find.”[353] This statement is interesting as
being directly opposed to the thought in Gay’s experiment. Both poets
mean to hold by the Latin form and use English materials, the one to
show that the two are incompatible, the other to show that they may be
united. Neither Gay nor Shenstone thought of discarding the Latin form.
In the same “Essay” he claims that in his use of Nature he has drawn
only on personal experience. “If he describes a rural landskip, or
unfolds the train of sentiments it inspired, he fairly drew his picture
from the spot; and felt very sensibly the affection he communicates.
If he speaks of his humble shed, his flocks and his fleeces, he does
not counterfeit the scene; who having (whether through choice or
necessity, is not material) retired betimes to country solitudes, and
sought his happiness in rural employments, has a right to consider
himself as a real shepherd. The flocks, the meadows and the grottoes
are _his own_, and the embellishment of his _farm_ his sole amusement.
As the sentiments, therefore, were inspired by Nature, and that in
the earlier part of his life, he hopes they will retain a natural
appearance.” This plea for first-hand observation is important because
it is the most direct of the early critical remarks on the poetical
treatment of Nature.
Shenstone’s delight in Nature was evidently genuine. He grants that men
may be dazzled by the city;
But soon the pageant fades away!
’Tis nature only bears perpetual sway,[354]
and they learn again
the simple, the sincere delight--
Th’ habitual scene of hill and dale,
The rural herds, the vernal gale,
The tangled vetch’s purple bloom,
The fragrance of the bean’s perfume.[355]
He speaks with scorn of those “bounded souls” who enjoy in Nature only
the satisfaction of present needs, or the prospect of future gain, and
who cannot on “the mere landscape” feast their eyes, and apostrophizes
them thus:
Athirst ye praise the limpid stream, ’tis true:
But though, the pebbled shores among,
It mimic no unpleasing song,
The limpid fountain murmurs not for you.
Unpleas’d ye see the thickets bloom,
Unpleas’d the spring her flowery robe resume;
Unmov’d the mountain’s airy pile,
The dappled mead without a smile.
But to the true lover of Nature,
Lo! not an hedge-row hawthorn blows,
Or humble harebell paints the plain,
Or valley winds, or fountain flows,
Or purple heath is ting’d in vain:
For such the rivers dash the foaming tides,
The mountain swells, the dale subsides;
Ev’n thriftless furze detains their wandering sight,
And the rough, barren rock grows pregnant with delight.[356]
Shenstone also defends the doctrine that beauty is its own excuse for
being.
Let yon admir’d carnation own,
Not all was meant for raiment, or for food,
Not all for needful use alone.[357]
Though Shenstone’s work is often undeniably tame and diffuse, and
though his interests were bounded by his farm, he is of significance
because of his thorough enjoyment of quiet country places, his
indignant rejection of the utilitarian view of Nature, and his
courageous plea for truth to English scenes.
Greene’s chief poem, “The Spleen,” was published in 1737, after his
death. The subject is not one that would lead to much use of Nature,
but there is at least one picture that cannot be passed over.[358]
In his sketch of the ideal life he describes his ideal home. Its
surroundings are most charming and natural, and the whole scene, in
its unity and reality of effect, contrasts well with such fanciful
combinations as the garden in Tickell’s “To a Lady before Marriage.”
One line in this description,
Brown fields their fallow sabbaths keep,[359]
is remarkable in that, in so few words, it not only presents a complete
picture, but also awakens the feeling that would be excited by the
scene itself.
Hamilton’s chief use of Nature is in gentle little allegories of life.
“The Rhone and the Arar,” though a description of two rivers, is
obviously didactic in all its details. Spring, summer, and winter in
Ode III are but “moral shows,” spread out for man’s instruction. Though
Hamilton’s scenes are usually of the soft, delicious, vaguely pleasing
sort, and his diction largely classical, yet now and then in his rather
monotonous spring poetry we find a fresh line or phrase, as when he
comments on spring’s gift of beauty to “each nameless field.” He finds
joy in the prickly briar rose, the bright-colored weed, the lion’s
yellow tooth, in a thousand flowers never sowed by art.[360] He is
filled with gratitude as he looks upon the smiling face of Nature and
the radiant glories of the sky, or listens to the music of the opening
year.[361] In “Contemplation” he exclaims,
Mark how Nature’s hand bestows
Abundant grace on all that grows,
Tinges, with pencil slow unseen,
The grass that clothes the valley green;
Or spreads the tulip’s parted streaks.
More distinctive, however, than this love of the spring-time world, is
Hamilton’s sense of communion with Nature. The lines,
As on this flowering turf I lie,
My soul conversing with the sky,
and this address to the passions that tyrannize over him,
This grove annihilates you all.
Oh power unseen, yet felt, appear!
Sure something more than nature’s here,
are new evidences of the spirit that animated Lady Winchilsea, Dyer,
and Parnell.
Hamilton’s most important poem is “The Braes of Yarrow.” In this ballad
there is a remarkable blending of external Nature with the tragedy
of love and death. The use of the phrase, “the Braes of Yarrow,” in
the refrain adds a curiously subtle touch to the pathos of the poem.
Tradition had so closely associated the sloping hills and the winding
stream of Yarrow with stories of unhappy love in far-off days that
the name was in itself enough to strike the keynote of pathos in
Hamilton’s ballad. The tone or color that human experience had once
given to the scenery was carried on by that scenery so that it became
the appropriate background for a new tale of grief. The one descriptive
stanza,
Sweet smells the birk, green grows, green grows the grass,
Yellow on Yarrow’s banks the gowan,
Fair hangs the apple frae the rock,
Sweet the wave of Yarrow flowan;
and a single line in the maiden’s lament,
I sang, my voice the woods returning,
are an appropriate setting for the happy love of the bonny bride and
her comely swain. But Nature is also compelled, as it were, to share
in the grief, and is implicated in the crime. On Yarrow’s rueful flood
floats the body of the slain knight; her doleful hills echo the cries
of sorrow. And the desolate bride prays that rain and dew may forever
forsake the fields where her lover was so basely slain. The descriptive
element in Hamilton’s ballad is of further interest as having suggested
some of the details in Wordsworth’s “Yarrow Unvisited.”
“The Deity,” a poem by Samuel Boyse, and much praised in its own
day,[362] is of importance here merely because of its Thomsonian
imitations, and because of its conception of God in Nature. This
conception is, in the main, the typical classical one, as in
“Omnipotence,” where the central idea is,
What hand, Almighty Architect, but thine
Could give the model of this vast design?
In “Providence,” however, the modified classical conception is
apparent, the ever-working power of God being dwelt upon. All Nature is
represented as being each moment derived from the Creator.
The sun from thy superior radiance bright
Eternal sheds his delegated light;
Thou shedd’st the tepid morning’s balmy dews,
are characteristic lines.
That Boyse was an admirer of Thomson we know from the lines addressed
to him,
When nature first inspired thy early strain
To paint the beauties of the flowery plain;
The charming page I read with soft delight,
And every lively landskip charmed my sight.[363]
In reading Boyse it is difficult to point out exact echoes from
Thomson, but the impression remains that certain passages, especially
in “Glory,” are, in spite of their couplets, but weak paraphrases of
some portions of Thomson’s work, noticeably “The Hymn.”
Young’s literary career lasted from 1713 to 1762. His “Ocean” and
“Sea Pieces” and the only book of the “Night Thoughts” (1742–45), in
which there is much use of external Nature, have already been briefly
characterized. They need little further discussion here. The preface
to “Ocean” is more worthy of note than the poem itself. In this
preface Young deprecates slavish following of the models of antiquity,
declaring that “originals only have true life.” Due deference to
the great standards of antiquity requires that “the motives and
fundamental method of their working” should be imitated rather than
the works themselves. He then defends his choice of the ocean as a
subject, saying that it is, like the subjects chosen by the ancients,
both national and great, and adds the significant phrase, “and (what
is strange) hitherto unsung.” “The crude ore of romanticism” which Mr.
Gosse finds in Young, has to do with his despairing attitude toward
life and death, not with his attitude toward external Nature. His love
of darkness, which seems at first thought akin to the sentimental
melancholy of the romantic poetry, is really an unemotional choice of a
fit background for his visions of gloom. His strongest lines on night
represent not its beauty, nor its melancholy, but its divinity, or,
rather, its theological import. The following are typical:
Let Indians ...
... the sun adore:
_Darkness_ has more divinity for me;
It strikes thought inward; it drives back the soul
To settle on herself.[364]
By night an atheist half-believes a God.[365]
At night the sense of sacred quiet is “the felt presence of the
deity.”[366] In occasional passages Young has more or less definite
previsions of scattered ideas in later poetry,[367] but these are
incidental, and of merely curious interest. Taken in the bulk, his work
is so slightly and coldly concerned with the outer world as to offer no
real contribution to the new feeling for Nature.
Collins possesses many of the qualities and the defects of the romantic
spirit. He made plans almost as comprehensive and visionary as those
of Coleridge. His indolence, his wavering, irresolute disposition,
his morbid sensitiveness, the intensity of his emotions, his love of
liberty, his passion for “high romance and Gothic diableries,” together
with his new sense of the mystery of Nature, set him quite apart from
the men who were his friends, from Dr. Johnson, Armstrong, Aaron
Hill, from Garrick, Quin, and Foote, even from Thomson. His interests
were not those of his day, for his admiration turned to Aeschylus,
Sophocles, and Euripides, rather than to Virgil and Horace.[368]
In English poetry he gave his allegiance to Spenser, Milton, and
Shakspere, rather than to Dryden and Pope.[369] He was devoted to
music. He was also deeply interested in the remote history of his own
country, and in the legendary lore and superstitions of any land. Dr.
Johnson says of him: “He loved fairies, genii, giants, and monsters; he
delighted to rove through the meanders of enchantment, to gaze on the
magnificence of golden palaces, to repose by the waterfalls of Elysian
gardens.”
Collins was a town-bred poet and could have known little of the country
at first hand. We might therefore expect all his imagery to be of the
conventional sort in the “Eclogues” written in his early school days.
But such is not the case. In the later poems the use of Nature, slight
as it is, is marked by unusual originality and imaginative power. There
is everywhere present a sense of delight in the wilder, freer, in the
more remote and mysterious, aspects of Nature. He makes Fear sit
in some hollow’d seat
’Gainst which the big waves beat,
and listen to
Drowning seamen’s cries in tempest brought.
His gifted wizard seers
view the lurid signs that cross the sky
Where in the west the brooding tempests lie,
And hear their first, faint, rustling pennons sweep.
Note also the description of the “wide, wild storm,” in the “Ode to
Liberty,” and especially the skilful mingling of landscape details
and superstitious terrors in the “Ode on Popular Superstitions.” The
“bewitch’d, low, marshy, willow brake,” “the spot where hums the
sedgy reed,” the “dim hill that seems up-rising near,” “Uist’s dark
forest,” “the watery strath or quaggy moss,” “the damp, dark fen,” are
slight touches, but they serve perfectly to suggest the fit home of
the kelpie, the will-o’-the-wisp, the mischievous fairy folk, and the
phantom train of gliding ghosts. But Collins’ most appreciative use of
Nature is in the “Ode to Evening (1746).” That poem was doubtless the
result of personal experience, for it notes facts, such as the rising
of the beetle in the path at twilight, that were not yet stock poetical
property. The lines,
Thy dewy fingers draw
The gradual dusky veil,
could hardly have been written by one unfamiliar with the slow
disappearance of a landscape as night comes on. More remarkable are the
simplicity and directness of touch by which the few details are made to
stand for complete pictures. The cloudy sunset, the silence of evening,
the calm lake amid the upland fallows, the fading view, the windy day
in autumn, are all excellent examples of the stimulative as opposed to
the delineative description. But the final impression made on the mind
is powerful mainly because in some way that escapes analysis the very
mood and spirit of evening, its calm, its tender melancholy, breathe
through the unpretending lines. We seldom find in the eighteenth
century, personifications so high and spiritual, description so
essentially poetical, or workmanship so perfect in its simplicity.
Dr. Akenside’s “The Pleasures of the Imagination,” though not published
till 1744, was begun in 1738 when the author was but seventeen, and
completed when he was twenty-one. In 1757 it was remodeled and many
additions were made. In its first form the poem was essentially a
product of the author’s precocious, brilliant youth. Yet it has
little of the fire and passion of youth. It is a smooth, correct,
rather frigid exposition of certain philosophical principles. The
whole poem seems like an illustration of Akenside’s belief that
poetry is true eloquence in meter.[370] It is not marked by any
especially rich or faithful portrayal of Nature, nor is there much
description. In point of fact, such descriptions as occur are often
marred by eighteenth-century periphrases such as calling honey
“ambrosial spoils;” the sun, “the radiant ruler of the year;” flowers,
“the purple honors of the spring;” water, “a delicious draught of
cool refreshment;” and frogs, “the grave, unwieldly inmates of the
neighboring pond.” There is also frequent use of stock words and of
worn-out similitudes. But in spite of its coldness, this poem is an
important contribution to the development of the poetry of Nature
because of its new conception of the relation between man and Nature.
When the poet endeavors to explore the “secret paths of early genius,”
he imagines inspiration as coming to the lonely youth from some “wild
river’s brink at eve,” or from “solemn groves at noon,”[371] and there
is one passage that lays a Wordsworthian emphasis on the effect of
Nature on the soul of a child:
O ye Northumbrian shades, which overlook
The rocky pavement and the mossy falls
Of solitary Wensbeck’s limpid stream;
How gladly I recall your well-known seats
Beloved of old, and that delightful time
When, all alone, for many a summer’s day,
I wandered through your calm recesses, led
In silence by some powerful hand unseen.
Nor will I e’er forget you; nor shall e’er
The graver tasks of manhood, or the advice
Of vulgar wisdom, move me to disclaim
Those studies which possessed me in the dawn
Of life, and fix’d the color of my mind
For every future year.[372]
But the great scene of Nature does not appear the same to all. It is
only to the finer spirits that the true meaning of the outer world is
revealed.[373] These nobler souls are all “naked and alive”[374] to
the influences of Nature to which they respond as Memnon’s image to
the touch of the morning.[375] Form, color, sound, motion, detain the
enlivened sense, and soon the soul perceives the deep concord between
these attributes of matter and the mind of man.[376] The passions are
lulled to a divine repose. The intellect itself suspends its graver
cares. Love and joy alone possess the soul
Whom nature’s aspect, nature’s simple garb,
Can thus command.[377]
For the happy man whom neither sordid wealth nor the gaudy spoils of
honor can seduce to leave the sweets of Nature,
Each passing hour sheds tribute from her wings:
And still new beauties meet his lonely walk,
And loves unfelt attract him....
... Nor thence partakes
Fresh pleasure only; for the attentive mind,
By this harmonious action on her powers,
Becomes herself harmonious; wont so oft
In outward things to meditate the charm
Of sacred order, soon she seeks at home
To find a kindred order, to exert
Within herself this elegance of love.[378]
If men feel themselves cramped by custom, by sordid policies, let them
appeal
to Nature, to the winds
And rolling waves, the sun’s unwearied course,
The elements and seasons.
All these call us to beneficent activity.
Thus the men
Whom Nature’s works can charm, with God himself
Hold converse; grow familiar, day by day,
With his conceptions, act upon his plan,
And form to his the relish of their souls.[379]
But even the susceptible soul must come to Nature in an open, receptive
mood. The sacred rites of the Naiads are sought in vain by the “eyes
of care.” No vision is granted to the preoccupied guest.[380] There is
also an independent life in Nature, or at least a spirit that is no
reflection of man’s moods, but with qualities of its own whereby man is
influenced.
Throned in the sun’s descending car,
What power unseen diffuseth far
This tenderness of mind?
What Genius smiles on yonder flood?
What God, in whispers from the wood,
Bids every thought be kind?[381]
Who can tell,
Even on the surface of this rolling earth,
How many make abode? The fields, the groves,
The winding rivers and the azure main,
Are rendered solemn by their frequent feet,
Their rites sublime.[382]
The power of Nature over man is constant and varied. She is endowed
with such enchantment, made up of forms so exquisitely fair, breathed
through with such ethereal sweetness, that she can at will “raise
or depress the impassioned soul.”[383] Her dark woods rouse him to
solemn awe. Her gay landscapes with blue skies and silver clouds give
an impression of winning mirth. There is in the rising sun something
kindred to man’s spirit. At evening the “breath divine of nameless
joy,” that steals through the heart, is but another message from the
spirit of love that rules the world. All the forms of the external
world are but visible expressions of such thoughts of God as the mind
of man is fitted to receive. The soundness of this interpretation of
Nature is not here in question. We are merely concerned with the fact
that in the middle of the century we find a statement of poetical
creed which, so far as the thought is concerned, might come from “The
Excursion” or “The Prelude.” Akenside is one of the first of the poets
of the age to insist on the beauty of all Nature,[384] and to show an
abiding sense of the spiritual elements that give significance to the
external forms of Nature. He was also the first one to emphasize the
platonic doctrine of the identity of truth and beauty,
For Truth and Good are one;
And Beauty dwells in them, and they in her.[385]
A minor poet, John Gilbert Cooper, must be mentioned because of one
poem, “The Power of Harmony” (1745). In execution it is heavy and
involved. It is a clumsy attempt to work out a theory of beauty. The
preface is more interesting than the poem. In this preface he says:
“It is the design of the poem to show that constant attention to what
is perfect and beautiful in Nature will, by degrees, harmonize the
soul to a responsive regularity and sympathetic order.” In the poem he
ascribes to “each natural scene a moral power,” and traces even the
song of birds and the frisking of cattle to the effect
Of beauty beaming its benignant warmth
Through all the brute creation.
He believes also that all parts of Nature are beautiful. Shagged rocks,
barren heaths, precipices, sable woods, headlong rivers, all are
examples of the principle of harmony and so of beauty.
Somewhat earlier in the period is another minor poet who would be today
practically unknown had not Southey preserved his work. This is Joseph
Relph, the son of a Cumberland statesman. He was born in Shergham,
where he spent most of his unhappy life. His “Cumbrian Pastorals” were,
Southey says, transcripts from real life. They are among the very
earliest attempts to represent the Cumberland dialect, and they are a
close record of Cumberland superstitions and games and customs. The
poems show an original study of the scenery about Shergham, as in the
following lines:
A finer hay-day was never seen,
The greenish sops already luik less green
* * * * *
And see how finely striped the fields appear,
Striped like the gown ’at I on Sundays wear.
White show the rye, the big of blaker hue;
The bluimen pezz greenment wi’ reed and blue.
Blair’s one important poem is “The Grave” (1743). Its aim is a moral
one, and it makes but slight use of the outer world. There is,
however, one interesting realistic description of a row of ragged elms
Long lash’d by the rude winds. Some rift half down
Their branchless trunks; others so thin atop,
That scarce two crows could lodge in the same tree.
These elms, the cheerless unsocial yew, the wan moon, the howling
wind, the screech owl, the moss-grown stones skirted with nettles,
are descriptive details that serve very well to add the desired
“supernumerary horror” to the scene. “The Grave” is one of the earliest
poems to give to melancholy reflections on man’s mortality the Nature
setting that was later recognized as the conventionally appropriate one.
William Thompson is best known by his “Epithalamium” (1736), “Sickness”
(1745) and especially his “Hymn to May,” written “not long after.” His
poems were published in a volume in 1757. His “Milkmaid” is a stilted,
artificial pastoral filled in with homely details. Colin begs politely
and on his knees that Lucy will smile upon him;
So may thy cows forever crown
With floods of milk thy brimming pail;
So may thy cheeze all cheeze surpass,
So may thy butter never fail.
Lucy, of course, sighed and blushed a sweet consent. This pastoral,
together with his admiration of Pope’s Alexis, who was so
Gently rural! without coarseness plain;
How simple in his elegance of grief!
A shepherd but no clown,
would hardly lead one to suspect much satisfactory study of Nature in
Thompson’s poetry. But there is apparent in the “Hymn” and even in
“Sickness,” through all the florid, exuberant diction and obscure forms
of expression, a genuine delight in the beauty and freshness of the
outer world. He was a great admirer of Thomson, who as
Nature’s bard the seasons on his page
Stole from the year’s rich hand,[386]
and his poems show Thomson’s influence in expression and general
conception. Such phrases as the “boundless majesty of day,” the “sun’s
refulgent throne,” the “vernant showery bow profusive,” clouds of
“ten thousand inconsistent shapes,” are suggestive. Here is a typical
Thomsonian passage:
What boundless tides of splendor o’er the skies,
O’er flowing brightness! stream their golden rays!
Heaven’s azure kindles with the varying dyes.[387]
Or take this one:
And what a prospect round
Swells greenly grateful on the cherish’d eye;
A universal blush, a waste of sweets![388]
There are many other suggestions of Thomson in these “tender and
florid” descriptions of “the beauties, the pleasures, and the loves” of
spring. William Thompson is of importance in this study merely because
he is one more poet who loved Nature, who wrote of her with enthusiasm,
and who imitated Thomson. His chief use of Nature is in similitudes and
in frequent enthusiastic summaries of the charms of Nature.
Moses Mendes published in 1751 four poems named in imitation of
Thomson, “Spring,” “Summer,” “Autumn,” and “Winter.” There is some
first-hand observation in such lines as,
The pool-sprung gnat on sounding wings doth pass
And on the ramping steed doth suck his fill,
or,
The patient cow doth, to eschew the heat,
Her body steep within the neighboring rill;
but more often the observations are of the conventional imitative sort,
as in this couplet:
On every hill the purple-blushing vine
Beneath her leaves her racy fruit doth hide,
which is hardly true of an English scene. On the whole the passages in
which Mendes treats of Nature, while rather fanciful and decorative,
are not indicative of any real knowledge of Nature.
Jago’s most important poems are “Edge Hill” (1767), “The Swallow”
(1748), “The Blackbirds” (1753), and “The Goldfinches.” The last two
are love stories of the birds named, each love story being disastrously
ended by the cruelty of man in taking innocent life. “The Swallow” is
an allegory of life and death. “Edge Hill” is notable for its pleasure
in wide views which are minutely traced, and, alas, made “generally
interesting by reflections, historical, philosophical, and moral.”
The new note is struck by the exceptional frequency and evident
appreciation with which the poet notes the mountains in the different
views. Of “Dafset’s ridgy mountain,” he says,
Like the tempest-driven wave,
Irregularly great, his bare tops brave
The winds.
To the west
Braids lifts his scarry sides,
And Ilmington, and Campden’s hoary hills
Impress new grandeur on the spreading scene,
* * * * *
While distant, but distinct, his Alpine ridge
Malvern erects o’er Esham’s vale sublime.
In 1750 appeared Francis Coventry’s “Pens-hurst,” a poem in rhymed
octosyllabics, notable chiefly for its many imitations of Milton.
Another poem written by Coventry to the Honorable Wilmot Vaughan
indicates that the two friends had found some pleasure in mountain
climbing:
Dost thou explore Sabrina’s fountful source,
Where huge Plinlimmon’s hoary height ascends:
Then downwards mark her vagrant course
’Till mixed with clouds the landscape ends?
Dost thou revere the hallowed soil
Where Druids old sepulchred lie?
Or up cold Snowden’s craggy summits toil
And muse on ancient savage liberty?
Ill suit such walks with bleak autumnal air.
In the “World,” April 12, 1753, Coventry also had an article entitled
“Strictures on the absurd Novelties introduced in Gardening,” which was
a plea for simplicity and naturalness.
William Mason, who is a poet known chiefly because he had insight
enough to appreciate Gray, may, in this study, be lightly passed over.
His dramas “Elfrida” (1752), and “Caractacus” (1759) were written on
the model of the ancient Greek tragedy. They have little to do with
external Nature, although in order to introduce “touches of pastoral
description” such as had especially delighted him in “Comus” and “As
You Like It” he had laid the scene of “Elfrida” in “an old romantic
forest.” “Caractacus” is a Druid play the action of which takes place
on or near “majestic Snowden,” but there is only a single passage in
which the wild scenery is made effective in the poem, and that is the
ode beginning,
Mona on Snowden calls;
Hear, thou King of Mountains, hear.
Later on the ode allies itself with romantic work by its use of
the supernatural but it makes slight use of Nature. Mason’s chief
significance in this study is in what he had to say about gardens. In
“To a Water Nymph” (1747), there is a protest against the elaborate
Gothic fountains then fashionable, and also against shell work and
mineral grottoes. His long work, “The English Garden,” will be spoken
of later.
The greatest name in this period is that of Thomas Gray. His prose will
be taken up under “Travels.” His poetry falls into three periods.[389]
The first or classical period, in spite of an occasional good line,
such as
The untaught harmony of Spring,
is entirely conventional in its use of Nature, the prevailing tone
being exemplified in such phrases as “the attic warbler,” “the purple
year,” and “Venus’ train.” But in the two poems of 1742–50, we find
close and appreciative study of the country about Windsor and Stoke
Pogis. In the ode on “Eton College” the wistful pleasure with which the
poet recalls his childhood is intensified by his memory of the beloved
hills and fields, the silver-winding stream, and the pleasant paths
inseparably associated with the care-free days of his youth. In the
“Elegy” the use of Nature is highly artistic. The purpose of the poem
is a human one--the sympathetic representation of the honorable labor,
the innocent joys, the tender and wholesome affections of the poor,
the general tone being that of a pensive melancholy induced by the
thought of death. Nature is used in due subordination to the theme, and
with exquisite fitness. Every detail of the opening twilight picture
contributes its own touch to prepare the mind for the succeeding
reflections on death. The sounds, the tinkling of the distant folds,
the droning of the beetle, the complaining of the owl, are such as
emphasize silence, which is itself an accompaniment and an emblem of
death. The ivy-mantled tower, the rugged elms, the black yews, have
been immemorially associated with death. There is also a subtle analogy
in the withdrawal of light, the life of Nature. So, too, each detail
in the first picture of morning, has its human purpose. The stirring
sounds are interesting and of pathetic import because they once waked
an answering throb of life in the hearts of men who now hear them no
more. The enumeration of homely country tasks has its chief value
in the suggested delight of the workman in his occupation and the
resultant emphasis by contrast on the pathos of death.
In the last six stanzas of the poem we find the true romantic
conception of the relation between man and Nature. The poet is
represented as a shy, solitary being in communion with Nature, and
drawing his inspiration from her. In the morning he hurries to some
hillside that he may watch the sunrise; at noon he stretches himself
at full length under some beech-tree by the side of a brook, and pores
over the waters as they babble by; or he wanders through the woods,
murmuring to himself his wayward fancies. This poet is certainly far
enough removed from the typical town-bred poet of the classical régime.
He is rather of the same race as Warton’s Enthusiast, and he at least
suggests Wordsworth’s Poet who murmurs by the running brooks a music
sweeter than their own.[390] In these stanzas Nature is not only the
appropriate dramatic background. It is taken up into the mental action
and becomes at least in part the occasion of the poet’s moods, and it
is entirely through the relation of the poet to Nature that these moods
are revealed to the reader.
Nature is thus throughout the poem made strictly subservient to the
human theme, but the intrinsic beauty of the brief descriptions, quite
apart from the context, cannot pass unnoticed. Separate lines have the
power of suggesting whole pictures. For example in
How bowed the woods beneath their sturdy stroke,
the ringing blow of the ax, the crash of the falling tree, smite upon
the ear. The stanza beginning
Oft did the harvest to their sickle yield
suggests several themes for the landscape artist. There is also a wide,
peaceful landscape effect in
The lowing herds wind slowly o’er the lea.
And the line
The swallow twittering from its straw-built shed
brings up all the details of a humble farmyard. These and other
descriptions in the “Elegy” are distinctively English in spirit and
detail. They are the result of first-hand knowledge, they are drawn
with a firm hand, and they are used with an instinctive recognition of
artistic fitness.
A new range of sympathies, however, appears in the poems of Gray’s
third or purely romantic period. Here he writes of northern mythologies
and superstitions or gives transcripts of Norse tales, and the pictures
interwoven with the human elements are of a wild and savage character.
In “The Bard,” mountain, precipice, and torrent form a setting without
which the fiery denunciation of the poet would lose half its force. The
storm and the whirlwind sweep through these poems. Rough and frowning
steeps, foaming floods, warring winds, the heights of Snowdon and huge
Plinlimmon, darkness, cold, make up the terrible but dramatically
appropriate environment for the fierce, imprecatory elegy which the
bard utters over his lost companions, for the fatal and dreadful song
of the gigantic sisters weaving “the loom of Hell.”
In one or two other poems there is effective use of Nature. The joy
of a convalescent able at last to go out of doors was not an uncommon
subject through this period, but there is no better expression of
it than in “A Fragment” by Gray. The feeling, and in passages, the
phraseology, are almost Wordsworthian.
The meanest flowret of the vale,
The simplest note that swells the gale,
The common sun, the air, the skies,
To him are opening Paradise,
is an illustrative stanza. There are also some exquisite lines on
birds, as,
But chief, the Sky-lark warbles high
His trembling thrilling ecstacy;
And, lessening from the dazzled sight,
Melts into air and liquid light,[391]
and,
There pipes the wood-lark, and the song-thrush there
Scatters his loose notes in the waste of air.[392]
Though undated these lines in their spirit and workmanship ally
themselves at once with the period of the “Elegy” rather than with the
later work. They also accurately represent Gray’s dominant attitude
toward Nature, his knowledge of sweet, homely things, and the delicate
perfection of his literary touch.
The Rev. R. Potter’s chief poem is “A Farewell Hymn to the Country,
Attempted in the Manner of Spenser’s Epithalamion” (1749). The poem
shows much sympathetic knowledge of some parts of Nature, especially
of birds and trees. He speaks of the quail that “runnes piping o’er
the land,” of the “mavis-haunted grove,” and of the nightingale that
delights “the stillness of the night.” He declares that his entire
orchard, plums, pears, grapes, permains, and all, is at the service of
these, his “fellow-poets.” At evening
The slumb’ring trees seem their tall tops to bow
Rocking the careless birds that on them nest
To gentle, gentle rest.
He does not often refer to specific trees, but he gives little
suggestive pictures as of “the uncertain shaded grove,” or
the doubtfull shade
By quivering branches made,
or of delightful resting places roofed with “inwoven branches.” The
stream for which he cared most was “the gentle Tave” in Norfolk. He
mentions many flowers, but in no new or finely descriptive manner. His
sensitiveness to perfumes we may see in such lines as,
Sweet is the breath of heaven with day-spring born,
Where the fresh hay-cock breathes along the mead,
or in such phrases as “this flowre-perfumed aire.” The poem is rich in
color, as in the descriptions of sunrise, and of various kinds of fruit.
Though it would be difficult to quote specific lines to prove the
statement, it is nevertheless true that the whole poem conveys in a
quite unusual degree a sense of warm, abiding affection for the simple
scenes of the country. “Smit with the peaceful joys of lowly life,” he
gives thanks for “the unmoved quiet of his silver daies,” and thinks
with dread of “the cares and pains in mad cities.” His use of Nature is
almost entirely in a running assemblage of sweet sights and sounds to
justify his preference for country life.
Another of the minor poets of this period is Dr. John Dalton. In 1755
he wrote a “Descriptive Poem,” inscribed to “Two Ladies, the Daughters
of Lord Lonsdale.” It is long, rambling, tedious, but it is of
historical importance as being probably the first poetical tribute to
the beauty of Westmoreland and Cumberland.
Then change the scene: to Nature’s pride,
Sweet Keswick’s vale, the Muse will guide.
The Muse, who trod th’ enchanted ground,
Who sail’d the wonderous lake around,
With you will haste once more to hail
The beauteous brook of Borrodale.
He speaks of the streams that
rejoice to roar
Down the rough rocks of dread Lodore,
and says that
Horrors like these at first alarm,
But soon with savage grandeur charm,
And raise to noblest thoughts your mind.
Thus by thy fall, Lodore, reclin’d,
The cragged cliff, inpendent wood,
Whose shadows mix o’er half the flood,
The gloomy clouds, which solemn sail,
Scarce lifted by the languid gale
O’er the cap’d hill and darken’d vale
* * * * *
I view with wonder and delight,
A pleasing tho’ an awful sight.
Of Keswick and Skiddaw he writes,
Thy roofs, O Keswick, brighter rise!
The lake and lofty hills between,
Where giant Skiddow shuts the scene.
Supreme of mountains, Skiddow, hail!
To whom all Britain sinks a vale!
Lo, his imperial brow, I see
From foul usurping vapors free!
’Twere glorious now his side to climb,
Boldly to scale his top sublime.
There are several passages in the poem indicative of Dr. Dalton’s
unusually close study of streams, especially those near Lowther Castle,
and in the picturesque valley of Borrowdale. With evident delight he
traces the stream from its mountain source, over tuneful falls, under
broad spreading boughs, along silent meadows, to the wide lake. There
is also a fine passage descriptive of a patriarchal oak near Lowther.
It is the first sustained description of a specific tree with anything
like the modern feeling. It is represented as standing in a “sunny
plain alone.” Its reverend age, its majesty, are especially dwelt
upon. The poem shows some excellent first-hand observation. Dr. Dalton
is ahead of Wordsworth in noticing the “azure roofs” of the lowly
cottages. And he should have the credit of discovering the beauty of
the vale of Derwentwater, and the majesty of giant Skiddaw, fourteen
years before Gray made his famous tour, and nearly half a century
before the Lake poets set up their monopoly.
The most important work of this period was doubtless that of the Warton
brothers. Their father was also a poet, and he struck the romantic note
in his hatred of city life and his longing for solitude in the country.
Joseph Warton had a long literary career during which he edited books,
wrote poems, and contributed articles to periodicals. Those of his
poems that were of especial note in the history of Romanticism were
written early in life, between 1740 and 1753. “The Enthusiast” (1740),
“Odes on Various Subjects” (1746), and “Ode on Mr. West’s Translation
of Pindar” (1744) are the chief ones to be studied. In these poems
there are many summaries of such objects in Nature as give pleasure,
but there is little actual description. In details and phraseology
there are frequent echoes from Milton and Thomson.[393]
In general, though unoriginal in expression, the poems are marked by an
unmistakably genuine love of Nature, and of Nature untouched by man.
The poet dislikes Versailles whose fountains cast
The tortur’d waters to the distant heav’ns.[394]
Even Kent--
Though he, by rules unfettered, boldly scorns
Formality and method, round and square
Disdaining, plans irregularly great,[395]
cannot design like Nature. No gardens however artfully adorned can
charm like “unfrequented meads and pathless wilds.” The poet finds
peculiar pleasure in all the wild, solitary, mournful aspects of
Nature. He loves “hollow winds” and “ever-beating waves,” and hoary
mountains where
Nature seems to sit alone.[396]
He wishes for
some pine-top’d precipice
Abrupt and shaggy, whence a foamy stream
Like Anio, tumbling, roars; or some black heath
Where straggling stands the mournful juniper,
Or yew-tree scath’d.[397]
He escapes from the hated city’s “tradeful hum” and seeks for solitude
at “the deep dead of night” under the pale light of the moon. He is
alive to all the mysterious, romantic suggestions of Nature. He is
charmed by the little dancing fays that sip night-dews and “laugh and
love” in the dales. In storms he hears demons and goblins shrieking
through the dark air. He is also deeply conscious of the effect of
Nature on man. He finds himself even oppressed by the boundless charms
of “brooks, hill, meadow, dale,” and it is his belief that all Nature
conspires
To raise, to soothe, to harmonize the mind.
Nature can give happiness beyond that of luxury or gratified ambition.
These poems mark a new phase in the feeling toward Nature, because,
with little description, with no theory to propound, no moral to
teach, no human interest to exemplify, the poet with a rapt fervor and
intensity cries out for solitary communion with Nature as a necessity
of his own being. Warton is also, I think, the first of the romantic
poets to advocate a return to Nature in the sense in which Rousseau
used the phrase:
Happy the first of men, ere yet confin’d
To smoaky cities; who in sheltering groves,
Warm caves, and deep-sunk vallies liv’d and lov’d.
Yet why should man mistaken deem it nobler
To dwell in palaces and high-roof’d halls,
Than in God’s forests, architect supreme![398]
Joseph Warton’s exceptionally strong love of Nature is emphasized
by the testimony of Bowles who traces his own love of Nature to
companionship with Dr. Warton, and by the testimony of his brother
Thomas in a poem, “An Ode Sent to a Friend.” In this poem Thomas Warton
tells of his brother’s delight in walks at morning and evening through
unfrequented grassy lanes, or in the deep forest, or up steep hills “to
view the length of landscape ever new.”
A part of the service which Warton rendered to the poetry of Nature
rests in the fact that he led the attention from Pope to poets who had
treated of Nature with imaginative power. He had only scorn for
The fearful, frigid lays of cold and creeping Art,
“the courtly silken lay,” “the polished lyrics,” of his own day. But
it is in his prose that we find the best evidence of his break with
the classicists. In the dedication prefixed to the “Essay on Pope”
(1756) he divided English poets into four classes, putting in the
first class only Spenser, Shakspere, and Milton. Of Pope he said, “I
revere the memory of Pope; I respect and honor his abilities, but I
do not think him at the head of his profession.” He then proceeded to
show the difference “betwixt a man of wit, a man of sense, and a true
poet.” In the first and second sections of the “Essay” he minutely
discusses Pope’s descriptive poetry showing that his idea of pastoral
poetry as representing some golden age was but “an empty notion,” and
commenting severely on his mixture of British and Grecian ideas. He
condemns “Windsor Forest” because its images are “equally applicable
to any place whatsoever.” In contrast with Pope he puts Thomson, of
whose “Seasons” he gives a most discriminating eulogy. It is too long
to quote entire, but a part of it must be given if only to show its
remarkably modern tone.
Thomson was blessed with a strong and copious fancy; he hath
enriched poetry with a variety of new and original images,
which he painted from nature itself, and from his own actual
observations; his descriptions have, therefore, a distinctness
and truth, which are utterly wanting to those of poets who
have only copied from each other, and have never looked abroad
on the objects themselves. Thomson was accustomed to wander
away into the country for days, and for weeks, attentive to
“each rural sight, each rural sound,” while many a poet, who
has dwelt for years in the Strand, has attempted to describe
fields and rivers, and generally succeeded accordingly. Hence
that nauseous repetition of the same circumstances; hence that
disgusting impropriety of introducing what may be called a set
of hereditary images, without proper regard to the age, or
climate, or occasion in which they were formerly used.... And if
our poets would accustom themselves to contemplate fully every
object, before they attempted to describe it, they would not
fail of giving their readers more new and complete images than
they generally do.[399]
Wordsworth himself was hardly more emphatic in his scorn of vague
descriptions and hereditary images, and in his plea for simple truth
to Nature. The passages already quoted are sufficient to show how
self-conscious and theoretical was Warton’s romanticism. He was not,
however, so far as the study of Nature alone is concerned, the first
self-conscious worker in the new field. Ramsay and Shenstone had
already, apologetically to be sure, but none the less distinctly,
entered their protest against the conventional imitations of their day.
But Warton uttered no apology. His theory was fully established in his
own mind. He came down on the classicists with hammer and tongs, and
enunciated in 1756 at least two of the cardinal doctrines of the poets
of Nature who wrote forty years later.
Thomas Warton’s poems seem at first reading to be but a patchwork of
phrases from Milton.[400] “The Pleasures of Melancholy” (1745) was
written when he was but seventeen. The theme of this poem is a defense
of solitude against various social pleasures, and it has the customary
note of delight in darkness, tombs, pale shrines, “fav’rite midnight
haunts,” “pale December’s foggy glooms,” and “the pitying moon.” “The
First of April,” “Ode on the Approach of Summer,” and “Morning, an
Ode,” are of more importance so far as the love of Nature is concerned.
The lines on the opening spring show close observation.
Reluctant comes the timid spring.
Fringing the forest’s devious edge
Half rob’d appears the hawthorn hedge.
Scant along the ridgy land
The beans their new-born ranks expand.
The rooks swarm with clamorous call and
Wreathe their capacious nests anew.
The fisher “bursting through the crackling sedge”
Startles from the bordering wood
The bashful wild-duck’s early brood.
And so loud the blackbird sings
That far and near the valley rings.
He notes also the kite that sails above the crowded roof of the
dove-cote, the plumy crest of thistles, the russet tints and gleams
of light in the tops of trees at sunset, the faint, varying shades of
green when the new foliage appears on the trees, and the blue tint of
the unchanging pine standing in their midst. Warton’s pleasure in wide
views is indicated in several passages where he speaks of climbing a
hill for the sake of the broad prospect of field and stream. He had
also an appreciation of wild Nature, as we see from the descriptions
in “The Grave of King Arthur.” Warton’s work is of interest because of
the many attractive details scattered through his poems, but there is
little unity of effect. The general impression is that he saw Nature
first through Milton’s eyes, and that when he afterward made many
charming discoveries for himself he tried to express them in the “Il
Penseroso” manner.
His chief influence was through his “Observations on the Faerie Queen”
and in his “History of Poetry,” but except as attention was thus
directed to older writers, these works had no effect on the poetry of
Nature.
In Joseph Warton’s “Enthusiast” (1740) the love of solitary communion
with Nature was supreme. About fourteen years later appeared William
Whitehead’s “Enthusiast,” which is of interest here because it shows
so well the typical eighteenth-century view in contrast to the pure
romanticism of Warton. In Whitehead’s “Enthusiast” the poet yields
instinctively to the new spirit, but is suddenly recalled to himself,
is rendered sane by the wise admonitions of Reason. It is a bright day
in May. The poet, entranced by the beauty about him, walks forth,
With loit’ring steps regardless where,
So soft, so genial was the air,
So wond’rous bright the day.
And now my eyes with transport rove
O’er all the blue expanse above,
Unbroken by a cloud!
And now beneath delighted pass,
Where, winding through the deep-green grass,
A full-brim’d river flow’d.
These, these are joys alone, I cry;
’Tis here, divine Philosophy,
Thou deign’st to fix thy throne!
Here Contemplation points the road
Through Nature’s charms to Nature’s God!
These, these are joys alone!
Then Reason whispers “monitory strains,” and teaches the Enthusiast
that “light, and shade, and warmth, and air,” that the “philosophic
calmness,” the visionary sense of “universal love,” which come to man
from Nature, must sink into insignificance before the exalted joys of
Virtue, and reminds the poet that “man was made for man.” The intrinsic
value of this poem is slight, but it is noteworthy because we see the
two tendencies contending for mastery. Whitehead was no poet. He simply
reflected in a turbid fashion what more original men were saying. His
tolerably full statement of the romantic attitude toward Nature, with
his subsequent assertion of the triumphant good sense of classicism is,
therefore, valuable testimony to the twofold spirit of the age.
In general we may say that we find during this period, rural didactic
poetry treating of English subjects in the manner of John Philips in
“Cyder,” as in Somerville and Smart. There is good local color in some
descriptive poems as in Shenstone, Gray, Dr. Dalton, and Relph. There
is throughout the period first-hand observation, but it is not so
abundant, nor is the openness of the poet’s mind to sensuous impression
so apparent as in some preceding work. There is, however, delicate and
poetic handling of material as in the poems of Gray and Collins and
Greene. There is a self-conscious endeavor to break away from ancient
models, as in Ramsay’s “Preface” and Shenstone’s “Preface,” and from
existing poetic domination as in Warton’s protest against Pope.
Truth to Nature, independence of observation, as necessary poetic
qualities, are for the first time openly and theoretically insisted on
in Warton’s “Essay.” There is scorn of the utilitarian view of Nature,
as in Shenstone. The debt of man to Nature is dwelt upon with new
emphasis by Young, Shenstone, and especially Akenside. The sense of
a divine spirit in Nature is clearly expressed by Akenside, and less
clearly by Young. The purely romantic love of Nature in connection with
sentimental melancholy is fully exemplified in Joseph Warton. There
is strong personal enthusiasm for Nature in Shenstone, Akenside, and
Joseph Warton. There is love of animals in Shenstone and Jago. There
is notable representation of country people in Relph and Gray and
Somerville.
THE PERIOD FROM 1756 TO 1798
From the “Essay on Pope” to the “Lyrical Ballads” is a long period but
any subdivision would be purely arbitrary. It is chiefly characterized
by the development and emphasis of influences already manifestly
operant. The most valuable work is that of James Macpherson (1736–96),
James Beattie (1735–1803), Robert Burns (1759–96), William Cowper
(1731–1800), William Blake (1757–1827), and George Crabbe (1754–1832).
Oliver Goldsmith (1728–74) is of less importance. John Brown (1715–66),
John Langhorne (1735–79), Christopher Smart (1722–71), John Logan
(1748–88), and William Lisle Bowles (1762–1850), though minor poets,
are significant in their poetry of Nature. Of less note are William
Julius Mickle (1735–88), James Grainger (1724–66), Michael Bruce
(1746–67), James Graeme (1749–72), John Scott (1730–83), and Richard
Cumberland (1732–1811).
John Brown, otherwise unimportant, is interesting because of his
early appreciation of the scenery of the English lakes. He wrote a
description of Keswick[401] in a letter to Lyttleton, and his undated
“Fragment of a Rhapsody Written at the Lakes of Westmoreland” is
probably the outcome of the same visit. The “Fragment” is short and
may be quoted entire as well because of its beauty, as because of its
subject and early date:
Now sunk the sun, now twilight sunk, and night
Rode in her zenith; nor a passing breeze
Sigh’d to the groves, which in the midnight air
Stood motionless; and in the peaceful floods
Inverted hung; for now the billow slept
Along the shore, nor heav’d the deep, but spread
A shining mirror to the moon’s pale orb,
Which, dim and waning, o’er the shadowy cliffs,
The solemn woods and spiry mountain tops
Her glimmering faintness threw. Now every eye
Oppress’d with toil, was drown’d in deep repose,
Save that the unseen shepherd in his watch,
Propt on his crook, stood listening by the fold,
And gaz’d the starry vault and pendant moon.
Nor voice nor sound broke on the deep serene
But the soft murmur of swift gushing rills,
Forth issuing from the mountain’s distant steep
(Unheard till now, and now scarce heard) proclaimed
All things at rest, and imag’d the still voice
Of quiet whispering to the ear of night.
For a curious coincidence compare Wordsworth’s lines written thirty
years later:
The song of mountain streams, unheard by day,
Now hardly heard, beguiles my homeward way.
John Langhorne was born at Kirby-Stephen in Westmoreland. His best
poems were published in 1766, though his “Fables of Flora” did not
appear till 1771. Langhorne had an enthusiastic personal love for
Nature. He dwelt with rapture on stream and flower and field and
sky.[402] His wish was,
Oh let me still with simple nature live,
My lowly field flowers on her altar lay;
Enjoy the blessings that she meant to give
And calmly waste my inoffensive day.[403]
Or again,
Slow let me climb the mountain’s airy brow;
The green height gained, in museful rapture lie,
Sleep to the murmur of the woods below
Or look to nature with a lover’s eye.[404]
His preference for Nature untouched by art is seen in the charming
little “Fable”[405] showing the superiority of the wild rose to the
more splendid cultivated rose. And in another “Fable” he says,
Come let us leave the painted plain,
This waste of flowers that palls the eye;
The walks of nature’s wilder reign
Shall please in plainer majesty.[406]
That he had a tender feeling toward animals is shown by his poems on
birds and by his protest against the cruelty of confining birds in
cages. The most striking characteristic of Langhorne’s poems is his
direct expression of the excellence of the gift that Nature’s hand
bestows. A part of his excellent gift is the inspiration to poetry. The
young shepherd was inspired with “poetic charms” as he wandered through
the wild scenes
By Yarrow’s banks or groves of Endermay.
In his own experience
The nameless charms of high poetic thought,
were born of “spring’s green hours,” and the murmuring shore spoke to
him “divine words,”[407] while in earlier days “each lay that falter’d
from his tongue” had been “from Eden’s murmurs caught.”[408] In an
ode to the “Genius of Westmoreland,” he says that she kindled the
“sacred fire” in his heart, that she gave him “thoughts too high to be
exprest.” Again he speaks of an hour in his youth when
The woodland genius came
And touched me with his holy flame.[409]
Statements still more remarkable as foreshadowing later doctrines are
found in such lines as,
Whatever charms the ear or eye,
All beauty and all harmony,
If sweet sensations they produce,
I know they have their moral use.
I know that nature’s charms can move
The springs that strike to virtue’s love.[410]
Or these lines,
Has fair philosophy thy love?
Away! she lives in yonder grove.
If the sweet muse thy pleasure gives,
With her, in yonder grove, she lives.
And if religion claims thy care,
Religion fled from books is there.
For first from nature’s works we drew
Our knowledge and our virtue too.[411]
Langhorne’s perception of the power of Nature over man, and his
passionate sense of personal indebtedness to Nature are the keynotes
of his work. In a narrow way and with feeble speech he shows a mental
and spiritual experience of the same type as that which Wordsworth
records of his own youth. His motive in writing, “an unaffected wish to
promote the love of Nature and the interests of humanity,” is likewise
Wordsworthian.
In Christopher Smart’s one great poem, the “Song to David” (1763),
the use of Nature is of so strange a character that it refuses
classification under the customary categories. The chief thought of
the poem in the parts where Nature is used has to do with the creative
energy of God, the song of praise that is eternally his from all
existence, and the exceeding sweetness, strength, beauty, and glory of
the Spirit of God in man. These themes are not new with Smart in this
poem. In his prize poems ten years before he had taken the attributes
of God as his subject, and the general line of thought, and the method
of proof by the rapid accumulation of illustrative images drawn from
Nature are practically the same as in the “Song to David.” Here and
there are instances of the same noble conceptions and striking phrases,
as in this picture of a tree:
The oak
His lordly head uprears, and branching arms
Extends--behold in regal solitude
And pastoral magnificence he stands
So simple! and so great! The underwood
Of meaner rank an awful distance keep.[412]
Or this description of the Leviathan that,
The terror and the glory of the main,
His pastime takes with transport proud to see,
The ocean’s vast dominions all his own.[413]
It is, however, only in the “Song” that the early themes are treated
with sustained energy of thought and splendor of imagery. In this poem
each thought is abundantly illustrated from Nature. The details are
brought together from every clime and season. They are poured forth
with impetuous ardor. The excited imagination of the poet does not
hesitate and choose. The universe is laid under contribution. There is
a prodigal heaping-up of the treasures of Nature, an almost barbaric
splendor of images. Does the poet wish to say that all Nature praises
God? The earth passes before him as in a vision. The great song of
adoration swells upon his ear from every form of harmonious activity.
Seasons change, almonds glow, tendrils climb, fruit trees blossom,
birds build their nests, bell-flowers nod, the spotted ounce and her
cubs play, harvests ripen, wild carnations blow, the pheasant shows his
glossy neck, the squirrel hoards nuts, the map of Nature is crowded
with scenes of beauty, the crocus “burnishes alive” upon the snow-clad
earth, the bullfinch sings his flute note, the redbreast balances on
the hazel spray, silver fish glide through rivers, cataracts fall,
fruits are luscious, gums give out incense, all to “heap up the
measure, load the scales” with praise to the Lord who is great and
glad. In this rapid summary there is a pomp, an energy, an activity
that is indescribable. A later stanza on strength is almost terrifying
in its powerful imagery.
Strong is the lion--like the coal
His eyeball--like a bastion’s mole
His chest against the foes:
Strong the gier-eagle on his sail,
Strong against tide the enormous whale
Emerges as he goes.
Except Blake’s “Tiger” I recall no poem marked by the same tenseness
and abrupt energy.
Many of the details in Smart’s poems were drawn from his reading,
especially from the Hebrew Scriptures. They could not have come from
observation for they have little to do with the “old, oft catalogued
repository of things in sky and wave and land.” The images are fresh,
original, daring. They startle the mind out of passivity.
Another point to be noted is the peculiar combination of facts. Bears,
sleek tigers, ponies, and kids, are the beasts assembled to illustrate
God’s creative activity, and so in other combinations. Objects the
least likely to suggest each other are brought together. In the same
way facts from Nature and from human nature are strangely mingled.
Among beauteous things are reckoned a fleet before a gale, a host in
glittering armor, a wild garden, a moonlight night, and a virgin before
her spouse.
Amidst the prettinesses, decencies, timidities, of the
eighteenth-century poetry of Nature, this poem by Smart sounds out like
a trumpet. The marshaled facts move forward like a cohort of soldiers
with a splendid tread that shakes the earth. The whole effect is
Hebraic, apocalyptic.
Mickle’s chief poems are “Syr Martyn” (1767) “Pollio” (1762) and some
shorter pieces. In “Pollio” Mickle makes frequent references to his own
love of Nature. The country he knew best was that about Roslin Castle
where he was brought up, but he was not unfamiliar with other parts
of southeast Scotland as is shown by his references to the Forth, the
Annan, the Wauchope, the Ewes, to the dales of Tiviot, and to various
country seats. His interest in Nature was varied in character. In
“Almada Hill” (1781) and “May Day” there are frequent appreciative
lines on mountains, as:
Where Snowden’s front ascends the skies,
The tower-like summits of the mountain shore.
There are briefer references in such phrases as, “the hills of
Cheviot,” “the thyme-clad mountain,” “the mountains gray,” “Old
Snowden,” “Snowden’s hoary side,” “the curving mountain’s craggy brow,”
which serve at least to show that Mickle was not unconscious of the
scenery about him. One or two lines indicate the effect of the sea on
his mind. As he stood on Almada Hill and looked out over old Ocean,
By human eye untempted, unexplored,
An awful solitude,
it was
the last dim wave, in boundless space
Involved and lost[414]
that held his impatient imagination. Even so brief a passage serves to
illustrate the awakened curiosity, the new sense of pleasure in the
infinite and the unknown, that characterized the romantic impulse.
Another modern note in Mickle is his interest in moonlight and stars.
There are several picturesque descriptive lines, as,
When sudden, o’er the fir-crown’d hill
The full orb’d moon arose.[415]
How bright, emerging o’er yon broom-clad height
The silver empress of the night appears.[416]
While on the distant east
Led by her starre, the horned moone looks o’er
The bending forest, and with rays increast
Ascends.[417]
The star of evening glimmers o’er the dale
And leads the silent host of heaven along.[418]
In spite of the classical note in such a phrase as “silver empress”
these lines show not only genuine pleasure in the loveliness of
night, but also first-hand knowledge of its phenomena. Closeness of
observation is further indicated in the lines on birds, as in the
description of the “sootie black-bird,” that chants his shrill vespers
from the topmost spray of some tall tree, or of the eagle that sails
through the sky with “wide-spread wings unmov’d” till suddenly he
“sheer descends” on the brow of Snowdon.
In his representation of flowers Mickle notes the “daisie-whitened
plain,” and “the white and yellow flowers that love the dank,” but he
was especially attracted by flowers growing among rocks or upon cliffs.
One close observation is of the twinkling lines of gossamer that on
summer mornings hang from spray to spray.
Mickle’s poems show a genuine love of Nature. He abounds in
reminiscences of his happy youth
By the banks of the crystal-streamed Esk,
Where the Wauchope her yellow wave joins.[419]
His chief use of Nature is in the passages where he gives these early
associations, and in the many similitudes in his “Elegies.” He always
sees Nature in a pathetic or joyous union with past experiences in his
own life or in that of others.
Grainger’s chief poem, “The Sugar Cane,” appeared in 1764. The theme
and outline are presented in the first four lines:
What soil the cane affects; what care demands;
Beneath what signs to plant; what ills await;
How the hot nectar best to crystallize;
And Afric’s sable progeny to treat.
Grainger recognizes as his poetical masters, Maro, the “pastoral Dyer”
(“The Fleece”), “Pomona’s bard” (“Cyder”), Smart (“The Hop Garden”),
and Somerville (“The Chace”). “The Sugar Cane” is a purely didactic
poem and is no real contribution to the new feeling toward Nature. The
first part of the “Ode to Solitude,” a long ode beginning,
O Solitude, Romantic maid,
is another example of the sentimental view of Nature, with frequent and
obvious imitations of Milton; but the last half of the poem declares
that only the old and feeble should seek the solitude of the country,
that shades are no medicine for a troubled mind, and, in general, that
the proper business of mankind is man.
Chronologically Macpherson’s “Poems of Ossian” belong in the five
years before the publication of Percy’s “Reliques” (1765), and they
are a part of the same general stream of influence, the revival of
folklore. These poems are epic in character, their aim being the
celebration of the exploits of Celtic heroes. They are of importance
in this study because the adventures of Fingal, Ossian, Oscar, and
Gaul are throughout closely associated with natural scenery of a wild
and romantic sort.[420] Mist-covered mountains, storm-swept skies,
rough streams, desolate shores, dim moonlight nights, are the most
frequent scenic details, and they are so wrought into the story that
the human tragedy and the scene where it was enacted cannot be thought
of apart. The three ways in which Nature is used in these poems, as
dramatic background, in similitudes, and in apostrophes, will serve
to illustrate both the prominence given to Nature and the close union
between human emotions and the varying phenomena of the external world.
A fine example of a bright description to usher in a sudden contrasting
portent of disaster is in the opening lines of “Temora”:
The blue waves of Erin roll in light. The mountains are covered
with day. Trees shake their dusky heads in the breeze. Gray
torrents pour their noisy streams. Two green hills, with aged
oaks, surround a narrow plain. The blue course of a stream is
there.
The song that was “lovely, but sad, and left silence in Carric-Thura,”
has an autumn picture as its fit setting:
Autumn is dark on the mountains; gray mist rests on the hills.
The whirlwind is heard on the heath. Dark rolls the river
through the narrow plain. A tree stands alone on the hill and
marks the slumbering Connal. The leaves whirl round with the
wind and strew the graves of the dead.[421]
The description of the desolation of Balclutha is the prelude to the
song of mourning for the unhappy Moina.[422] The use of Nature in
apostrophes is characteristic of the Ossian poems. Of these the most
famous is the address to the sun.[422] There are frequent apostrophes
to winds, streams, and tempests, to stars, and especially to the moon.
Two good examples are the poet’s address to the evening star in “The
Songs of Selma,” and to the moon in “Dar Thula.” Of these the second
may be quoted as fairly typical:
Daughter of heaven, fair art thou! the silence of thy face is
pleasant! Thou comest forth in loveliness. The stars attend thy
blue course in the east. The clouds rejoice in thy presence, O
Moon! they brighten their dark-brown sides. Who is like thee
in heaven, light of the silent night? The stars are ashamed in
thy presence.... But thou thyself shalt fail one night, and
leave thy blue path in heaven. The stars will then lift their
heads.... Thou art now clothed with thy brightness. Look from
thy gates in the sky. Burst the cloud, O wind! that the daughter
of night may look forth; that the shaggy mountains may brighten,
and the ocean roll its white waves in light.
It will be observed that in almost every apostrophe there is beautiful
external description together with an underlying analogy to the thought
of the poem. In the passages quoted above, the triumphant brightness of
the moon in her blue path, and the suggestion of the coming night when
she shall fail in heaven, are but types of the beauty of Dar Thula and
of the day when, though the winds of spring shall be abroad, though the
flowers shall shake their heads on the green hills, and the woods shall
wave their growing leaves, the white-bosomed maiden shall not again
move in the steps of her loveliness.
Dr. Blair in his full study of the similitudes of Ossian admits that
they are too “thick-sown,” and that they are drawn from a narrow range
of objects. But he claims, on the other hand, that the similes have
the exceptional vividness that comes from first-hand observation,[423]
and that they show an imaginative perception of subtle analogies.[424]
Dr. Blair’s recognition of beauty and congruity was so quickened by
his partisanship of Ossian that his conclusions usually need to be
scrutinized in the cold light of facts. The subtlety of the analogies
certainly often escapes the ordinary reader, but no one can fail to
observe the pathetic beauty of the little pictures into which the
similitudes are often elaborated. Music, for instance, is compared to
“the rising breeze, that whirls at first the thistle’s beard, then
flies dark-shadowy over the grass.” Again a song is “like the voice of
a summer breeze, when it lifts the head of flowers and curls the lakes
and streams.” The heroes contended “like gales of spring, as they fly
along the hill, and bend by turns the feebly-whistling grass.” The
warriors are “bright as the sunshine before a storm; when the west wind
collects the clouds, and Morven echoes over all her oaks.” In these
and many similar comparisons we see how the beauty of the suggested
natural picture led the poet into a use of details not necessary for
his illustrations. The importance of the poetry of Ossian in the
evolution of the poetry of Nature rests on its early date, its close
interweaving of human emotions and natural scenes, and its abundant and
appreciative use of wild, free Nature.
Percy’s “Reliques” appeared in 1765. The publication of these ballads
was of great importance to the cause of the romantic revival in
general. The ballads were, however, of somewhat less significance in
their influence on the new feeling toward Nature. A ballad would never
interrupt the story for a description, and there would, of course,
never be any hint of a philosophy of Nature. But throughout the ballads
there are casual touches of description showing a genuine love for some
forms of Nature, especially the forest, green hills, and moors. “Upon
the wide moors,” “on moors so broad,” “over the fields so brown,” “over
the lea,” “over the downs,” are characteristic phrases. The castles are
usually on a hill and command a wide view.[425] The love of the hills
is indicated by such little pictures as
Robin sat on a gude grene hill,
Keipand a flock of fie.[426]
or,
Lord Thomas and fair Annet
Sate a’ day on a hill,
When night was cum and sun was sett
They had not talkt their fill.[427]
]But it is the forest that most often appears.
Until they came to the merry green wood,
Where they had gladdest bee,[428]
gives the fresh, open-air setting of most of these tales of love and
heroism;
Mery it was in the grene forest
Amonge the leves grene;[429]
All in the merrye month of May,
When greene buds they were swellin;[430]
And wee’ll away to the greene forest;[431]
Gil Morice sate in gude grene wode,
He whistled and he sang;[432]
In summer time when leaves grow greene
And blossoms bedecke the tree;[433]
To the greene forest so pleasant and faire;[434]
He myght have dwelt in grene foreste,
Under the shadowes greene;[435]
The woodweele sang, and wold not cease
Sitting upon the spraye,
Soe lowde, he wakened Robin Hood
In the greenwood where he lay;[436]
are typical forest pictures.[437] But the gude green wood is not always
fresh and blooming, as we see from occasional lines such as
Now loud and shrill blew the westlin’ wind,
Sair beat the heavy shower;[438]
About Yule quhen the wind blew cule;[439]
Oft have I ridden thro’ Stirling town
In the wind both and the weit;[440]
No shimmering sun here ever shone;
No halesome breeze here ever blew;[441]
Trees are not often mentioned individually except the oak and the
willow, the latter always representing sorrow.
There is occasional use of Nature in simple comparisons, as, “White as
evir the snaw lay on the dike,” “drye as a clot of claye,” “light of
foot as stag that runs in forest wild,” his “een like gray gosehawk’s
stair’d wyld.”
There are also some homely pictures of everyday country life, as in
“Take Thy Old Cloak about Thee,” “Plain Truth and Blind Ignorance”
(Somersetshire dialect), “The Ew-Bughts Marion,” and “The Auld Good
Man.”
The use of Nature in the “Ballads,” slight and limited as it is, gives
an impression of vivid reality. It is what Schiller would call the
simple as opposed to the sentimental love of Nature, the first being
characteristic of early races who _are_ Nature, and the last
of the moderns who _seek_ Nature.[442] On eighteenth-century
readers who, as a class, knew little about the external world outside
their parks and gardens, the effect of the descriptive touches in the
“Ballads” would be to lead them into lovely regions where Nature was as
spontaneous and free as the knights and fair ladies themselves.
Michael Bruce imitated Milton’s “Lycidas” in an elegy called “Daphnis”
and imitated Gray in some “Runic Odes,” which were lauded as “truly
Runic and truly Grayan.” In these poems the use of Nature is slight and
conventional. His “Lochleven” (1766) is more significant. In this poem
he celebrates
The pastoral mountains, the poetic streams
of his native land. He finds all Nature full of joy.
The vales, the vocal hills,
The woods, the waters, and the heart of man
Send out a general song; ’tis beauty all
To poet’s eye and music to his ear.
Clouds arrested in their swift course by lofty mountains, lakes that
hold a mirror to the sky, songsters twittering o’er their young, waters
glowing beneath western clouds, hoary-headed Grampius clad in snow, are
counted among his pleasures. He prefers life in the country, for there
All in the sacred, sweet, sequestered vale
Of solitude, the secret primrose-path
Of rural life, he dwells.
He loved especially the Gairney, a stream that flows into Loch Leven,
because, as a lad, he lay on its banks and composed poetry. He speaks
with evident knowledge of other streams, the gulfy Po, “slow and
silent among its waving reeds,” and the rapid Queech rushing impetuous
over broken steeps. It is natural that Bruce should know, as he did,
especially water birds. The “wild-shrieking gull,” “patient heron,”
“dull bittern,” the “clamorous mew,” and the “slow-wing’d crane” moving
heavily along the shore, were doubtless birds that he had often seen.
Bruce’s pleasure in wide views is shown by this poem, “Lochleven,”
for it is a description of the prospect spread out before him as he
stands on “Mount Lomond.” Bruce’s “Elegy” was written when he felt
himself dying of consumption. It represents his delight in all forms
of Nature’s life and his deep melancholy at bidding farewell to the
spring-time world.
By a process of selection we find in Bruce’s poems his real love for
the outer world. This is not, however, the impression made by his poems
as a whole. His knowledge of Nature was limited, and his expression was
often rigid and formal. He died young, before he had really attained
the mastery of his own thought, and his importance lies not so much in
actual accomplishment as in scattered suggestions of his tendencies and
possibilities.
Bruce’s most intimate friend was John Logan, who, in 1770, published an
edition of Bruce’s poems and included some “wrote by other authors.”
In 1781, when he published his own works, he laid claim to a number of
the poems that had appeared in the edition of Bruce’s poems in 1770.
Among these the most important was “The Cuckoo,”[443] a poem well worth
the sharp controversy waged over it by the respective friends of the
two authors. There is nothing else in this period that rings so fresh
and clear as this little ode. One stanza may be quoted to illustrate
its beauty, its simplicity, and naturalness. This stanza is also of
peculiar interest because it so definitely foreshadows Wordsworth’s “To
the Cuckoo.”
The schoolboy, wandering through the wood,
To pull the primrose gay,
Starts, the new voice of spring to hear,
And imitates thy lay.
Logan’s other poems, though he has nothing equal to the cuckoo song in
spontaneity and exquisite simplicity, are yet of real value. His “Braes
of Yarrow” is an effective presentation of the ancient, sorrow-laden
Yarrow _motif_. As is fitting in a ballad, the touches of
description are of the briefest sort, but the forest, the bonny braes,
and the sounding stream are felt through all the plaintive story.
“Ossian’s Hymn to the Sun” is a poetical paraphrase of the famous
apostrophe in “Balclutha.” It has some fine lines, but is inferior in
strength to the original. The “Ode Written in Spring” is a laudation of
a certain fair Maria in the true classical fashion, but the new note is
struck in the first five stanzas descriptive of spring.
The loosen’d streamlet loves to stray
And echo down the dale,
The hills uplift their summits green,
The cuckoo in the wood unseen,
At eve the primrose path along,
The milkmaid shortens with a song,
Her solitary way,
The sudden fields put on the flowers,
are lines showing fresh observation and easy, natural expression.
Another passage characterizes autumn as “the Sabbath of the year.”
Limited in compass as is Logan’s good work it is of value because
marked by exceptional purity and sweetness.
Most of James Graeme’s poems were written before he was twenty. His
tastes are thus referred to by his friend, Dr. Robert Anderson:
A passion for romantic fiction and fabulous history, appeared in
him very early in life.... Of the Gothic, Celtic and Oriental
mythology he was a warm admirer; and frequently attempted
imitations of the wild and flowery fictions of the northern and
eastern nations.... Like other votaries of the Muses, he was
passionately fond of rural scenery, and delighted in walking
alone in the fields.
His chief poems of Nature are some descriptive elegies. Occasionally
there is a fairly good line, as
The torrents, whiten’d with descending rain,
or
The blue-gray mist that hovers o’er the hill,
showing at least a hint of first-hand observation. But on the whole
the poems are a composite of phrases belonging to the typical poetry
of sentimental melancholy. His characteristic attitude toward Nature
is shown by his constant preference for chilly midnight when howlets
scream and ravens croak, and when he, with pensive care, tunes the
voice of woe and sheds “teary torrents” over grass-green graves. One
poem, on “Curling,” is, however, quite different in tone, for it is
a crudely realistic and technical description of the game and the
peasants who engage in it. The tastes of Graeme and his attempts are of
more significance than his actual work, which is of little value.
The bent of Goldsmith’s mind was toward the study of man in social
relations. His use of Nature is accessory and limited. In “The
Traveller” (1764) the real interest is in manners and customs.[444]
When the pilgrim is in the Alps with a wide prospect before him, it
is the thought of man’s grand heritage that impresses him. In the
account of Switzerland there is only a vague general description of the
country, but a full, sympathetic description of the peasant. So, too,
in Italy, France, Holland, and even in England. In the few descriptions
that do occur there are occasional lines indicative of first-hand
observation, as in this picturesque couplet on the scenery in Holland:
The slow canal, the yellow-blossomed vale,
The willow-tufted bank, the gliding sail.
We also find effective combinations of geographical names that give a
certain charm of remoteness and melody; and there is a sense of space
and movement conveyed by the rapidly presented and wide landscapes.
In “The Deserted Village” (1770) the central thought is still man, and
the purpose didactic, but there is effective though not abundant use of
Nature. Even here, however, it is only Nature inseparably associated
with man. Nine-tenths of the poem has to do directly with human nature.
The other tenth merely gives charming pictures of the country close
about a village. Scattered lines are of perfect workmanship, as that
one descriptive of the straggling fence,
With blossomed furze unprofitably gay,
and
The breezy covert of the warbling grove.
In the picture of desolation the details are selected with delicacy and
precision. Each touch helps the general impression. The value of such
work becomes more apparent when put into contrast with the description
of torrid climes. In Goldsmith and in Thomson what was seen at first
hand had the grace and power of truth, but scenes in remote lands,
known only through the distorting spectacles of books, were credited
with an odd mixture of incongruous details. Except for one use of
mountains in a simile there is no indication that Goldsmith knew any
but tame scenery.
In general we may say that Goldsmith showed a direct, simple-hearted
pleasure in the open-air world, that he was a sympathetic observer
of the more obvious facts of Nature, and that he had a bright, easy
way of recording those facts. The simplicity of his work is combined
with a quick perception of artistic form. But he has hardly a touch of
what Matthew Arnold calls “natural magic,” and he is in no sense a
revealer. He was on the surface of things. Of the higher ministry of
Nature to man’s spiritual needs he knew nothing.
In his prose works Goldsmith has several vigorous attacks on falseness
and affectation in poetry. In 1759 he characterized Italian poetry
at its lowest ebb, as “no longer an imitation of what we see, but of
what a visionary might wish. The zephyrs breathe a most exquisite
perfume; the trees wear eternal verdure; fauns, dryads, and hamadryads
stand ready to fan the sultry shepherdess ... who is so simple and
innocent as often to have no meaning.” This attack on the falseness
and affectation of Italian poetry might be quoted verbatim by a modern
critic of the popular eighteenth-century pastorals. Goldsmith also
praised Gay’s poems saying that “he has hit upon the true spirit of
pastoral poetry.” Goldsmith has other keen critical remarks that point
in the direction of the new spirit but they do not bear directly on the
study of Nature. He is important chiefly because of his interest in man
as man, his close and sympathetic delineation of the poor and ignorant.
In 1766 James Beattie had written 150 lines of “The Minstrel.” The
poem was then laid aside for the “Essay on Truth” and not taken up
again till 1770. The first book was published anonymously in 1771. The
second book appeared with the author’s name in 1774. The poem consists
of 122 Spenserian stanzas. Its design is “to trace the progress of a
poetical genius ... till that period when he may be supposed capable of
appearing in the world as a minstrel,”[445] and its theme is really the
effect of mountain scenery on a poetically sensitive mind. The child,
Edwin, is brought up in a remote village among the Scotch hills, and
his genius is developed through the varied influence of wild natural
scenery until he becomes “itinerant poet and musician.” As a lad his
chief pleasure was to follow
Where the maze of some bewilder’d stream
To deep untrodden groves his footsteps led.
He loved to climb craggy cliffs
When all in mist the world below was lost.
What dreadful pleasure! There to stand sublime
Like shipwreck’d mariner on desert coast
And view the enormous waste of vapour, toss’d
In billows, lengthening to the horizon round,
Now scoop’d in gulfs, with mountains now emboss’d.
And oft he traced the uplands, to survey,
When o’er the sky advanced the kindling dawn,
The crimson cloud, blue main and mountain gray.
He was
Fond of each gentle, and each dreadful scene.
In darkness and in storm he found delight.
He listened
with pleasing dread, to the deep roar
Of the wide-weltering waves.
When storms came up in black array
He hastened from the haunt of man,
Along the trembling wilderness to stray.
He visited haunted streams by moonlight and let his imagination dwell
on graves and ghosts. His soul was possessed by the “mystic transports”
born of “melancholy and solitude.” He scanned all Nature with a
“curious and romantic eye,” and his imagination was stirred by “old
heroic ditties,” by
What’er of lore tradition could supply
From gothic tale, or song, or fable old.
The second stage of Edwin’s education comes through his companionship
with a wise hermit, who, like Wordsworth’s Solitary, had “sought for
glory in the paths of guile,” but finally, dissatisfied with success
and stung with remorse, had hidden himself in a deep retired abode in
the mountains, there to commune with Nature. From a lofty eminence
Edwin chanced to look down one day upon this savage dell, shut in by
mountains and rocks piled on rocks, and he saw the “one cultivated
spot” with its garden of roses and herbs, and he heard the voice of
the hermit soliloquizing on the vanity of human life. In subsequent
interviews the hermit discoursed learnedly on history, art, and
sciences.
The intrinsic value of this poem is not great. It is important because
of the conception which it embodies. Edwin finds in Nature adequate
instruction and inspiration; the hermit, adequate consolation. His
words are,
Hail, awful scenes, that calm the troubled breast,
And woo the weary to profound repose!
Can passion’s wildest uproar lay to rest,
And whisper comfort to the man of woes?
Now the power of wild scenery over the plastic mind is exactly
Wordsworth’s idea in his account of the Wanderer’s youth,[446] and the
power of Nature to minister to a mind diseased is one of the leading
thoughts in his account of the Solitary,[447] while the thought of
tracing a child’s experiences with Nature until under her tutelage
he becomes a poet is the fundamental idea of the “Prelude.”[448] It
is certainly of more than merely curious interest thus to find in
the rather vague, ineffective stanzas of the earlier poet general
conceptions which afterward appear as the ruling ideas of the poet
confessedly greatest in his treatment of Nature.
The character of Edwin was autobiographic and shows Beattie’s personal
love of Nature. In a letter to the Dowager Lady Forbes, October, 1772,
he wrote:
I find you are willing to suppose that, in Edwin, I have
given only a picture of myself as I was in my younger days. I
confess the supposition is not groundless. I have made him take
pleasure in the scenes in which I took pleasure, and entertain
sentiments similar to those of which, even in my early youth, I
had repeated experience. The scenery of a mountainous country,
the ocean, the sky, thoughtfulness and retirement, and sometimes
melancholy objects and ideas, had charms in my eyes, even when
I was a school boy; and at a time when I was so far from being
able to express, that I did not understand my own feelings, or
perceive the tendency of my own pursuits and amusements.
Beattie never lost this keen delight in Nature. When he was
schoolmaster at Fordoun, at the foot of the Grampian Hills, his
greatest pleasure was found in the neighboring mountains and wooded
glens. His biographer also says that he would frequently “pass the
whole night among the fields, gazing on the sky, and observing the
various aspects it assumed till the return of day.” Beattie’s poems
bear conclusive evidence of his love of Nature in all her forms.
Mountains, and the sea, wild scenes of various sorts, storms, torrents,
night, clouds, the sky, streams, meadows, groves, summer and winter,
wide views, are regarded with genuine delight. But there are certain
curious limitations. There are almost no specific flowers, birds, or
trees mentioned in all this abundant study of the external world. This
use of the general instead of the specific is one element of an effect
too often perceived, an indefiniteness of outline, a vague blurring
of edges, the result of which is not mysterious suggestiveness but
simply dimness and confusion. There is also an unexpected feebleness
of vocabulary and lack of direct observation. The old word “murmur,”
for instance, is applied with wearisome insistence to springs, rills,
water, the ocean, pines, woods, groves, and gales. So the interest
in wild Nature, when analyzed, shows a rather monotonous and
undiscriminating succession of cliffs and precipices. But it would
be unfair to press these limitations too far. There are many true
observations happily presented, as in the following lines which are
selected as illustrative:
While waters, woods, and winds in concert join.
The wild brook babbling down the mountain side.
Torrents
Heard from afar amid the lonely night.
And now the storm of summer rain is over
And cool and fresh and fragrant is the sky.
When by the winds of autumn driven
The scatter’d clouds fly ’cross the Heaven.
Oft have we from some mountain’s head
Beheld the alternate light and shade
Sweep along the vale.
The scared owl on pinions gray
Breaks from the rustling boughs
And down the lone vale sails away
To more profound repose.
He finds pleasure in old oak trees that
from the stormy promontory tower
And toss their giant arms amid the skies.
In winter he watches
The cloud stupendous, from the Atlantic wave
High towering, sail along the horizon blue.
Lines such as these show knowledge both fresh and close, and the
expression is marked by picturesque effectiveness.
But Beattie’s real contribution to the study of Nature lies, as has
been indicated, in his own personal enthusiasm, and his steadfast
belief in the effect of Nature on man. In one stanza he even set forth
the doctrine, held to be sufficiently startling forty years later in
Wordsworth’s day, that country rustics from their familiarity with
Nature, gain a nicer sense of moral purity than is known among the poor
of a city.[449] Upon all men he urged the study of Nature as a moral
duty.
These charms shall work thy soul’s eternal health,
And love, and gentleness, and joy impart.[450]
The message of Nature is one not to be ignored.
O how canst thou renounce the boundless store
Of charms which Nature to her votary yields!
The warbling woodland, the resounding shore,
The pomp of groves, and garniture of fields;
All that the genial ray of morning gilds,
And all that echoes to the song of even,
All that the mountain’s sheltering bosom shields,
And all the dread magnificence of Heaven,
O how canst thou renounce and hope to be forgiven![451]
Though less popular than the “Essay on Truth,” Beattie’s “Minstrel” met
with almost immediate favor. Lyttleton said to Mrs. Montagu who sent
him the first book in 1771:
I read your “Minstrel” last night, with as much rapture as
poetry, in her noblest, sweetest charms, ever raised in my soul.
It seemed to me that my once most beloved minstrel, Thomson, was
come down from heaven, refined by the converse of purer spirits
than those he lived with here, to let me hear him sing again the
beauties of virtue.[452]
And Cowper wrote in 1784: “Though I cannot afford to deal largely in so
expensive a commodity as books, I must afford to purchase at least the
poetical works of Beattie.”[453] Mr. Dyce says that the success of “The
Minstrel” (Book First) “was complete. The voice of every critic was
loud in its praise; and before the second book appeared, four editions
of the first had been dispersed throughout the kingdom.”[454]
“The Minstrel” is of importance in the historical development of the
poetry of Nature because of the ideas it emphasizes, and because its
immediate popularity is an indication of the change in taste since the
beginning of the century.
Most of John Scott’s poems were on rural subjects,[455] and he is of
especial interest because of his abundant and close observation of
natural facts. Mr. Hoole says of him, “He was certainly no servile
copyist of the thoughts of others; for living in the country, and being
a close and accurate observer, he painted what he saw;” and again,
“He cultivated the knowledge of natural history and botany, which
enabled him to preserve the truth of Nature with many discriminating
touches, perhaps not excelled by any descriptive poet since the days
of Thomson.” It was Scott’s avowed purpose to enrich poetry by the
use of many natural facts not before observed. In the introduction to
the “Amoebaean Eclogues” he said, “Much of the rural imagery which
our country affords, has already been introduced in poetry, but many
obvious and pleasing appearances seem to have totally escaped notice.
To describe these is the business of the following Eclogues.” After
this explicit announcement, two gentle youths, in responsive verse,
call attention to over two hundred rapidly stated natural facts. A fact
to a line is about the average, as in these lines:
These pollard oaks their tawny leaves retain,
These hardy hornbeams yet unstripped remain;
The wint’ry groves all else admit the view
Through naked stems of many a varied hue.
Old oaken stubs tough saplings there adorn.[456]
Straight shoots of ash with bark of glossy gray,
Red cornel twigs, and maple’s russet spray.
There scabious blue, and purple knapweed rise,
And weld and yarrow show their various dyes.
In shady lanes red foxglove bells appear
And golden spikes the downy mullens rear.
The second of these “Eclogues” has to do with the care of farms and is
as minute as Cowper’s treatise on the cucumber. There is nowhere in
these poems any poetical fusion of facts. They read rather like the
notebooks of a professional observer. Yet it is certainly significant
to find at this date so persistent and systematic a search for natural
facts, and that not in the service of science but of poetry. In
“Amwell” Scott calls on the Muse of Thomson, Dyer, and Shenstone for
his inspiration. The poem is a description of the prospect from a
certain “airy height” near Amwell. A single illustration will show the
minute observation and catalogue style in this commemoration of “lonely
sylvan scenes.”
How picturesque
The slender group of airy elm, the clump
Of pollard oak, or ash, with ivy brown
Entwin’d; the walnut’s gloomy breadth of boughs,
The orchard’s ancient fence of rugged pales,
The haystack’s dusty cone, the moss-grown shed,
The clay-built barn; the elder-shaded cot.
Whose whitewashed gable prominent through green
Of waving branches shows; ...
... the wall with mantling vines
O’erspread, the porch with climbing woodbine wreath’d.
And under sheltering eaves the sunny bench
Where brown hives range, whose busy tenants fill
With drowsy hum the little garden gay,
Whence blooming beans, and spicy herbs, and flowers,
Exhale around a rich perfume! Here rests
The empty wain; there idle lies the plough.
There is a pleasant homely grace in these lines about the cottage,
worth more than all the historical episodes “introduced to secure
interest.” In the “Elegies” and “Odes” there is no use of Nature
different from that observed in the other poems, unless, indeed,
mention should be made of Scott’s belief that Nature gives her fairest
smiles to those “who know a Saviour’s love.” One further characteristic
is to be found in a large number of the poems, and that is enjoyment
of a wide view. He describes views as seen from “Musla’s cornclad
heights,” from “Grove Hill,” the cliff at Bath, from “Chadwell’s
cliffs,” from “Widbury’s prospect-yielding hill,” from “Upton’s
elm-divided plains,” from “Clifton’s rock,” from Amwell, and other
spots. The poems read as if he had spent many days climbing hills and
prospecting for views.
Richard Cumberland wrote in 1776 several “Odes,” something in the style
of Gray’s “Bard,” in honor of the artist Romney. In the “Dedication to
Romney” he spoke with enthusiasm of the Lake Region.
In truth a more pleasing tour than these lakes hold out to men
of leisure and curiosity cannot be devised. We penetrate the
Glaziers, traverse the Rhone and the Rhine, whilst our domestic
lakes of Ulls-water, Keswick, and Windermere, exhibit scenes
in so sublime a stile, with such beautiful colourings of rock,
wood, and water, backed with so tremendous a disposition of
mountains, that if they do not fairly take the lead of all the
views of Europe, yet they are indisputably such as no English
traveller should leave behind him.
One of the poems, the “Ode to the Sun,” has Helvellyn, Skiddaw,
the Derwent, Lodore, “Keswick’s sweet fantastic vale,” “stately
Windermere,” “Savage Wyburn,” and “delicious Grasmere’s calm retreat”
as its important scenic elements. He considers
The prim canal, the level green,
The close-clipt hedge, that bounds the flourish’d scene
as but “the spruce impertinence of art.” From them comes no rapture
such as that excited by the “gigantic shapes” of mountains. The Thames
is but a tame stream compared with “old majestic Derwent” forcing his
independent course. In contrast to the grandeur and splendor of Nature
man seems but “weak, contemptible, and vain, the tenant of a day.”
Imperial Ulls-water is not only declared to be superior in charm to
Loch Lomond or Killarney, but it can maintain its own even against
“ought that learned Poussin drew” or anything painted by “dashing
Rosa.” Eighteenth-century praise of scenery could go no farther.
William Blake’s “Poetical Sketches,” published in 1783, were written
between 1769 and 1777.[457] The “Songs of Innocence” appeared in
1788–9; “Book of Thel,” 1789; “The Marriage of Heaven and Hell,” 1790;
and “Songs of Experience” in 1794. In the first volume Nature was the
leading subject; in the next human interests were in the ascendent, and
Nature was used only in fresh, ballad-like touches. In the later work
Nature is slightly used and for the most part in the form of mystical
symbolism.
It was Blake’s theory that man is “imprisoned in his five senses,” and
he counted it his mission to reveal to closed eyes the spiritual as
the only real fact of existence. In his early work this theory, as yet
unexaggerated in application, led to a treatment of Nature, not untrue
to facts, but characterized especially by qualities of simplicity and
vision such as are not found again before Wordsworth. In these years of
his youth Blake was essentially the poet of childhood and spring in all
their sweet, potent, indefinable charm.
And I made a rural pen,
And I stained the water clear
And I wrote my happy songs,
Every child may joy to hear,[458]
gives the keynote to these songs of delight. The joy of Nature is
everywhere insisted on. The sun makes the sky happy; the vales rejoice;
spring cannot hide its joy when buds and blossoms come; the happy
blossoms look on merry birds; groves are happy and green woods rejoice;
dimpling streams, the air, green hills, meadows, and birds laugh with
delight. Here is one exquisite example:
The moon like a flower
In heaven’s high bower,
With silent delight,
Sits and smiles on the night.[459]
He contrasts the clamor and destruction of city streets with the true
joy in Nature. In the silent woods, delights blossom around, numberless
beauties blow. The green grass springs in joy, and the nimble air
kisses the leaves. The brook stretches its arms along the silent
meadow, its silver inhabitants sport and play. The youthful sun joys
like a hunter roused to the chase.[460] In “Fragments” and “Couplets,”
excerpts from his MS book, occurs this fine, though casual statement of
the opposition between town and country:
Great things are done when men and mountains meet;
These are not done by jostling in the street.
Blake cared much for sleep as the time when man was most free from
the tyranny of the senses. Many of his characters are represented as
asleep, and the conception is transferred to many lovely scenes in
Nature. He pictures summer as sleeping beneath oaks; flowers shut their
eyes in sleep; the west wind sleeps on the lake; and dawn sleeps in
heaven. With this is associated an evident pleasure in the silence of
Nature, apparently the pathetic complement of its joys. There is a
silent sleep over the deep of heaven; the evening star speaks silence
to the lake. At night the moon is silent, and the earth, and the sea.
Occasional passages show the character of Blake’s own love of Nature,
as,
I love to rise on a summer morn,
I love the laughing vale,
I love the echoing hill.
His feeling toward flowers was as intimate, as tenderly protecting, as
was that of Burns toward small animals. Sun and stars, winds, clouds,
dew, and angels are represented as caring for the happy blossoms.
All of Blake’s poetry of Nature is as freshly beautiful as the dewy
mornings, the spring-time green, the shining skies, as clear and
transparent as the limpid, dimpling streams he loved. There are also
frequent passages that besides their metrical flow and exquisite charm
of external suggestion seem to reveal the essential spirit of the
object described. One of the loveliest examples is the word of the Lily
of the Valley.
I am a watry weed,
And I am very small and love to dwell in lowly vales:
So weak the gilded butterfly scarce perches on my head.
Yet I am visited from heaven; and He that smiles on all
Walks in the valley, and each morn over me spreads his hand.
Saying, Rejoice, thou humble grass, thou new-born lilly flower,
Thou gentle maid of silent valleys and of modest brooks;
For thou shalt be clothed in light and fed with morning manna.[461]
For fine contrasts, each poem perfect of its kind, see “The Lamb”
and “The Tiger.” The modest simplicity of the one is as adequately
portrayed as the dread magnificence of the other. There is no
description. There is interpretation of the most penetrating sort.
He has also frequent similes worked out with picturesque detail, as in
this one from “The Couch of Death”:
He was like a cloud tossed by the winds, till the sun shines,
and the drops of rain glisten, the yellow harvest breathes,
and the thankful eyes of villagers are turned up in smiles;
the traveller, that hath taken shelter under an oak, eyes the
distant country with joy.
One secret of the effectiveness of Blake’s best work is his
recognition of the unity of all existence. The prefatory stanza to
“Auguries of Innocence,”
To see a world in a grain of sand,
And a heaven in a wild flower;
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,
And eternity in an hour,
is a brief poetic statement of the creed afterward elaborated in
Wordsworth’s “Primrose on the Rock” and Tennyson’s “Flower in
the Crannied Wall.” The thought back of the lines is the one in
Wordsworth’s mind when he looked on “the meanest flower that blows.”
It is this underlying consciousness of essential spiritual unity in
all existence that gives to the work of both Blake and Wordsworth its
subtle power.
There could hardly be two more dissimilar ways of approaching Nature
than those of John Scott and William Blake. They stand at opposite
poles, the one with no sense of unity, no power of poetic fusion or
interpretation, but with a wide, accurate, and often picturesque
assemblage of natural facts; the other with a prevailing tone of
unreality and mysticism, a fine scorn of the actual, but with a swift
recognition of the spirit of Nature, and an abiding sense of cosmic
unity. Yet each represents a characteristic phase of the new feeling
for Nature as seen in Wordsworth. On the one hand, the practiced eye
and the inevitable ear; on the other, the vision and the faculty divine.
In its significance as a prophecy of Wordsworth and Shelley, the early
poetry of William Blake is of especial importance.
Crabbe’s poetry falls into two periods, the first one closing with “The
Newspaper” in 1785, and the second beginning with “The Parish Register”
after an interval of twenty-two years. In the first of these periods we
find but slight use of external Nature. The occasional similitudes are
of a formal conventional type. The two longest descriptive passages are
of a dismal winter scene,[462] and of some sterile summer fields that
mock man’s need with profitless blooms.[463] There is no expression of
pleasure in Nature. It is her pitiless, anti-human aspects that Crabbe
sees. The charm of Nature independent of utility seems to have no
meaning for him. He consciously repudiates
Clear skies, clear streams, soft banks, and sober bowers,
Deer, whimpering brooks, and wind-perfuming flowers,
as unworthy poetic material.[464] Rough or barren Nature as the
background or occasion of man’s misery is the thought of these early
poems.
Crabbe’s second period does not properly belong in a study of
development which has “The Lyrical Ballads” as its _terminus
ad quem_, but it may be briefly spoken of here because of the
interesting contrast it offers to the first period. A suggestive study
might be made of the descriptive element in “The Village” (1783) as
compared with that of “The Borough” (1810). The scene of each is a
seaside village on the Suffolk coast, but we note many changes in the
presentation. In the first place, in “The Borough” Nature plays a
much more important part than in “The Village.” There is a leisurely
elaborateness of description as if the poet enjoyed the work for its
own sake. There is, to be sure, insistence on the ugly realistic
details of the scenes about a country town, but there is in addition
a recognition that even along this rocky coast and in these barren
fields where Nature defies man’s industry there may be found her gift
of beauty. The “greedy ocean” of “The Village” is now “a glorious page
of nature’s book” on which the poorest may gaze with delight. The
firm, fair sands on quiet summer evenings, the lovely “limpid blue and
evanescent green” as shadows run over the waves on a fresh day, serene
winter-views where strange effects of fog add mystery to the scene,
the majesty of a storm at sea--all these are now reckoned a part of
the pleasures of the poor in a seaside village. The sterile fields,
too, have rare blossoms and curious grasses. There are pleasant walks
with every scene rich in beauty. The evening twilight is sweet with
jasmine odors.[465] “The Borough” is as realistic as “The Village,”
but it has a broader outlook and depicts the attractive as well as
the forbidding aspects of the Suffolk coast near Aldborough. In later
poems the scope becomes still wider. Besides the frequent strong and
truthful ocean pictures there are some beautiful descriptions of
autumn days, moonlight nights, and soft, rich inland scenes. It is
especially noteworthy that though there are seldom any gay or bright
aspects of Nature presented, yet Nature is no longer represented as a
force inimical to man. On the contrary, there is something in even her
most useless forms that gives to man a strangely profound pleasure.
The simple music of a cascade has in it a soothing power that words
will not express. In the clear, silent night there is a quiet joy
that lessens the sting of mortal pain. These positive expressions of
pleasure in Nature are not numerous, but they are important as marking
a distinct change of tone. They are the more significant because they
occur chiefly in the poems after 1819.
Yet it must not pass unnoticed that what Crabbe wrote in these late
poems, he had perceived and felt in his youth. In his description of
Richard he gives an account of his own boyhood. Of the ocean he says,
I loved to walk where none had walked before
About the rock that ran along the shore.
* * * * *
Here had I favorite stations, where I stood
And heard the murmurs of the ocean flood,
With not a sound beside, except when flew
Aloft the lapwing, or the gray curlew.
* * * * *
Pleasant it was to view the sea-gulls strive
Against the storm, or in the ocean dive
With eager scream, or when they dropping gave
Their closing wings to sail upon the wave.
* * * * *
Nor pleased it less around me to behold
Far up the beach the yesty sea-foam rolled;
Or from the shore upborne, to see on high
Its frothy flakes in wild confusion fly:
While the salt spray that clashing billows form
Gave to the taste a feeling of the storm.[466]
He recalls how he explored every creek and bay, how he took long walks
over the hilly heath and mossy moors. Most of the scenery in “The
Borough” as well as that in “The Village” is a memory picture of the
country he knew so well in boyhood. It seems strange that this genuine
love and accurate knowledge of Nature should not have found fuller
expression in his early poetry. The explanation is perhaps twofold. His
interest was primarily in man. He said that the finest scenes in Nature
were less attractive to him than faces on a crowded street. He meant to
be the portrait painter of poor people as he had seen them in a seaside
village. His bitter pictures of country vice and ignorance and folly
had in them no touch of patronage or contempt. He simply gave a hard,
truthful representation of sordid life, and Nature had no meaning for
him except as it was brought into connection with that life. When in
after years his own lot was a happier one, and when a wider experience
had brought him into contact with thrifty country folk, the bitterness
of his early thought of man was greatly modified. With new views of
man came an openness of mind to the gentler aspects of Nature. The
real love of his boyhood, no longer crushed down by an over-mastering
sense of human misery, was allowed free play. Furthermore, his later
work was doubtless influenced by the new spirit of poetry about him.
His son says that while at first but a cool admirer of the Lake poets,
he came soon to love them and took no books oftener in his hands. All
of Crabbe’s work in which there is much use of Nature comes more than
ten years after the “Lyrical Ballads,” hence his growingly full use of
Nature might easily be due in part to the influence of the new school
of poetry. His free life, the different class of peasants he saw, the
new poetry he was reading, would all have their effect in turning his
attention to Nature. But the Nature he chose to write about was that
which he had known and loved as a boy.
William Cowper as a poet of Nature, is marked first by the narrowness
of the limits within which he writes. Mountains[467] are merely
mentioned. Night is nowhere described. Moonlight plays no part in
his poetry.[468] The stars are occasionally spoken of, but only in a
conventional manner as “shining hosts,” “fair ministers of light,” or
“beamy fires.” Of wild scenery there is none. The nearest approach to
it is in two brief descriptions of rocky bluffs on the seashore.[469]
His references to the ocean are brief and not of much importance; nor
are there any storms except in a few lines about “a driving, dashing
rain” with thunder and lightning used as an “apt similitude.”[470] The
one winter storm is merely a gentle fall of snow that comes after the
evening curtains are tight drawn.[471] The similitudes, though often
carefully elaborated, show little if any new use of Nature, and they
are drawn from a small number of natural facts.[472]
The explanation of this narrowness of limit is twofold. Cowper
described only what he had seen,[473] and he had seen no country but
his own, and only a very small and comparatively uninteresting portion
of that. The Downs about Bath, where he seems to have been for a short
time when he was about eighteen, was the nearest approach to wild
scenery that he had ever known. During the seventeen years before the
writing of “The Task” (1785) he had seldom left Olney, and never for
a fortnight together.[474] His knowledge was further limited by his
continued ill-health. He was ignorant of certain phases of the out-door
world simply because his physical infirmities kept him in the house.
This explanation of the narrow range of the Nature in Cowper’s poetry
is not entirely satisfactory, for when we come to his letters we find
suggestions of a wider experience and sympathy than the poems would
indicate. In a letter to Joseph Hill he wrote:
I was always an admirer of thunderstorms, even before I knew
whose voice I heard in them; but especially an admirer of
thunder rolling over the great waters. There is something
singularly majestic in the sound of it at sea, where the eye
and the ear have uninterrupted opportunity of observation, and
the concavity above, being made spacious, reflects it with more
advantage.... We have indeed been regaled with some of those
bursts of ethereal music.... But when the thunder preaches, an
horizon bounded by the ocean is the only sounding board.
To the Rev. William Unwin, September 26, 1781, he wrote:
I think, with you, that the most magnificent object under heaven
is the great deep; and can not but feel an unpolite species of
astonishment when I consider the multitudes that view it without
emotion, and even without reflection. In all its various forms
it is an object of all others the most suited to affect us with
lasting impressions of the awful power that created and controls
it. I am the less inclined to think this negligence excusable,
because, at a time of life when I gave as little attention to
religious subjects as any man, I yet remember that the waves
would preach to me, and that in the midst of dissipation I had
an ear to hear them. One of Shakespeare’s characters says, “I
am never merry when I hear sweet music.” The same effect that
harmony seems to have had upon him I have experienced from the
sight and sound of the ocean, which have often composed my
thoughts into a melancholy not unpleasing nor without its use.
He had also, during these years at Olney, made many an imaginary
evening journey to remote lands by means of books of travel, of which
he was especially fond. But when he came to write poems, only what he
had known at first hand and with long familiarity occurred to him.
Experiences merely casual, or remote in time, and facts gained from
books slipped away. He remembered only what he habitually saw. The
scenes about Olney he knew, literally, by heart, and of these he wrote.
A characteristic excellence of Cowper’s treatment of Nature is that,
within his narrow circuit, his knowledge is of unusual fulness and
accuracy. The charm of truthful description is everywhere apparent.
In pictures of homely country occupations, such as feeding the
hens,[475] foddering the cattle,[476] cutting wood,[477] plowing,[478]
threshing,[479] there are no false touches, no hasty work. All is
the result of first-hand, leisurely, sympathetic observation. His
description of the garden is from memory, but it almost seems as if he
were walking from flower to flower and taking notes, so minute is the
characterization, so exact each epithet in the representation of the
various colors, forms, odors, and ways of growth of the flowers in this
garden that the poet sees under the snows of winter.[480]
The same love of precise detail is illustrated in his descriptions of
trees. In noting their color he does not, like Thomson, enjoy general,
broadly inclusive words, but he gives the exact shade and tells to
what tree it belongs. When he takes a walk he sees that the trunks of
the ash, the lime, and the beech shine distinctly under their shadowy
foliage. The willow is a “wannish gray.” The poplar is likewise gray,
but there is a touch of silver in the lining of the leaves. The elm is
deeper green than the ash, and the oak of a deeper green still. The
maple, the beech, and the lime have glossy leaves that shine in the
sun. The sycamore changes from green to tawny, and then to scarlet,
according to the season.[481]
This highly differentiated knowledge is evident also in various
passages on the sounds of Nature. In a letter to Newton he wrote: “The
notes of all our birds and fowls please me, without one exception; ...
and as to insects ... in whatever key they sing, from the gnat’s fine
treble to the bass of the humble bee, I admire them all.”
Equally specific is his record of the sounds from winds and waters, as
in these lines:
Rills that slip
Through the cleft rock, and chiming as they fall
Upon loose pebbles, lose themselves at length
In matted grass that with a livelier green
Betrays the secret of their silent course.[482]
Or these about forest sounds:
Mighty winds
That sweep the skirt of some far-spreading wood
Of ancient growth, make music not unlike
The dash of ocean on his winding shore.[483]
In wider descriptions, as of extended views, there is absolutely no
blurring of edges. The picture is as clear, distinct, and exact as a
photograph. There is no inartistic mixing of foreground and background.
A good example is the view described in the first book of “The
Task.”[484] The eye travels over the landscape with its river shining
like molten glass; on its banks droop the elms, on either side are
level plains sprinkled with cattle, beyond is the sloping land covered
with hedgerows, groves, heaths, with here and there a square tower or
tall spire, and in the distance smoking towns; and at last the scene is
lost in the clouds on the horizon.
Many little pictures, complete in a few lines, serve even better to
illustrate the exquisite truth of Cowper’s work. Note this description
of the shifting lights in a forest pathway:
While beneath
The chequered earth seems restless as a flood
Brushed by the wind. So sportive is the light
Shot through the boughs, it dances as they dance,
Shadow and sunshine intermingling quick,
And darkening and enlightening, as the leaves
Play wanton, every moment, every spot.[485]
Or this of the squirrel just come from winter quarters in
some lonely elm:
Flippant, pert, and full of play:
He sees me, and at once, swift as a bird,
Ascends the neighboring beech; there whisks his brush,
And perks his ears, and stamps, and cries aloud,
With all the prettiness of feign’d alarm
And anger insignificantly fierce.[486]
Equally felicitous are the descriptions of tall grass fledged with icy
feathers on a frosty morning,[487] or of the redbreast in a sheltered
woodland path in winter.[488] These pictures and other similar ones
immediately take a permanent place in one’s mental picture gallery.
It would be difficult indeed for a painting to make the light dance
as it does in that forest path. The squirrel absolutely tingles with
life. The right word comes easily and the lines show exquisite deftness
of literary touch. It is rare in any poetry to find more excellent
examples of pure description than these and other passages in “The
Task.” Cowper had the mind that watches and receives. He looked about
him and wrote down in simple, sincere words the loveliness he found. He
took notes, but they were of the right sort, mental and unconscious,
the inevitable imprint on a sensitive mind of scenes that had
ministered to his deepest need.
The ministry of Nature to human needs is a cardinal principle in
Cowper’s poetry. Nor was this conception merely theoretic. It was
rather a transcript from his own experience. From childhood he had
loved Nature,[489] and poems about Nature,[490] and he had always
planned to live in the country.[491] After years of disappointment and
terrifying fears, comparative peace came to him amid quiet country
scenes. The instincts of his early days revived. Nature offered
him a paradise of rich delights. She enchanted him. She gave him
heart-consoling joys. She sweetened his bitter life, alluring him with
smiles from gloom to happiness. The glory of each new morning was a
lesson in hope. He found in Nature the nurse of wisdom, a power that
could compose his passions and exalt his mind. He felt that in the
country God spoke directly to his heart.[492]
The obverse of this genuine love of the country is an equally genuine
detestation of the town and town standards. The crowds that swarm to
city streets are the subjects of repeated invectives, and there is even
more emphatic scorn of sham lovers of Nature, as cockneys in suburban
villas; girls who but for the show and dress-parade of the country
would hurry back to the city; men who love hunting and fishing, and
call it a love of Nature; sentimentalists, who exclaim over Thomson’s
poetry, but prefer to read it in the city.[493] His own relationship
with Nature was too intimate and too sacred to admit of indifference or
profanation on the part of others.
Cowper’s literary use of Nature was largely determined by his purpose
in writing. His poetical thesis received its dogmatic summing-up in the
famous dictum,
God made the country and man made the town,[494]
and to the establishment of this thesis nearly all his use of Nature is
made more or less directly subservient.
This is clearly seen in his use of summaries. He has a habit of
analyzing Nature into separate facts and then classifying these facts
under topics. For instance, to make a list of his sounds one hardly
needs to search through the poems. They will be found already grouped
together. So, too, the garden flowers, the greenhouse flowers, the
colors of trees, country occupations, and country pleasures, are
arranged under heads instead of being scattered through various
descriptions. Then there are many summaries of miscellaneous facts.
Now the literary purpose of nearly every assemblage of details is the
establishment or illustration of some point connected with the general
conception of the superior attractions of the country. The catalogues
of facts have a definite argumentative value, and the artistic
selection of these facts out of the mass known is determined by the
especial point under consideration. In “Retirement” there is a rapid
enumeration of many phases of Nature in various seasons, the purpose
being to show that all forms of Nature are pleasing to a poet’s mind.
The following passage is a good example of a summary the purpose of
which is to present a concrete, picturesque, amplified statement of the
creed that Nature gives a wisdom higher than can come from books:
But trees, and rivulets, whose rapid course
Defies the check of winter, haunts of deer,
And sheep-walks populous with bleating lambs,
And lanes, in which the primrose ere her time
Peeps through the moss that clothes the hawthorn root,
Deceive no student. Wisdom there, and truth,
Not shy, as in the world, and to be won
By slow solicitation, seize at once
The roving thought, and fix it on themselves.[495]
Frequent summaries are used to show that in the country God gives
especial revelations of his power. The long flower catalogue is to
show that the beauty of the flushing spring but speaks to man of the
in-dwelling of God.[496] The ceaseless activity of Nature is attested
by another summary.[497] Still further summaries illustrate the power
of Nature over the man wearied with cares of state.[498] The beautiful
summary of rural sounds is to show the exhilarating effect of Nature
on the languid mind and heart.[499] It is this underlying purpose that
gives unity to passages which would otherwise be hardly more than
catalogues.
Another characteristic way in which Cowper presents Nature is in
descriptive passages used as a background for his own meditative
figure. The beautiful description of the sheltered path where he walked
in winter[500] would lose much of its meaning if we were not throughout
conscious of the poet’s presence and his delighted response to all the
influences about him. Nearly all the passages that might otherwise be
called pure description are given warmth and tone by the fact that we
go with the poet, and, as it were, hear him talk about the scene as one
he has long known and loved, until it takes an added interest from
his personality, or we seem to see him in semi-identification with the
scenes. It is the apparent equality, the comradeship, between the hare,
the squirrel, and the poet in the solitary winter retreat that adds to
the beauty of the spot the needed human touch. Nature is thus suffused
with human experience and takes on a new interest. But it usually
happens that these descriptions become, further, either the appropriate
setting for a certain train of reflections on the part of the poet, or
they directly suggest these suggestions. In the winter retreat just
spoken of the fearless, innocent animal life becomes the occasion of
a long disquisition on the lesson of benevolence taught by Nature to
man. In the sheltered walk the poet finds his mind soothed and prepared
for a Wordsworthian contemplation on Nature as the teacher of the
wise, so that ultimately many of Cowper’s descriptions, as well as his
summaries, become contributory to his main purpose.
Cowper’s knowledge of natural facts was not more remarkable than
John Scott’s. His range was much narrower than Thomson’s. Other men
had loved Nature with passionate intensity. To other minds Nature
had suggested deep thoughts of God and man. Cowper came when many
elements of the new attitude toward Nature had been clearly voiced.
What marks him out as holding a unique position is not only that he
gave body and emphasis to the new thought, but especially that he
became its propagandist. He analyzed the effect of Nature on man, he
translated his personal experiences into a theory which he set himself
to interpret and promulgate. He wrote with the zeal of a convert. Joy
such as had come to him late in life was man’s natural heritage. Men
must be called back from the perverted and ruinous life of towns to
the simplicity of Nature. His theme is stated abstractly, repeated in
concrete form, illustrated and amplified with the patience and ardor
of absolute conviction. He was the preacher of the new religion of
Nature.
Robert Burns was deeply sensitive to the charms of Nature. In a letter
to Mrs. Dunlop he said:
I have some favorite flowers in Spring, among which are the
mountain-daisy, the harebell, the foxglove, the wild brier-rose,
the budding birk and the hoary hawthorn, that I view and hang
over, with particular delight. I never hear the loud, solitary
whistle of the curlew in a Summer noon, or the wild mixing
cadence of a troop of grey-plover in an Autumnal morning,
without feeling an elevation of soul like the Enthusiasm of
Devotion or Poetry.[501]
Again he says:
I have various sources of pleasure which are in a manner
peculiar to myself.... Such is the peculiar pleasure I take
in the season of Winter more than in the rest of the year....
There is scarcely any earthly object gives me more--I don’t know
if I should call it pleasure, but something which exalts me,
something which enraptures me--than to walk in the sheltered
side of a wood or high plantation in a cloudy winter day, and
hear a stormy wind howling among the trees and raving o’er the
plain. It is my best season for devotion; my mind is rapt up in
a kind of enthusiasm to _Him_ who ... walks on the wings of
the wind.[502]
Note also what Mr. Walker, his companion on the border tour, says of
him:
I had often, like others, experienced the pleasures which arise
from the sublime or elegant landscape, but I never saw those
feelings so intense as in Burns. When we reached a rustic hut
on the river Tilt, where it is overhung by a woody precipice,
from which there is a noble waterfall, he threw himself on
the heathy seat, and gave himself up to a tender, abstracted,
and voluptuous enthusiasm of imagination.... It was with much
difficulty that I prevailed upon him to leave the spot.[503]
This susceptibility to Nature was one of the signs by which “Coila”
knew that Burns would be the poet of Scotland. He represents her as
saying to him:
I saw thee seek the sounding shore,
Delighted with the dashing roar;
Or when the North his fleecy store
Drove thro’ the sky
I saw grim Nature’s visage hoar
Struck thy young eye.
Or when the deep green-mantl’d earth
Warm cherish’d ev’ry flow’ret’s birth
And joy and music pouring forth
In ev’ry grove,
I saw thee eye the gen’ral mirth
With boundless love.[504]
In his “Commonplace Book,” Burns records his eager desire to write
verse that shall make “the fertile banks of Irvine, the romantic
woodlands & sequestered scenes on Aire, and the healthy, mountainous
source, & winding sweep of Doon emulate Tay, Forth, Ettrick, Tweed,
&c.” And his love of Nature was limited in scope to just these scenes
of which he speaks. He had no interest in mountains or the sea. Mr.
Douglas calls attention to the fact that, “living in full face of
the Arran hills he never names them.”[505] He was as narrow in his
limits and as vividly local in the Nature he chose to represent as was
Cowper, but what he loved he loved with intensity. In the beautiful and
picturesque scenery about Ayr he found poetic inspiration. To William
Simson he said,
The muse, nae poet ever fand her,
Till by himself he learn’d to wander,
Adown some trottin burn’s meander,
An’ no think lang;
and in “The Brigs of Ayr” he says the simple bard may learn his tuneful
trade from every bough.
Burns’ knowledge of the Nature about him was abundant and exact, and he
was keenly critical of any note of falsity in the poems of others. He
objected to the “Banks of the Dee” because of the line,
And sweetly the _nightingale_ sang from the _tree_.
“In the first place,” he said, “the nightingale sings in a low bush,
but never from a tree; and in the second place, there never was a
nightingale seen or heard on the banks of the Dee, nor the banks of any
other river in Scotland. Exotic, rural imagery is always comparatively
flat.”[506]
Again he said of another song, “It is a fine song, but for
consistency’s sake, alter the name ‘Adonis.’ Was there ever such
banns published, as a purpose of marriage between _Adonis_ and
_Mary_? These Greek and Roman pastoral appellations have a flat,
insipid effect in a Scot song.”[507] He gives especial praise to
Rev. Dr. Cririe, because “like Thomson,” the poet had “looked into
Nature for himself,” and had nowhere been content with a “copied
description.”[508]
When Burns wrote a descriptive poem of set purpose he was comparatively
commonplace and uninteresting as in “The Fall of Foyers” or “Admiring
Nature.” His best descriptions come in, by chance as it were, in the
midst of some vivid human interests. One of the most beautiful is a
stanza in “Halloween”:
Whyles owre a linn the burnie plays,
As thro’ the glen it wimpl’t;
Whyles round a rocky scaur it strays,
Whyles in a wiel it dimpl’t;
Whyles glitter’d ta the nightly rays,
Wi’ bickering, dancing dazzle;
Whyles cookit underneath the braes,
Below the spreading hazel,
Unseen that night.
Work so perfect as this is rare in any age. The beauty of the poem is
simply the beauty of the stream itself.
Burns’ chief use of Nature, however, is in connection with man.
External Nature is illustration, background, frame, for human emotions.
“The Lass of Cressnock Banks” was written at twenty-two and is the
first one of his poems in which there is any distinct use of Nature.
It is merely an assemblage of twelve formally drawn-out similes
to represent the beauty of the lassie. Some of these similes are
conventional and unmeaning, as when her hair is likened to curling
mist on a mountain side,[509] her forehead to a rainbow, her lips
to ripe cherries, and her teeth to a flock of sheep. In later poems
the similitudes are simpler and sweeter, but they are drawn from a
small number of facts and those of the more obvious sort, as the
“simmer morn,” “the flower in May,” “the opening rose.” A much more
effective use of Nature is as dramatic background either by congruity
or contrast. As fine examples of the use of Nature to give the keynote
of the human emotion it accompanies we have the opening lines of the
“Elegy,” “Farewell Song to the Banks of Ayr,” “Raving Winds around Her
Blowing,” and “Farewell to Ballochmyle.” The more usual form is to
represent a natural picture in contrast to the human emotion, as in
“The Chevalier’s Lament,” “The Lament of Mary, Queen of Scots,” or best
of all, “The Banks of Doon.”
Ye banks and braes o’ bonny Doon,
How can ye bloom sae fresh and fair?
How can ye chant ye little birds,
And I sae weary, fu’ of care!
It is characteristic of Burns that his knowledge was wider and his
sympathy keener in the realm of animate than of inanimate Nature. He
apparently thought of animals almost as if they had been human. The
address to a mouse is as tenderly and genuinely sympathetic as if it
had been to a hurt child. On winter nights he listens to the wind and
cannot sleep for thinking of the “ourie cattle” and “silly sheep” and
helpless birds that “cow’r” with “chittering wing.”[510] He scorned
hunting and said there was no warm poetic heart that did not inly bleed
at man’s savage cruelty.[511] He found it impossible to reconcile
so-called “sport” with his ideas of virtue.[512] He knew animals,
especially birds, in an intimate, friendly fashion. In the description
of their manners and habits there is the most minute realism. The
following phrases are illustrative: “Ye grouse that crap the heather
bud;” “Ye curlews calling thro’ a clud;” “Ye whirring paitrick brood;”
“Ye fisher herons watching eels;” “sooty coots;” “speckled teals;”
“whistling plover;”
Clam’ring craiks at close o’ day
’Mang fields o’ flow’ring clover gay;
and
Ye duck and drake, wi’ airy wheels
Circling the lake.[513]
In accurate first-hand observation, in abundant knowledge, in the use
of felicitous descriptive epithets, in great personal joy in Nature, in
delight in winter, in love for animals, and in a critical estimate of
the value of truthful portrayal, Burns represents the new spirit.
William Lisle Bowles is another of the reputed “fathers” of modern
poetry. His slender title to the distinction thus conferred upon him by
Rev. George Gilfillan,[514] rests on the admiration of Coleridge,[515]
Southey,[516] and Lovel for his early poems.[517] From 1798 to the end
of his life Bowles wrote constantly, so the list of his works is a long
one; but in the present study we are concerned only with the poems
before 1798, the ones that stirred Coleridge to abandon metaphysics for
poetry.
From fourteen to nineteen years of age Bowles was in Winchester School
under the tutelage of Dr. Joseph Warton, who won the boy’s confidence
and inspired him with his own tastes. In the “Monody on the Death of
Dr. Warton,” written eighteen years after these school days, Bowles
says of Warton,
Thy cheering voice,
O Warton! bade my silent heart rejoice,
And wake to love of nature; every breeze
On Itchen’s brink was melody; the trees
Waved in fresh beauty; ...
... And witness thou
Catherine, upon whose foss-encircled brow
We met the morning, how I loved to trace
The prospect spread around....
So passed my days with new delight.
Warton also taught him to love literature. He learned to read Greek
poets with “young-eyed sympathy,” and he went with “holier joy” to
The lonely heights where Shakespeare sat sublime.
Charmed, the lad bent his soul
Great Milton’s solemn harmonies to hear.
“Unheeded midnight hours” were beguiled by the wild song of Ossian, and
his fancy found a “magic spell” in the “Odes” of his master, Dr. Warton.
The influences of these early school days had awakened Bowles to love
of Nature and of poetry, and when sorrow came it was to Nature and
to poetry that he turned for relief. His “Sonnets” are the direct
and genuine expression of a personal grief. They were composed, he
says, during a tour in which he “sought forgetfulness of the first
disappointment in early affections,”[518] and they are pervaded by a
melancholy unmistakably real. But along with this deep sadness is a
frequent recognition of the power of Nature to give at least temporary
respite from grief. Not only does she “steep each sense in still
delight,”[519] but she bestows “a soothing charm.”[520] The lovely
sights and sounds of morning
Touch soft the wakeful nerve’s according string.[521]
The river Itchen brings “solace to his heart.”[522] After visiting the
Cherwell he says:
Whate’er betide, yet something have I won
Of solace, that may bear me on serene.[523]
In the midst of sorrow he is
Thankful that still the landscape beaming bright
Can wake the wonted sense of pure delight.[524]
What Bowles saw in Nature was largely determined by his state of
mind. His own sadness led him to a quick perception of the pensive or
melancholy suggestions in any scene. He loved sequestered streams,
romantic vales, the hush of evening. The sounds he heard were soft
and plaintive. The river Wainsbeck makes “a plaintive song among its
“mossy-scattered rocks.”[525] He listens to the wind and seems to hear
a plaint of sorrow.[526] Sea sounds are
Like melodies that mourn upon the lyre.[527]
There is strange music in the stirring wind
When lowers the autumnal eve.[528]
Of the bells at Ostend he says:
And hark! with lessening cadence now they fall;
And now, along the white and level tide,
They fling their melancholy music wide;
Bidding me many a tender thought recall
Of summer days, and those delightful years
When from an ancient tower, in life’s fair prime,
The mournful magic of their mingling chime
First waked my wondering childhood into tears.[529]
Again, his own striving after self-control leads him to look with
pleasure on such natural objects as have withstood the shock of
tempests. Rugged Malvern Hill, on which the “parting sun sits smiling,”
teaches him a lesson of victory over grief, and he exclaims,
Ev’n as thou
Dost lift in the pale beam thy forehead high,
Proud mountain! whilst the scattered vapours fly
Unheeded round thy breast--so, with calm brow
The shades of sorrow I may meet, and wear
The smile unchanged of peace, though pressed by care![530]
Some of the brief descriptions in these sonnets are not without a
certain beauty in themselves, as in this passage from “Dover Cliffs”:
On these white cliffs, that calm above the flood
Uprear their shadowing heads, and at their feet
Hear not the surge that has for ages beat,
How many a lonely wanderer has stood!
And, whilst the lifted murmur met his ear,
And o’er the distant billows the still eve
Sailed slow, has thought of all his heart must leave
Tomorrow.
But here, as elsewhere in the poems, the chief thought is human grief;
and the most important characteristic of the poems, taken as a whole,
is the intimate union between the spirit of a man and the spirit of
Nature. It was always Bowles’ theory, says Clark,[531] that Nature is
the true subject of poetry; but he does not, in his later work, strike
so true and simple a note as in these early sonnets.
Such general statements as are to be drawn from this study of specific
poets can be more advantageously made after the chapters on “Fiction,”
“Travels,” “Gardening,” and “Painting,” for these chapters offer facts
that modify or confirm the impressions gained from the poetry.
CHAPTER III
FICTION
The great achievement of the eighteenth century was in the development
of fiction. The famous names here are, of course, Richardson,
Fielding, Smollett, and Sterne. After them, and also to a less degree
contemporary with them, are many writers of fiction the quality of
whose work has consigned them to the list of “The Neglected, the
Disdained, the Forgotten,” and in most cases it would be a literary
misfortune if by any chance they should fall into the fourth class,
“The Resuscitated.” As literature they are almost unreadable. It
is only from the historical point of view that they can arouse any
real interest. For the present purpose I do not pretend to have read
all the works of fiction written in the eighteenth century. The
forty-three mentioned here were selected because by their dates they
represent the century as a whole, and because they represent also the
various kinds of fiction. I shall first speak of these briefly in
chronological order, and then indicate such general statements as may
seem the legitimate outcome of the facts presented. The one point to be
considered is the use made of external Nature in the novel or romance.
The “Sir Roger de Coverley” papers (Addison and Steele, 1712) are
continuous narratives marked by some at least of the characteristics of
the coming English novel. Many of these papers purport to be written
from the country and Will Wimble complains that they “begin to smell
confoundedly of woods and meadows.” After a time the author finds
himself growing short of subjects in the country, and returns to
town as the true “field of game for sportsmen of his species.” Though
written from the country the papers have nothing about country scenes
except frequent phrases such as, “We then took a walk in the fields,”
and one brief description of “a solemn walk of elms,” unless, indeed,
we might add the pleasure the author took in his friend’s poultry yard.
The stress is all on country people.
“Robinson Crusoe” (Defoe, 1719), the first great example of the
_voyage imaginaire_, necessarily regards Nature from the point
of view of immediate utility. The whole interest of the book rests on
the mechanical ingenuity whereby man subdues Nature. There are few if
any passages where Robinson Crusoe is represented as being in any way
sensitive to the beauty or charm of Nature.
In “Pamela” (Richardson, 1740) there is much talk about the value of
travel in Great Britain and on the continent, but there is not a word
about the scenery of the places visited. Pamela sums up her impressions
of travel in England in one sentence. “These excursions have given me
infinite delight and pleasure, and enlarged my notions of the wealth
and power of the kingdom” (Vol. III, p. 304). When Lord B. and Pamela
are spending their honeymoon in their Kentish house they plan certain
improvements such as cutting a vista through the coppice; they train
the vines around the windows because they love the mingled odors of
woodbines and jessamines; and they listen for two hours at a stretch
to the “responsive songs of two warbling nightingales” (Vol. II,
p. 163). Earlier in their career, during a walk in the garden, the
fragrance from a bank of flowers inspires Lord B. to sing a typical
eighteenth-century song of which this is one stanza:
The purple violet, damask rose,
Each, to delight your senses, blows.
The lilies ope as you appear;
And all the beauties of the year
Diffuse their odours at your feet,
Who give to ev’ry flower its sweet.
There is not a hint in the book of any feeling toward Nature except
such as is characteristic of the pseudo-classical poetry.
In “Joseph Andrews” (Fielding, 1742) there are four brief passages
in which Nature is touched upon. Two of these are evidently meant as
satires on the ordinary descriptions of sunrise. The first one is as
follows:
“Aurora now began to show her blooming cheeks over the hills, whilst
ten millions of feathered songsters, in jocund chorus, repeated odes
a thousand times sweeter than those of our laureate” (p. 43; cf. p.
219). The longest description is of a vale with a winding rivulet, many
trees, and soil “spread with a verdure which no paint could imitate,”
the whole place being such as “might have raised romantic ideas in
older minds than those of Joseph and Fanny” (p. 226).
In “Jonathan Wild” (Fielding, 1743) there are no references to the
world of Nature.
In “David Simple” (Sarah Fielding, 1744) the search of the hero for a
true friend is so complicated and absorbing an occupation that there is
no room for observation of the external world.
In “Clarissa Harlowe” (Richardson, 1748) there is one simile drawn from
Nature (Vol. II, p. 478), one mention of the “variegated prospects”
from Hampstead Heath (Vol. III, p. 198), and one reference to an
overgrown ivy so thick as to be a shelter from the rain (Vol. I, p.
394).
In “Roderick Random” (Smollett, 1748) there are no references to Nature.
Of the eight passages referring to Nature in “Tom Jones” (Fielding,
1749) two are satirical of the conventional descriptions and
similitudes of the day.
Aurora now first opened her casement, _Anglicé_, the day
began to break (Vol. II, p. 9).
As in the month of June, the damask rose, which chance hath
planted among the lilies, with their candid hues mixes his
vermilion; or, as some playful heifer in the pleasant month of
May diffuses her odoriferous breath over the flowery meadows; or
as, in the blooming month of April, the gentle, constant dove,
perched on some fair bough, sits meditating on her mate, so sits
Sophia, looking a hundred charms, and breathing as many sweets,
her thoughts being fixed on her Tommy (Vol. II, p. 61).
A third passage, also satirical, is, “And now the moon began to put
forth her silver light, as the poets call it (though she looked at
that time more like a piece of copper)” (Vol. II, p. 172). There is
one appreciative reference to the attractive scenery of Devon and
Dorset. The description of Mr. Allworthy’s estate which owed “less to
art than to nature,” is modern in tone and marks the break already
made with the formal garden (Vol. I, p. 12). In another passage there
is an expression of pleasure in a wide prospect, seen by moonlight,
for “the solemn light which the moon casts on all objects is beyond
expression beautiful, especially to an imagination which is desirous of
cultivating melancholy ideas” (Vol. I, p. 422). The other passages are
of no significance.
“Peter Wilkins” (Robert Paltock, 1751) is the first and most famous of
the successors of “Robinson Crusoe.” The scene of Peter’s trials and
successes is laid in Africa and the southern islands. There is but one
brief passage in which there is even the slightest indication that the
author thought of Nature from any but the utilitarian point of view.
“Pompey the Little” (Coventry, 1751) is a romance ostensibly relating
with serio-comic minuteness the life and adventures of a lapdog much
in the manner of the _novele picaresco_ of Mendozo and Aleman, but
really dealing in thinly disguised social satire. It makes no use of
Nature, unless we may count poor Mr. Rhymer who looks at the moon and
quotes Milton to the extravagant amusement of a group of dandies who
observe him.
In “Peregrine Pickle” (Smollett, 1751) Peregrine sings one of the
conventional songs to Emilia, beginning,
Thy charms divinely bright appear
And add new splendor to the year.
This is the only use of Nature in the book. The eighteen months of
travel in France and Holland do not suggest a single phrase about the
scenery of those countries.
Mrs. Lennox’s “The Female Quixote” (1752) is a record of the absurd and
futile attempts of a beautiful maiden unfortunately brought up on “the
languishing love romances of the Calprenedos and the Scuderis” to make
over the practical world about her according to the laws of love and
chivalry. Almost all her adventures occur in the country, but there are
only two references to the out-door world. Of the estate of the marquis
it is said: “The most laborious endeavours of art had been expended to
make it appear like the beautiful product of wild uncultivated nature.”
In another passage the heroine is said to lead her unhappy friend into
the garden, “supposing a person whose uneasiness proceeded from love
would be pleased with the sight of groves and streams.”
In “Ferdinand Count Fathom” (Smollett, 1753) there is merely a
conventional description of a furious storm.
In “Sir Charles Grandison” (Richardson, 1753) there are two interesting
passages concerning the estate of Sir Charles. It was his aim not
“to force and distort nature, but to help it as he finds it, without
letting art be seen in his works, where he can possibly avoid it”
(Vol. II, p. 276). A part of the estate was evidently laid out
according to the ideas of Kent and Brown, but the orchard “with its
regular semicircle rows of pears, apples, cherries, plums and apricots,
arranged according to the season of flowering,” belonged to the days of
Sir Thomas, when symmetry and regularity ruled (Vol. IV, p. 238). In
this novel also is Richardson’s frequently quoted description of Savoy,
“equally noted for its poverty and rocky mountains ... one of the worst
countries under heaven” (Vol. III, pp. 138–42).
We have now passed the middle of the century and there has not been
in the works of fiction mentioned a single passage indicating any
close observation or love of Nature, and hardly a passage showing
any knowledge of Nature except as found in parks and gardens. But
in 1756–66 there appeared a fantastic novel by Thomas Amory called
“The Life of John Buncle,” which is notable in the present study
because nearly all the adventures whereby the hero gains and loses
his seven Socinian wives occur among the mountains of Westmoreland
and Cumberland. We have but to compare the book with Mrs. Ward’s
“Robert Elsmere” to see how extravagantly unreal are most of Amory’s
descriptions. They often contain marvels equal to those of “Vathek.”
The mountains are made as lofty and dangerous as the most inaccessible
Alps, and they are so heaped in together that progress from one
valley to another would be out of the question were it not for
convenient caves and natural tunnels by which the venturesome hero
makes his way from vale to vale. But in the midst of these absurdities
and impossibilities, there are occasional passages of effective
description, and of real appreciation of wild mountain scenery. It is
an entirely new note in fiction and it followed close upon the poem
by Dr. Dalton, which was probably the first poetical tribute to the
scenery of the Lakes. Mr. Amory aptly describes mountain tarns as
pools of “black, standing, unfathomable water” (Vol. I, p. 290). He
frequently gives enthusiastic descriptions of the views from mountain
tops. In one passage he says: “I climbed up to the top by a steep,
craggy way. This was very difficult and dangerous, but I had an
enchanting prospect when I gained the summit of the hill.... The vast
hills had a fine effect in the view” (Vol. II, p. 122; cf. Vol. I, p.
167).
Of Westmoreland he says:
The Vale of Keswick and Lake of Derwentwater, in Cumberland,
are thought by those who have been there to be the finest point
of view in England, and extremely beautiful they are, far more
so than Dr. Dalton has been able to make them appear in his
descriptive poem; or than the Doctor’s brother, Mr. Dalton, has
painted them in his fine drawings; and yet they are inferior
in charms to the vale, the lake, the brooks, the shaded sides
of the surrounding mountains, and the tuneful falls of water
to which we came in Westmoreland. In all the world, I believe,
there is not a more glorious scene to be seen in the fine time
of the year (Vol. III, p. 93).
And, again, “Westmoreland is the most beautiful and romantic solitude
in the world” (Vol. III, p. 151). The first volume of Amory’s book
appeared in 1756. The other volumes, written at intervals thereafter,
were published in 1766. The best passages are in the third volume, but
at the latest they must have been written three years before Gray made
his tour to the lakes. It would be interesting to know whether Gray had
read “John Buncle,” as Amory had Dalton’s poem. At any rate Amory’s
novel shows how early the Lake District was visited by lovers of the
beautiful, for he not only describes it himself, but he speaks as if
there were already a good deal of discussion as to the rival charms of
Keswick and Westmoreland.
In “Rasselas” (Dr. Johnson, 1759) the scenery of the Happy Valley is
briefly described. Since it was a spot where “all the diversities
of the world were brought together, the blessings of nature were
collected, and its evils were extracted and excluded,” it would be in
vain to look for first-hand description. We have merely an impossible
combination of millennial details. After leaving the Happy Valley Imlac
wanders through the world, but his only impression from Nature is a
feeling of repulsion at the “barren uniformity” of the ocean. When
he tried to be a poet he did, to be sure, turn to Nature. He “ranged
mountains and deserts for images and similitudes” in true classical
style. He studied trees and flowers, he wandered along rivulets,
and sometimes he watched the clouds, for “to a poet nothing can be
useless.” Dr. Johnson’s use of Nature in “Rasselas” is tasteless and
insipid.
Sterne’s one allusion to Nature in “Tristram Shandy” (1759–67) is too
characteristic to be omitted. It occurs in the description of a journey.
There is nothing more terrible to travel-writers than a large
rich plain, especially if it is without great rivers or bridges;
and presents nothing to the eye but one unvaried picture of
plenty; for after they have once told you that it is delicious
or delightful (as the case may happen); that the soil was
grateful and that nature pours out all her abundance, etc., they
have then a large plain upon their hands which they know not
what to do with and which is of little or no use to them but to
carry them to the next town.
In “Almoran and Hamet” (Hawkesworth, 1761), an oriental tale, there is
no use of Nature except in a few far-fetched similes, and one or two
phrases about the lengthening evening shadows.
In “Sir Launcelot Greaves” (Smollett, 1762) there is no reference to
Nature except in a sarcastic allusion to poets who cannot talk of a
beautiful girl without “blending the lily and the rose and bringing in
a parcel of similes of cowslips, carnations, pinks, and daisies.”
Mrs. Brooke’s “The History of Lady Julia Mandeville” (1763) has a hero
and a heroine who rejoice in “a genuine taste for elegant nature,” and
their letters contain some descriptive passages evidently intended to
combine vividness and elegance. The gardens and parks behind the house
are “romantic beyond the wantonness of imagination,” and the whole
adjoining country has “every charm of lovely unadorned nature.” Beyond
the house there is “an avenue of the tallest trees which lets in the
prospect of a fruitful valley, bounded at a distance by a mountain,
down the sides of which rushes a foaming cascade, which spreads into
a thousand meandering streams in the vale below.” In the woods are
rustic temples “in the most elegant style of simplicity.” At the close
of a walk they come to a grotto “wildly lovely, its entrance almost
hidden by the vines that flaunt over its top,” and there they find
an opportune repast with servants in attendance. The motherly care
with which Mrs. Brooke preserves her delicately bred characters from
roughness or fatigue or hunger interferes somewhat with her attempts
to represent “simple, unadorned nature,” and in spite of her protests
against “the gloomy haunts of London” she never quite gets out into the
free country. Her raptures have a forced, made-up air. The exclamatory
ecstacy of such passages as the following is certainly open to
suspicion:
“What a divine morning! how lovely is the face of nature! The
blue serene of Italy with the lovely verdure of England! But
behold a more charming object than nature herself! The sweet,
the young, the blooming Lady Julia!”
There is a more genuine ring to Lady Wilmot’s protest, “The finest
landscape is a dreary wild without people.”
Most of the action in Mrs. Brooke’s second novel, “Emily Montague,”
is laid in Canada, which country Mrs. Brooke had visited. The book
represents her enjoyment of the strange scenes about her. The beauty
of the river Montmorenci more than repays Miss Arabella Fermor for
the fatigues of a voyage across the Atlantic. The hero finds that the
streams and mountains of England seem petty when he is in the presence
of the majesty and sublimity of the western world. The descriptions are
perhaps over-elaborate, but they are not ineffective, and they show
much closer knowledge of natural phenomena and more real interest in
them, than do the tamer passages in the preceding novel.
In the famous “Castle of Otranto” (Walpole, 1764) there is no use
whatever of Nature.
In Brooke’s “Fool of Quality” (1766) the sky is fitly spoken of as “a
stupendous expanse sumptuously furnished with a profusion of planets.”
Certainly no other sort of sky would have presumed to bend down over
Mr. Brooke’s stupendous little prig of a hero. The chief use of Nature,
however, is in similes for Harry’s countenance which is “like sunshine
on a dark day,” or a “lake on a summer’s evening showing heaven in its
bosom,” or, if bathed in tears as it frequently was, “like the sun in a
shower.”
The charm of “The Vicar of Wakefield” (Goldsmith, 1766) rests upon
its sweetness and purity, its quaint humor, and its quality of fresh,
open-air wholesomeness. Its use of Nature is of the most casual,
unemphasized sort. There are not in the whole work twenty-five lines
concerning the country scenes in which all the action takes place. And
yet these simple, direct phrases have a magical power of suggestion.
The seat under the hawthorn where the family drank their tea and
watched the sunset, the dinner in the hayfield, the brief description
of the little farm, have in them the power of reality and do more
to give a free, out-of-doors atmosphere to the story than all Mrs.
Brooke’s panegyrics. But here, as in Goldsmith’s other works, the
stress is on the characters, and the little, truthful pictures of
Nature seem almost accidental.
In Sterne’s “Sentimental Journey” (1768) there is no use of external
Nature.
Of Mackenzie’s “Man of Feeling” (1771) the same may be said unless,
indeed, we except one reference to a scene “not unlike Salvator’s
backgrounds.”
Smollett’s “Humphrey Clinker” (1771) is the last of his novels and the
only one in which there is effective use of Nature. Smollett was born
and brought up in the valley of the Leven; and he spent some months
there before the final trip to Italy for his health. He was in Leghorn
about a year before he died, and during this year he wrote “Humphrey
Clinker.” It recounts the travels of Matthew Bramble in search of
health. The love of Nature comes out chiefly in the letters supposed to
be written from Scotland. He speaks with pleasure of the “huge dusky
mountains of the West Highlands, piled one over another,” and of Loch
Lomond, that “surprising body of pure, transparent water, unfathomably
deep in many places,” with its green, wooded islands. His delight in
the wild scenery of Scotland is thus expressed:
I have seen the Lago di Gardi, Albano, De Vico, Bolsena, and
Geneva, and upon my honor, I prefer Loch Lomond to them all; a
preference which is certainly owing to the verdant islands that
seem to float upon its surface, affording the most enchanting
objects of repose to the excursive view. Nor are the banks
destitute of beauties, which even partake of the sublime. On
this side they display a sweet variety of woodland, cornfield,
and pasture, with several agreeable villas emerging as it were
out of the lake, till at some distance the prospect terminates
in huge mountains, covered with heath, which being in the bloom,
affords a very rich covering of purple. Everything here is
romantic beyond imagination.... Above the house is a romantic
glen or cleft of a mountain covered with hanging woods, having
at bottom a stream of fine water that forms a number of cascades
in its descent to form the Leven; so that the scene is quite
enchanting.... This country is amazingly wild, especially
towards the mountains, which are heaped upon the backs of one
another, making a most stupendous appearance of savage nature,
with hardly any signs of cultivation, or even of population. All
is sublimity, silence, and solitude (pp. 261–65).
On the country of Ossian he says:
These are the lonely hills of Morven, where Fingal and his
heroes enjoyed the same pastime. I feel an enthusiastic pleasure
when I survey the brown heath that Ossian was wont to tread; and
hear the wind whistle through the bending grass.... The poems of
Ossian are in every mouth.
Smollett’s love for the Leven, that “charming stream ... transparent,
pastoral, delightful,” is further evidenced by this “Ode to the Leven,”
a single stanza of which may be quoted here:
Pure stream in whose transparent wave
My youthful limbs I wont to lave;
No torrents stain thy limpid source,
No rocks impede thy dimpling course,
That sweetly warbles o’er its bed,
With white round polished pebbles spread (p. 262).
Smollett has one character who labored under ἀγροφοβια, or _horror
of green fields_, but that was manifestly not his own case. Though
he completely ignored Nature in his other books, “Humphrey Clinker” is
ample proof of his sensitiveness to Nature and his descriptive power.
It needed a touch of homesickness and the vivifying force of early
associations to bring the feeling to the surface, but as soon as it
found expression there was revealed a closeness of observation and a
genuineness of affection for Nature in her milder forms not found in
any novel before “Humphrey Clinker.” The nearest approach to it is in
the fantastic work of Amory.
In Clara Reeve’s “Old English Baron” (1777) there is one brief
conventional passage about the morning serenade of the birds and the
fragrance of the woodbine (p. 27).
In “Julia de Roubigné” (1777) Mackenzie makes more use of Nature than
he had in “The Man of Feeling.” Julia and Savillon are both represented
as finding pleasure in the beautiful country around them. In one letter
Julia says: “Methinks I should hate to have been born in a town;
when I say my native brook, or my native hill, I talk of friends of
whom the remembrance warms my heart.” In the serenity of Nature she
finds calmness after spiritual tumult. Belville, the home of Julia,
is described as “a venerable pile, the remains of ancient Gothic
magnificence.” The most attractive part of the estate was “a wild and
rocky dell, where tasteless wealth had never warred on nature, nor even
elegance refined or embellished her beauties. The walks are only worn
by the tread of shepherds and the banks only smoothed by the feeding
of their flocks.” There is great regret expressed when the new owner
of Belville cuts down the trees, and puts in modern adornments “which
they call Chinese.” In this novel Mackenzie shows a real though narrow
appreciation of free, unsubdued Nature.
In Fanny Burney’s “Evelina” (1778) the only touch of Nature is a
criticism of Vauxhall Gardens as being too formal and regular. In
“Cecilia” (1782) there is no use of Nature.
William Beckford’s “Vathek” (1784) is an extravaganza where there is no
pretense of representing Nature as it is. A single quotation will give
the general tone. It is a description of a high mountain:
Upon it grew a hundred thickets of eglantine and other fragrant
shrubs, a hundred arbours of roses, jessamines and honeysuckle,
as many clumps of orange trees, cedar, and citron whose branches
interwoven with the palm, the pomegranate, and the vine,
presented every luxury that could regale the eye or the taste.
The ground was strewed with violets, harebells, and pansies, in
the midst of which sprang forth tufts of jonquils, hyacinths,
and carnations, with every other perfume that impregnates the
air.
In Dr. Moore’s “Zeluco” (1786) neither the hero himself, that “finished
model of depravity,” nor any of the characters associated with him,
show any knowledge of the existence of any world outside their own
intrigues and counter-intrigues.
Mrs. Inchbald’s “A Simple Story” (1791) is a study of true and false
education. There is in it no word concerning Nature. The same may be
said of her “Nature and Art,” published in 1796.
Godwin’s story, “Caleb Williams” (1794), has one brief, conventional
description of a sunrise. This ignoring of Nature seems the more
surprising in Godwin since his next novel, published ten years later,
“Fleetwood, or the New Man of Feeling,” is full of the wild scenery of
Wales and is really the study of a character made sensitive by early
and constant communion with Nature. But this novel would carry us into
the next century.
Another novel of some repute toward the close of the century is Robert
Bage’s “Hermsprong, or Man as He Is Not” (1796). It was read chiefly
for its political bias toward the popular democratical doctrines. The
scene is laid chiefly in the country and there are occasional pleasant
bits of description. They are unimportant, but the book cannot be
dismissed without a reference to the hero who was compelled, by lack
of funds, to seek a country retreat, and who fortified his failing
resolution to leave the beloved city by quoting Thomson’s “Seasons.”
The two authors who first made extensive use of Nature in fiction are
Mrs. Charlotte Smith and Mrs. Ann Radcliffe.
Mrs. Smith shows in her novels and poems a really ardent enjoyment,
though seldom a close knowledge, of Nature. She indulges in long and
animated descriptions of places of which she has only vaguely heard and
the result is sometimes as amazing as the scenes in “Vathek.” In “The
Old Manor House” (1793), her best work, a part of the scene is laid in
the northern United States and Canada. Here is her idea of spring in
that region:
The forest in only a few days after the severest weather, which
had buried the whole country in snow, burst into bloom, and
presented, beneath the tulip tree and the magnolia, a more
brilliant variety of flowers than art can collect in the most
cultivated European garden.
The following is a description of Canada on the banks of the St.
Lawrence, “a very few days” after the severest winter weather:
On the opposite side of the river lay an extensive savannah,
alive with cattle and coloured with such a variety of swamp
plants that their colour, even at that distance, detracted
something from the vivid green of the new-sprung grass.... The
acclivity on which the tents stood sinking very suddenly on the
left, there gave place to a cypress swamp ... while the rocks
rising suddenly and sharply were clothed with wood of various
species; the evergreen oak, the scarlet oak, the tulip tree
and magnolia, seemed bound together by festoons of flowers,
some resembling the convolvuluses of our garden, and others the
various sorts of clematis with vegenias and the Virginia creeper
... beneath these fragrant wreaths that wound about the trees,
tufts of rhododendrons, and azalia, of andromedas and calmias,
grew in the luxuriant beauty; and strawberries already ripening,
or even ripe, peeped forth among the rich vegetation of grass
and flowers.
Mrs. Smith’s imagination certainly had other laws than the dull ones
imposed by the facts of the case. She could hardly have mixed up zones
and seasons and flowers and fruits more successfully if she had tried.
But the notable point here is that there was in her mind an instinctive
and inevitable dwelling upon the scenery of the country through which
she led her hero. The English scenes are much better. The following
passage shows well her emotional openness to the influence of Nature.
Just as he arrived at the water, from the deep gloom of the
tall firs through which he passed, the moon appeared behind the
opposite coppices, and threw her long line of trembling radiance
on the water. It was a cold but clear evening, and, though early
in November, the trees were not yet entirely stripped of their
discoloured leaves; a low wind sounded hollow through the firs
and stone pines over his head, and then faintly sighed among
the reeds that crowded into the water; no other sound was heard
but, at distant intervals, the cry of the wild fowl concealed
among them, or the dull murmur of the current, which was now
low. Orlando had hardly ever felt himself so impressed with
those feelings which inspire poetic effusions: Nature appeared
to pause and to ask the turbulent and troubled heart of man,
whether his silly pursuits were worth the toil he undertook for
them. Peace and tranquillity seemed here to have retired to a
transient abode; and Orlando, as slowly he traversed the narrow
path over ground made hollow by the roots of these old trees,
stepped as lightly as if he feared to disturb them. Insensibly
he began to compare this scene, the scene he every day saw of
rural beauty and rural content with those into which his destiny
was about to lead him.
Mrs. Barbauld says that Mrs. Smith was one of the first to introduce
description of scenery into fiction. That she had predecessors we have
already seen, but it is true that she laid much more stress on Nature
than had any other novelist except Mrs. Radcliffe. Mrs. Smith has
frequent descriptions that are not needed for the progress of the plot
or the development of the characters, but are written purely for their
own sake. She also often uses Nature as dramatic background and she
represents her hero as deeply influenced by Nature. Mrs. Smith’s poems
further attest her love of Nature. In one poem she says,
Farewell, Aruna! on whose varied shore
My early vows were paid to Nature’s shrine.
In another she addresses the South Downs,
Ah, hills beloved, where once a happy child,
Your beechen shades, your turfs, your flowers among,
I wove your bluebells into garlands wild.
Mrs. Smith’s life was a most unhappy one, and she found her real
comfort in Nature.
Mrs. Radcliffe’s “Romance of a Forest” (1791) appeared two years before
“The Old Manor House,” and “The Mysteries of Udolpho” (1794) one
year after. In these novels by Mrs. Radcliffe the romantic landscape
was presented in its complete form. Except in the most rapid parts
of the story there is greater stress on the scenery than on the
characters. Emily, Adeline, and Clara seldom indulge in an emotion
without first describing the dell or glen or forest glade, to which
they have wandered. They are never too deeply agitated to observe the
glories of sunrise and sunset. A wide view can soothe any grief. This
susceptibility of the heroines to Nature is represented as one of their
greatest charms. Mrs. Radcliffe had never seen most of the scenes she
described. She had never been in France, Italy, or Switzerland. The
landscapes she gives us do not bear the stamp of reality. They are
ideal compositions but they are never merely an inventory nor are they
impossible combinations. Though not exactly true, they can be read
with pleasure because the details are blended into harmonious and
lovely pictures which seem to have caught the actual spirit of the
places described. She delighted in all kinds of Nature, peaceful or
wild, but her especial pleasure was in those phases of Nature ignored
by the classicists. Mountains, the ocean, the phenomena of the sky,
and deep forests, are chiefly dwelt upon in her descriptions. Her love
of the ocean is really a new element in the general attitude toward
Nature. Painting, poetry, and fiction had up to this time put little
stress on the ocean, but Mrs. Radcliffe in frequent passages shows
that her own feeling was that of Adeline, of whom she says, “Of all
the grand objects which nature had exhibited the ocean supplied her
with the most sublime admiration. She loved to wander alone by its
shore.” It is, however, in the representation of forest scenes that
Mrs. Radcliffe’s most effective work is done. The wild and terrifying
influence of the dark woods that cover the Apennines, all the dim
and shadowy loveliness, all the mystery and suggestiveness of the
romantic forest about the ruined abbey, reappear in her descriptions.
Her feeling toward mountains is one of almost extravagant delight in
their vastness, their wildness, their remoteness, and inaccessibility.
She is deeply sensitive to all the “goings on” in the sky. She catches
with accuracy the most ethereal, delicate, evanescent effects. It
is especially mystery and remoteness that she loves, hence night,
moonlight, and stars attract her. Closely connected with her pleasure
in the sky is her artistic openness to all aërial transformations.
In her wide views over land and sea, in vistas caught through forest
glades, in pictures of twilight or dawn, of sunrise or sunset, she
seldom fails to note the quick shiftings of color and form, the
interplay of light and shade, the dimness, the transparency, the
luminosity, resulting from atmospheric changes.
She looked upon Nature not only, as she said of one of her own
characters, “with the eye of an artist, but with the raptures of a
poet.” The effect of Nature on man in soothing his grief, modifying
his passions, and elevating his character is everywhere insisted upon.
As Adeline’s eyes “wandered through the romantic glades that opened
into the forest her heart was gladdened.” Through the melancholy
boughs the evening twilight, which still colored the air, “diffused a
solemnity that vibrated in thrilling sensations upon the hearts of
the travellers.... The tranquillity of the scene, which autumn had
touched with her sweetest tints, softened her mind to a tender kind of
melancholy.”
The Alps “filled her mind with sublime emotions.” The solitary grandeur
of these scenes both “assisted and soothed the melancholy of her
heart.” The stillness and total seclusion of the scene, the stupendous
mountains, the gloomy grandeur of the woods, “diffuse a sacred
enthusiasm over the mind and awaken sensations truly sublime.” Such a
scene “fills the soul with emotions of indescribable awe, and seems to
lift it to a nobler nature.” “It was in the tranquil observation of
beautiful nature” that Clara’s mind recovered its tone. The moonlight
on the sea seemed to “diffuse peace.” Twilight sometimes “inspires
the mind with pensive tenderness,” sometimes “exalts it to sublime
meditations.” The Alps inspire reflections that “soften and elevate
the heart and fill it with the certainty of a present God.” Such
expressions were repeated with an insistence that becomes monotonous.
There is, indeed, an element of sameness in all the descriptions, an
effect the more tiresome because they are so numerous. So large a
descriptive element would hardly be admitted in a novel today unless
justified by some remarkable power of word-painting. Mrs. Radcliffe’s
descriptions would doubtless invite the modern reader, at least after
a steady progress through four or five volumes, to do some judicious
skipping. But thought of as in her own day, Mrs. Radcliffe must always
rank as a discoverer, so new and fresh was this element she brought
into fiction. As is usual with discoverers she overworked her idea. She
was not a great genius. She was often weakly sentimental. But she had
a genuine and most ardent love of Nature, and, when at her best, had
exceptional descriptive power. Her fame and her influence on succeeding
literature rest on these characteristics.
In “Fiction,” as in “Travels” and “Poetry,” there is the transfer of
interest from what man does or is, to the powers of untrammeled Nature.
The new spirit here, as in “Travels,” is late in finding adequate
expression. We can hardly put any real beginnings of it earlier than
“John Buncle” (1756–66). Even after that, development is spasmodic and
slow. In most of the novels and romances we find the romantic impulse
to see strange lands, but men and manners absorb the attention of the
travelers. Mrs. Radcliffe’s fugitives in “The Romance of the Forest,”
the travelers in “The Mysteries of Udolpho,” and Mrs. Brooke’s soldier
in “Emily Montague” are the first to make much of the scenery through
which they pass.
In general we may say that novels had little to do with Nature,
and romances much. This may account for the lack of reality in
the descriptions. There is nothing in any work of fiction at all
correspondent to the temperate, truthful, clear-cut work of Cowper and
Burns. There is practically nothing of the bald realism of John Scott,
whose poetry was written rather in the scientific temper with which
most travels were undertaken. Nor, on the other hand, is there anything
of the visionary, mystical power of Blake. The best use of Nature in
fiction is more akin to the emotionalism of Beattie. Except for Mrs.
Radcliffe, and she came late in the century, fiction contributed less
to bring about the new attitude toward Nature than did any other form
of art expression.
CHAPTER IV
TRAVELS
It is impossible to do more here than merely to sketch the
possibilities in a “History of the Tour and the Guide Book,” because
the mass of material to be gone over is so great. Pinkerton’s
“Catalogue of Voyages and Travels,” published in 1814, gives over 4,500
books. It is so elaborately tabulated that it is not easy to use, but
it is possible to cull from its voluminous pages a fairly compendious
list of such travels as were published in England in the eighteenth
century. In this list there are about 360 books. Of these 360 books
all but 84 are travels outside of Great Britain and Ireland. Their
distribution through the century indicates a steady growth of interest
in foreign lands, for nearly half of the English accounts of travels
in other countries belong in the last quarter of the century. But
these foreign tours, however interesting in themselves, are outside
the present field of inquiry. They were undertaken usually with some
definite purpose. Antiquities, curiosities, minerals; laws, manners,
customs; utilitarian possibilities--these were the leading subjects
of inquiry. In the titles such phrases as, “relating chiefly to the
history, antiquities, and geography;” “remarks on Characters and
Manners;” “chiefly relative to the knowledge of mankind, industry,
literature, and natural history;” “with an account of the most
memorable sieges;” “containing a great variety of geographical,
topographical and political observations;” “containing specially a
description of fortified towns;” “containing a Picture of the Country,
the Manners, and the Actual Government,” are of constant recurrence and
serve to mark out the general scope of these works. There are, to be
sure, in these books, many scattered descriptions of the natural scenes
visited. This is especially true of the “Travels” in the last quarter
of the century. But to study these descriptions, even superficially,
would be too wide a work for the present limits. Furthermore, the
accounts of the tours made in the United Kingdom will doubtless reveal
the characteristics of the observations made in foreign lands.
One of the early books of English travel in the eighteenth century is
Mr. Martin’s “Description of the Western Islands of Scotland” (1703).
It is this book that stirred Dr. Johnson to make his visit to the
Hebrides, and it is from this that Mallet drew the details for his
“Amyntor and Theodora.” In the Preface Martin says:
Perhaps it is peculiar to those isles, that they have never been
described till now by any man that was a native of the country,
or had traveled them.... Descriptions of countries, without
the natural histories of them, are now justly reckoned to be
defective. This I had a particular regard to in the following
descriptions, and have everywhere taken notice of the nature of
the climate and soil, and of the remarkable cures performed by
the natives merely by the use of simples.
This preliminary promise of first-hand observation, especially so far
as Nature is concerned, is hardly carried out. The book is a credulous,
entertaining, unsifted narrative of whatever marvels came to his
ears. His interest rested chiefly on strange cures made by the use of
“simples.” The “Description” has the negative importance of entirely
ignoring Nature. In its 120 pages there is not a word or phrase in
recognition of the wild and beautiful scenery in these islands.
The same distinction holds of Brand’s “Brief Description of Orkney,
Zetland, Pightland-Firth, and Caithness” (1701). Brand was one of a
commission sent by the General Assembly to inquire into religious
matters in the northern islands, so it is not strange that he
bestows much attention on heathenish and popish rites, charms, and
superstitions. He is also much interested in the prevailing diseases
and the means of cure employed by the natives, and he says much of
their customs, manners, and personal appearance. He describes the
crops, the climate, the favorite articles of food, but his eyes are
holden to the charms of scenery.
In 1715 appeared Alexander Pennecuik’s “Description of Tweeddale.” He
was a physician and for thirty years his employment had obliged him to
know and observe every corner of Tweeddale. He found great pleasure in
“herbalizing shady groves and mountains,” and the chief value of his
work is accordingly in its numerous botanical observations. Not a stray
sentence indicates pleasure in the beauty of the Lowland mountains.
Except for the work of Brand, Martin, and Pennecuik, the first half of
the century shows but a meager list of travels. Besides eight “Tours”
published anonymously, Pinkerton records only Gordon’s “Itinerarium
Septentrionale” (in Scotland and Northern England) in 1726, and Macky’s
“Journey through England” in 1732. In 1762 appeared Hamilton’s “Letters
from Antrim,” the chief subject of which was announced to be “the
Natural History of the Basaltes.” Mr. Hamilton spoke occasionally of
the beautiful and picturesque appearance of the Irish coast, but he
professed himself an advocate of Mr. Locke’s system of a dictionary
of pictures in preference to a dictionary of tedious descriptions.
From 1764 to 1769 Mr. Bushe added his contribution to Irish “Travels,”
the objects dwelt upon in his “Hibernia Curiosa” being “Manners,
observations on the state of Trade and Agriculture, and Natural
Curiosities.”
Much of the work in “Travels” or “Tours” in the eighteenth century is
thrown into the form of familiar letters. By far the most important of
these tourists’ letters from the present point of view is Dr. Brown’s
description of Keswick in a letter to Lyttleton. This letter was
printed at Newcastle in 1767 but it was written at least a year earlier
for Dr. Brown died in 1766. Even this date puts it with “John Buncle”
and Dr. Dalton’s “Descriptive Poem” as being one of the three earliest
descriptions of the Lake Region.[532] Since it is so little known some
unusually long extracts from it may be of value:
But at Keswick, you will on one side of the lake, see a rich
and beautiful landskip of cultivated fields.... On the opposite
shore you will find rocks and cliffs of stupendous height,
hanging broken over the lake in horrible grandeur, some of
them a thousand feet high; the woods climb up their steep and
shaggy sides, where mortal foot never yet approached: on these
dreadful heights the eagles build their nests; a variety of
waterfalls are seen pouring from their summits and tumbling
from rock to rock, in rude and terrible magnificence, while on
all sides of this immense amphitheatre the lofty mountains rise
around, piercing the clouds in shapes as spiry and fantastic
as the very rocks of Dovedale. To this I must add the frequent
and bold projection of the cliffs into the lake, forming noble
bays and promontories; in other parts they finely retire from
it and often open in abrupt chasms or clefts, through which at
hand you see rich and uncultivated vales, and, beyond these, at
various distance, mountain rising over mountain, among which,
new prospects present themselves in mist, till the eye is lost
in an agreeable perplexity,
Where active fancy travels beyond sense
And pictures things unseen.
Were I to analyze the two places in their
constituent principles, I should tell you that the full
perfection of Keswick consists of three circumstances, beauty,
horror, and immensity united....
So much for what I would call the permanent beauties of this
astonishing scene. Were I not afraid of being tiresome I could
now dwell as long on its varying or accidental beauties....
Sometimes a serene air and clear sky disclose the tops of the
highest hills; at others, you see the clouds involving their
summits, resting on their sides or descending to their base,
and rolling among the valleys, as in a vast furnace; when the
winds are high, they roar among the cliffs and caverns like
peals of thunder; then too the clouds are seen in vast bodies
sweeping along the hills in gloomy greatness, while the lake
joins the tumult and tosses like a sea; but in calm weather the
whole scene becomes new; the lake is a perfect mirror and the
landscape in all its beauty, islands, fields, woods, rocks and
mountains, are seen inverted and floating on its surface. I will
now carry you to the top of a cliff, where, if you dare approach
the ridge, a new scene of astonishment presents itself; where
the valley, lake and islands are seen lying at your feet; where
this expanse of water appears diminished to a little pool amidst
the vast and immeasurable objects that surround it; for here
the summits of more distant hills appear beyond those you have
already seen; and rising behind each other in successive ranges
and azure groups of craggy and broken steeps, form an immense
and awful picture, which can only be expressed by the image of a
tempestuous sea of mountains. Let me now conduct you down again
to the valley and conclude with one circumstance more, which
is, that a walk by still moonlight (at which time the distant
waterfalls are heard in all their variety of sound) among these
enchanting dales, opens such scenes of delicate beauty, repose
and solemnity as exceed all description.
Mr. Gilpin knew Dr. Brown’s “Letter,” for in his Cumberland “Tour”
(1772) he justified his own preference for Keswick by saying that this
region had also been singled out by Dr. Brown, “who was a man of taste
and had seen every part of this country.” Mr. Hutchinson quoted the
whole of the “Letter.” Mr. West went to Keswick with the “Letter” in
hand, trembling with eagerness to experience the joys it depicted.
Certainly this “Letter from Keswick” in the delight with which it
dwells on the wild and terrible elements of Nature, in its detailed
observation, in its artistic appreciation of the accidental effects
of atmospheric conditions, and in its sensitiveness to the spirit of
the place, comes very close to the modern enthusiasm for mountains.
The details are sometimes exaggerated and the author’s rapture may
seem over-stated, but the genuineness of his feeling, and the reality
of his knowledge of mountains and lake, must remain unquestioned. The
“Letter” is one of the first, and the most considerable of the early
contributions to the literature of the Lakes.
The great period of English travels began in 1767 with Arthur Young’s
“Six Weeks’ Tour in the Southern Counties of England and Wales.” In
1768 (June to November) he wrote his “Six Months’ Tour in the North of
England.” His next important work, “A Farmer’s Tour through the East
of England,” was published in 1771. His “Tour in Ireland” appeared
in 1779. The professed design of these sketches was husbandry.
Agriculture, industry, population, farming experiments, prices,
laws--these were the topics on which he wished to inform himself
and others. He had apparently, in his original plan, no thought of
describing the country through which he passed. There is in this
respect a significant difference between the books of 1767–68 and
that of 1779. In the first two he kept the text rigorously free from
all weakening admixture of landscape, the enthusiastic descriptions
of scenery appearing as footnotes. In the last, the descriptions
are boldly incorporated into the text, and form, what is more, a
surprisingly large proportion of it. In 1767–68 he described such
places as he happened to pass near. In 1779 he followed up one
river and down another professedly in search of “wild and romantic
landscapes.” In general character, however, the descriptions do not
greatly vary in the three books. The most numerous descriptions are of
gentlemen’s estates, perhaps in courteous repayment of hospitalities
received. These accounts are always detailed and often tedious. Young
apparently went about with the polite owner, sat in his seats, looked
down his vistas, observed his temples, and took notes thereon. Our
chief interest in these passages is the testimony they bear to Young’s
own preference for estates where art had done the least and Nature
most. “The owner has had the good judgment merely to assist nature,” or
“merely to render natural beauties accessible” are characteristic words
of praise. The best descriptions are not, however, of estates, but of
grand natural scenes. It is views from Persfeld on the Why (Wye);[533]
the wild country along the Tees; the English Lakes; the waterfalls and
wild glens near Powerscourt; the mountains and lakes of Killarney,
that really stir him. Such spots he describes with an enthusiasm that
never flags. He is tediously minute. He cannot let a detail escape.
And through all there is an eager, overflowing delight, a rapturous
pleasure in wild scenery such as we find in no traveler before Young
except Brown. He broods over a fine landscape. He is unwilling to lose
one of its possible charms. At Derwentwater he rows all around the
lake, around each island, stops to hunt up unseen waterfalls, climbs
all crags that promise fine views. He is indefatigable. No peril
stops him. He wonders why the people of Keswick do not at once cut
paths to the fine views so that no one need miss them. As he climbs
Skiddaw he laughs with scorn as he mentally compares “the effects of
a Louis’ magnificence to the play of nature in the vale of Keswick.”
His exclamation, “How trifling the labors of art to the mere sport of
nature!” certainly marks a rebound from conventional standards. The
view of “Winandermere” from the heights on the eastern shore is, he
thinks, “the most superlative view that nature can exhibit” or, if not,
she is “more fertile in beauties” than his imagination can conceive.
“To ride the eighteen miles from Bernard Castle to the falls of the
Tees one could well afford,” he says, “a journey of a thousand miles.”
He rides out to Haws Water. He makes a close study of Hulls Water. The
whole region holds him with a fascination nowhere repeated till he
finds himself, ten years later, among similar wild scenes in Ireland.
Here, almost forgetting that he is a scientific farmer in search of
information, he wanders along the picturesque banks of the Liffey, the
Boyne, the Nore, the Boyle, visits Lake Ennel, Loch Earne, the lakes of
Killarney, and writes descriptions in the manner of the most voluminous
and ardent of modern sightseers. Young’s significance in this study
rests not so much on any artistic excellence of expression as on his
wide observation, his personal enthusiasm for Nature, and his early
date.
The next traveler of importance was Thomas Gray. The openness of Gray’s
mind to pleasure from the external world is hardly at all indicated in
his poetry. In his prose we find it especially in the “Journal in the
Lakes” in 1769. Thirty years before this, his “Journal in France” had
given some hint of his taste for wild scenery, but at that time, though
he expressed great pleasure in the “magnificent rudeness” of the Alps,
he had not entirely broken away from the current conceptions and the
current phraseology, as is shown by the sentence: “You here meet with
all the beauties so savage and horrid a place can present you with.”
Gray’s published letters extend from 1739 to 1770. Scattered through
these are occasional passages indicative of a genuine love of Nature.
In the midst of a humorous letter to Walpole (Sept. 1737) he speaks
of “venerable beeches ... always dreaming out their old stories to
the winds.” After he came back from Scotland, in 1765, he wrote to Mr.
Mason:
I am returned from Scotland charmed with my expedition; it is
of the Highlands I speak; the Lowlands are worth seeing once,
but the mountains are ecstatic, and ought to be visited in
pilgrimage once a year. None but these monstrous creatures of
God know how to join so much beauty with so much horror. A fig
for your poets, painters, gardeners, and clergymen, that have
not been up among them; their imagination can be made up of
nothing but bowling-greens, flowering shrubs, horse-ponds, Fleet
ditches, shell-grottoes, and Chinese rails.
So early as 1739 he expressed his dislike of formal gardens in his
sarcastic description of the grounds at Versailles. The same feeling
of irritation at the preponderance of art over Nature recurs in his
description of Warwick in 1754. That even the most natural garden did
not satisfy Gray as did wild Nature we see from Mason’s lines written
just after the death of Gray. He evidently had not approved of “The
Garden” as a subject for a poem and Mason represents him as saying:
“Why waste thy numbers on a trivial art,
That ill can mimic e’en the humblest charms
Of all-majestic Nature?” At the words
His eye would glisten, and his accents glow
With all the poet’s frenzy. “Sovereign Queen!
Behold, and tremble, while thou view’st her state
Throned on the heights of Skiddaw; call thy art
To build her such a throne; that art will feel
How vain her best pretensions. Trace her march
Amid the purple crags of Borrowdale,” etc.
In general, however, the testimony of the letters is to a scientific
rather than a poetic love of Nature. There are many exact records of
the weather, of the coming crops, of the blossoming of flowers. A
single example may serve as typical. It is a record of observations
made at Stoke Pogis in July, 1754.
Barley was in ear on the first day; gray and white peas in
bloom. The bean flowers were going off. Duke-cherries in plenty
on the 5th; hearts were also ripe. Green melons on the 6th, but
watry and not sweet. Currants began to ripen on the 8th, and red
gooseberries had changed color.
And so on with nearly a hundred more of the tabulated natural facts.
Of Gray as a traveler Sir James Mackintosh is quoted by Mitford as
saying: “Gray was the _first_ discoverer of the natural beauties
in England, and has marked out the course of every picturesque journey
that can be made in it.”
The dogmatic absoluteness of such a statement is its own ruin. We have
already seen that Gray had at least three predecessors, Dalton, Amory,
and Brown, in his recognition of the beauty of the Lake Region, and
many a new tour was sought out by later lovers of the picturesque.
But Gray’s “Journal in the Lakes,” though not first, is certainly
most important. Both in feeling and in spontaneity and adequacy of
expression it shows a marked advance on his preceding work, and as
literature it is distinctly in advance of what others had done.
The whole of this famous tour occupied but three weeks, and the trip
in the Lakes but ten days. Gray was by no means so unwearied in
sight-seeing as Young. He was “not fond of dirt,” and he was fastidious
about roads and inns. He did not go on an eager search for views. He
did not climb Skiddaw, and he passed by Orrest-Head. He saw what he
could see comfortably. His descriptions are quiet and controlled. They
have none of the “dizzy raptures” of Brown and Young. There is no
straining after epithets, no struggle to find expression adequate to
the emotion. The following brief quotations may serve to indicate his
style:
The shining purity of the lake, just ruffled by the breeze,
enough to show it is alive.
The lake majestic in its calmness.
Little shining torrents hurry down the rocks.
The grass was covered with a hoar frost, which soon melted, and
exhaled in a thin blueish smoke.
In the evening walked alone down to the lake after sunset and
saw the solemn colouring of night draw on, the last gleam of
sunshine fading away on the hill-tops, the deep serene of the
waters and the long shadows of the mountains thrown across them.
At distance heard the murmur of many waterfalls not audible in
the day-time. Wished for the moon, but she was _dark to me and
silent, hid in her vacant interlunar cave_.
The charm of Gray’s descriptions lies in a certain bare perfection of
phrase, in his direct, unadorned statement of beautiful facts. His
words have a vital, penetrating quality, while his sense of form,
his artistic reticence, keep his enthusiasm free from exclamatory
extravagances.
Thomas Pennant’s first tour in Scotland was made in 1769. The notes
taken on this tour were put into shape and published in 1771.
Dissatisfied with the result, he went again in 1772, and his “Second
Tour in Scotland and the Hebrides” appeared in 1776. In the first
tour his professed object was the study of zoölogy. In the second he
was assisted by two friends, one trained in botany, and the other
well up in Scotch customs and legends. But Pennant’s interest was not
confined to zoölogy and botany, to manners and customs. His curiosity
was omnivorous and insatiable. Everything was fish that came to his
net, and his industry in note-taking was prodigious. The two journeys
occupied six months, and the record of what he saw and heard filled 570
folio pages.
In this mass of observations not more than ten pages, all told,
have anything to do with the scenery through which he passed. Such
descriptive passages as do occur are usually of torrents, rapid, rocky
rivers, or the shores of lakes. The best of these are of the banks
of the Nith, the falls of CoryLin in the Clyde, the Cascades at
Moness, which he calls “an epitome of everything that can be admired
in the curiosity of waterfalls,” the falls and streams near Loch
Maree, Aysgarth Force in the Ure, the little lake of Barrisdale on the
Inverness coast, Coniston, and Derwentwater. He prides himself on being
one of the first to describe Coniston.
The scenery about this lake, which is scarcely mentioned, is
extremely noble. The east and west sides are bounded by high
hills often wooded; but in general composed of grey rock, and
coarse vegetation; much juniper creeps along the surface;
and some beautiful hollies are finely intermixed. At the
northwestern extremity the vast mountains called Coniston fells
form a magnificent mass. In the midst is a great bosom retiring
inward, which affords great quantities of fine slate.
He very often notes wide views, and he has an unfailing interest of a
scientific, botanical sort in the forests through which they pass.
He never, however, notes any but the permanent details of a scene.
There is not a hint that he saw the varying, evanescent, atmospheric
effects, so important an element in the beauty and sublimity of
mountain scenery. He does admit that the “Highlands like other
beauties, have their good and bad days,” but there is nothing in his
books to show that he knew them apart.
On the whole he shows a preference for a region of smooth, rich, arable
land. On leaving the Highlands his comment is,
The country continually improves; the mountains sink gradually
into small hills; the land is highly cultivated, well planted,
and well inhabited. I was struck with rapture at a sight so long
new to me. Nothing can equal the contrast between the black,
barren, dreary glens of the morning ride and the soft scenes of
the evening.
He dislikes the Borrowdale end of Derwentwater where “all the possible
variety of Alpine scenery is exhibited, with all the horror of
precipice, broken crag, or overhanging rock, or insulated pyramidal
hills.” He prefers the outlook toward Skiddaw.
But the opposite or northern view is in all respects a strong
and beautiful contrast; Skiddaw shows its vast base, and
bounding all that part of this vale, rises gently to a height
that sinks the neighboring hills; opens a pleasing front, smooth
and verdant, smiling over the country like a gentle, generous
lord, while the fells of Barrowdale frown upon it like a
hardened tyrant. Skiddaw is covered with grass to within half a
mile of the summit; after which it becomes stony.
So far as Nature is concerned, the passages cited show Pennant at his
best. His descriptions are full, clear, painstaking, but unimaginative.
He is as impersonal and impartial, as conscientiously exact, in taking
notes on a landscape as in recording the annual haul of fish in
Scotch lakes. Beautiful scenes were to him an object of intellectual
curiosity. They made no artistic or emotional appeal. “The visions of
the hills and the souls of lonely places” were a strain upon him. He
was glad to come forth into fertile valleys and pleasant corn lands.
All this is true, and Pennant shows much less of the new spirit than
Brown, Amory, Young, and Gray. But his work was done independently of
theirs, and in 1769. He must have been in the Lake District a month
before Gray, and he penetrated into much wilder regions of Scotland
than had before been described. That his instinctive shrinking from
wild scenes should have been so far overcome as it was, that he should
have been often forced into admiration, is of itself proof of the
strength of the new impulse.
The Rev. William Gilpin made many tours and gave full accounts of them,
but the accounts were not published till years after the tours were
made. His chief travels in their order are:
(1) Tour in Norfolk, Cambridge, Suffolk, and Essex (1769; account
published 1809); (2) tour along the river Wye (1770; published 1782);
(3) tour in Cumberland and Westmoreland (1772; published 1786); (4)
tour in North Wales (1773; published 1809); (5) tour in Hampshire,
Sussex, and Kent (1774; published 1804); (6) tour in the Highlands of
Scotland (1776; published 1789); (7) tour in Western England (before
1778; published 1798).
Mr. Gilpin’s point of view is clearly stated in the Preface to the
first of these publications. “The following little work proposes a new
object of pursuit: that of examining the face of a country by the rules
of picturesque beauty.” He hopes that no one will consider his plan
unduly light and trivial for a clergyman. He is himself convinced that
to study the beauty of a country is as noble, in a way as useful, as to
study its agriculture.
By picturesque beauty Gilpin always means beauty that can be put into
a picture. He draws pictures of mountains to show whether they have or
have not a good sky-line. Some are too regular, some are grotesque,
some look deformed. He seldom dwells long on wide views because they
are so difficult to make interesting in a picture. The grandeur of
Penmaenmawr and Snowdon hardly makes up to him for their lack of
picturesqueness. Penmaenmawr “has no variety of line, but is one heavy
lumpish form.” He starts up Snowdon, but finding that it is merely “a
collection of mountains formed on the old gigantic plan of heaping
mountain on mountain,” he does not go to the top, but contents himself
with quoting Pennant’s description of the view.
Gilpin’s language is often borrowed from the art of painting. He calls
the steep banks of rivers “side screens;” the changing view before him
as he floats down the river is a “front screen.” He is always talking
about foregrounds and backgrounds and perspective and composition. He
says that Nature is great in design, an admirable colorist, and that
she harmonizes tints with infinite variety and beauty. But, he adds,
she is seldom so correct in composition as to produce a
harmonious whole. Either the foreground or the background is
disproportioned, or some awkward line runs through the piece; or
a tree is ill placed, or a bank is formal; or something or other
is not as it should be.
With his sense of form Gilpin has also an unusual sensitiveness to
color, and to varieties of light and shade. The following description
of a sunset is typical:
The sun was now descending low, and cast the broad shades of
evening athwart the landscape, while his beams, gleaming with
yellow lustre through the valleys, spread over the inlightened
summits of the mountains a thousand lovely tints--in sober
harmony where some deep recess was faintly shadowed--in
splendid hue where jutting knolls or promontories received
fuller radiance of the diverging ray. The air was still. The
lake, one vast expanse of crystal mirror. The mountain shadows,
which sometimes give the water a deep, black hue (in many
circumstances extremely picturesque) were softened here into a
mild blue tint which swept over half the surface. The other half
received the fair impression of every radiant form that glowed
around. The inverted landscape was touched in fainter colours
than the real one. Yet it was more than _laid in_. It was
almost finished. What an admirable study for the pallet is such
a scene as this!
“No one can paint a country properly,” he says, “unless he has seen
it in various lights.” The local variations caused by the weather,
the time of day, the time of year, “cannot be too much attended to by
all lovers of landscape.” “Every landscape is seen best under _some
peculiar_ illumination.” He has always the painter’s eye for fogs,
mist, haze, soft coloring, atmosphere.
Gilpin studied Nature according to the rules of art, because, as he
said, these rules were drawn from Nature. No man resented more quickly
than he the transforming hand of man in natural scenes. If lands
must be turned to agricultural uses, if fields must be marked off, he
only wishes that it might be made as little apparent as possible. He
hates “a multiplicity of glaring temples” in a landscape. He thinks
most so-called adornments in private grounds are mere “expensive
deformity,” and he calls regular clipped hedges “objects of deformity.”
He apologizes for his severe strictures on several estates in the
Cumberland region by saying that the grand natural scenes so filled his
thought that he could not restrain his contempt for mere embellished,
artificial ones. Such passages are an emphatic indication of the
revolution in taste since the days of the formal garden. Here is a
characteristic sentence written as they leave the Lakes: “Here the
hills grow smooth and lumpish, and the country at every step loses some
of the wild strokes of Nature and degenerates, if I may so speak, into
cultivation.”
Not infrequently Gilpin turns from the painter’s study of the scene,
and gives something of its poetical quality. In speaking of the appeal
made by the Lake Country to the imagination he says, “No tame country,
however beautiful, however adorned, can distend the mind like this
awful and majestic scenery.” Of “Ulzwater” on a perfectly serene day
he says, “So solemn and splendid a scene raises in the mind a sort of
enthusiastic calm which spreads a mild complacence over the breast,
a tranquil pause of mental operations which may be felt but not
described.” And again in his “Essay on Picturesque Travel,”
We are most delighted when some grand scene, though perhaps of
incorrect composition, rising before the eyes, strikes us beyond
the power of thought--when the _vox faucibus haeret_ and
every mental operation is suspended. In this pause of intellect,
this _deliquum_ of the soul, an enthusiastic sensation of
pleasure overspreads it. We rather feel than survey the scene.
These last passages inevitably recall Wordsworth’s analysis of his own
emotions before a beautiful view when
Thought was not; in enjoyment it expired,
or the better-known lines in “Tintern Abbey.”
Gilpin, if we take the whole extent of his work, represents the new
spirit more fully than any of the other early travelers. He notes the
permanent and the evanescent. He observes color, form, and motion. The
technical quality of his descriptions does not seriously interfere with
the impression they give of pleasure in free, wild Nature, and he again
and again shows himself capable of an imaginative communion with Nature.
In 1770 appeared “Letters from Snowdon” by Joseph Cradock. This book
is the first record I have found of travels in Wales for the special
purpose of enjoying the scenery. Mr. Cradock says that he had long
wished to visit “The Welsh Alps, the summit of Snowdon” and he seems to
find the reality even more attractive than his imagination had pictured
it. The beautiful little valleys “environed by mountains that scale the
heavens,” and “the infinitely extensive and variegated prospect” from
the top of Snowdon enchant him. The travelers are caught in tempestuous
weather but Mr. Cradock rejoices in the war of the elements and quotes
Thomson’s description of a thunderstorm in Carnarvon. He particularly
recommends the valley of the Dryryd to painters delighting in romantic
Nature because of its picturesque wooded hills, its naked mountains,
rocky rivers, foaming cataracts, transparent lakes, and ruined castles.
Gilpin’s journey up Snowdon was made in the same year but even his
account hardly shows the unforced, uncritical enthusiasm for wild
Nature evinced by Mr. Cradock.
In 1773, Mr. Hutchinson and his brother, an accomplished draughtsman,
made a tour through the Lakes. In 1774, after the death of his brother,
Mr. Hutchinson went over the ground again in order to verify his
brother’s incomplete sketches. The observations made in these two
tours were published under the title “An Excursion to the Lakes in
Westmoreland and Cumberland.” Hutchinson’s dislike of the wild and
desolate region of Stainmore has already been cited, but that quotation
alone would give a most unfair impression of the book as a whole. His
pleasure in Nature is great. He cares especially for artistic effects
of light and shade, and he often spends pages on the changing beauty
of a landscape seen at sunset, or sunrise, or after a storm. A single
passage may stand as illustrative of many similar ones in the book.
At the foot of this vast range of hills three smaller mounts,
of an exact conic form, running parallel, beautified the scene,
being covered with verdure to their crowns; the nearest, called
Dufton Pike, was shadowed by a passing cloud, save only the
summit of its cone, which was touched by a beam which painted
it with gold; the second pike was all enlightened and gave its
verdure to the prospect as if mantled with velvet; the third
stood shadowed, whilst all the range of hills behind were
struck with sunshine, showing their cliffs, caverns, and dells
in grotesque variety and giving the three pikes a picturesque
projection on the landscape.
Mr. Hutchinson had evidently read many of the books treating especially
of the beauty of Nature. He quotes the whole of Dr. Brown’s “Letter”
and much of Mr. Dalton’s “Poem.” He also quotes freely from Thomson’s
“Seasons,” Mason’s “Garden,” and Pennant’s account of Derwentwater.
Some of his most effective descriptions are of the road from Keswick to
Ambleside, “the finest ride in the north of England;” of the cataract
near Ambleside, probably Stock Gill Force; of the ascent of Skiddaw and
of a thunderstorm seen from its summit; of Derwentwater from various
points of view, and of a moonlight row upon the lake. They are too
long to quote, but they all show faithful and minute observation,
artistic appreciation of beauties of form and color, and, occasionally,
a lively sense of the deeper significance of the places visited.
Five or six years after Mr. Hutchinson’s “Tour” there appeared an
important “Guide to the Lakes,” by Mr. West. The second edition,
revised and annotated by Mr. Cockin came out in 1779, and the ninth
edition in 1807. A special feature of West’s “Guide” was its “Addenda”
under which heading he published all the best-known descriptions of the
Lakes. The chief of these were Dr. Brown’s “Letter,” portions of Dr.
Dalton’s “Poem,” the whole of Gray’s “Journal,” Mr. Cumberland’s “Ode
to the Sun,” selections from Relph’s “Cumberland Pastorals,” and two
descriptions of tours in search of noted caves. In 1807 were added Mrs.
Radcliffe’s “Ride over Skiddaw” (1794) and the Rev. James Plumptre’s
“Night Piece on the Banks of Windermere.” The “Guide” itself shows much
careful investigation, is written in a clear, intelligible fashion, and
betrays genuine and discriminating love of Nature.
The most important English tours were made between 1768 and 1778.
Pennant, Gray, Young, Gilpin, and Hutchinson made during these ten
years sixteen rather extended journeys, of which they gave full
accounts. Besides these we have Dr. Johnson’s “A Journey to the
Hebrides” (1773; published 1775), Boswell’s “Journal of a Tour to the
Hebrides” (1773; published 1786), and Bray’s “Tour into Derbyshire”
(1777). In Boswell’s “Journey” there is not the slightest indication of
any interest in the scenery through which they passed, and the general
impression given by Boswell is that Johnson’s indifference was equal
to his own. For instance, Boswell wonders at the outset if a man who
has known “the felicity of London life” can fail to find any narrower
existence “insipid or irksome.” He quotes Dr. Johnson as saying at
Portree that he “longed to be again in civilized life.” He records
his famous sayings, “By seeing London I have seen as much of life as
the world can show,” and “Who _can_ like the Highlands?” This is
not quite fair to Johnson, because in his own account of the Scotch
tour and in his letters there are a few passages that indicate close
observation, and even enjoyment, of the wild scenes about him. The
finest passage is a description of a storm:
The night came on while we had yet a great part of the way to
go, though not so dark but that we could discern the cataracts
which poured down the hills on one side, and fell into one
general channel that ran with great violence on the other. The
wind was loud, the rain was heavy, and the whistling of the
blast, the fall of the shower, the rush of the cataracts, and
the roar of the torrent, made a nobler chorus of the rough music
of Nature than it had ever been my chance to hear before.
But Johnson’s attitude toward the external world was, on the whole,
the typical classical one, and is well illustrated by his reply to Mr.
Thrale’s attempt to win his admiration of a fine prospect. “Never heed
such nonsense; a blade of grass is always a blade of grass, whether
in one country or another. Let us, if we _do_ talk, talk about
something; men and women are my subjects of inquiry.”
Mr. Bray’s “Tour” has a full map and is written somewhat in the
guide-book style. Industries, architecture, history, family chronicles,
anecdotes, inscriptions, fill up its 135 closely printed folio pages.
There is comparatively little about the scenes through which he
passed. In describing the various estates which he visited pages are
given to house-furnishings for a single paragraph on the grounds. But
these seldom go unnoticed. He dislikes the formal garden. He objects
to the regular cascades at Matlock. He thinks that the conceits in
the water-works at Chatsworth might have been deemed wonderful when
they were made, “but those who have contemplated the waterfalls which
nature exhibits in this country ... will receive little pleasure from
seeing a temporary stream falling down a flight of steps, spouted out
of the mouths of dolphins or dragons, or squirted from the leaves of
a copper tree.” The most extended description is of the gardens at
Stowe, which he praises because, though laid out in the formal style,
their regularity has been broken up and disguised. Mr. Bray also shows
a liking for wild and romantic scenery. He frequently mentions wide
views, and condemns Compton Wyngate because it has no prospect, of
which, he adds, “our ancestors appear to have scarce ever thought.” The
spots he enjoyed most are Matlock High Tor, and wild places on the Dove
and the Derwent, Aysgarth Force in the Ure, and rocky Gordale. He noted
especially waterfalls and rivers. Of the Derwent at Matlock he says:
It is a most romantic and beautiful ride. The river is sometimes
hid behind trees, sometimes it glides smooth and calm, sometimes
a distant fall is heard; here it tumbles over a ledge of rocks
stretching quite across, there it rushes over rude fragments,
torn by storms from the impending masses. Each side, but
particularly the farther one, is bordered by lofty rocks,
generally clothed with wood, in the most picturesque manner.
Passages such as this, though perhaps not very effective, show an
attention arrested by the beauties of Nature. There is a closeness of
detail indicating first-hand observation, and the prevailing tone shows
that Mr. Bray justly claims for himself “a taste for nature in her
genuine simplicity.”
Of the “Travels” after 1778, numerous as they are, few need special
mention, because almost no really new elements appear in them. A few
new tours are sketched out, as to the Isle of Wight and the Isle of
Man. But in general the same old ground is gone over, the preference
still being accorded to Scotland, Wales, and the English Lakes. In
1796, but three years before Wordsworth went to Dove Cottage, there
appeared four new “Tours” to the Lakes by Rudworth, Walker, Houseman,
and Hutchinson. In 1794–95 there were five “Tours” in Wales. Of a few
of these “Tours” after 1778 perhaps some mention should be made.
The Rev. Mr. Shaw’s “Tour” (1788) in the west of England is significant
for two reasons. It is one of the first books to make literary
associations prominent in the description. He says that Woodstock is
classic ground because Chaucer lived there; Horton is sacred because
of Milton; Beaconsfield, because of Waller; Windsor Forest, because of
Pope; and Stoke Pogis, because of “the sublime and the pathetic Gray.”
The second point of significance is Mr. Shaw’s evident irritation at
the apparently overweening attention to mountains. He says that if
people could forget Skiddaw and Ben Lomond for a little while they
might be able to see the rich beauty of the champaign country about
Malvern Hills. Mr. Shaw goes back to the “crowds and bustle” of London
with great regret because, he says, no matter what society you find
there, nothing can make up for the pensive enjoyments of a feeling mind
in a picturesque country.
Hassel’s “Tour of the Isle of Wight” (1790) is in the style of Gilpin’s
work. The general knowledge of the Lake Country and the general
admiration of it is shown by his comparisons. A certain spot has “all
the appearance of a Westmoreland scene.” Certain noble hills “rise with
all the majesty of the Skiddaw mountains.” Hassel’s purpose is a search
for the picturesque. He especially notes rich effects of color, and the
varying lights of sunrise and sunset. He sees Nature in a succession of
pictures, but his language is free from the technicalities of Gilpin.
Robertson’s “Tour in the Isle of Man” (1794) has little effective
description, but it is noteworthy as one of the first books of travel
to be infected by the sentimental melancholy of the romances. His
Manxmen “recline by some romantic stream” in the true pensive spirit.
He visits churchyards and solitary places. He pores over the mazy
stream, he watches the rooks, he listens to the sighing evening breeze,
very much like one of Mrs. Brooke’s lovelorn heroes. Occasionally he
has some expressions of deeper import, as when he says that Nature not
only charms the eye “but purifies and ennobles the soul.” “The mind
is filled with divine enthusiasm.” He is, however, perhaps adequately
characterized by the word “romantic,” which he uses until it becomes
almost unbearable.
Of “Travels” in general we may say that the transfer of emphasis from
man to Nature is strongly marked. The love of Nature as shown in
“Travels” is later in development than it is in poetry, but when the
new feeling does find expression it sounds no uncertain note, and by
the end of the century has reached a statement as bold and unqualified
as that which is found in the poetry itself.
CHAPTER V
GARDENING
When Charles II returned to England in 1660 he brought with him a
knowledge of the new style of gardening in France, and an ambition
to reform English taste according to French models. He committed the
care of the royal gardens of Whitehall, St. James, and Hampton Court
to French gardeners, and he spent money lavishly in various attempts
to naturalize French flowers, fruits, and vines in English soil. With
memories of the glories of Versailles he summoned Le Nôtre, the famous
designer of French palatial gardens, and Grillet, noted for his skill
in hydraulics, to plan the parks of St. James and Greenwich.[534] It is
not certain that Le Nôtre actually came to England, but the royal parks
and some great estates were laid out according to the dominant ideas
of the French designer if not under his direct supervision. The French
traditions thus established were carried on by John Rose who was sent
to study the gardens at Versailles and who was appointed royal gardener
in England. Rose’s pupil and successor, George London, in about 1690
took Henry Wise as partner and the two were for nearly a quarter of
a century the recognized authorities on gardens in England. On the
accession of Queen Anne, Wise became royal gardener, and London then
confined himself to country work. He is said to have supervised most of
the notable English estates, riding sometimes fifty or sixty miles a
day in the course of his business.
London and Wise not only designed and developed gardens but they
were influential writers on garden topics. Among their best works
were “The Compleat Gard’ner,” 1699, and “The Retir’d Gardener,” 1706.
These books, though they contained much new and original material,
were in the main translations from French authors and contributed
to the predominance of French influence. Evelyn’s writings also did
much to establish French canons of taste in England. He had seen and
greatly admired the work of Le Nôtre in the gardens of the Tuileries,
Fountainebleau, and St. Germain, and in his “Dairy” he recorded fully
the impression made upon him by the grandeur, beauty, and especially by
the artificial marvels of these parks.
The French style was not, however, allowed all the honors. It met with
a powerful rival in the Dutch taste that came in with William and
Mary in 1688. This taste gradually prevailed over the French so that
even London and Wise were affected by the new ideas from Holland and
Flanders. Gardens laid out in the same decade were, the one French, the
other Dutch in tone, or French and Dutch characteristics were mingled
in the same garden. Melbourne Hall, Derbyshire, the gardens of which
were remodeled and enlarged by Henry Wise between 1704–11 is cited
by Blomfield and Thomas in “The Formal Garden in England” as “a very
valuable instance of a garden laid out when the French influence was
still dominant,” while the gardens at Levens in Westmoreland, laid
out soon after 1690, and remaining almost unaltered to the present
day, are referred to by Miss Amherst as “a most perfect example of
the Dutch type of garden of this period.”[535] But whether Dutch or
French in type, all the great gardens from 1660 to nearly the middle
of the eighteenth century come under the general designation of formal
gardens.
The most striking features of the Dutch style were topiary work, potted
plants and shrubs, dwarf trees, and water-works of “quaint forms and
surprise arrangements.” The gardens of Le Nôtre were especially marked
by long, broad, straight avenues radiating from a goose-foot; much use
of architecture in the way of temples, long and massive flights of
steps, balustrades, columns, and urns; much statuary; fountains with
many high and complicated jets, with magnificent marble basins, and
with elaborate carving in representations of men and animals; many
hedges both high and low; long and broad terraces; and parterres laid
out in intricate plant embroidery.[536]
[Illustration: LONG LEATE
_By L. Knyff and J. Kip_]
Our most accurate idea of the plans of these formal gardens comes from
such books as “Les dèlices de la Grande Bretagne et de l’Irlande,”
published in Leyden in 1707; “Britannia Illustrata” by Knyff and Kip,
1709; “Views of Kent” by Badeslade, 1722; and other early county
histories.[537] One of Kip’s plans of Longleat is here reproduced.
The grounds at Longleat were laid out between 1682 and 1690 under the
supervision of London.[538] Though of exceptional magnificence, their
characteristic features as shown in the plan are fairly typical of
other great gardens of the period. Bird’s-eye views such as Kip gives
are necessarily unfair representations since they crowd into startling
juxtaposition features that are in reality widely separated, and since
they do not even suggest charms of color, light and shade, fragrance,
movement, the change of the seasons. But such plans are, nevertheless,
of especial value in revealing the governing ideas of the garden
designers.
One of these ideas is admirably brought out by Sir William Temple in
his essay, “On the Gardens of Epicurus: or of Gardening in the Year
1685,” the most important article on gardening published in England in
the seventeenth century. It is mostly given up to exposures, soils,
scions, grafts, seeds, and the like, but here and there are significant
statements of theory. “Among us,” he says, “the beauty of building
and planting is placed chiefly in certain proportions, symmetries,
and uniformities, our walks and our trees ranged so as to answer one
another and at exact distances.” This defense of order in beauty is
illustrated by his description of Moor Park, Hertfordshire, according
to his taste the sweetest garden ever known. It was divided into
quarters by gravel walks, and adorned with two fountains and eight
statues in each quarter. The straight terrace walk had a summer-house
at each end. On each side of the parterre was a cloister, over each
cloister an airy walk, at the end of each airy walk a summer-house,
and so on.[539] “Certain proportions, symmetries, and uniformities” is
a phrase characteristic of classicism in thought and literary style
as well as in gardens and it shows how completely the ideal garden
represented the dominant thought of the age. Equally characteristic
and interesting is Temple’s reason for approving of this style of
gardening. In exact figures, with regular and definite intervals, it
is, he says, “hard to make any great or remarkable faults.” In this
sentence there is surely a suggestion of one reason for the love
of order, of limits clearly set, that marked the classical spirit.
Symmetries and proportions and uniformities were a specific against
great and remarkable faults such as had resulted from the undue license
of a romantic age. The beaten path had legitimate attractions for an
age that had lost its way among the pleasures of the pathless woods.
A second principle underlying the formal garden was the delight men
took in controlling Nature and in seeing evidences of such control.
Radiating straight avenues as against vagrant paths; water flowing
out of marble temples, down marble steps, and rising again in almost
unbelievable shapes, as against a natural winding stream; a tree cut
into difficult shapes as against a tree following the normal spread
of branch and leaf--all of these show an exceptional satisfaction in
the marks of human interference with Nature. Order in a garden, and
skilful management of Nature by art, are of course legitimate sources
of delight, but when these two principles are pushed to the exclusion
of other sources of delight, reaction becomes inevitable.
Indications of revolt against the formal garden began early in the
eighteenth century. Even so early as 1703 in James’s translation of
Le Blond’s[540] treatise on the theory and practice of gardening
there was a plea for simplification in the architectural details of a
garden, accompanied by a protest against fantastic verdant sculpture.
Plain hedges cut square with a regular succession of balls on top,
and with niches sunk for statues or seats, was all the elaboration Le
Blond could sanction. No new principles were inculcated by Le Blond.
His defense of “a plain regularity” was really a protest against
the cluttered and confused effect of gardens of the Dutch type. His
dictum that “Art should give place to Nature, Art being used only to
set off the beauties of Nature” sounds more revolutionary than it was
apparently meant to be, for the gardens he describes are purely of the
formal type, but his work shows a recognition of some of the whimsical
extravagances in the formal gardens of his day, and an effort to apply
the recognized rules with good sense and a certain degree of restraint.
The English essayists, notably Addison and Pope, were early exponents
of a freer style of gardening. In “The Tatler” (August 31, 1710)
Addison laughed the tulip mania out of court, and lightly set aside
“the best ordered parterres” as of less charm than “a spot of daisies
or banks of violets.” Slight as it is, this preference for the wild
flower over the garden rarity, for fields and hedgerows over the
choicest plant embroidery, strikes a new note in the garden literature
of the eighteenth century. Two years later, in “The Spectator” for
September 6, 1712, Addison gave an account of an imaginary garden
evidently made to his taste and far enough removed from the formal
garden. The irregularity and wildness of his flower-garden, the
wandering rill that runs “as it would do in an open Field,”[541] the
trees and shrubs growing freely, are what he prides himself upon.
The whole picture is a plea for the “beautiful Wildness of Nature”
as against “the nicer Elegancies of Art.” But Addison’s strongest
utterance, and the one in which the theoretical side is most fully
discussed is in “The Spectator” for June 25, 1712. In contrasting the
works of Nature and Art, Nature is throughout given the preference.
There is something more bold and masterly in the rough careless
Strokes of Nature, than in the nice Touches and Embellishments
of Art. The Beauties of the most stately Garden or Palace lie
in a narrow Compass; the Imagination immediately runs them
over, and requires something else to gratify her, but in the
wide Fields of Nature the Sight wanders up and down without
Confinement, and is fed with an infinite variety of Images,
without any certain Stint or Number.... Our _British_
Gardeners, on the contrary, instead of humouring Nature, love to
deviate from it as much as possible. Our Trees rise in Cones,
Globes, and Pyramids. We see the Marks of the Scissors upon
every Plant and Bush. I do not know whether I am singular in my
Opinion, but, for my own part, I would rather look upon a Tree,
in all its Luxuriancy and Diffusion of Boughs and Branches than
when it is thus cut and trimmed into a Mathematical Figure; and
cannot but fancy that an Orchard in Flower looks infinitely more
delightful than all the little Labyrinths of the most finished
Parterre.
Pope followed up this attack in a wittier fashion in “The Guardian”
(September 29, 1713). He, too, prefers “the amiable simplicity of
unadorned nature” to “the nicer scenes of art.” Only people of the
common level of understanding are, he thinks, “principally delighted
with the little niceties and fantastical operations of art,” while
“persons of genius .... are always most fond of nature.” His chief
attack is on sculptured greens, and he gives a sarcastic account of
a town gardener who was so skilful that he could cut “family pieces
of men, women, or children,” and who had for sale the most elaborate
greens. His catalogue was as follows:
Adam and Eve in yew; Adam a little shattered by the fall of the
tree of knowledge in the great storm; Eve and the serpent very
flourishing. The tower of Babel, not yet finished. St. George in
box; his arms scarce long enough, but will be in condition to
stick the dragon by next April. A green dragon of the same, with
a tail of ground-ivy for the present. N. B. These two not to be
sold separately.... An old maid of honour in wormwood.... Divers
eminent modern poets in bays somewhat blighted to be disposed
of, a pennyworth. A quickset hog, shot up into a porcupine by
its being forgot a week in rainy weather [and so on].
That the true principles of “gardening finely” were matters of common
discussion is indicated by a letter from Pope to Lord Bathurst,
September 23, 1719, on the subject of the gardens the prince of Wales
was about to construct at Richmond. One critic, said Pope, protested
against too much art for according to his notion gardening was little
more than “sweeping Nature.”
There were some who could not bear evergreens, and called them
never-greens; some who were angry at them only when cut into
shapes, and gave the modern gardeners the name of evergreen
tailors; ... and some who were in a passion against anything
in shape, even against clipped hedges, which they called green
walls.
In the midst of this literary discussion comes the work of another
practical gardener, Stephen Switzer, a pupil of London and Wise. His
“The Nobleman, Gentleman and Gardener’s Recreation” appeared in 1715
and was published again with additions as “Ichnographia Rustica”
in 1718. Switzer’s work shows several indications of new ideals.
He is the first of the writers on gardens to hold up Milton’s[542]
description of a garden as a model to be followed. He also protested
against the cutting-down of fine old trees at the command of so-called
“Improvers of Estates.” He said he knew not “whether to think with Pity
or Disdain” of a property owner who could thus sanction the wanton
destruction of “noble Oaks and other umbrageous Trees.” He likewise
urged the abandonment of box-work and “such like trifling ornaments,”
and said that “the largest walk in the most magnificent garden one can
think of” was to his taste inferior to “a level easy walk of gravel or
sand shaded over with Trees and running thro’ a cornfield or Pasture
ground.” More revolutionary still was his advice to abolish walls
and to embellish the whole estate. London and Wise had insisted upon
the boundary wall as necessary to give dignity to the gardens and to
unite them architecturally with the house, but Switzer said he would
“throw the Garden open to all View, to the unbounded Felicities of
distant Prospect, and the expansive Volumes of Nature herself.” This
substitution of the sunk fence for the boundary walls is generally
counted as “the beginning of the end of Formal Gardening.” Horace
Walpole credits Bridgeman with having first suggested this innovation,
but the new scheme almost certainly originated with Switzer.
In gardening theoretical exposition and discussion would, from the
nature of the case, antedate the actual construction of gardens
according to new principles. Pope was one of the first, if not the
first, to put the new ideas into practice. In 1718 he took a long lease
of a house and five acres of land at Twickenham, and he at once set
about the construction of a garden according to his own ideas. Said
Horace Walpole, “It was a little bit of ground of five acres, enclosed
with three lanes; and seeing nothing. Pope had twisted and twirled
and rhymed and harmonized this, till it appeared two or three sweet
little lawns opening and opening beyond one another, and the whole
surrounded by thick impenetrable woods.”[543] The plan of the garden
drawn by John Searle after Pope’s death shows that in the five acres
Pope had a shell temple, a large mount, two small mounts, a bowling
green, a vineyard, a quincunx, an obelisk in memory of his mother,
and hot-houses and gardeners’ sheds.[544] This garden could hardly be
called “natural” but it was an undoubted protest against the formal
school and was so regarded, and Pope was counted “the prophet of the
new school.” Blomfield and Thomas[545] in reviewing the decay of formal
gardening say, “It now became the fashion to rave about Nature, and
to condemn the straightforward work of the formal school as so much
brutal sacrilege. Pope and Addison led the way with about as much
love of Nature as the elegant Abbé Delille some three generations
later.” Mason calls Kent, the reputed father of landscape gardening,
“Pope’s bold associate.”[546] Walpole dwells on the assistance Kent
had from Pope and thinks that the ideas of some of Kent’s best works
were really borrowed from Pope’s garden at Twickenham.[547] Hazlitt
emphasizes the healthy and important influence in this direction
exercised by Pope.[548] In “The Quarterly” for 1816, in a review of
Humphrey Repton’s work, we find the influence of Pope commented on as
follows: “He so completely developed the principles of true gardening
that the theories of succeeding writers have been little more than
amplifications of his short general precepts.”
Pope’s paper in “The Guardian” was in 1713, and his garden was
practically completed by 1718[549] but his most influential utterance
on the theory of gardening did not come till 1731, and before that
time other significant writings had appeared.[550] One of these was
“Huetiana,” a translation in 1722 of the work of Pierre Daniel Huet
(1630–1721), bishop of Avranches. In the chapter on “Natural Beauties
preferable to Artistic ones” he comments thus on the bad taste of his
age:
Polite society ... requires palisades erected with the line and
at the point of the shears. The green shades of these tufted
birches and of those great oaks which were found at the birth
of time, are in bad taste and worthy of the grossness of our
fathers. Is not to think thus to prefer a painted face to the
natural colour of a beautiful countenance? But the depravity
of this judgment is discovered in our pictures and in our
tapestries. Paint on one side a fashionable garden, and on the
other one of those beautiful landscapes in which Nature spreads
her riches undisguised; one will present a very tedious object,
the other will charm you by its delight. You will be tired of
the one at the first glance. You will never weary of looking at
the other, such is the force of Nature to make itself beloved in
spite of the pilferings and deceits of art.[551]
There were doubtless many other evidences of a changing taste, but
the book that most distinctly marks a new era is Batty Langley’s
“New Principles of Gardening” in 1728. In his Introduction is the
iconoclastic statement, “Nor is there any Thing more _shocking_
than a _stiff, regular Garden_ where after we have seen one
quarter thereof, the very same is repeated in all the remaining Parts.”
His campaign against regularity is consistently carried out through
the book. He comments on some gardens that seem to him “forbidding”
because laid out with “that abominable Mathematical Regularity and
Stiffness, that nothing that’s bad could equal them.” And again, “Nor
is there any Thing more ridiculous ... than a Garden which is regular.”
Of straight walks and hedges he wrote, “To be condemned to pass along
the famous vista from Moscow to Petersburg, or that other from Agra to
Lahore in India, must be as disagreeable a sentence, as to be condemned
to labor at the gallies. I conceived some idea of the sensation ...
from walking but a few minutes, immured, betwixt Lord D----’s high
shorn yew hedges.” He regards cutting down fine old oaks in order to
make a regular garden as “a Crime of so high a Nature, as not to be
pardon’d.” In planning his grounds he allows “no three trees to range
together in a strait line.” He advises conducting the walks so that
they shall lead through “small Enclosures of Corn ... Hop-Gardens
... Melon-Grounds ... Paddocks of Deer, Sheep, Cows, ... with rural
Enrichments of Hay-Stacks, Wood-Piles, etc.” His final dictum is that
all gardens must be “grand, beautiful, and natural.” He is thoroughly
romantic in his idea of beauty, for not only is regularity debarred,
but “misshapen Rocks, strange precipices, Mountains, old Ruins,” are
counted as indispensable. If ruins cannot be actually found or built,
he would even have them “painted on Canvas.” Batty Langley’s book is of
especial importance since at so early a date it formulates many of the
principles on which the landscape gardeners worked.
Pope’s “Fourth Epistle” in 1731 marks an epoch in English garden
literature, not because he says anything new but because of the great
weight of his name and because of the high literary quality of the
poem. Pope’s scornful picture of the formal garden sums up most of the
characteristics objected to by earlier writers:
His gardens next your admiration call,
On every side you look, behold the wall!
No pleasing intricacies intervene,
No artful wildness to perplex the scene:
Grove nods at grove, each alley has a brother,
And half the platform just reflects the other.
The suffering eye inverted Nature sees,
Trees cut to statues, statues thick as trees;
With here a fountain never to be played;
And there a summer-house, that knows no shade:
Here Amphitrite sails through myrtle bowers;
There gladiators fight, or die, in flowers;
Unwatered see the drooping sea-horse mourn,
And swallows roost in Nilus’ dusty urn.
Pope also gives explicit support to the theories of the landscape
gardeners. In the lines,
He gains all points who pleasingly confounds,
Surprises, varies, and conceals the bounds,
are given, he said, in concise form the three heads to which all rules
of gardening are reducible, namely “the contrasts, the management of
surprises, and the concealment of bounds.” The fundamental distinction
between Pope’s conception of a garden and that of the formal school
rests in the fact that Pope would seek to conceal or obscure all
traces of man’s interference with Nature, while Nature’s ductility or
manageableness was frankly shown in the formal garden and constituted
one of its charms. Pope was also definitely in line with the landscape
gardeners in his belief that the garden should melt imperceptibly into
the surrounding park scenery. “Conceal art,” “destroy boundaries,”
“imitate Nature,” these were Pope’s maxims and they sum up the
doctrines of the new school.
The three professional gardeners who established the landscape school
were Bridgeman, Kent, and Brown. To the first of these Horace Walpole
gives much credit. After commenting on the gardens of London and Wise
he says,
Absurdity could go no further and the tide turned. Bridgeman,
the next fashionable designer of gardens, was far more chaste,
and whether from good sense, or that the nation had been struck
and reformed by the admirable paper in “The Guardian,” No. 173,
he banished verdant sculpture, and did not even revert to the
square precision of the foregoing age. He enlarged his plans,
disdained to make every division tally to its opposite; and,
though he still adhered much to straight walks with high clipped
hedges, they were only his great lines, the rest he diversified
by wilderness, and with loose groves of oak.... As his
reformation gained footing he ventured further, and in the royal
garden at Richmond dared to introduce cultivated fields, and
even morsels of a forest appearance.... But the capital stroke,
the leading step to all that has followed, was (I believe the
first thought was Bridgeman’s) the destruction of walls for
boundaries, and the invention of fossés--an attempt then deemed
so astonishing that the common people called them Ha! Ha’s! to
express their surprise at finding a sudden and unperceived check
to their walk.
Though Switzer gave early expression to the ideas praised by Walpole,
Bridgeman was apparently the first to put these ideas into practice
in any notable way. His work at Stow was complete some years before
1724, for in that year Lord Percival wrote, “Bridgeman laid out the
ground and plan’d the whole, which can not fail of recommending him
to business. What adds to the bewty of this garden is, that it is
not bounded by walls, but by a Ha Ha, which leaves you the sight of
a bewtifull woody country, and makes you ignorant how far the high
planted walks extend.”
William Kent (1685–1748) was Bridgeman’s successor at Stow, and here
and in other great gardens, he made bold experiments along the lines
rather timidly marked out by Bridgeman. Walpole says of Kent, “At that
moment appeared Kent, painter enough to taste the charms of landscape,
bold and opinionative enough to dare and to dictate, and born with a
genius to strike out a great system from the twilight of imperfect
essays. He leaped the fence and saw that all Nature was a garden.”
Kent’s dominating principle, “Study Nature and follow her laws,”
marked the completeness of his break with the formal schools, and was
the basis of his best work, but it led also to absurdities. Since
Nature apparently abhors a straight line, all paths and avenues and
streams were sent serpentining around in the most tedious and unmeaning
fashion. Francis Coventry said that no follower of Kent would be
willing to go to heaven on a straight line. Kent even went so far, at
one time, in his desire to follow Nature, as to plant dead trees in
his parks. But, on the whole, his work was marked by a genuine love
of Nature, and he at least succeeded, as Walpole says, in “routing
_professed art_.”[552]
[Illustration: HAGLEY PARK
_By Thomas Smith_]
Kent’s most important gardens come between 1730 and 1748. One of the
first of those incited by the beauty of his “Elysian scenes” to make
over their own domains was Lord Lyttleton. His estate, Hagley, was
a _ferme ornée_ much admired in its own day, and an excellent
illustration of the new style. The accompanying print shows that the
forest trees come close to the house and grow unfettered. There are
open glades ornamented by temples and seats, and enlivened by the
presence of animals, which, according to the new scheme of beauty, had
at last come into their own as ornamental elements of a landscape.
Philip Southcote’s “Wooburn Farm” is another early _ferme ornée_.
Charles Hamilton’s “Pain’s Hill,” in Surrey, shows a somewhat different
type, which Walpole calls “the forest or savage garden.” In this
garden, continues Walpole, “all is great and foreign and rude; the
walks seem not designed, but cut through the wood of pines; and the
style of the whole is so grand and conducted with so serious an air
of wild and uncultivated extent, that when you look down on this
seeming forest you are amazed to find it contain a very few acres.” The
approximate date of “Wooburn Farm” and “Pain’s Hill” is determined by
the fact that in 1761, in Dodsley’s “London and its Environs,” they are
spoken of as “but lately laid out,” and so not very much advanced in
growth, but yet “very beautiful and extremely well worth seeing.”[553]
The most famous eighteenth-century “ferme ornée” was Shenstone’s
estate, known as “Leasowes,” and this is also somewhat earlier in
date, for a poetical tribute dated 1754 calls it “that new-form’d
Arcadia.” Eight other poetical eulogies show the place of Leasowes in
popular esteem. Dodsley published a map of the place with thirty pages
of minute description of the arrangement of the grounds.[554] There
was a prescribed order in viewing the estate, the path leading from
surprise to surprise, a gay, lively scene being immediately succeeded
by one “cool, gloomy, solemn, and sequestered.” Various scenes were
sentimentally suited to particular persons, or to especial trains of
thought. One glade was devoted to lovers, another to fairies; one spot
was set apart for reflections on death, another for communion with the
spirit of Virgil. Each separate portion had its rocks, waters, trees,
and shrubs, arranged according to a ruling idea, the idea being brought
into prominence by a suggestive inscription, and further emphasized
by a seat so placed that from it the idea could present itself
with cumulative effect. Shenstone paid great attention to artistic
combinations. In his “Unconnected Thoughts on Gardening,”[555] 1764],
he said concerning the art of “distancing and approximating,”
A straight-lined avenue that is widened in front, and planted
there with ewe trees, then firs, then with trees more and more
fady, till they end in the almond-willow, or silver osier,
will produce a very remarkable deception of the former kind;
which deception will be encreased, if the nearer dark trees are
proportionable and truly larger than those at the end of the
avenue that are more fady.
Shenstone’s work was certainly based on the most elaborate art but
his whole purpose was so to use art as to conceal it. “Art,” he said,
“should never be allowed to set a foot in the province of nature,
otherwise than clandestinely and by night.” “Whatever thwarts nature
is treason.” Whenever art is allowed to appear, “night, gothicism,
confusion and absolute chaos are come again.”
One of the earliest poetical champions of the picturesque development
of landscape gardening is William Mason, author of “The English
Garden,” a long didactic poem, begun in 1767 but not published till
1772, and then in an incomplete form. The purpose of the book is to
apply “the rules of imitative art to real nature.” Folly and Wealth
are called “the cruel pair” who, “borrowing aid from geometric skill,”
strive by line, plummet, and unfeeling shears, to deform the fair
surface of mother earth. Claude Lorraine, Salvator Rosa, Ruysdael,
are called upon as the true law-givers in gardening. Much credit for
the banishment of false taste is accorded to Addison and Pope. Of the
latter he says,
With bolder rage
Pope next advances; his indignant arm
Waves the poetic brand o’er Timon’s shades,
And lights them to destruction; the fierce blaze
Sweeps thro’ each kindred vista; groves to groves
Nod their fraternal farewell and expire.
Mason claims both Bacon and Milton as progenitors, the former “because
in developing the constituent properties of a princely garden, he
had largely expatiated upon the unadorned natural wildness which we
now deem the essence of the art;” the latter “because of his having
made this natural wildness the leading idea in his description of
Paradise.”[556] Another element of interest in Mason’s Preface is his
reason for writing his poem in blank verse. He confessed that the
didactic nature of the theme seemed to call for the heroic couplet, but
since every charm in gardens springs from variety, since the gardens
he praised represented Nature scorning control, he felt that he must
get a verse form as unfettered as Nature herself.[557] During the
slow publication of Mason’s “English Garden” there appeared in 1770
Thomas Whateley’s “Observations on Modern Gardening,” which summed up
in admirable fashion the achievements of the landscape school. It is
of especial importance as being “the very first treatise professedly
on landscape art.”[558] Walpole’s “The History of the Modern Taste in
Gardening,” was written in 1770, but was not printed till 1785 when
it came from the Strawberry Hill press with a French translation on
the opposite pages by the Duc de Nivernois. The essays by Walpole and
Whateley cover about the same ground and advocate the principles of the
same school, but Walpole’s fame and his brilliant style have combined
to give his work pre-eminence, and his essay ranks in the garden
literature of the eighteenth century as Sir William Temple’s essay does
in the seventeenth century.
William Kent’s successor in gardening was Lancelot Brown (1715–83) who
was kitchen-gardener at Stow when Kent was there as designer. Brown’s
original work does not begin till about the middle of the century when
he became royal gardener and was employed at Blenheim. After that he
was concerned in laying out or in altering “half the gardens in the
country.” In 1767 Viscount Irwin thus eulogized him:
Born to grace Nature and her works complete
With all that’s beautiful, sublime and great,
For him each Muse enwreathes the laurel crown,
And consecrates to fame immortal Brown.[559]
But immortal Brown, while enjoying to the full the favor of owners of
great estates, had sturdy and loud-spoken critics. The ruthlessness
with which he destroyed fine old grounds, and especially fine avenues
of great trees, the unhomelike effect of his stretches of bare,
undulating lawn, his serpentining walks and streams, aroused active
hostility. Cowper in “The Task,” 1785, said,
Improvement, too, the idol of the age,
Is fed with many a victim. Lo, he comes!
The omnipotent magician, Brown appears!
Down falls the venerable pile, the abode
Of our forefathers.
* * * * *
He speaks. The lake in front becomes a lawn;
Woods vanish, hills subside, and valleys rise:
And streams, as if created for his use,
Pursue the track of his directing wand,
Sinuous or straight, now rapid and now slow,
Now murmuring soft, now roaring in cascades--
E’en as he bids.[560]
Late in the century Richard Payne Knight was so extreme in his attack
on Brown’s unpicturesque smoothness and finish as to express a
preference even for the formality of the old school. He thus describes
the designers of the school of Brown:
See yon fantastic band,
With charts, pedometers, and rules in hand,
Advance triumphant, and alike lay waste
The forms of nature and the works of taste!
T’ improve, adorn, and polish, they profess;
But shave the goddess whom they come to dress;
Level each broken bank and shaggy mound,
And fashion all to one unvaried round;
One even round, that ever gently flows,
Nor forms abrupt, nor broken colours knows;
But wrapt all o’er in everlasting green,
Makes one dull, vapid, smooth, and tranquil scene.
* * * * *
Hence, hence! thou haggard fiend, however call’d,
Thin, meagre genius of the bare and bald;
Thy spade and mattock here at length lay down,
And follow to the tomb thy fav’rite Brown;
Thy fav’rite Brown, whose innovating hand
First dealt thy curses o’er this fertile land;
First taught the walks in formal spires to move,
And from their haunts the secret Dryads drove:
With clumps bespotted o’er the mountain’s side,
And bade the stream ’twixt banks close shaven glide.
* * * * *
Oft when I’ve seen some lonely mansion stand
Fresh from th’ improver’s devastating hand,
’Midst shaven lawns, that far around it creep
In one eternal undulating sweep;
* * * * *
Tir’d with th’ extensive scene so dull and bare,
To Heav’n devoutly I’ve addressed my pray’r,--
Again the moss-grown terraces to raise,
And spread the labyrinth’s perplexing maze;
Replace in even lines the ductile yew,
And plant again the ancient avenue.
Some features, then, at least, we should obtain,
To mark this flat, insipid, waving plain.[561]
To his mind statues, urns, terraces, mounds, parterres, topiary work,
though all “against Nature,” were preferable to a whole estate “shorn
and shaved” after the manner of Brown. Sir Uvedale Price (1747–1829) to
whom Knight dedicated his poem also opposed Brown, saying in prose with
almost equal heat what his friend had put into verse.[562] The points
made against the works of Brown, and likewise of his master, Kent, were
the tameness and monotony, the over-cultivated appearance, of their
grounds. The central thought of Knight and Price, as of Gilpin,[563]
their contemporary, and, earlier, of Mason in “The English Garden,” was
that a garden should be “picturesque,” that is, should be “composed”
as a picture is. Landscape painting secured its best effects from
rough, natural, varied scenes, hence gardens should, if possible, show
similar combinations. The essential difference between Brown and the
advocates of the picturesque is brought out by two plates published by
Knight. The first of these shows the truly picturesque. The elements
of the landscape are: a stream flowing at its own will between natural
and uneven banks; groups of spreading trees and shaggy shrubs in
natural union; fern-covered knolls; intricate thickets; mossy stones;
“cherished weeds;” a prostrate tree, rough and gnarled; “native stumps
and roots” overgrown with wild vines; and a rude bridge. The second
plate shows the same scene as “dressed by an improver,” evidently of
the Brown school. We now see the stream flowing between close-shaven
banks; over it a frail Chinese bridge; clumps of trees in the most
orderly and trim fashion; the grounds smoothed and cleaned like a
drawing-room; unmeaning curves in stream and walk; and a vast expanse
of lawn stretching in monotonous undulations to the bare-looking modern
house.
The controversy was carried over from Brown to his disciple and
imitator, Sir Humphrey Repton (1752–1818). Repton in a courteous
“Letter to Uvedale Price,” 1794, and again in his “Sketches and Hints
on Landscape Gardening” (chap. vii and Appendix), 1795, defended
the principles of landscape gardening adopted by Kent and Brown and
followed in his own work. Price answered in “A Letter to Humphrey
Repton,” 1795. In opposition to the claims of the devotees of the
picturesque Repton put forward the beauty to be found “in the milder
scenes that have charms for common observers,” and he protested
against the rigid application of the laws governing landscape painting
to an art so different in its views and possibilities as gardening.
But Repton, though he had entered upon his work as the disciple and
imitator of Brown, gradually changed, discarding the formalities of
Brown and adopting a more varied and natural style of ornamentation.
He made use of some of the ideas of the “artistical” or picturesque
school, but so modified them according to the dictates of good sense
and good taste, as to establish the beautiful and natural parks and
gardens in which England led the world.
The picturesque garden had two offshoots that cannot be passed over.
The idea of imitating a picture, when carried to an excess, led to
frantic effort to put cliffs, precipices, gnarled oaks, ruined,
moss-grown fortresses, ivy-hung abbeys, into every landscape.
Frequent sage advice is given as to the best ways to secure these
effects. Richard Jago, a friend of Shenstone, urges the importance of
appropriate sites--a cliff for a ruined castle, a well-water’d vale
for “the mouldering abbey’s fretted windows.”[564] In 1772 Gilpin
criticized Shuckburgh because the ruins were not “happily fabricated,”
but he adds in exculpation, “It is not every man, who can build a
house, that can execute a ruin.” There follows a long list of the
mechanical difficulties, with the following conclusion, “When it is
well done, we allow, that nothing can be more beautiful: but we see
everywhere so many absurd attempts of this kind, that when we walk
through a piece of improved ground, and hear of being carried next to
_see the ruins_, if the master of the scene be with us, we dread
the encounter.” In “The Spiritual Quixote,” 1773, is an amusing account
of a visit of Sir Geoffry Wildgoose to a noted estate. The ignorant
keeper in showing off various objects of interest calls attention to
the “_turpentine_ walks,” and then leads the way to the ruins
explaining that it was built “but a few years ago; and his Lordship
used to say, he could have _built_ it as _old_ again, if he
had had a mind.” An antiquary present exclaims,
I don’t at all approve of these deceptions.... I don’t wonder
that any gentleman should wish to have his woods or gardens
adorned with these venerable Gothic structures; as they strike
the imagination with vast pleasure, both by the greatness of
the object, and also by giving us a melancholy idea of their
past grandeur and magnificence. But for a man to _build a
ruin_, or to erect a modern house in the style of our Gothic
ancestors--appears to me the same absurdity ... as that which
many people have of late run into, of having their pictures
drawn in the habits of Vandyke or Sir Peter Lely.
Mr. Mason, in “The English Garden” deprecates building ruins, but
thinks a man to be congratulated if on his grounds
one superior rock
Bear on its brow the shivered fragment huge
Of some old Norman fortress; happier far,
Oh, then most happy, if thy vale below
Wash, with the crystal coolness of its rills,
Some mouldering abbey’s ivy-vested wall.
This search after ruins was a morbid and exaggerated development of the
new love of the old, the wild, the picturesque, just as the sentimental
melancholy in poetry was a morbid and exaggerated development of the
new poetic turning to emotional introspection, to solitude, to thoughts
of death and the grave. In the extreme form both phases were ephemeral,
and, it is interesting to note, were nearly contemporaneous. Batty
Langley was advocating “ruins” in gardens in 1728 but it is not till
after the middle of the century that they seem to have been accepted
as a necessary part of an estate, and this is just the period when the
spirit of sentimental melancholy in poetry, a spirit that had found
early expression in the night-piece of Parnell and Lady Winchilsea,
reached its culmination.
The subject of oriental gardens was also much discussed in prose
and verse. In 1752 appeared “An Account of the Emperor of China’s
Gardens at Pekin” by Père Attiret, translated by Sir H. Beaumont
(i.e., Joseph Spence).[565] In 1760 came Goldsmith’s “Description
of a Chinese Garden.” Most influential of all was “A Dissertation
on Oriental Gardens” by Sir William Chambers in 1772. The practical
influence of the discussion of Chinese gardens went little beyond the
building of summer-houses and bridges in the Chinese style. But the
naturalistic school in England was strengthened by an appeal to the
Chinese method of copying Nature “in all her beautiful irregularities,”
while the sentimentality of gardens such as Leasowes seemed to receive
sanction from the efforts of Chinese gardeners to construct scenes
with the express purpose of arousing certain emotions. The “fancies
and surprises” of Chinese effects were pleasing to those who, as Sir
William Chambers, thought Kent’s English gardens “no better than so
many fields.” The popularity of writings on oriental gardening is
furthermore significant of the enlarged horizons, the prevailing
interest in the new and the remote, characteristic of one phase of
romanticism, and it is to be classed as a sign of the times along with
the interest in oriental eclogues in the realm of poetry.
Incomplete and cursory as so short a study of so great a subject must
be, the facts here presented seem to warrant the following statements:
The feeling toward Nature in the period studied shows in gardening the
same order of development, nearly the same dates, and the same phases
as in poetry. There was first in both a pleased recognition of the
supremacy of man, a rigid exclusiveness, a love of order, of symmetry,
and of definite limits. Then came, in the early eighteenth century, a
tentative turning from art to Nature; then an epoch-making statement in
each art, Thomson’s “Seasons” from 1726 to 1730, and Pope’s “Epistle”
in 1731. From this point on the development was in mass and variety
rather than in the enunciation of new principles. The growing love
for wild Nature in the poetry, and the passion for the picturesque in
gardening proceed side by side. At the end of the century all is ready
in both arts for the splendid work of the new era. Throughout the
century both have had curiously correspondent offshoots or temporary
fads--sentimental melancholy in poetry, and the ruins, artificial and
real, in gardening; foreign eclogues and studies of distant countries
in the one art, and Chinese gardens in the other.
CHAPTER VI
LANDSCAPE PAINTING
It is the purpose of this chapter to indicate how far and in what way
painting lent itself to the expression of that new love for Nature
which, as we have seen, gradually became dominant in the realm of
poetry, fiction, travels, and gardening. Such an inquiry is beset
with peculiar difficulties in the case of pictures because they are
seldom dated. At best we usually know only whether a picture is
early or late in the artist’s career. After the beginning of public
exhibitions with catalogues, which was not till 1760, something like
accuracy in dates becomes possible, but the information thus obtained
is not entirely reliable for the reason that pictures were not always
exhibited the year they were painted, and it is certainly inadequate
because so small a proportion of the pictures painted reached any
exhibition. Furthermore, the pictures most important in establishing
the early use of landscape would come before 1760. A second difficulty
arises from the inaccessibility of much of the material, especially
the important early material. Whatever was printed in a book had many
chances of survival. A single brief poem indicative of a new love of
Nature, even though a poem but lightly regarded by the author and his
contemporaries, would hold its small place in his works and share
in the reduplicated life of the tragedies, satires, and didactic
poems to which he intrusted his fame. But an equally slight picture,
though equally indicative of a new tendency, would have no such fate.
Unregarded, unpurchased, its ultimate destiny would be destruction, or,
possibly, burial in some attic. Even such of these pictures as still
hold their own in some collection are widely scattered and often in
private galleries not open to public inspection.
This inaccessibility of much of the original material would be an
insuperable difficulty from the point of view of the student of
technique, but is less formidable in the present study which has to do
not with qualities that would give the picture high or low artistic
rank so much as with the thoughts the artist strove to express, his
tastes, his feelings, the conception of Nature that guided his work.
For this purpose we have as authentic material not only original
pictures whenever obtainable, but also reproductions of various sorts,
along with biographies, letters, and critical essays. From these
scattered sources it becomes possible to make a brief but not wholly
inadequate statement concerning the place of the external world in
English eighteenth-century art.
I. LANDSCAPE IN PORTRAITURE
As a picturesque accessory in portraiture landscape received early
recognition in English art. Even the miniaturists found space for
landscape backgrounds,[566] and Vandyck, who was painting in England
from 1621 to 1641, established the use of landscape elements in large
portraits in oil. Sometimes, where the portrait is inevitably in the
open air, as in the equestrian portrait of Charles I in the National
Gallery, the landscape is worked out with much beauty of detail, but
as a rule Vandyck makes use of Nature as an accessory rather than as a
full background. Various devices, as an open window or door, a space
framed in by heavily draped curtains and massive pillars, or an outlook
over a balustrade, serve to enrich the picture by a glimpse of sky, a
bright horizon line, or a stretch of vaguely indicated country. He also
frequently uses a rock as the direct background, the rock revealing
itself as such only at the edge where tufts of foliage or a gnarled
tree branch out against the sky and an indeterminate landscape.[567]
In no case does Vandyck subordinate the portrait to the landscape,
nor does he combine the portrait and the landscape with the idea of
securing a general decorative effect. The landscape remains always
simply as background or as an enlivening detail.
[Illustration: JOHN MAITLAND, DUKE OF LAUDERDALE
_By Sir Peter Lely_]
Vandyck’s most important successor, Sir Peter Lely, who was in England
from 1641 to 1680, but whose great vogue was after 1660, made frequent
use of open-air settings, especially in his portraits of women. The
“Windsor Beauties”[568] sufficiently attest his command of landscape
effects. Princess Mary as Diana, the duchess of Cleveland as Minerva,
the duchess of Richmond, the countess of Falmouth, Mrs. Middleton
as Pomona, Mrs. Stewart, are fair women whose picturesque beauty is
enhanced by the poetic and romantic landscapes against which they
stand. There is, to be sure, no attempt at verisimilitude. There is no
thought of a real landscape to which the person in the picture has some
natural relation. Walpole says in derogation of Lely that his nymphs
trail their embroideries and fringes through the thorns and briars of
pastoral landscapes, but the fact is that these Dianas and Minervas and
innocent shepherdesses of the Nell Gwynn variety are no more _in_
these landscapes than they are actual goddesses or country maidens. The
landscape is but a sort of wall-painting or figured tapestry used as a
decorative background. These portraits are of importance in the present
study because they show that while Lely as portrait painter rightly
cared especially for the figure, he had yet an appreciation not common
in his time of the beauty of the world about him.
It would seem as if the example of Vandyck and Lely and their great
fame would have established the use of landscape as a portrait
convention, and it is true that Lely’s pupils[569] made some attempts
in this direction, but under the leadership of Sir Godfrey Kneller
(1646–1723) the custom gradually fell into disuse. Kneller, practically
supreme in England during the half-century before his death, painted
the kings and queens and royal families of England, the beaux and the
belles, the statesmen and the wits, so that a gallery of his portraits
would afford a survey of the notable social and intellectual England of
his day. Commissions came in upon him too rapidly to allow much time
for carefully studied backgrounds. Sometimes he uses a rock background
in the manner of Vandyck, but even more conventionalized, as in his
“Madam Turner,”[570] and there is an occasional landscape in the manner
of Lely, as in the “Countess of Ranelagh.”[571] The “Hampton Court
Beauties,”[572] painted in emulation of the “Windsor Beauties,” are
the portraits in which we should expect the richest use of landscape,
and Kneller’s tall, elaborately gowned ladies, do stand in front of
gardens with pillars and balustrades, with hints here and there of a
red sunset, but not even the best of these backgrounds, that in the
portrait of Lady Middleton with lamb and crook, has Lely’s grace and
poetic suggestiveness. Now and then, when there is some reason to
emphasize the portrait as a picture, Kneller brings all his ingenuity
into play and crowds the canvas with decorative detail. The little duke
of Gloucester, for instance, is rendered almost pathetically childish
by his varied and elaborate surroundings,[573] but the combination
of draped curtains, marble steps, massive pillars, a huge sculptured
urn loaded with flowers, a balustraded terrace, and, beyond it, a
park landscape under a cloudy sky, gives an impression of confused
magnificence, with none of the artistic restraint of Vandyck, none of
the elusive, romantic charm of Lely.
After Kneller, Jervas (1675–1739), Richardson (1665–1745), Hudson
(1701–79), and Highmore (1692–1780) were leaders in portrait
painting. Jervas has occasional effects reminiscent of Lely as in the
portraits of Dorothy Walpole and Mrs. Howard.[574] Hudson’s “Duchess
of Ancaster,”[575] clad in the richest brocade, roped with pearls,
stands stiffly erect in front of a rock that harks back to Vandyck.
These pictures and others of their class well illustrate the wooden
and unmeaning use of landscape characteristic of the mid-eighteenth
century. Certain conventions from the great days of a century earlier
still remained, but deprived of all charm or significance. With the
successors of Kneller portrait painting reached the lowest point of the
decline that had been steadily going on since Vandyck, or, at least,
since Lely. Walpole, who had a high opinion of Kneller, said of his
successors,
They have either left us hideous and literal transcripts of
the awkward, tight-laced, behooped, and bewigged generation of
beaux and belles before them; or, quitting all probability,
or even possibility, have given us Arcadian shepherdesses,
and soi-disant Greeks and Romans, where wigs and flounces and
frippery mingle with crooks, sheep, thunderbolts, and Roman
draperies.[576]
The darkness that seemed thus at the middle of the century to be
settling down around the art of portrait painting was, however, the
darkness that precedes the dawn, or, in this instance, the full day,
for with the first portraits of Sir Joshua Reynolds after he returned
from Rome in 1752, and with the work of Thomas Gainsborough, his
immediate contemporary, we enter upon the supreme period of British
portraiture, a period in which there seemed suddenly to spring into
being all the grace and skill, all the sense of beauty and poetry,
all the power of imaginative interpretation, that had been waning in
English art annals since the days of Vandyck. And with this great
revival in the art there came a striking revival of interest in the use
of landscape in portraiture.
Sir Joshua Reynolds (1723–92) made use of landscape backgrounds in
portraits of various kinds. His full-length portrait of Keppel was
completed in 1753 and was the picture that established his fame. It is
thus described by Lord Gower: “The gallant young sailor is represented
as literally walking out of the canvas. His countenance is full of
animation, and as he seems to step briskly, bareheaded, across the
beach, his locks are blown backward from his forehead by the gale....
In the background a wild sea breaks on the shore.” This portrait, says
Lord Gower, “made an epoch in that form of art.”[577] The epoch-making
characteristics of the picture were, in the first place, the striking
animation and naturalness of the figure as opposed to the monotony
and woodenness of pose adopted by artists such as Hudson, and, in the
second place, the genuine open-air effect of the whole picture, the
perfectly simple and natural union of the figure and the landscape. In
some other portraits of men Reynolds made use of landscape backgrounds,
as in the half-lengths of Admiral Keppel (1780) and that of Lord
Heathfield (1787) in which the figures stand forth boldly against a
stormy sky with a suggestion of an ocean view. Some landscapes show
reminiscences of Vandyck, as in the backgrounds of the equestrian
portraits of Captain Orme (exhibited 1761) and Lord Ligonier[578]
(about 1760), or in the conventionalized tree-trunks and distant view
in the half-length of the archbishop of Armagh.[579] It is, however, in
full-lengths of women and children, either singly or in groups, that
Sir Joshua makes freest use of landscape. The little Princess Sophia
Matilda of Gloucester, a chubby baby rolling on the grass with her
dog; Prince William of Gloucester in plum-colored cavalier costume
standing on a hill against the sky; the Lady Caroline Montague Scott, a
bright-eyed little maiden standing in a snowy landscape, her hands in
a big muff; little Miss Cholmondeley valiantly carrying her dog over
a brook; the four-year-old Viscount Althorp, a quaint little figure
outlined against lovely effects of sky and foliage, are but a few of
the children Reynolds has painted with admirable life and charm and
in the midst of natural out-door surroundings. Even more elaborate
attention is given to the landscape backgrounds in the full-lengths of
women. Such portraits as those of the Marchioness Camden, Mrs. Crewe
as St. Geneviève, the Viscountess Crosbie, Lady Betty Compton, the
Duchess of Devonshire, the countess of Salisbury, Miss Mary Moncton,
the Duchess of Rutland, Lady Bampfylde, Mrs. Bonfoy, or Mrs. Carnac,
show abundantly the skill with which Reynolds united figures, drapery,
and landscape so as to secure a harmonious and decorative general
effect.[580] It often happens, indeed, that the faces of these tall
aristocratic ladies are hardly remembered, so strongly is the attention
caught by the flow of line, the shimmer of fabrics, the abundance of
charming scenic detail. Mrs. Jameson says that Reynolds was the first
English artist to venture upon light and gay landscape backgrounds. In
his portraits of women we do not find the stormy skies, rude rocks, and
blustering weather against which Lely’s ladies posed. Reynolds delights
in typical English park scenery, with its variety of wood and water,
its soft, dim distances, its rich clumps of trees. He often uses, too,
the architectural elements appropriate to a park, but never in a hard
or obtrusive fashion. His steps and balustrades, his columns and urns,
gleam out from masses of foliage or are overhung with a wealth of vines
and flowers. The whole effect is rich and stately, suggestive of lovely
order and nurture, and is particularly well suited to the fashionable
dames who are thus enshrined. In general we may say that Sir Joshua’s
use of landscape in portraiture surpasses in amount that of any
preceding master, and that his scenic backgrounds are unrivaled in the
qualities of naturalness and charm, and in artistic suitability for the
personages portrayed.[581]
[Illustration: MRS. CARNAC
_By Sir Joshua Reynolds_]
Thomas Gainsborough (1727–88) uses landscape with as much insistence
as Reynolds, but not in the same manner. His backgrounds are not so
elaborately worked out, yet with all their slightness and sketchiness
they are more imaginatively suggestive. It is, indeed, astonishing to
perceive with how little reality of detail Gainsborough contrives to
call up a vital impression of Nature in her most enchanting aspects.
A still subtler source of charm rests in his power to fuse figures
and landscape into an effect of perfect unity. The “Musidora” in the
National Gallery is a picture before which, even in its present state,
one could linger long in absorbed contemplation, without once mentally
separating the figure and its surroundings. There is such a harmonious
blending of lovely lines, of soft, rich hues, that the whole picture
seems to have sprung from a single impulse. Sir Walter Armstrong says
that in general Gainsborough’s landscape backgrounds “are nothing
more than the extension over the unoccupied part of the canvas of
the sentiment governing the sitter.”[582] Mr. Van Dyke points out
the effect of the landscape in the famous portrait of “Mrs Graham,”
where “the castle wall, the deep glen at the left, the loneliness of
the background, add to the romance of her face.”[583] The portrait
of Mrs. Robinson as “Perdita”[584] or that of “Mrs. Sheridan”[585]
are even more convincing proofs of his ability to present a landscape
inexplicably akin to the personality of the sitter, a landscape that
in some indefinably but most real way interprets and emphasizes that
personality. It is in full-length portraits of women whose beauty
is enhanced by an air of pensive melancholy that this subtle use of
landscape is mainly found. But in group portraits such as that of “Mrs
Moody and her Children,” or, lovelier still, that of “Mrs. Sheridan
and Mrs. Tickell,”[586] are landscape backgrounds every line and color
of which serve to carry out and complete the grace and tenderness
characteristic of the figures. In the “Squire Hallet and his
Wife”[587] there is a harmony so penetrating that it haunts the mind
like music. In “The Mall”[588] where there is no individual portraiture
we seem at first to have but a Watteau-like effect of fashionably
attired dames in a setting of rich park scenery. But presently we
perceive that the whole picture conveys a sense of pathos. The ancient
trees stretching up against the soft sky in immemorial majesty and
beauty give to the onlooker a keen sense of the futile and evanescent
life fluttering away its brief hour under their solemn and mysterious
shadows.[589]
[Illustration: SQUIRE HALLET AND HIS WIFE
_By Thomas Gainsborough_]
On the same wall in the Wallace collection hang Reynolds’ “Mrs. Carnac”
and Gainsborough’s “Perdita.” Both pictures exemplify the possible
heightened attractiveness of a portrait in which the artist has made
skilful use of a landscape background. They also serve to illustrate a
central point of unlikeness in the use of landscape by the two great
artists. In Reynolds’ picture the beautiful setting can be conceived of
as a landscape quite apart from the stately lady whose pose, figure,
and draperies it so advantageously sets off. There is artistic harmony
but there is no essential union. But Gainsborough’s background cannot
be thought of by itself. It merely makes us conscious that the fair
Perdita is out in the light and air, that behind her are real forest
depths, that the pensive, appealing charm of her face is enhanced by
the pathetic loveliness of Nature herself. With Gainsborough we have
reached the subtlest and most perfect use of Nature in portraiture, and
his supremacy is based on the fact that his landscapes serve the true
purpose of backgrounds. They never offer an individual beauty that
rivals or eclipses that of the person, but they contribute to build up
an impression the very heart of which is the characteristic effect made
by the sitter.
After Gainsborough, from the studios of great artists such as Romney,
Raeburn, Opie, and Hoppner, Sir Thomas Lawrence and Sir Thomas Beechey,
and many of lesser note, came many portraits with landscape work of
power and significance, but it is not, in pursuance of this topic,
necessary to take up their work in detail, for the reason that Reynolds
and Gainsborough led the way, and for the further reason that after
them there arose no new or superior way of using Nature in portraiture.
II. LANDSCAPE PAINTING
English landscape painting from 1660 to 1800 falls naturally into
three periods. During the first of these which ends in 1707 with the
death of the younger Van de Velde, there was considerable landscape
work, but nearly all of it was by foreign artists.[590] We do, to
be sure, find early in the period an Englishman, Robert Streater
(1624–80), who, in addition to his fame as a painter of historical and
mythological subjects on walls and ceilings, was counted “incomparable”
in landscape. His contemporary popularity is attested by the fact that
in James II’s collection were five of his landscapes, but such examples
of his work as are accessible in public galleries hardly substantiate
his reputation. He founded his style, it is said, on “the late
Italians.”[591] At the end of the period is Francis Barlow (1626–1702)
who, anticipating the themes of George Morland, crowded his farmyard
scenes with fowls of many varieties, with pigs, sheep, horses, cows,
donkeys, and even deer. A tinted drawing by him in the South Kensington
Gallery illustrates his lively conceptions, and indicates his clever
use of landscape backgrounds. Working with Barlow as an engraver was
Francis Place[592] (1647–1728) whose best plates were of animals, but
who sometimes etched landscapes “for his own amusement.” A print of his
“View of Scarborough” in the Print Room of the British Museum shows,
in spite of the conventional wool-bag clouds, a notable attempt to
represent truly a bold and rugged cliff with a distant sea-view and
waves rolling gently in on a curving beach. But with these unimportant
exceptions the painters of landscape in England before 1707 were
foreigners. And of the foreign artists only the Van de Veldes, father
and son, achieved more than local and temporary fame. Willem Van de
Velde the Elder (1610–93) was already a famous painter of sea-pieces
when Charles II called him to England in 1675. At Hampton Court may
still be seen many of his huge canvases, chiefly important as pictorial
chronicles of English naval achievement, but showing also effective use
of sea and sky. The eighteenth-century estimate of Willem Van de Velde
the Younger (1633–1707) is expressed in Walpole’s dictum, “Pre-eminence
is no more to be contested with Raphael for history than with Van de
Velde for sea-pieces,” and he still ranks as one of the great marine
painters. English galleries, both public and private, are rich in
beautiful examples of his work.[593] No other name so illustrious
occurs in Walpole’s annals of this period. Of the other foreign
painters it is sufficient to say that they were men whose habits of
thought, whose tastes, as well as their technique, had been established
in Holland, Flanders, or Italy, and who did their mature work in
England because the desire of Charles II to revive the art activities
fostered by his father seemed to offer a good professional opening.
The fact that they painted in England had hardly more influence on the
course of English art than would have been exerted by the importation
of their pictures. They founded no schools, they excited little
emulation or even imitation. They were merely second- or third-rate
workmen who painted along in a manner studiously reminiscent of their
earlier masters. Such slight effect as their work had in developing
the love of Nature in England came from the fact that Englishmen
at last saw depicted some of the wild or romantic scenes of their
own country, scenes from Scotland and the Isle of Jersey, from the
neighborhood of Derbyshire Peak, from along the banks of the Thames.
But such slight influence as this attention to local scenery might
have had, was, it must be insisted, nearly neutralized by the fact
that these representations of English scenery were always so “touched
up” in the style of some Dutch or Italian master as to be practically
unrecognizable. Instead of observing Nature the artists “composed”
pictures, using elements conventionally accepted as picturesque. They
trained themselves to see England through the eyes of Salvator Rosa or
Ruysdael or Claude Lorraine or the Poussins.
[Illustration: A CALM
_By Willem van de Velde_]
The second period of landscape art in England comprises the forty-eight
years between the death of the younger Van de Velde (1707) and the
return of Richard Wilson from Italy in 1755. In studying this period a
convenient point of departure is given by M. Rouquet’s “L’état des arts
en Angleterre,” published in 1755. His only reference to landscape art
is in the following interesting but rather vague paragraph:
Rien n’est si riant que les campagnes de ce pays-là, plus d’un
Peintre y fait un usage heureux des aspects charmans qui s’y
présentent de toutes parts: les tableaux de paysage y sont
fort à la mode, ce genre y est cultivé avec autant de succes
qu’aucun autre. Il y a peu de maîtres dans ce talent qui ayent
été beaucoup supérieurs aux Peintres de paysage qui jouissent
aujourd’hui en Angleterre de la première réputation.[594]
M. Rouquet’s words seem to imply a much larger amount of successful
and popular landscape work than extant pictures or the meager annals
of the time would indicate. Possibly in the landscapes that were
“fort à la mode” were included important Italian works, or the works
of foreigners painting in England. There must have been, also, more
landscape production than is in any way recorded, so that M. Rouquet
doubtless had knowledge of pictures now practically non-existent. And
even the following summary of such names and works as have survived a
century and a half will give his words a modified justification.
Peter Monamy (1670–1749) was a marine painter of the school of the
younger Van de Velde. “The Old East India Wharf at London Bridge,”
a large and interesting canvas at the South Kensington Gallery, and
“The Calm,” a small but very attractive picture at Dulwich, go far
toward the maintenance of his great contemporary reputation. A second
marine painter of much promise was Charles Brooking (1723–59). Of the
few pictures by him in London galleries the most delightful is “The
Calm,” a picture recently added to the National Gallery. A series of
his naval reviews was reproduced by Boydell in 1753, and other works
were engraved by Canot and Ravenet. Samuel Scott (1710–72), after Van
de Velde the most important marine painter of the century, did some of
his fine views of the Thames and old London bridges as early as 1745.
Excellent examples of his work are in the National Gallery and at South
Kensington.
[Illustration: DUNNINGTON CLIFF
_By Thomas Smith_]
There were also during this period several men whose chief pictures
were of animals, but with considerable incidental use of landscape.
James Seymour (1702–52), known as a portrait painter of fine horses,
also painted many hunting-scenes where horses and dogs are trooping at
full speed through broken country. Contemporary with Seymour was John
Wootton (d. 1765) the excellence of whose representations of animals
is well shown by his illustrations of Gay’s “Fables” in 1731. Wootton
was also painting landscapes in the Italian manner before 1751. George
Stubbs (1724–1806) began his work as an animal painter before
the middle of the century. In 1740 he broke away from conventions
by resolving never to copy any picture but “to look into Nature for
himself and consult and study her only.” This sturdy independence
ripened in 1754 into a determination to visit Italy in order to test
his opinion that “Nature is superior to all Art,” a dictum worthy of
note so early in the century.
Landscape painting specifically so called begins with the topographical
draughtsmen of the early eighteenth century. If a draughtsman had any
susceptibility to the beauties of Nature his sketch almost insensibly
took on various adjuncts from the scenes about him till his work
gradually merged into landscape painting for its own sake. One of
the earliest topographers was Samuel Buck (1696–1779) who, with his
brother Nathanael, brought out over five hundred views between 1723 and
1753.[595] Their work, stiff and crude as it is, did not confine itself
to buildings or bird’s-eye views but shows some attempts at adornment
by the introduction of sky and foliage. William Taverner (1703–72),
another early topographer and landscape painter as well, is represented
in South Kensington by one sepia drawing of a path by a river, and by
a singularly attractive water-color landscape, a composition in the
Italian style. Mr. Cosmo Monkhouse refers also to a view of a sand-pit
at Woolwich, and to “an extensive and beautiful landscape” (now at
Whitworth Institute, Manchester) showing the view from Richmond Hill.
Taverner’s reputation was justly high in his own day. Smollett in
“Humphrey Clinker” makes Matthew Bramble say of Taverner in a letter to
Dr. Lewis (May 19),
This young gentleman of Bath is the best landscape painter now
living: I was struck with his performances as I had never been
by painting before. His trees not only have a richness of
foliage, and warmth of colouring which delight the view; but
also a certain magnificence in the disposition and spirit in the
expression, which I cannot describe.... If there is any taste
for ingenuity left ... this artist, I apprehend, will make a
capital figure, as soon as his works are known.[596]
[Illustration: DERWENTWATER
_By William Bellers_]
After Taverner’s death “The Gentleman’s Magazine” for 1772 reiterated
Smollett’s statement but in a stronger form calling Taverner “one of
the best landscape painters England ever produced.” Mr. Monkhouse
speaks of him as “the artist who could most justly challenge Paul
Sandby’s claim to the title of the father of the English school of
water-colours in the production of faithful landscape.”[597] About
contemporary with Taverner is George Lambert (1710–65), engravings
from whose landscapes were published in 1749. In the Print Room of the
British Museum his work is represented by six attractive engravings,
and there is a fresh, modern looking painting by him in the National
Gallery.[598] Lambert chose as themes mixed country of slow streams
or quiet lakes, with bushy shores; low, wooded hills; stretches of
arable land with thatched cottages under embowering trees. In most of
his pictures the rich, peaceful scene is enlivened by the presence
of domestic animals, cows standing lazily in pools, sheep huddling
along the road, horses coming heavily home from the day’s work. There
are also men, women, and children engaged in various country sports
or occupations. George Lambert is one of the first English artists
to attempt what may be called domestic landscape. Contemporary with
Lambert is Thomas Smith (d. 1767), known as “Smith of Derby” from
the town where he chiefly resided. His “Views of Chatsworth” are
dated 1744, and Vivares engraved some of his views of Derbyshire in
1745. A print from his “View of Dunnington Cliff,” dated 1745, shows
a river winding in tortuous fashion into the remote distance, with
wooded hills on one side, balanced on the other by meadows stretching
away to a low hill crowned with a little church. The foreground shows
scraggly trees, a waterfall, a lock, cattle grazing, and figures
variously occupied. The crowded canvas lacks unity of impression and
is thoroughly conventional in arrangement, but the details are English
and are painted with manifest appreciation and a very evident attempt
at fidelity. George Smith (1714–76), or “Smith of Chichester,” belongs
in time with Lambert and Thomas Smith. He and his brothers were the
first to establish a local school of landscape art. In 1760 he was
awarded a premium of fifty pounds for “A Landskip, half-length,” the
first premium given by the “Society of Arts” for landscape work, but
he had done considerable Claudesque painting before this time. In
spite of his imitative manner his themes are the lovely scenes about
Chichester, and he painted them with genuine affection. A pleasing
example of his Italian style is in the South Kensington Gallery.
A dark line of foreground with tufted brownish trees on each side
frames in a still lake; a fine effect of distance is given by misty
blue hills beyond the lake; and sunset effects--a tender blue sky
with grayish little clouds softly brightened by yellow light from the
diffused golden glow along the horizon--are delicately repeated in
the mirror-like water. Another early artist of whom little seems to
be known is William Bellers.[599] Numerous engravings by Mason from
landscapes “Painted after Nature by William Bellers” occur from 1752
to 1759. He was a Cumberland man and nearly all of his pictures are
of scenes in that county and in Westmoreland. As art his work cannot
rank high, but not even his fluffy hills, tossed together without a
suggestion of rock foundation, nor his lack of aërial perspective, can
obscure the delight with which he painted the picturesque scenery of
his native regions. Bellers was apparently the first one of the long
line of Lake Country artists and his pictures antedate by some years
the known descriptions in poetry, travels, and fiction. Thomas Smith
also painted in Westmoreland and other northern counties but there
is no means of determining whether his pictures are earlier or later
than those of Bellers. Alexander Cozens (d. 1786), was sent to study
art in Italy. He returned to England in 1746 and exhibited from 1760
to 1781. There are at South Kensington several examples of his work,
especially two interesting mountain landscapes. In the British Museum
are fifty-four drawings which belong to his Italian period. Some of
these are extensive views. Some of them show interesting experiments
such as the attempt to represent sunlight streaming through clouds.
“Altogether,” says Mr. Monkhouse, “these show that Cozens before his
arrival in England, was a well-trained artist who observed Nature for
himself, and was not without poetical skill” and Mr. Monkhouse finds in
the “imagination, ingenuity, and trained skill” of the father adequate
explanation of his son, John Robert Cozens, whose work will be noted in
the next section.[600] The work of Alexander Cozens was particularly
that of teaching art.[601] John Boydell (1719–1804), better known
as a publisher of prints than as an original artist, yet did some
interesting early work. In 1736 his interest in scenery was aroused by
“a book of well-executed landscape engravings.” In 1745 he brought out
a series of “landscapes for learners” the tremendous success of which
laid the foundation of his great fortune, and throughout his life his
activities as publisher were largely affected by his love of scenery.
He was the first artist to paint in Wales. A large print done by him
from one of his own pictures and bearing the date 1750 is an attempt to
represent Mount Snowdon. Paul Sandby (1725–1809) is of more importance
in the history of landscape art than any of the men already mentioned,
but most of his work belongs after 1755. His sketches in the Highlands,
whither he went as draughtsman on a road survey, were, however, made
during the years 1746–51[602] and his exquisite aquatint studies of the
country about Windsor belong about 1751–52 when he was with his brother
Thomas at the deputy ranger’s lodge at Windsor.
[Illustration: MOUNT SNOWDON
_By John Boydell_]
That early landscape painting was not confined to England may be shown
by reference to some Scotch and Irish artists. Alexander Runciman
(1736–85) was born in Edinburgh. He began to paint landscapes before he
was twelve. “Furnished with pencils, and brushes, and colours, he took
to the fields; his first sketches were rocks, trees, and waterfalls.”
At fourteen he was placed in the studio of John and Robert Norris where
he showed himself “one of the wildest enthusiasts that ever devoted
themselves to the art.” “Other artists,” it was said, “talked meat
and drink, but Runciman talked landscape.” By 1755 Runciman set up as
landscape painter on his own account, but he speedily learned that
though landscape might bring applause it was not an art whereby even
a moderate livelihood could be obtained and by 1760 the young painter
had turned to other realms.[603] John Norris, of whom little is known
except that he was Runciman’s teacher, was nevertheless in his day
reckoned “a celebrated landscape painter.” Brydall says that he was
“probably the first to create, or at least to minister to the taste for
landscape in the Scottish metropolis.”[604] In Ireland was an obscure
artist named Rogers who has been called “the father of landscape art”
in that country. His pupil, Butts (d. 1764), painted early landscapes
said to be “impressive copies of the wild scenes which abound in the
county of Cork, and the romantic views that abound on the margin of
Black Water.”
From this catalogue of names and dates several facts emerge. In the
first place, nearly all the landscape work mentioned belongs after
1740. From 1707 to about 1740 English landscape art can hardly be said
to exist at all. Even the foreign artists so much in evidence in the
preceding period are no longer to be found in England.[605] George II
frankly hated “boetry and bainting” and the reigns before him were
hardly more hospitably inclined to aesthetic claims outside the realms
of portraiture and history painting. This lack of royal patronage
would sufficiently account for the dearth of foreign painters, and
perhaps, also, for the lack of English landscape painters. All native
art-impulse would likewise feel the inevitably deadening effect of the
universal and rigid acceptance of foreign canons of art. But whatever
the cause, the fact remains that most of the English landscapes M.
Rouquet speaks so enthusiastically of in 1755 must have been painted in
the preceding fifteen years.
In the second place, the landscape art, though technically not of
high rank, is yet, by its amount, the range of its themes, and its
suggestions of a new personal feeling toward the external world, an
important contribution to the growing love of Nature. The output of
the years 1740–55 is really surprisingly large and correspondingly
varied in theme. There are three artists who paint successful marines,
and three whose studies of animal life take good rank. In landscapes
we find much emphasis on the pastoral beauty of England, its hills,
streams, lakes, woods, meadows, and thatched cottages. Wilder scenery
is also portrayed, for by the middle of the century the Highlands of
Scotland, Derbyshire and Yorkshire, the Lake District, and Wales, have
all received recognition as true subjects for landscape art. And there
is, in the case of every artist, even of those who feel most strongly
the dominance of foreign masters, a very evident study of the details
of English landscapes and an eagerness to record in painting the charms
felt by the artist. It should also be noted that, though nearly all the
more important pictures were the work of English artists, yet native
artists began to paint scenery at about the same time in England,
Scotland, and Ireland.
The period from 1755 to 1800 is throughout rich in landscape
production, but the thirty years between 1755 and 1785 is the most
significant portion of the period. These are the years during which
landscape art was established in England and during which it won the
greatest laurels it was to have before the great days of the early
nineteenth century. The two famous artists of this notable thirty years
were Wilson and Gainsborough and it will simplify the account if we
take up their work before that of their lesser contemporaries.
[Illustration: THE SUMMIT OF CADER-IDRIS
_By Richard Wilson_]
Richard Wilson (1714–82) was born at Penegoes near Machynlleth,
Montgomeryshire, Wales, but while still a child, his father, the Rev.
John Wilson, went to live at Mold, Flintshire, and there the lad was
brought up. Talent of some sort as an artist he early evinced and at
fifteen he was sent to London to study portrait painting, a profession
at which he worked steadily for twenty-one years, and by which he
apparently made a fair income though his portraits never rose much
above mediocrity.[606] At thirty-six he went to Italy for further
study. During his six years there he devoted himself exclusively to
landscape. He remained in Venice a year; with William Lock he made
a slow tour from Venice to Rome; with Lord Dartmouth he went to
Naples; from Rome as his headquarters he made many excursions into
the surrounding regions; and throughout all these travels he was
tireless in the production of studies, sketches, pictures. Through the
generous praise of recognized authorities such as Zucarelli, Mengs,
and Vernet, a report of his surprising achievements reached England,
and when he returned to London in 1755 it was to find his reputation
practically established. His solemn style did not, however, at once
commend itself to the artists of his time. Wright says that his return
excited “some interest and much criticism in the coteries of art,” and
that certain artists “who then constituted themselves, what they called
_A Committee of Taste_, and led the understanding of the public
in art” sat in judgment on Wilson’s work and resolved “That the manner
of Mr. Wilson was not suited to the English, and that if he hoped for
patronage he must change it for the lighter style of Zucarelli.” When
this committee waited on Wilson it was met with cool contempt,[607]
and he painted on in his own fashion. But the committee’s estimate
of patronage was apparently correct, for during the lifetime of the
artist, in spite of the fact that during a period of twenty-five
years he assiduously painted landscapes, he did not achieve an even
moderately comfortable livelihood. His life was one of sordid financial
shifts and of growing bitterness of spirit, until, in 1780, through a
small inheritance, he was enabled to retire to a little patrimony in
Wales, where, broken and enfeebled, he spent the two years before his
death.
Wilson’s work as a landscape painter began certainly as early as
1750 in Italy, and all probabilities are in favor of the supposition
that it began earlier in England. To be sure, no juvenile sketches,
no anecdotes of youthful tendencies, remain to substantiate this
conjecture. Even the “View of Dover,” the one landscape known to have
been painted before the Italian visit, is no longer in existence.
But the fact that this picture was at once engraved by J. S.
Miller would seem to indicate that it was counted a work of some
importance. Furthermore, when Wilson began his work in Italy there
was no apprentice period. Work done in the early years there shows a
management of landscape detail and composition quite equal to that
of his later work, and such as would not be prepared for by the most
zealous study in portraiture. It is, indeed, hardly believable that a
pronounced passion for landscape such as characterized Wilson should
never have tempted his brush till he was thirty-six, and should then,
at the chance words of a fellow-artist suddenly open out before him
as his life-work. Edwards Edwardes is responsible for the anecdote
that attributes Wilson’s change from portraiture to landscape to the
advice of Zucarelli. But we have, on the other hand, the more probable
account given by Mr. Hastings in a volume of etchings made by him from
the Ford collection of Wilson’s paintings. Mr. Hastings gives Mr.
R----s (probably Mr. Samuel Rogers, the author of “Italy” and an art
connoisseur) as authority for the statement that an influential patron
of the arts, Mr. William Lock of Norbury, perceived Wilson’s bent
toward landscape of the grand sort, and urged him to go to Italy as
the best place to perfect himself in that art. Mr. Beaumont Fletcher,
Wilson’s latest biographer, considers that the artist was fully
conscious of his powers as a landscape painter, and that his visit
to Rome was premeditated for the purpose of study in that particular
line.[608] Sir Walter Armstrong also maintains the probability, almost
certainty, of landscape work by Wilson prior to the Italian tour.[609]
The landscapes painted by Wilson between 1755 and 1760, the date of
the first public exhibition of pictures[610] in England, cannot be
absolutely identified, but he was probably spending much of his time
in painting from the sketches made in Italy. In the exhibition of 1760
was his “Niobe.” In the same year he painted an upright picture of
the Arno for the drawing-room mantel-piece of a patron in Platt Hall,
Manchester. In 1761 were exhibited “The Lake of Nemi” and other Italian
pictures. The “Phaeton” appeared in 1763, the “L’Anconetta” in 1764,
the “Villa Madama” in 1765, and many other Italian pictures in these
and successive years. By 1768 he had exhibited about thirty landscapes
nearly all of which were based on his Italian sketches, and it was his
custom through his life to paint pictures the chief elements of which
were the sunny skies and ruined temples of classic regions.
A recognition of the great influence of Italy over Wilson’s mind and
art should not, however, be allowed to obscure the fact that he gave
equally sympathetic response to the scenes of his own land. When
Stothard was a student at the Royal Academy he asked Wilson to suggest
to him something to copy, and Wilson, who happened to be looking out
over the Thames, responded that there could not well be anything better
to copy than that. That he loved English scenery becomes apparent
when we study such pictures as the lovely “English Landscape”[611]
in the possession of the Rev. Stopford Brooke, the “River Scene with
Castle” in the South Kensington Gallery, the “View on the Wye”[611]
in the National Gallery, the “De Tabley House” in the possession of
A. T. Hollingsworth,[612] “Wilton in Wiltshire,”[613] “View in Kew
Gardens,”[614] “Sion House,” and “A View near Chester.” The dates of
these English pictures can seldom be determined, but it is evident that
he made occasional sketching tours, for the exhibitions record views in
Bedfordshire, Devonshire, and Cheshire, besides those of places in the
immediate neighborhood of London such as St. James’ Park, Windsor Great
Park, Kew Gardens, and Hounslow Heath.
But none of these English pictures, and few even of his Italian ones,
can compare in dignity and beauty with his notable Welsh views. He
certainly visited Wales before 1766 for in that year he exhibited two
views from North Wales, “Carnarvon Castle” and “Northwest View of
Snowdon.” It seems very likely that when he was painting at Manchester
and Chester in 1760 he took the opportunity to visit his old home,
but there are no dated Welsh pictures before 1766. But even this date
gives him no predecessors among artists painting in Wales except men so
inferior as John Boydell and Anthony Devis. Other Welsh pictures were
exhibited by Wilson in 1771 and 1774. In 1775 Boydell published “Six
Views in Wales,” engravings by Byrne and Rooker from Wilson’s pictures.
Britton in his “Fine Arts in England” (1805) said that “Wilson’s ‘Six
Views’ were the most important topographical views ever published in
England.” But they only partially represent the great amount of work
done by Wilson on Welsh subjects. In the Print Room of the British
Museum are engravings from many other fine Welsh pictures such as “The
Great Bridge over the Taafe,” engraved by Canot, “Kilgarren Castle,”
engraved by Elliott, “Pembroke Castle” by Mason, “Carnarvon Castle”
by Byrne, “Snowdon Hill” by Woollett, “The Summit of Cader Idris” by
E. and M. Rooker. Even in the engravings these are pictures of very
great nobility and charm. One original “Snowdon” picture is in the
Manchester Art Gallery. It is called “A Welsh Valley with Snowdon Hill”
and is of the rarest beauty. The rough foreground slopes, the distant
mountain bathed in light and delicately outlined against the softest of
skies, the mists rising from the hidden valleys, are magically combined
into a picture adequate in its presentation of the facts of Nature,
and having, also, a strong poetic and imaginative appeal. A beautiful
print after Wilson in the British Museum is another, “Snowdon Hill,”
by Woollett. The loneliness, the serenity, the majesty, and the beauty
of mountain regions are portrayed by Wilson with an essentially modern
feeling.
[Illustration: KILGARREN CASTLE
_By Richard Wilson_]
It was many years before any other artist so well illustrated Blake’s
phrase, “Great things are done when men and mountains meet,”[615]
as did Wilson. For fifteen impressionable years he had lived in
North Wales and his mind and heart had been insensibly affected by
the sublimity of mountain scenes. Wales had given as important and
effective tutelage to him as did the Lake District to the youthful
Wordsworth sixty years later. Wilson is reported to have said that
Wales “afforded every requisite for a landscape painter” but we need
no testimony beyond his pictures to show with what power these rugged
cliffs and deep ravines, these silent lakes and tarns, these tumultuous
streams and waterfalls, these lonely mountain masses towering into the
sky, spoke to him both as an artist and as a man when, in mature life
with mature power, he returned to the land of his birth. He painted
Welsh scenes with boldness and freedom, with grandeur, dignity, and
impressiveness, and with a power of divination that must put him high
in the ranks of painters of mountain scenery in any age.[616]
In one characteristic Wilson’s Italian and Welsh pictures are alike.
He was temperamentally susceptible to the pathos of ruins. His Italian
pictures are steeped in a sense of inescapable sadness. Through the
loveliness of Nature runs the mournful memory of fallen grandeur,
of races who have lived and loved and are no more. But the ruined
strongholds and castles of his own land touched him even more deeply.
The bright stillness of Kilgarren Castle on its rocky cliff, mirrored
in the smooth surface of the river below, is more beautiful and more
subtly suggestive of “old, unhappy, far-off things” than are the
Italian pictures.
Through all Wilson’s pictures we feel, furthermore, a quality of
genuineness in both observation and feeling. He studied the great
masters of landscape, but not as a copyist. He compared their work with
Nature which he studied for himself. Ruskin says of him,
Here, at last, we feel, is an honest Englishman, who has got
away out of all the Camere, and the Loggie, and the Stanze,
and the schools, and the Disputas ... and has laid himself
down with His own poor eyes and heart, and the sun casting his
light between ruins--possessor, he, of so much of the evidently
blessed peace of things--he and the poor lizard in the cranny of
the stones beside him.[617]
Mr. Beaumont Fletcher in developing this conception of Wilson as
one able to see with his own eyes, very justly points out that his
idealism, even in the Italian pictures, is based on a singularly close
representation of the facts of Nature. Even Sir Joshua Reynolds when
he objects to Wilson’s use of classical figures incidentally testifies
to the truth of his landscapes which are, says Sir Joshua, “too near
common nature to admit the supernatural.”[618]
Wilson has been called “a painter’s painter,” and various testimonies
show how deeply impressed later distinguished artists were by his
work. Sir James D. Linton[619] points out that “Turner carried Wilson’s
methods so far in some of the works of his early middle period as
almost to amount to imitation,” and notes a picture by Turner of
“Kilgarrin Castle” “so like Wilson in manner, treatment, and colour
that it might fairly be called a ‘Wilson Turner.’” Constable, also,
though he did not choose the grand themes, and though he rejected the
classical mannerisms of Wilson, was yet one of his great admirers.
Of a visit to the gallery of Sir John Leicester in 1823 he wrote, “I
recollect nothing so much as a large, solemn, bright, warm, fresh
landscape by Wilson, which still swims in my brain like a delicious
dream. Poor Wilson! think of his fate, think of his magnificence.”[620]
Of Wilson’s place in the development of art Ruskin says, “I believe
that with the name of Richard Wilson the history of sincere landscape
art, founded on a meditative love of nature, begins with England.”
[Illustration: A WELSH VALLEY WITH SNOWDON HILL
_By Richard Wilson_]
Thomas Gainsborough, though mainly known as a portrait painter, showed
an early and persistent bent toward landscape. Before he was twelve
it was his delight to spend his mornings in the woods near his home
at Sudbury in Suffolk, sketching from streams, trees, cattle, sheep,
and peasants. In 1741, at fourteen years of age, he went to London and
studied, first under Gravelot, then under Hayman, and finally set up
a studio of his own. His ostensible work was portraits for which he
charged from three to five guineas, but he likewise painted landscapes
for such prices as they would bring. From 1745 to 1759 he was again in
Suffolk, but this time at Ipswich, twenty-two miles east from his old
home at Sudbury, and in the region between the Orwell and the Stour,
the region afterward made famous by Constable. During the Ipswich
period he was slowly building up a reputation as a portrait painter;
but here, too, he made “Madam Nature, not man, his sole study.” He did
much sketching along the picturesque banks of the Orwell and in the
groves of oaks and elms in the neighborhood of Ipswich. That he painted
many landscapes while at Ipswich is indicated by the fact that Governor
Thicknesse called upon him in 1754,[621] and was much struck by the
great beauty of the small landscapes mingled with the rather stiff
portraits in the artist’s studio. None of these landscapes can now
be identified, but it was their excellence that gained from Governor
a commission to paint “Landguard Fort,” important as the earliest
known of Gainsborough’s landscapes, though, even in this case, the
original picture has perished and is known only through Thomas Major’s
engraving. To the latter part of the Ipswich period belong the “Cornard
Wood,” “View of Dedham” and two small uprights in the National Gallery,
besides seven or eight other canvases attributed to these years. The
landscapes of this period were strongly influenced by Dutch artists.
The most noteworthy picture of the Ipswich years, the “Cornard Wood,”
might almost, says Mr. Boulton, have been painted by Both or Berghem.
The Dutch fidelity to the details of the scene in this picture was
shown in two other probably contemporary landscapes of which Mr.
Fulcher wrote, “They were both drawn and coloured in the open air:
in one of them a young oak is painted leaf for leaf, while ferns and
grasses are portrayed with microscopic fidelity.”[622] Gainsborough’s
life at Bath (1760–74) was marked by almost exclusive attention to
portraiture, yet in the midst of his successes here he wrote, “I’m
sick of portraits and wish very much to take my viol-da-gam and walk
off to some sweet village where I can paint landskip and enjoy the
fag-end of life in quietness and ease.” Quin said at this time that
when a portrait was on the easel Gainsborough was disposed to growl
at all sublunary things, but if he was engaged on a landscape “he was
all gaiety, his imagination in the skies.” He employed the intervals
between sittings in studying the fine trees in his neighborhood. He
painted numerous landscapes and rural scenes during the Bath period,
the more celebrated ones, such as the “Market Cart” of the National
Gallery, the “Harvest Wagon,” and the “Cottage Door,” belonging to
the later years of that period. During Gainsborough’s last or London
period (1774–88) he still kept up his interest in Nature and took a
house on Kew Green that he might have a convenient center for sketching
tours along the banks of the Thames, and many landscapes were produced
during these years. Walpole says of one exhibited in 1777 that it was
“by far the finest landscape ever painted in England, and equal to the
great masters.” Another in 1779 Walpole called “most natural, bold,
and admirable.” Six landscapes in 1780 he characterized as “charming,
very spirited, as admirable as the great masters.”[623] Walpole’s
favorable opinion of Gainsborough was quite generally shared by artists
and critics, but even in his case there was but a small purchasing
public, so that when he died in 1788 his house was found to be filled
with unsold landscapes. This fact, and the large sums he could command
for portraits, make it all the more striking that out of a total
of eight hundred and eighty-seven pictures about a fifth should be
landscapes.[624]
[Illustration: THE MARKET CART
_By Thomas Gainsborough_]
In the landscapes of the Bath and London periods the labored accuracy
of the early work gives place to the “landscape generalization” by
which Gainsborough’s mature paintings are characterized. In these
later landscapes, of which the great “Watering Place” in the National
Gallery may be taken as the supreme example, there is an apparent
ignoring of the separate facts of Nature. No oaks are painted leaf for
leaf. There is not even sufficient definiteness to make the kind of
tree unmistakable. Yet the effect of Nature is adequately rendered.
The mind is conducted into genuine woodland coolness and shade. As
we look we become gradually conscious of the mysterious charm of
Nature herself. These landscapes not only satisfy the eye by wonderful
harmonies of color and flowing line, but they speak appealingly to
the emotions. Constable says of them, “They are soothing, tender, and
affecting. The stillness of noon, the depths of twilight, and the dews
and pearls of morning are all to be found on the canvases of this most
benevolent and kind-hearted man. On looking at them we find tears in
our eyes and we know not what brings them.”[625]
In theme Gainsborough is distinctively English, and even within this
limit his range is narrow. The grander elements in Nature did not
stir his imagination. Mountains, the ocean, storms, were, to be sure,
not entirely absent from his pictures. In 1781 he had apparently been
painting along the coast, for Walpole comments on two pictures “of
sea and land,” “so fine and natural that one stepped back for fear
of being splashed.” One of these was, Mr. Conway thinks, the Duke
of Westminster’s “Coast Scene,” “a sparkling picture, articulately
suggestive of a single delightful idea,” a windy day on an estuary.
In 1783 Gainsborough made a trip to Cumberland and Westmoreland,
gaily predicting that on his return he would show “your Grays and Dr.
Browns to be but tawdry fan-painters.”[626] Sir Walter Armstrong
reproduces a chalk drawing subsequent to this period in which “the
hills in the distance are thoroughly true in mass, perspective,
and aërial envelope;”[627] Mr. Fletcher is of the opinion that had
Gainsborough “lived a few years longer, he would undoubtedly have taken
a new departure in landscape art;”[628] and Mr. Boulton finds in the
pictures after 1783 a new tendency to deal with rocky foreground and
mountain scenery.[629] Yet a few successful coast scenes and a late and
certainly rather slight interest in mountain regions can hardly affect
the statement that Gainsborough was, on the whole, but little moved by
the grander aspects of Nature. He cared as little for the majestic,
the terrible, the awe-inspiring, as he did for the trim, the formal,
and the precise. What he loved to portray was the gently varied and
picturesque scenery of his own countryside. He sought out woodland
roads, lanes with steep grassy banks, trees heavy with foliage, tangled
copses, pools of still water, skies glowing with sunset hues, or
deepening into twilight, or with the blue showing through rifted storm
clouds. Cumberland and Westmoreland had for him no appeal comparable to
the remembered charm of Suffolk.
Gainsborough’s pictures of rural life do not properly come under
the head of landscape painting, but the representation of country
activities, and pure landscapes run into each other by many gradations.
If we consider those pictures in which landscape elements distinctly
predominate we shall find that the figures of men and animals are
hardly more than animating or decorative details. One of the artist’s
rare theoretical statements was to the effect that a landscape should
admit only such figures as “create a little business for the eye to be
drawn from the trees in order to return to them with more glee.”[630]
Accordingly the figures whether of men or animals were painted because
they helped out the scheme of light, of color, of form in the picture
as a whole. But while this is true, it is likewise true that his rustic
groups, his shaggy horses, his cattle, and goats, and donkeys, and pigs
are something more than picturesque elements in the landscape. They
help to individualize and interpret it, and they give it a quaint,
homely charm. The grandeur of Wilson’s themes, the solemnity of his
tone, make the few small figures in his pictures seem strikingly
incongruous with the scene, but Gainsborough’s figures have an intimate
union with the landscape.
However impossible it may be to determine who is the “father” of
English landscape art, there can be no question as to the value of
having at the formative period of that art two men so unlike in
education, temperament, and taste as Wilson and Gainsborough. One
brought in the Italian, the other the Dutch influence, yet each was
too strong an individuality to be a mere copyist. The one painted with
poetic comprehension and in a grand manner, not only the sunny skies,
clear air, bright lakes, and ruined temples of classic lands, but also,
and with equal power, scenes of dignity, grandeur, and pathos, in his
own land, while the other painted with genuine tenderness and affection
the lovely scenes of rural England. Both loved Nature passionately and
strove to express that love in their pictures. From the point of view
of a growing taste for the beauties of the out-door world, both artists
are of the greatest importance. The transfer of interest from man to
Nature is as marked in their pictures as in any other realm of thought
and emotion.
Contemporary with Wilson and Gainsborough were many artists of lesser
note whose work is nevertheless important because of the cumulative
testimony it bears to the growing interest in Nature. The catalogues
of the Society of Artists (1761–91), of the Free Society (1761–83),
and of the Royal Society which began its exhibitions in 1769,[631]
supplemented by some other scattered sources of information, give an
idea of the scope and the themes of this work, though not many of the
original pictures are now accessible.
We find, in the first place, that nearly all the artists who were
painting from Nature before 1755 continued their work for periods of
considerable length after that date. Boydell published forty plates
from the “Derbyshire Views” of Thomas Smith who continued to exhibit
till 1767.[632] Samuel Scott exhibited occasional sea and shore views
to 1771. Between 1761–74 George Smith of Chichester exhibited over a
hundred landscapes some of which show a reaching-out into new realms.
He has not only _genre_ pictures such as “A Country Family Picking
Their Own Hops” (1761)[633] and “Cottages in a Wood” (1773), but
experiments such as “Moonlight,” “Mist,” “Sunset,” and eighteen “Frost”
or “Snow” scenes. William Bellers is credited, between 1761–73, with
seventy-seven landscapes, twenty-eight of them being views in the Lake
District. Alexander Cozens lived till 1786 and exhibited many small
landscapes in which he paid especial attention to “chiaro-oscuro.” His
chief work, however, was as a teacher, and he published some books on
art, notable among them being “The Shape, Skeleton, and Foliage of
Thirty-Two Species of Trees” (1771, republished 1786). Taverner was
also working as late as 1772. George Stubbs was constantly represented
in exhibitions from 1761 to 1803.
[Illustration: PEMBROKE CASTLE
_By Paul Sandby_]
Of far more importance than any of the artists mentioned in the
foregoing paragraph is Paul Sandby,[634] who, as has already been
indicated, was the first to make known to art the wild and beautiful
scenery of the Scotch Highlands. In 1773 he exhibited his first Welsh
picture, and after that he did much work in Wales. Though not the first
to paint in that region--for Boydell, Wilson, Farington, and Devis were
ahead of him--he yet did much to show its picturesque possibilities.
His important Welsh “aquatint views taken on the spot” appeared in
four sets of twelve plates each, beginning in 1775, the very year of
Boydell’s publication of Wilson’s “Six Views.” These mountain pictures,
especially those of the second series, justly rank as the most vital
landscape work contemporary with Wilson and Gainsborough. “Llangolin
in Denbigh,” “Conwyd Mill,” “Llanberis Lake and Great Mountain
Snowdon,” “Pont-y-Pair over the River Conway” are but a few of the many
pictures that show with what enthusiasm Sandby surrendered himself to
impressions from the grand scenery of Wales. The striking change from
early eighteenth-century topographical sketches where the building
was merely rendered slightly more attractive by washed-in skies and
greensward is evidenced by such pictures as Sandby’s “Wynnestay,
Seat of Sir Watkins William Wynne” which is a pure landscape with no
house visible. So, too, in “Chirk Castle” there is but the faintest
indication of the castle in the distance. Sandby’s original purpose may
have been topographical but the outcome was pure landscape of great
interest and significance.
There are, in addition to these older men, several artists whose work
begins about 1760 or soon after. Anthony Devis exhibited in 1761–63
eight pictures, chiefly “Views in Wales.” He would thus antedate all
painters of Welsh scenery except Boydell. In 1761–78 James Lambert
exhibited numerous landscapes including many with titles such as “A
Misty Morning with Ewes and Lambs,” “Landscape with Ewes and Lambs,” “A
Farm-yard with Cattle.” George Barret (1732–84) was an Irish painter
who had taken a premium for landscape from the Dublin Society before
he came to England in 1762. Of the fifty-five landscapes exhibited
by him in England during the years 1764–82 the earliest were of
Powerscourt Park in Ireland, but from 1769 to 1772 he shows Scotch
and Lake District views, and in 1776–77 three pictures of “Llanberis
Pool in the Mountains of Snowdon.” The list of his pictures shows some
interesting special studies as “A Moonlight, with the Effect of a Mist;
a Study from Nature” (1767); “A Group of Beech Trees” (1776); “A View
of Windermere Lake, in Westmoreland, the effect, the sun beginning
to appear in the morning, with the mists breaking and dispersing”
(1781). Barret was a very popular painter. Of his premium picture in
1764 Barry wrote, “My friend and countryman, Barret, does no small
honour to Landscape amongst us; I have seen nothing to match his last
year’s premium picture. It has discovered to me a very great want
in the aërial part of my favourite Claude’s performances.” Barret’s
work brought prices never before paid for landscapes, Lord Dalkeith
having given fifteen hundred pounds for three of them. The Rev. John
Lock commissioned him to paint the principal rooms of his house
from skirting to ceiling with landscape scenes.[635] Richard Wright
(1735–75) was a marine painter known sometimes as “Wright of the Isle
of Man.” In 1764 he took a premium of fifty guineas for a sea-piece
from which Woollett engraved “The Fishery.” Such themes as “A Ship in
a Squall,” “The Sun Dispersing a Fog,” “A Fresh Gale,” “A Moonlight,”
show attempts at the representation of other aspects of the sea than
merely as a background for England’s navy. Wright exhibited till 1773.
Another marine painter, John Cleveley, exhibited from 1764–86. Fleets,
royal yachts, ships of war, distinguished naval events, are his chief
themes. Dominic Serres (1722–93) exhibited after 1765. He, too, was
chiefly occupied with naval affairs, particularly so after 1780 when
he became marine painter to his majesty. The Rev. William Gilpin
(1723–1804) contributed to the interest in home scenery by numerous
sketches and, especially, by his book, “Forest Scenery” (1786). Far
more gifted was his younger brother, Sawrey Gilpin (1733–1807), who
excelled as an animal painter. His most abundant as well as his most
spirited and accurate work is in portraits of fine horses and dogs.
But he painted other animals also, birds, deer, foxes, tigers, and
even “American Bears” (1798). There is in the South Kensington Museum
a beautiful canvas by Gilpin called “Cows in a Landscape.” It has a
smooth, clear, decorative effect, the cows are broadly, simply, but
realistically painted, and the landscape gives in most suggestive
fashion the mists, the faintly illumined sky, the dewy feeling, of
early morning.[636]
[Illustration: LODORE WATERFALL
_By Joseph Farington_]
The men enumerated in the preceding paragraph did all of their work,
or, in a few cases such as Paul Sandby and Sawrey Gilpin who painted
through the century, did much of their most characteristic work, before
1785. There is still another group of men who were born about the
middle of the century the bulk of whose work, or whose most significant
work, belongs before 1800. Of professional marine painters we have
Robert Cleveley who began to exhibit in 1780; the more celebrated
Nicholas Pocock (1741–1821); and John Thomas Serres (1759–1825), all
of whom carried on the traditional representation of noted ships,
harbors, and naval actions. David Allan’s (1744–96) best work is
his set of illustrations of “The Gentle Shepherd.” He went to the
Pentland Hills and studied both the places and the people he wished
to represent. “He visited,” says Cunningham, “every hill, dale, tree,
stream, and cottage, which could be admitted into the landscape of the
poet.... Glaid’s farm house, the Monk’s burn, the Linn, the Washing
Green, Habbie’s How, New Hall House, and that little breast-deep basin
in the burn, called Peggie’s pool, were all carefully drawn.” It was
Allan’s endeavor to do in painting what Ramsay had done half a century
before in poetry, and though his pictures are far from expressing the
brightness and beauty of the poem, they fairly take rank as important
attempts to represent native landscapes from careful, first-hand
observation. James de Loutherbourg (1740–1812) came to England about
1770, and was constantly represented in the exhibitions during the
rest of the century. His vigorous storms and sea-scapes were long
popular. The public taste that could laud De Loutherbourg’s pictures
and neglect Wilson’s was severely satirized by “Peter Pindar.”[637]
But De Loutherbourg has another claim to recognition in that he
was one of the staunchest defenders of the picturesque scenery of the
British Isles as against that of other lands. He maintained that no
English painter need go abroad for inspiration when he had access to
the Highlands of Scotland, the Lake District of Cumberland, and the
mountainous region of North Wales. It was to further this idea that
he opened his panorama of English scenery in 1782, a show by which
Gainsborough was fascinated, and which, apparently, prompted his visit
to the Lakes in 1783.[638] Thomas Hearne (1744–1817) is of importance
in the early history of water-color. In 1777 he began a series of tours
through Great Britain for the purpose of illustrating “The Antiquities
of Great Britain” for which he made fifty-two drawings. Mr. Cosmo
Monkhouse praises him for close and fresh observation of Nature, for
excellence in atmospheric perspective, for truth of sunlight, and
for beauty of trees and skies.[639] Though he lived well into the
nineteenth century, much of his most finished work belongs before
1800. Joseph Farington (1747–1821) was a pupil of Richard Wilson. He
exhibited almost yearly from 1765 to 1813. He may possibly have been
with Wilson in Wales before 1766. At any rate he exhibited in 1768 and
1770 views of Snowdon Hill and Penmaenmawr. Between 1778 and 1784 are
views of “Ambleside,” “Skiddaw and Derwentwater,” “Lodore,” “Rydal
Waterfall,” “Borrodale Grange,” “Winandermere from High-harig.” Mr.
Gilpin in his book on Cumberland (1786) says that descriptions are
useless since there are prints so accurate and beautiful as these of
Mr. Farington. Mr. Farington also has many views from Kent, Sussex,
Devonshire, Oxford, and Buckinghamshire. John Rathbone (1750–1807),
sometimes called “the Manchester Wilson,” began to exhibit in 1785.
Of his forty-eight recorded landscapes eleven represent Lake District
scenes, and most of the others are from similar scenery in Derbyshire,
Lancashire, on the Wye, or in Wales. Julius Caesar Ibbetson (1759–1817)
painted Welsh views after 1796 and Cumberland views after 1798. He is
best known, however, as a skilful painter of animals and of groups
of gay, rollicking rustic figures in an agreeable landscape setting.
Of the six pictures by him in the South Kensington Museum the one
called “Jack in his Glory” is most characteristic. The “Conway Castle,
North Wales” (1794) has the added interest of being a moonlight
scene. Abraham Pether (1756–1812) began to exhibit in 1777. From
1784 to 1800 at least a fifth of his exhibited pictures were simply
entitled “Moonlight.” He painted “a water-mill,” “an iron foundry,” “a
waterfall,” “a fire,” and “ruins” by moonlight. He also chose as themes
“Evening,” “Sunset,” “Morning just before Dawn,” “Evening and Rain,”
and other unusual and delicately discriminated natural phenomena.
Edward Dayes (1763–1804), the master of Girtin, made many studies in
the Lake District after 1790. The “Windermere” and “Keswick Lake” in
the gallery at South Kensington attest the truthfulness and charm of
his work.
The most important landscape painters of the second half of the century
have yet to be mentioned, Morland, Girtin, and Cozens. John Robert
Cozens (1752–99) began to exhibit when only fifteen years of age. At
twenty-four he was taken by Mr. Robert Payne Knight to Switzerland
to make sketches of the scenery. Of the work done on this trip Mr.
Monkhouse says,
These drawings of 1776 are remarkable in the history not only
of English water-colour painting and English art, but in the
history of landscape painting of all time. They are the first
successful[640] attempt to give a true impression of Alpine
scenery. From the first Cozens seems to have found his way to
render its character, to convey the grandeur of its snow-crowned
peaks, the depth of its valleys, the solitude of its lakes, the
appearance of its slopes, “fledged,” as Shelley sang, “with
pines,” the sun striking through the gorges on high-perched
cot, or village, the chill of the shaded hollows filled with
mist, the cloaks of cloud about the shoulders of the hills,--and
all this not in a pretty conventional or a grand conventional
manner, but with a style that was Nature’s own.... His mountains
look their height, and suggest their bulk and weight.[641]
Cozens was in England again by 1779. A second visit to Italy with Mr.
Beckford ended in 1783 and resulted like the first tour in a large
number of water-color drawings. Mr. Thornbury comments on a view of
a glacier valley executed at this time as “worthy of all praise for
its multitudinousness, breadth, and grand, harmonious simplicity, as
well as for the dazzling purity of its colour.”[642] Constable said
of Cozens that he was “all poetry,” and that “he was the greatest
genius that ever touched landscape;” and Turner said that from Cozens’
“Hannibal Crossing the Alps” (1776) he had learned more than from
anything he had before seen.[643]
Thomas Girtin (1775–1802) had a short life but he came early to the
maturity of his genius. He exhibited at the Royal Academy from 1794 to
1801. In about 1796 he went to the north of England and to Scotland
with James Moore, and there “made many sketches of pure landscape,
recording the grand effects of light and shade upon the swelling moors
and rolling downs, with a breadth and simplicity and a large regard to
truth never equalled before.”[644] In the South Kensington Gallery are
many water-colors by Girtin that show his excellent drawing and his
skill in the use of color. Four Yorkshire views, a “Coast Scene,” and
three river scenes well illustrate the truth and vigor with which he
represented landscape. Mr. Ruskin said of Girtin’s work, “He is often
as impressive to me as Nature herself; nor do I doubt that Turner owed
more to his teaching and companionship than to his own genius in the
first years of his life.”[645]
[Illustration: THE WOOD CUTTERS
_By George Morland_]
George Morland (1763–1804) exhibited at the Royal Academy at the age
of ten, and from that time on each year saw many pictures from his
brush. He seldom painted pure landscapes. But whatever his theme the
landscape setting is almost invariably worthy of particular attention.
In many notable pictures of gipsies or wood-cutters it is, in fact,
not the fat, invertebrate figures of men and women that hold the eye.
The imagination is captured instead by the bower of shade, by the
deep wild-wood of the background. So, too, in various coast scenes,
the chalk cliffs against which breakers dash in blinding spray, the
trees bending before the wind, the rifts of blue sky showing through
scattering storm clouds, the feeling of rain in the air, certainly
count for as much in the general impression as do the men tugging at
the rope or lading wagons with the spoils of the sea. Nearly all of
Morland’s domestic pictures have an exquisite framework of old oak
trees, climbing vines, and flowering shrubs. J. T. Smith[646] says that
Morland was “the first artist who gave the sturdy oak its peculiar
character in landscape painting.”
As a painter of animals Morland excels. His horses are of especial
interest for he does not expend his art on portraits of noted racers
or thoroughbreds, but on work-horses, and preferably on such horses
at the moment of release from toil. “The Inside of a Stable” (1791)
in the National Gallery, and “Horses in a Stable” (1791) in the South
Kensington Gallery are two of his finest works; and they show not only
his power of painting dim old interiors in the softest blend of color,
but they show particularly the attentive sympathy with which he had
studied horses. Many similar pictures could be cited but chief among
them for pathetic understanding is “The Blind White Horse.” Pigs were
among Morland’s favorite subjects. So frequently did he introduce
them into his pictures that the title-page of a book of his sketches
portrayed him leaning over a fence and making a drawing of three fat
sows. The animals in his pictures were all studied from the life. The
white horse so often depicted by him was modeled from an old nag he
bought and kept for a fortnight in his painting room. He regularly kept
by him various sorts of animals for study, “dogs, rabbits, guinea-pigs,
fowls, ducks, pigeons, mice, and many other kinds of livestock,”[647]
and sooner or later these were sure to appear in his pictures with
convincing realism.
Morland rather defiantly declared that “the barn, the cow-house and
the piggery” were his favorite themes, but he has another class of
subjects, his numerous pictures of children, in which the out-door
setting is of great charm. Reynolds had painted beautiful pictures of
high-born, well-dressed children; and Gainsborough had given lovely,
pathetic, somewhat idealized representations of cottage children;
but Morland takes us into the realm of childhood itself, and his
gay, romping lads and lasses swing on gates, play games, go nutting,
sail toy boats, in the midst of most delightfully real out-of-door
surroundings.[648] All that Morland does is simple, genuine,
spontaneous, and has a permanent appeal, and his landscape without
being especially beautiful or at all novel, has a sort of homely,
intimate, and obvious charm.
A survey of the century shows that there has been from 1700 to
1800 a remarkable change in the attitude of painting toward the
external world. From a predominating interest in man as shown in
history-painting and portraiture, with, at the best, landscape as an
unimportant background or adornment, we come to a period when landscape
is not only a very important element in portraiture, but is counted
as so valuable in itself that figures take rank as hardly more than
insignificant landscape detail. The development of the love of Nature
is shown in painting in England somewhat later than in poetry: Thomson
antedates the early English landscape painters, and Wordsworth’s
characteristic poetry of Nature is somewhat earlier than the great
paintings of Turner and, Constable. But in abundance and variety of
theme the English landscape artists have, by the end of the century,
surpassed even the poetry of the period. Pastoral England receives
especially full recognition. The ocean is, however, comparatively
unimportant as a source of inspiration, even as we have seen it to be
in the poetry of the same years. Perhaps the most striking fact is the
remarkable influence of mountains in reawakening the love of Nature.
The most enthusiastic and original landscape work was based on the wild
scenery of Scotland, Ireland, Wales, and the Lake District.[649]
Two other facts that bear upon the period as a whole should, in
conclusion, be noted. The first of these is the stimulus given to the
interest in Nature in England by the sketches brought home by artists
who had been in foreign lands. Nearly every artist studied in Italy
so that separate mention of Italian scenes is not necessary. But some
artists went into newer fields. Charles Fox (1749–1809) is interesting
as being the first recorded artist to visit Norway, Sweden, and Russia
for the purpose of representing the wild scenery of those countries.
Draughtsmen accompanied almost every public or private expedition to
remote regions. William Pars went with Dr. Chandler to Greece, 1764–66,
and with Lord Palmerston to various parts of the continent in 1767.
Thomas Hearne was in the Leeward Islands with Sir Ralph Payne in
1771–75. John Cleveley went with Sir Joseph Banks to the Hebrides in
1772, and with Captain Phipps to the North Sea in 1774. John Webber
was with Captain Cook on his last voyage to the South Seas in 1776–80.
A. M. Devis was in the Orient for the East India Company in 1788. And
William Alexander went with Lord Macartney to China in 1792. These
men brought back hundreds of views, many of which were exhibited at
the Royal Academy and later appeared as illustrations in the books
describing the various tours. The interest aroused by these pictures
is an evidence of the new romantic delight in whatever is remote,
and especially in the landscape characteristic of distant lands. But
it must be noted that the importance of this work is lessened by the
two facts that most of it belongs late in the century, after English
landscape art was already fairly well established, and that, in the
second place, much of it is of merely curious interest and intended to
show the oddities in flora or fauna or in human life in the various
countries.
The second point is the prolonged dominance of foreign models. Walpole
in his “Anecdotes of Painting” (1762–71) said quite justly that
English artists drew “rocks and precipices and castellated mountains”
not because they saw such objects in England but because “Salvator
wandered amongst Alps and Apennines.” But the artists were not alone in
preferring to look at Nature through Italian spectacles. Poets, too,
gave praise to the Poussins, Salvator Rosa, and Claude Lorrain. When
Thomson in “The Castle of Indolence” (1748) had the cool airy halls of
his palace decorated with landscapes he chose
Whate’er Lorraine light-touch’d with softening hue
Or savage Rosa dash’d or learned Poussin drew.
A quarter of a century later we find these artists in undiminished
authority, for Mason (“The English Garden,” 1772) declares that the
true law-givers in the realm of the picturesque are Claude, Salvator
Rosa, and Ruysdael. An interesting illustration of the general
acceptance of the Italian or Dutch masters comes in 1754 from the realm
of house decoration. In that year Mr. Jackson of Battersea published
“An Essay on the Invention of Engraving and Printing ... and the
Application of it to the Making of Paper Hangings” in which he advised,
in order to show “the Taste of the owner,” “the introduction into the
Pannels of the Paper” of prints taken from “the works of Salvator Rosa,
Claude Lorrain, Gasper Poussin, Berghem, or Wouverman or any other
great master” in landscape. But perhaps, after all, no class of writers
shows more clearly the tendency to regard English scenes from the point
of view of Italian landscape art than do the early travelers. Dr. Brown
in his famous “Letter from Keswick” says that to give a complete idea
of the beauty of that region would require the united powers of Claude,
Salvator, and Poussin. “The first should throw his delicate sunshine
over the cultivated vales, the scattered cots, the groves, the lake,
and wooded islands. The second should dash out the horror of the rugged
cliffs, the steeps, the hanging woods, and foaming waterfalls; while
the grand pencil of Poussin should crown the whole with the majesty of
impending mountains.” So, too, Mr. Cradock says his utmost of Snowdon
when he boldly declares that it is as rich a region to him as Tivoli
or Frascati, and that “the romantic imagination of Salvator Rosa was
never inspired with a more tremendous idea, nor his extravagant pencil
never produced a bolder precipice.” Mr. Hutchinson in praising Keswick
and Skiddaw says that “Claude in his happiest hour never struck out
a finer landscape.” In a summary of the glories of the Lake District
he says, “The painters [_sic_] of Poussin describe the nobleness
of Hulls-water; the works of Salvator Rosa express the romantic and
rocky scenes of Keswick; and the tender and elegant touches of Claude
Loraine, and Smith, pencil forth the rich variety of Windermere.”
West’s “Guide” is professedly written in the interests of landscape
painting, but not of English landscape art, though by 1778 there was
strong and abundant English work. In each scene West still finds
suggestions of Italian painters only. Throughout his tour he marked
many “Stations” from which the artist in search of material could
get hints for pictures. On Coniston Lake he would find verified “the
delicate touches of Claude,” on Windermere-water “the noble scenes of
Poussin,” on Derwentwater “the stupendous, romantic ideas of Salvator
Rosa.” A traveler across Lancaster Sands would see the mountain of
Ingleborough from “as happy a point of view as that selected by Claude
in his picture of Soracte on the Tyber.” The region of the Langdale
Pikes is “as grand an assemblage of mountains, dells, and chasms, as
ever the fancy of Poussin suggested, or the genius of Rosa invented.”
Later in the century the scenic school of the Italians partially gave
way before the growing supremacy of the Dutch artists. In 1795 “Anthony
Pasquin” in a critical review of the pictures exhibited in that year
says,
When many of our present race of landscape painters wish to make
a _study_, they do it by their firesides; they take an old
perished copy of Wynants, Ruysdael, or Hobbima, or a damaged
copy from some eminent artist, and _compose_ by stealing a
tree from one, a dock-leaf from another, and a waterfall from
a third. By this means we have Flemish landscapes peopled with
English figures, and the same unvaried scenes served up _ad
infinitum_.
That the taste of the purchasing public remained, until late in the
century, steadily in favor of foreign work may be shown in various
ways. Hogarth’s satires on the rage for “Old Masters” and Foote’s
comedy “Taste” (1752) in which a picture is pronounced excellent
until discovered to be by “an Englishman _now living_” when it
is discarded as “not worth house-room,” are significant mid-century
attacks on the undiscriminating demand for continental pictures.
Records of sale by the celebrated auctioneer Longford illustrate the
same fact. In 1764 he sold a collection of two hundred and fifty
paintings belonging to Roger Hearne. About one third of these were
landscapes, but not a single English artist, unless Van de Velde should
be so counted, is represented in the list. In 1765 the pictures of
“Mr. Samuel Scott, Painter (who is retiring into the Country)” were
sold. Of these pictures thirty-three were his own landscapes. Of the
remaining ninety canvases nearly all were landscapes, but again with
no English names in the list except Lambert and Marlow. In 1768 Mr.
Thomas Payne’s collection, largely made up of landscapes, has one each
by Monamy, Swaine, Lambert, Scott, and three by Wootton. In 1769 the
pictures of Smith of Derby were sold. He had five by Brooking, but all
the rest were his own unsold canvases of Lake District, Derbyshire,
and Yorkshire views. George Barret’s sale in 1771 was an attempt to
dispose of sixty-seven of his own views in Wales, Ireland, and the Lake
District. He advertised “waterfalls, effects of morning, of evening,
of moonlight, a remarkable great tree, etc., etc.” It is not till
1790 that we come upon a distinctively English collection. In that
year “Mr. Serres, Jun., Marine Painter (Going to Italy)” offered for
sale five hundred and fifteen pictures nearly two hundred of which
were landscapes by English artists. Thirty-two artists were named in
the list. This slow development of English appreciation for English
landscape art makes all the more evident the vitality of the impulse
that led to productivity so ample and varied in that field.
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.
[Illustration]
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.
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Chaucer, Geoffrey. “Poetical Works.” 6 vols. Aldine Ed., London,
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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_.
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