Chapter II (3)

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.