"circumstances" as were "either not very important, or unsusceptible of poetical ornament." He was deeply interested in the wool industry, and, feeling that much of his country's greatness depended on it, desired to make his work of real service. Hence it was that he wrote what has been termed "the most extensive industrial poem of the eighteenth century, if not of English literature." 2 His practical suggestions are by no means confined to sheep-raising; for he discusses intemperance, smuggling, the digging of canals (including one through Panama), the relation of machinery to the laborer's welfare, the encouragement of foreign artisans to settle in England, and the erection of county houses in which the poor should be compelled to work on wool. As Wordsworth pointed out, The character of Dyer, as a patriot, a citizen, and a tender-hearted friend of humanity, was, in some respects, injurious to him as a poet; and has induced him to dwell in his poem upon processes which, however important in themselves, were unsusceptible of being poetically treated. Accordingly, his poem is in several places, dry and heavy; but its beauties are innumerable, and of a high order. In point of imagination, and purity of style, I am not sure that he is not superior to any writer in verse since the time of Milton.' This last is going too far; yet the Bard of the Fleece, whose skilful genius made does at least deserve that pure and powerful minds, hearts meek and still, Long as the thrush shall pipe on Grongar Hill! 4 Such a treatise as The Fleece may well have served some useful purposes; but no such justification can be found for the thirty-seven pages of Robert Shiells's Marriage (1748), which ceases to be dull only when it becomes lascivious, or for the eighty-six pages of Richard Shepherd's Nuptials (1761), in which the dreariness of fatuous, sentimental advice concerning matrimony is unrelieved. 1 Preface to his Hop-Garden. 2 C. A. Moore, Humanitarianism in the Periodical Essay and Poetry, 1700-1760 (doctor's thesis, Harvard, 1913), 227. Mr. Moore points out that Dyer emphasized the dignity and importance of trade and sought to remove the social stigma attached to it (see The Fleece, ii. 611-59 and the whole of book iv). 3 Letter to Lady Beaumont, Nov. 20, 1811. See also Wordsworth's postscript to his Duddon sonnets, and Knight's Life of Wordsworth (Edin., 1889), ii. 324. 4 Wordsworth's sonnet to Dyer. In the fourth line from the end I have changed "shall" to "should" and "thy" to "his." Shiells quotes from Paradise Lost on his title-page, and praises its author as "the lawful Prince of Song," one "possess'd of all the Wit Which lavish Nature grants."1 Shepherd also alludes to Milton, but there could in any case be no question as to the source of a style like this: In Quest of Happiness, attractive Spring And Soul of Action, see the motley Tribe The nuptial Bark with Foot adventurous climb.2 A later Ars Amoris, given to the world in 1807, is Martin Kedgwin Masters's Progress of Love. It is as harmless as Shepherd's, and like it abounds in comments and advice on many aspects of love and marriage. Masters had very little education, but neither Oxford nor Cambridge could have given him a less natural style and diction: Again to wake the monitory strain And charm to mute attention heedless youth, In the Sugar-Cane, which Dr. James Grainger published in 1764, information is "pour'd abundant," though unfortunately his theme is now, as before he visited the West Indies, one Whence never poet cropt one bloomy wreath." Some few leaves of laurel might possibly have decked Grainger's brow if he had possessed even a rudimentary sense of humor; but what hope is there of a man who uses the blank verse of Paradise Lost for a solemn treatment of "rats and other vermin," of weeds (including the "cow-itch"), of "the greasy fly," of the "care of mules" and the "diseases to which they are subject," as well as for a discussion as to whether, in planting, "dung should be buried in each hole, or scattered over the piece"? The bard himself when he came to some of these subjects and was trying to "adorn" them "in poetic garb," exclaimed, "Task how difficult!" and queried, Of composts shall the Muse descend to sing, Nor soil her heavenly plumes? Yet he not only answered in the affirmative and concluded the subject with 1 Page 33. Enough of composts, Muse; of soils, enough, 2i. 284-6; the reference to Milton is two lines earlier. Shepherd was a voluminous writer, but only three of his other poems show the influence of Milton (see Bibls. I and II, 1761). 3 See the preface, p. viii. ♦ii. 423-5. In iii. 20 he quotes "cheerful haunts of men" (cf. Comus, 388). si. 301. • See the arguments prefixed to the first three books; and ii. 123. but later said of negroes, "Worms lurk in all!" This willingness to call a spade a spade would indicate a dislike of periphrases, were it not for expressions like "lave . . . with the gelid stream,” “Raleigh's land" (Virginia), "the chlorotic fair; Tho' coction bid The aqueous particles to mount in air; Bristol, without thy marble, by the flame Calcin'd to whiteness, vain the stately reed Grainger has, in fact, practically all the vices of his frankly-acknowledged models, "pastoral Dyer, . . . Pomona's bard, And Smart and Sommerville. " "In their steps," he wrote, "I shall always be proud to tread," and added, "Vos sequor... Quod vos imitari aveo." He also wished to imitate Hesiod and lofty Maro (whose immortal muse Distant I follow, and, submiss, adore)." Obviously, the style and diction of these lines and of those previously quoted are derived from Milton or his followers, and the numerous verbal borrowings indicate that the direct influence of Paradise Lost was not slight." 1 i. 297-9 (the word "adorn" is significant), 218-19, 255; iv. 103. 2 iii. 321-2, 259; iv. 150; iii. 347-8, 381-3. Grainger uses such words as "fugacious," "endemial," "depurated," "perflation," "vermifuge" (i. 368; ii. 120; iii. 253, 340; iv. 312). The influence of the couplet prosody upon the Sugar-Cane is unmistakable: in the first passage to which I open (ii. 440-47) eight successive lines end with semicolons or periods, while within the lines there are only commas. The most interesting passage in the poem is that which pictures a hurricane, a calm, and an earthquake (ii. 270-426). In iii. 539-42, 566–7, Grainger expresses an appreciation of the beauty of the ocean which was unusual at the time. * i. 12-13; preface, vi-vii. 4 ii. 132-3. For example: "Pan, Knit with the Graces" (i. 61-2, cf. P. L., iv. 266-7); "draw her humid train” (i. 147, cf. P. L., vii. 306); “hold amorous dalliance” (i. 387, cf. P. L., ix. 443); "fruit of vegetable gold" (i. 429, cf. P. L., iv. 219-20); "shed genial influence" (i. 437, cf. P. L., vii. 375, of the heavens in each case); "at shut of eve" (ii. 11, cf. P. L., ix. 278); "scales bedropt with . . . gold” (ii. 142, cf. P. L., vii. 406, of fishes in each case); "in her interlunar palace hid" (ii. 311, cf. Samson, 89); "to gratulate ... the beginning year" (iii. 10-11, cf. P. R., iv. 438); "Fountain of being" (iii. 212, cf. P. L., iii. 375, of God in each case); Tho' no herald-lark Here leave his couch, high-towering to descry The approach of dawn, and hail her with his song (iii. 558-60, cf. P. R., ii. 279-81). For other borrowings, see iii. 256-7 (cf. Comus, 95–7), 274 (cf. P. L., xi. 484, 488), 372–3 (cf. Allegro, 133–4); iv. 8 (cf. P. L., iii. 7, invocation in each case), 554–81 (cf. P. L., iv. 641–56); and the following, which are indicated by quotation-marks, i. 90-92 (from Comus, 21-3), 132 n. (from P. L., ix. 1101-10), iv. 500 (from P. L., iv. 138). Grainger's Solitude is modelled upon Penseroso. Grainger knew a good deal about his subject and evidently tried to make both the poem and the notes to it useful; but he did not go so far as William Mason, who asserted that, since "to amuse was only a secondary motive" with him in writing his English Garden, he thought the 'copious and complete Commentary, which the partiality of a friend had induced him to write upon it, would be of more utility than the poem itself would be of entertainment." It is very doubtful, however, if the vain and much-flattered "Scroddles" really thought anything of the kind, for he embellished his treatise with two long episodes and devoted more attention to nature descriptions and other adornments than did his fellows. Such a subject as fence-making, for example, which he found an "ingrateful" task, he was not content to expound "in clear preceptive notes," but tried by modulation meet Of varied cadence, and selected phrase, As regards both varying the cadence and writing without inflation Mason succeeded better than most writers did, although if the "Simplicity" whom he twice summoned to preside over his poem had really responded he would probably have been not a little discomfited. But in his subject-matter, landscape architecture, he did vigorously uphold simplicity and naturalness against regularity or formality, and on this account, as well as because of his imitation of Milton's monody, octosyllabics, and sonnets, he is of some significance in the romantic movement. His romanticism and his poetic powers are seen at their best in lines like these: "He has, to be sure, a good deal of the "verdant mead" and "crystal stream" sort of thing, and occasional enormities like the reference to an ice-house (iv. 95-8) as the structure rude where Winter pounds In conic pit his congelations hoar, That Summer may his tepid beverage cool Yet neither this passage, nor that which describes the "thundering death" from the "fell tube" Whose iron entrails hide the sulphurous blast, (ii. 215-18), is typical of the poem. Mr. Beers is, therefore, hardly fair to Mason's georgic (by no means the most absurd of its class), when he quotes these two passages to bear out his remark, "The influence of Thomson's inflated diction is here seen at its worst" (English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century, 124-5). At the beginning of the first and fourth books. Happy art thou if thou can'st call thine own Such scenes as these: where Nature and where Time Have work'd congenial; where a scatter'd host Of antique oaks darken thy sidelong hills; While, rushing through their branches, rifted cliffs Bear on its brow the shiver'd fragment huge Of some old Norman fortress; happier far, The influence of the style, prosody, and perhaps diction of Paradise Lost upon this passage will surprise no one who is familiar with Mason's slavish imitation of Milton's early works. Phrases from these works, as well as from the epic, are introduced into the English Garden,2 together with references to their author and a tribute to "Milton's inimitable description of... Eden" as a prototype of the English garden.3 Mason divided his work into four parts (published separately in 1772, 1777, 1779, and 1782), devoting the first book to general principles and the later ones to their practical application, — to sunken fences, the arrangement of shrubbery, and the like. A similar plan was adopted by Richard Polwhele, the Devonshire clergyman who flitted industriously, but without either genius or that "infinite capacity for taking pains" which is allied to it, between poetry, topography, literary history, and theology. Polwhele regarded the English Garden as "the faultless Model of Didactic Poetry," and in imitation of it divided his English Orator into four books, in the first of which he considered "general Precepts" and in the other three 1i. 374-85. Unfortunately, Mason favored the erection of "old Norman fortresses" for barns and of "mould'ring abbeys" as screens for ice-houses, etc. (iv. 79–109). His grotto (iv. 118-31) also reminds one unpleasantly of Pope's; but he at least appreciated the ocean (iv. 110-14). 2 For example, "Contemplation imp Her eagle plumes" (i. 152-3, cf. Comus, 377–8, and the sonnet to Fairfax, line 8); "the gadding woodbine" (i. 433, cf. Lycidas, 40); "airs of Dorian mood" (iii. 502, cf. P. L., i. 550); "huddling brooks" (iii. 522, cf. Comus, 495); "glimm'ring glade" (iv. 656, cf. Penseroso, 27); The spicy tribes from Afric's shore, Or Ind, or Araby, Sabaean plants (iv. 234-6, cf. P. L., iv. 162–3, v. 293, and Comus, 991). The following borrowings are indicated by quotation-marks: i. 239 (Allegro, 133), 453-9 (P. L., iv. 240-63), iii. 370 (P. L., ii. 628), iv. 458-62 (P. L., iv. 248-51). i. 448-66, and note v. (p. 392). English Orator, iv. 334 n. (on p. 6 of the "Notes"). |