A little rule, a little sway, And see the rivers how they run, The cadence of these octosyllabics certainly recalls Allegro, as does the plan of the earlier part of the poem: Silent Nymph, with curious eye! . . . Come with all thy various hues, Dyer's handling of his meter, his love of nature, and his pensive strain all indicate that a new current was moving in English verse. As yet it was not romanticism, but classicism turning in a new direction. Dyer faced towards Shelley and Wordsworth, but he was nearer to Thomson and Gray, or even to Pope. Grongar Hill shows this, for as first published it was an irregular Pindaric ode and scarcely better than the rest of that wretched species. It contained some lines of eight syllables, and was presumably followed a little later by the Country Walk, entirely in octosyllabics. At any rate, the two pieces appeared in the same miscellany, which was edited in 1726 by Johnson's friend, the unfortunate Richard Savage. Apparently Dyer was told by his friends, or soon saw for himself, how much better were his octosyllabics than his Pindarics; for that same year he published Grongar Hill as we now have it, an interesting example of a work of art made in the reworking. Imitation of Milton's companion poems was by no means confined to octosyllabics or even to rime. In 1731 appeared anonymously 1 The phrase "mossy cells" in this last extract may be from Penseroso, 169, and "gardens trim" in the Country Walk, 115, from Penseroso, 50 (George Sherburn, in Modern Philology, xvii. 528, 525, cf. 520). 2 Miscellaneous Poems and Translations, 48–57, 60-66. Another piece in Dyer's characteristic octosyllabics, An Epistle to a Famous Painter, may be seen in Chalmers's English Poets, xiii. 251. 3 Miscellaneous Poems, published by D. Lewis (1726), 223–31. Grongar Hill influenced not a few eighteenth-century poems. In 1785 it was made the subject of one of John Scott's "Critical Essays." eight pages of very Miltonic blank verse with the title Il Penseroso and the motto (from Paradise Lost) "Solitude sometimes is best Society." In the first half of the poem, which pictures the life of a solitary nature-lover, much the same things are done as in Allegro. Two rather similar poems adopted Milton's title to emphasize their own melancholy strain, James Foot's blank-verse Penseroso (1771),2 and an anonymous Il Penseroso, an Evening's Contemplation in St. John's Church-yard, Chester, a Rhapsody, written more than twenty years ago (1767), of which the Monthly Review remarked, "If this poem hath any merit at all, it is entirely local, from the objects it describes, and therefore we cannot recommend it beyond the precincts of St. John's church-yard in Chester, where it was born, and where it was buried, in the year of our Lord 1767; aged twenty years." 3 Another unexpected use of the Allegro-Penseroso structure appears in the opening of Constantia, a very free and highly-sophisticated rendering of the Man of Law's Tale, which Henry Brooke, author of Gustavus Vasa and the Fool of Quality, contributed to Ogle's Canterbury Tales of Chaucer Modernis'd (1741). The poem begins, Hence, Want, ungrateful Visitant, adieu, Pale Empress hence, with all thy meager Crew, After twelve more lines of evil spirits, Virtue is introduced with her long train of personified abstractions; then come more vices until the capital letters are well-nigh exhausted, then Virtue again, and finally the story, tilting on nicely-balanced heroic couplets. Truly, features of the companion poems were appearing in strange places and being put to strange uses! Their plan and meter will be found in the verses under the second plate of Hogarth's "Rake's Progress" (1735),* in the wedding entertainment which the poet 1 Miscellany of Poems, publish'd by J. Husbands (Oxford, 1731), 161-9. The closest verbal similarity to Milton is "divine Philosophy, Here [let me] ever dwell with Thee" (p. 164). A few lines (1-49, 363-94) of the unrimed Death which James Macpherson of Ossianic fame composed about 1750 show the influence of Milton's octosyllabics. 2 See pp. 397-8 above. 3 xxxvi. 409. The poem proves to have been written by Dr. William Cowper, a physician of Chester, who died in 1767. Another physician, "Dr. G. P. . . ." of Baltimore, used this same title of Milton's for a brief stanzaic piece on the sadness of winter and the gladness of spring (Europ. Mag., 1788, xiii. 222). Dr. John Hoadly, who translated Holdsworth's burlesque Muscipula into the verse of Paradise Lost (see pp. 108, 318, above), wrote a few tetrameter couplets for each plate of the series. Those under the third print contain the line (from Comus, 47), "Sweet poison of misused wine." The verses are all reprinted in "Dodsley's Miscellany" (1758, publisher Robert Dodsley wrote in 1732, and in the pantomime he composed in 1745. Sir William Blackstone (author of the Commentaries) employed them in 1744 to bid farewell to his muse and welcome to his new profession, while in 1746 Benjamin Hoadly unblushingly put them into a cantata which was sung in honor of the Duke of Cumberland's victory at Culloden.3 Early in 1745, a year after he published the Pleasures of Imagination, Mark Akenside brought out his Odes on Several Subjects. In the words of the "advertisement," the author "pretends chiefly . . . to be correct," and this goal-a curious one for a lyric poet — is all he achieves. Yet the odes (which were subsequently increased from ten to thirty-three), though quite free from inspiration, move slowly with the new current in poetry; for, besides being stanzaic and often octosyllabic, they deal with nature and with personifications. One of the tetrameters, the Hymn to Cheerfulness, is in part clearly modelled on the companion poems: The courtship of the parents of Cheerfulness and the account of her birth are patently taken from Allegro: As once ('twas in Astraea's reign) . . It happen'd that immortal Love Was ranging through the spheres above. . . . And, known from that auspicious morn, The pleasing Cheerfulness was born. Nearly six years before the publication of his Odes Akenside had contributed to the Gentleman's Magazine a Hymn to Science, which v. 269-74), in the volume that contains The Grotto ("printed in .. 1732 but never published," ib. 159) by Matthew Green, author of The Spleen. A page and a half, perhaps, of the ten pages of Green's easy, pleasant octosyllabics seem pretty clearly suggested by Milton's work in the same measure. Both Hoadly's and Green's borrowings are pointed out by Sherburn, pp. 519, 530, 520, 524. 1 See Bibl. II, below. In The Lawyer's Farewel to his Muse ("Dodsley's Miscellany," 1755, iv. 228–32). The lines that are closest to Milton's are, Yet let my setting sun, at last, Find out the still, the rural cell, Where sage Retirement loves to dwell! See Bibl. II. This occasion also called forth an anonymous octosyllabic ode in which the "goddess of immortal song" is asked to "descend, and bring along Fame, Concord," etc. (Gent. Mag., xvi. 267). he wisely never republished.1 These lines show the debt to Milton: Science! thou fair effusive ray. Descend with all thy treasures fraught. . . . Bid Fancy quit her fairy cell, In all her colours drest. . .. From the vain tumult timely fly, And sit in peace with thee. This piece may have been in Swift's mind when he wrote his burlesque Ode on Science, which is similar in title and structure, has the same meter, and was composed about the same time, though perhaps earlier. Swift's Ode seems to ridicule the commonplaces of poetry, which characterize Akenside's Hymn but become much more obnoxious later in the century, - as well as the use of vague language that sounds impressive but means little or nothing. It was certainly directed at some of Milton's imitators: O, HEAVENLY born! in deepest dells If fairest science ever dwells Beneath the mossy cave. . . . Come, fairest princess of the throng, Bring sweet philosophy along, In metaphysic dreams. Drive Thraldom with malignant hand... Iërne bear on azure wing; Energic let her soar, and sing Thy universal sway. The Dean was himself the subject of a good-natured parody in Isaac Hawkins Browne's Pipe of Tobacco (1735-6). The last of the six "imitations" that make up this volume burlesques Swift; yet it makes some use of the Allegro-Penseroso structure, which Swift employed only in the Ode on Science: Probably Browne did not intend the "come" and "bring" and other Miltonisms as part of the imitation, but introduced them because 1 Gent. Mag., ix. 544 (1739); reprinted in the Aldine edition of his Works (1835), 293-6. See also p. 471 below. they were associated in his mind with the octosyllabic, Swift's favorite meter.1 Contentment, which "E. L." contributed to the Gentleman's Magazine for October, 1736, begins, Descend, celestial Peace of Mind! ... Hence, murmurs, sighs, and Fears, exclude! and David Mallet's octosyllabic Fragment (1743?), though it does not make use of the "hence" or "come," has the Miltonic cadence and personifications and mentions a number of the things that are done in Penseroso. Health is first invoked: Thou oft art seen, at early dawn, Slow-pacing o'er the breezy lawn. . . . With Thirst and Languor in his train; then, "amid the shadows brown," Imagination listens to "every murmur of the wood," to the brook, the bee among the flowers, the "woodman's echoing stroke," and "the thunder of the falling oak.”2 After 1740 the number of these imitations increased so rapidly that it would be both impracticable and unprofitable to consider them all. One that should be mentioned, however, not only for its length but because it illustrates the influence of Handel's oratorio L'Allegro, Il Pensieroso, ed Il Moderato (1740), is The Estimate of Life (1746), which, like Handel's work, consists of three parts, The Melancholy, The Cheerful, The Moderate.3 John Gilbert Cooper, the author, who had used the verse and style of Paradise Lost the preceding year in his Power of Harmony, did not hesitate to follow the companion poems as closely as this: Grim Superstition, hence away, To native Night, and leave the Day; Come gentle Mirth and Gaiety, An earlier, pleasanter, and more important writer of octosyllabics, but one who likewise belongs to the "minor orders," is William Hamilton of Bangour, follower of the Pretender and author of The Braes of Yarrow. Though a mild classicist, Hamilton furnishes one 1 Browne's Ode to Health, presumably written later than his Pipe of Tobacco, is also patently Miltonic. See below, Bibl. II. ♦ See above, pp. 393-4. 2 Cf. Penseroso, 122–44. |