Then glide on my moments, the few that I have,
Smooth-shaded, and quiet, and even ;
While gently the body descends to the grave,
And the spirit arises to heaven."

I have said enough of these expressions of the desire for happiness in the eighteenth century to show, I think, that here too was a contemplative, rather than an active, attitude to life. In conclusion I will quote one of the most pleasing of the many poems relating to this question. It is by John Hawkesworth, and is entitled A Moral Thought:

"Through groves sequestered, dark and still,
Low vales and mossy cells
among,
In silent paths the careless rill,

With languid murmurs, steals along:
Awhile it plays with circling sweep,

And lingering leaves its native plain,
Then pours impetuous down the steep,
And mingles with the boundless main.

O let my years thus devious glide,

Through silent scenes obscurely calm,
Nor wealth nor strife pollute the tide,
Nor honour's sanguinary palm.

When labour tires, and pleasure palls,

Still let the stream untroubled be,
As down the steep of age it falls,
And mingles with eternity."

V

NATURE

I ask not Fortune's glittering charms,
The pride of courts, the spoils of arms;
By silver stream and haunted grove,
O give my peaceful steps to rove:
Beneath the shade of pendent hills,
I'll listen to the falling rills,
That chase the pebble, as they stray;
And haste, like human life, away.

DR MARRIOT (?).

THAT the eighteenth century in its own realistic, common-sense way appreciated nature in general has been shown to some extent in treating of its conception of ideal happiness as a cultured life in rural retirement. But if we come down to details we find here, too, many poems showing observation of, and interest in,

nature.

Throughout the century that type of poetry which Johnson termed "local poetry," poetry fashioned after the manner of Denham's Cooper's Hill, was popular. We cannot as a whole call it "lyrical," either in spirit or in form, but at times, as in its choicest production, Dyer's Grongar Hill, the lyric note is distinctly heard, while the whole of this local poetry, good and bad, does at anyrate show an interest in natural beauty.

Nor, when we talk of the love of the Town, and of the influence of the coffee-houses upon the writers of the time, must we forget that outside those circles of wit and

social pleasures were many minor writers who, living in the quietude of eighteenth-century rural England, loved Nature as men in all ages have loved her, and tried (sometimes successfully) to express in simple and sincere language the joy she gave.

The Rev. Thomas Fitzgerald has contrasted the pleasures of town and country, and expressed the desire to escape from the whirl and noise of the one into the peace and rest of the other:

"No! No! 'Tis in vain, in this turbulent Town,
To expect either pleasure or rest!
To hurry and nonsense still tying us down,
'Tis an overgrown prison at best!

From hence, to the country escaping away,
Leave the crowd and the bustle behind!
And there you'll see liberal Nature display
A thousand delights to Mankind!

The change of the seasons, the sports of the fields,
The sweetly diversified scene,

The groves, and the gardens ;-nay ! everything yields A happiness ever serene!

Here, here, from ambition and avarice free,

My days may I quietly spend !

Whilst the cits and the courtiers, unenvied by me,

May gather up wealth without end!

No! I thank them! I'll never, to add to my store,
My peace and my freedom resign!

For who, for the sake of possessing the ore,
Would be sentenced to dig in the mine?"

In the following anonymous song, taken from The Musical Miscellany of 1729, we find this same appreciation of the country:

THE COUNTRY LIFE

Happy is a country life! Happy is a country
Blest with content, good health and ease,
Free from factions, noise and strife,
We only plot ourselves to please.
Peace of mind's our day's delight,
And love, or welcome dreams, at night.
Peace of mind's our day's delight,
And love, or welcome dreams, at night.
Hail! green fields, and shady woods!
Hail! crystal streams that still run pure,
Nature's uncorrupted goods,

Where virtue only dwells secure;
Free from vice and free from care,
Age has no pain, nor youth a snare.

life!

At times, in poems not specifically written about the country, the love of Nature is an all-pervading influence, as in the once famous poem, Arno's Vale, by Charles, the 2nd Duke of Dorset :

When here, Lucinda, first we came,
Where Arno rolls his silver stream,

How blithe the nymphs, the swains how gay,
Content inspired each rural lay.

The birds in livelier concert sung,
The grapes in thicker clusters hung;
All looked as joy could never fail
Among the sweets of Arno's Vale.

But since the good Palemon died,
The chief of shepherds and their pride,
Now Arno's sons must all give place
To northern men, an iron race.

The taste of pleasure now is o'er,
Thy notes, Lucinda, please no more;
The Muses droop, the Goths prevail;
Adieu the sweets of Arno's Vale."

Nichols has preserved for us in his collection of poetry an Ode to Morning by Miss Pennington, who was the daughter of the rector of Huntingdon, and died in 1759, when only twenty-five years of age:

Hail roseate Morn! returning light!
To thee the sable Queen of Night
Reluctant yields her sway;
And, as she quits the dappled skies,
On glories, greater glories rise,
To greet the dawning day.

O'er tufted meads gay Flora trips;
Arabia's spices scent her lips;

Her head with rose-buds crowned
Mild Zephyr hastes to snatch a kiss,
And, fluttering with the transient bliss,
Wafts fragrance all around."

After much stilted description of " broidered vales," blooming flowers" and "vernal breezes," we have the concluding stanzas with a final touch of moralising

verse:

"Shall I, with drowsy poppies crowned
By sleep in silken fetters bound,
The downy God obey?

Ah, no!-Through your embowering grove,
Or winding valley, let me rove,

And own thy cheerful sway.

1 Written at Florence on the death of the last Grand Duke of

Tuscany of the Medici family.