Here we are far indeed in spirit from the fêtes champêtres of Watteau, or Dr Johnson's wholesale condemnation of the country.

One counterpart at least Brown and Gray have amongst the eighteenth-century poets, one indeed who expressed their attitude to Nature long before themselves, for Dyer's Grongar Hill appeared as early as 1726. In this poem, one of the most charming descriptive poems in our language, we find a keen appreciation of natural beauty, finely expressed. It is indeed a picture in words, and we are not surprised to find its author a painter himself. Unfortunately the poem is too long to quote in full-perhaps some would say too long to be regarded as a lyric-but the lyrical quality in it is everywhere obvious.

We pass regretfully over the delightful opening invocation and ascent of the hill, and turn to the description of the landscape when the poet has attained

the summit:

Now, I gain the mountain's brow,
What a landscape lies below!
No clouds, no vapours intervene,
But the gay, the open scene
Does the face of nature show,
In all the hues of heaven's bow!
And, swelling to embrace the light,
Spreads around beneath the sight.
Old castles on the cliffs arise,
Proudly towering in the skies!
Rushing from the woods, the spires
Seem from hence ascending fires!
Half his beams Apollo sheds
On the yellow mountain heads!

Gilds the fleeces of the flocks:

And glitters on the broken rocks!
Below me trees unnumbered rise,
Beautiful in various dyes:

The gloomy pine, the poplar blue,
The yellow beech, the sable yew,
The slender fir, that taper grows,
The sturdy oak with broad-spread boughs.
And beyond the purple grove,
Haunt of Phillis, queen of love!
Gaudy as the opening dawn,
Lies a long and level lawn,

On which a dark hill, steep and high,

Holds and charms the wandering eye!

And see the rivers how they run,

Through woods and meads in shade and sun,
Sometimes swift, sometimes slow,
Wave succeeding wave, they go
A various journey to the deep,
Like human life to endless sleep!
Thus is nature's vesture wrought,
To instruct our wandering thought,
Thus she dresses green and
gay,

To disperse our cares away.
Ever charming, ever new,

When will the landscape tire the view!
The fountain's fall, the river's flow,
The woody valleys warm and low;
The windy summit, wild and high,
Roughly rushing on the sky!
The pleasant seat, the ruined tower,
The naked rock, the shady bower;
The town and village, dome and farm,
Each give to each a double charm,
As pearls upon an Æthiop's arm.

Now, even now, my joys run high,
As on the mountain turf I lie;
While the wanton zephyr sings,
And in the vale perfumes his wings;
While the waters murmur deep;
While the shepherd charms his sheep;
While the birds unbounded fly,
And with music fill the sky,

Now, even now, my joys run high."

So we come to the final verses, the moral, the quiet close of this joyous song, so unlike its contemporaries in poetic art :

"Be full, ye courts, be great who will;
Search for Peace with all

Open wide the lofty door,

your

Seek her on the marble floor,

skill:

In vain ye 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 allied,
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."

That is the high-water mark of eighteenth-century Nature poetry, and one of the choicest poems of its kind in our literature.

But I have more than reached my allotted space in this chapter, so I too will conclude with a moralising passage, taken from an unknown poet of the time:

"Happy the man whose tranquil mind Sees Nature in her changes kind, And pleased the whole surveys; For him the morn benignly smiles, And evening shades reward the toils That measure out his days.

The varying year may shift the scene, The sounding tempest lash the main, And Heaven's own thunders roll; Calmly he views the bursting storm, Tempests nor thunder can deform The morning of his soul."

VI

SOCIETY

O sweet Society!

What is living without thee?
Solitude hath oft and long
Been the theme of poet's song:
And charming Solitude

Is exquisitely fair and good;

But never, never without thee,

Best boon of Heaven, O sweet Society!

So sang the ill-fated Dr Dodd in Society, An Ode, which appears in his Poems published in 1767. Perhaps if he could have foreseen the future, and the day when society claimed his life as the penalty for forgery, he might have found less virtue in society and more in that solitude which the growing spirit of romance praised with increasing ardour.

Everywhere in the forgotten minor poetry of the century, as in the work of its chief poets, we find evidence of the strong social spirit of the age. The Town inspired the true Augustan to sing its praise and the praise of all forms of social life. In these productions the gregarious instinct in average humanity finds frequent, if not very exalted, expression.

The Town moulded human nature much more than did the country, and the ideal townsman, the beau, elegant and airy, became the subject of the poet's pen. An unsympathetic poet, the Rev. James Miller, sings: