Why, when the mead, the spicy vale,
The grove and genial garden call,
Will she her fragrant soul exhale,
Unheeded on the lonely wall?

For sure was never beauty born

To live in death's deserted shade!
Come, lovely flower, my banks adorn,

My banks for life and beauty made."

Suddenly, as the poet is about to remove the flower, the "Genius of the ruin" replies, defending the dead who lie there at rest:

From thee be far th'ungentle deed,

The honours of the dead to spoil,

Or take the sole remaining meed,

The flower that crowns their former toil!

Where longs to fall that rifted spire,
As weary of th'insulting air;
The poet's thought, the warrior's fire,
The lover's sighs are sleeping there.

When that too shakes the trembling ground,
Borne down by some tempestuous sky,
And many a slumbering cottage round

Startles-how still their hearts will lie!"

Such is the variety of elegiac verse throughout the century, from the crude realism of the butcher's shop to a tender melancholy that in the weaker writers becomes a maudlin sentimentality.

Both types of verse are found throughout the century, not only running side by side, but sometimes intermingling in the same poem. This elegiac literature impresses upon the modern reader the hold that the fear of death had upon an age dominated by the most

fantastic horrors theology and crude imagination could invent. "But is not the fear of death natural to man?" asks Boswell. "So much so, Sir," said Johnson, “that the whole of life is but keeping away the thought of it." Everywhere in the literature of the time we find this attitude to death. Too often the love of life is but the reflex of this fear, a somewhat hysterical pleasure for so reasonable an age:

"To die's a lesson we shall know
Too soon without a master;

Then let us only study now

How we may live the faster." 1

But I would conclude with what I consider one of the most charming poems on death that the eighteenth century offers. It was written by the once well-known Dr George Sewell of Hampstead, and appears in his posthumous Works as the conclusion to a curious and amusing essay Of the Usefulness of Snails in Medicine. Of his essay, as a contribution to medical science, the less said the better, but in his verses we find an echo of the quiet grace and dignity of the seventeenth century :

"Why, Damon, with the forward day,
Dost thou thy little spot survey?
From tree to tree, with doubtful cheer,
Pursue the progress of the year;

What winds arise, what rains descend,
When thou before that year shalt end?

What do thy noon-day walks avail,

To clear the leaf, and pick the snail?

1 Chesterfield: "Verses written in a lady's Sherlock upon Death.”

Then wantonly to death decree
An insect usefuller than thee?

Thou and the worm art brother-kind,
As low, as earthy, and as blind.

Vain wretch! canst thou expect to see
The downy peach make court to thee?
Or that thy sense shall ever meet
The bean-flower's deep-embosomed sweet?
Exhaling with an evening's blast,
Thy evenings then will all be past.

Thy narrow pride, thy fancied green,
(For vanity's in little seen)
All must be left when Death appears,
In spite of wishes, groans, and tears;
Nor one of all thy plants that grow,
But Rosemary, will with thee go."

IV

SUMMUM BONUM

Martial, the things that do attain
The happy life, be these, I find :
The riches left, not got with pain;
The fruitful ground, the quiet mind:

The equal friend, no grudge, no strife;
No change of rule, nor governance ;
Without disease, the healthful life;
The household of continuance :

The mean diet, no delicate fare;
True wisdom joined with simpleness;
The night discharged of all care,
Where wine the wit may not oppress:

The faithful wife, without debate;
Such sleeps as may beguile the night,
Contented with thine own estate;

Ne wish for death, ne fear his might.

HENRY HOWARd, Earl of Surrey.

It is a curious fact that the one age in English literature which has been generally reproached with a lack of interest in Nature is the one whose poets, with surprising unanimity, laid their conception of ideal happiness in a country life. It is true that the appreciation of the country shown by these poets of the eighteenth century is far removed from the later romantic love of Nature's wildness, mystery, or imaginative inspiration. They are common-sense realists, who know quite clearly what good life can give, and will not lose a limited happiness by asking more.

The leading poets of the day, as we have been

constantly reminded, were poets of the Town, for whom the country had no charms. But, although true in the main, this common criticism of eighteenthcentury literature needs qualification. It is true that the eighteenth-century poet could not have found satisfaction in such a retirement to the Lakes as Wordsworth made, nor did any desire arise in him to worship Nature as a mystical power. Wandering amidst the elegance of his eighteenth-century garden with its winding walks, its groves and grottos, its classic urns and temples, he appreciated Nature in that form, as something which ministered delightfully to man's enjoyment. Outside his garden, the open country was good too: good for growing corn, for feeding cattle, for the joys of hunting. Here too he appreciated Nature; here too Nature was good because it ministered to the needs and happiness of man. Hence in the eighteenth century appreciation of the country of a practical, common-sense kind was by no means lacking.

Of the eighteenth-century man, as of Peter Bell, we may say:

"A primrose by the river's brim

A yellow primrose was to him,
And it was nothing more."

Indeed to the lips of the eighteenth-century poet, if he could have listened to the above quotation, the question would have immediately sprung: "What more was it?" We may according to our mood or temperament pity or praise this realistic attitude of the eighteenth century to Nature, but we must not deny that at times Nature charmed, sometimes even moved, them. We of the present day are too ready to forget