POETS' COUNTRY 
 
 EDITED-BY 
 
 -AN DREW- LANG > 
 
 ILLUSTRATED-BY 
 
 FRANCIS'SWALKER 
 
LIBRARY 
 
 OF THE 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA. 
 
 Class 
 
POETS' COUNTRY 
 
UNiVE;' 
 
 fedL'' 
 
DOVE COTTAGE, GRASMERE 
 
 Dove Cottage was the home of Wordsworth for seven 
 years and bears traces of his care. Many of the flowering 
 shrubs were planted by his own hand. The stones laid 
 down in the garden are steps up its steep incline to a terrace 
 higher than the cottage, over which he had a view of 
 Grasmere Lake, and of Silver How beyond. 
 
 When Wordsworth left Dove Cottage, De Quincey 
 resided in it for many years. 
 
POETS' COUNTKY 
 
 EDITED BY 
 
 ANDKEW LANG 
 
 CONTRIBUTORS 
 
 PROF. J. CHURTON COLLINS . W. J. LOFTIE, F.S.A. 
 
 E. HARTLEY COLERIDGE . MICHAEL MACMILLAN 
 
 ANDREW LANG 
 
 WITH FIFTY ILLUSTRATIONS IN COLOUR BY 
 
 FRANCIS S. WALKER 
 
 PHILADELPHIA: J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY 
 EDINBURGH: T. C. & E. C. JACK 
 
 1907 
 
EDITOR'S PREFACE 
 
 THE purpose of this volume, as the title indicates, is to 
 trace the relations of poets with the aspects of " their 
 ain countrie," or with the scenes where they built their 
 homes, or pitched their transient camps. " A wanderer 
 is man from his birth," Mr. Matthew Arnold writes, 
 and the habits of many poets have been nomadic. 
 There is little of his native Devonshire in Coleridge ; 
 Sussex has no conspicuous part in the making of 
 Shelley ; the Muse of Byron is influenced rather by 
 the Mediterranean than by Dee and Don. But other 
 poets are home-keeping, like Wordsworth and Scott ; 
 their favourite scenes are those among which they were 
 born and spent their years of boyhood and their later 
 lives. Tennyson, too, had a strong attachment to his 
 native " Brook " in which, if The Millers Daughter be 
 autobiographic, he was a very idle angler and to the 
 level wastes of the Lincolnshire fen country. There 
 are poets who " generalise " landscape ; they give us " a 
 practicable wood," a pasteboard cottage, a stream which 
 
vi POETS' COUNTRY 
 
 punctually "purls," and the rest of the dfaor of the 
 eighteenth century. Drayton, on the other hand, seems 
 to have had minute knowledge of every bourne and 
 beck, as well as of every river, in England. 
 
 Some poets, anxious, in Wordsworth's phrase, "to 
 write with their eyes on the object," take notes of 
 landscape, as painters make rapid pencil sketches. To 
 take such notes on aspects of the atmosphere, of the 
 hills, woods, and even the most retiring species of the 
 vegetable kingdom, was the practice of Wordsworth 
 and of his sister Dorothy. The ingredients thus col- 
 lected might or might not come handy in the composi- 
 tion of a poem. Thus Dorothy Wordsworth would 
 chronicle the circumstance that "the moon was 
 immensely large, the sky scattered over with clouds. 
 These soon closed in, contracting the dimensions of 
 the moon without concealing her." This note of 
 phenomena very familiar was made in Somerset. 
 Coleridge read it, and did it into blank verse, in a 
 pocket-book : 
 
 Behind the thin 
 
 Grey cloud that covered but not hid the sky, 
 The round full moon looked small. 
 
 The piece of local colour was now ready for instant 
 use, in case Coleridge was writing a poem in blank 
 verse. Wordsworth also exploited Dorothy's note, in 
 
EDITOR'S PREFACE vii 
 
 his Night -Piece, lines 1-7. Finally, Coleridge, in 
 Cliristabel (where the scene is Cumberland), did the 
 note afresh into four lines, in the metre of that poem. 
 All this learning Mr. Ernest Coleridge provides in his 
 beautiful edition of ChristabeU It is not probable that 
 most of our poets made notes in this conscientious 
 way ; though Scott wrote down the names of the 
 local wild-flowers at Rokeby, as he was to write a 
 poem with Rokeby for its centre. 
 
 To every poet his own method. The artist, Mr. 
 Walker, has visited and pourtrayed scenes familiar to 
 the singers ; the business of the authors in this volume 
 has been to study the poets' relations to the landscapes 
 with which they were best acquainted, and, in some 
 instances, to describe these scenes in their changed 
 aspects of to-day. In other instances, notably in the 
 case of Shelley, the Poets' Country is the "Land of 
 Dreams " (as Homer says), and the sky and sea, which 
 are changeless in their changefulness. 
 
 The influence of the Nature which environed poets 
 in their youth has not a scientifically calculable effect 
 on their genius. The mountains and the sea, as in 
 Wordsworth's sonnet, may inspire a love of freedom ; 
 but, in the case of Oliver Cromwell (as Mr. Matthew 
 Arnold remarked in an early prize poem on that states- 
 
 1 Frowde. London, 1907. 
 
viii POETS' COUNTRY 
 
 man), the same effect may be produced by the flat 
 scenery of the Midlands. The method of Monsieur 
 Taine, and of others who unhesitatingly discover, for 
 all effects, causes in the local environment, is a method 
 of merely popular science. 
 
 The Editor should perhaps explain that he was asked, 
 single-handed, to write the studies which accompany the 
 pictures in this volume. Having neither the leisure 
 nor the necessary literary and topographical knowledge, 
 he suggested that writers better qualified than he should 
 be invited to select the poets and scenes preferred by 
 them. He mentioned some names, and Mr. Churton 
 Collins, Mr. Coleridge, Mr. Loftie, with Mr. Macmillan, 
 kindly undertook their pleasant tasks. The Editor has 
 not dreamed of suggesting any alterations in their ex- 
 pressions of taste and opinion when (as will happen in 
 matters of taste) there is some lack of grace of con- 
 gruity between his impressions and those of his fellow- 
 workers. 
 
 A. L. 
 
ARTIST'S PREFACE 
 
 THE pictures in this book are of places associated with 
 the poets either through their lives or scenes that are 
 supposed to be sources of their inspiration. 
 
 The designs are not presented as illustrations of the 
 words of the poets, rather as backgrounds characteristic 
 of scenes that influenced their poetry ; for example, the 
 bold scenery of the Highlands is to Scott what the 
 gentle scenery of Olney is to Cowper. 
 
 In some cases the scenes are undoubtedly those 
 that have been immortalised by their writings, notably 
 by Byron at Newstead, Gray at Stoke Poges, and I 
 believe Burns at the Ayr and Doon, Wordsworth at 
 the Lakes, Coleridge at Nether Stowey and the Quan- 
 tocks. All of these poets make direct reference to actual 
 places, and the pictures are intended to be sympathetic 
 representations of them. 
 
 Other places designed are not mentioned in their 
 poems, but represent such scenes as they have described. 
 Some lines from The Two Gentlemen of Verona seem to 
 have been inspired by Shakespeare's love of the Avon, 
 and are very characteristic of it. 
 
 Some pictures are of places in which the poets lived. 
 
 ix 
 
x POETS' COUNTRY 
 
 That of Milton in his garden at Chalfont St. Giles, 
 during his blindness, suggests his love of flowers, and 
 the pastoral landscape of the surrounding scenes is 
 such as he has described, while the picture of him 
 dictating shows an incident in his life's affliction. Shake- 
 speare's birthplace and school, as well as the Hathaway 
 cottage and church, are under this head of associations ; 
 also Eton and Bisham, as connected with Shelley. 
 
 The artist's efforts on the whole have been to 
 carry out pictorially in every case some effect that 
 came under his own observation, while painting each 
 scene in the spirit of Coleridge's words on " the poetry 
 of Nature " : 
 
 During the first year that Mr. Wordsworth and I were neigh- 
 bours, our conversation turned frequently on the two cardinal 
 points of poetry the power of exciting the sympathy of a reader 
 by a faithful adherence to the truth of Nature, and the power of 
 giving the interest of novelty by the modifying colour of imagina- 
 tion. The sudden charm which accidents of light and shade, which 
 moonlight or sunlight, diffused over a known and familiar landscape, 
 appeared to represent the practicability of combining both ; these 
 are the poetry of Nature. Coleridge's Biographia Liter aria. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 SHAKESPEARE ....... 1 
 
 PROFESSOR J. CHURTON COLLINS 
 
 WILLIAM WORDSWORTH . . . . . .25 
 
 E. H. COLERIDGE 
 
 BYRON . . . . . . . .46 
 
 E. H. COLERIDGE 
 
 S. T. COLERIDGE . . . . . . .66 
 
 E. H. COLERIDGE 
 
 SCOTT ........ 83 
 
 ANDREW LANG 
 
 SHELLEY AND NATURE . . . . . .100 
 
 ANDREW LANG 
 
 MILTON . . . . . . . .116 
 
 PROFESSOR J. CHURTON COLLINS 
 
 Sm JOHN DENHAM AND "COOPER'S HILL" . . .127 
 
 PROFESSOR J. CHURTON COLLINS 
 
 WALLER, COWLEY, AND DRYDEN . . . . .133 
 
 PROFESSOR J. CHURTON COLLINS 
 
 THE DESCRIPTIVE POETRY OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY . 140 
 
 PROFESSOR J. CHURTON COLLINS 
 
 POPE AND THE MINOR POETS OF THE AUGUSTAN AGE . .150 
 
 PROFESSOR J. CHURTON COLLINS 
 xi 
 
xii POETS' COUNTRY 
 
 PAGE 
 
 AKENSIDE, ARMSTRONG, SHENSTONE, GRAINGER, MALLET, AND 
 
 SMOLLETT . . . . . . .172 
 
 PROFESSOR J. CHURTON COLLINS 
 
 GOLDSMITH, COLLINS, AND GRAY . . . . .177 
 
 PROFESSOR J. CHURTON COLLINS 
 
 FALCONER AND MARINE SCENERY, MASON, THE WARTONS, AND 
 
 BEATTIE ....... 191 
 
 PROFESSOR J. CHURTON COLLINS 
 
 LANGHORNE, JAGO, SCOTT OF AMWELL, CHARLOTTE SMITH, 
 
 BOWLES, CROWE, AND HURDIS .... 204 
 
 PROFESSOR J. CHURTON COLLINS 
 
 WILLIAM COWPER . . . . . . .215 
 
 PROFESSOR J. CHURTON COLLINS 
 
 CRABBE AND ALDBOROUGH ..... 239 
 
 PROFESSOR J. CHURTON COLLINS 
 
 TENNYSON. ....... 253 
 
 PROFESSOR J. CHURTON COLLINS 
 
 CHAUCER AT ELTHAM ...... 274 
 
 REV. W. J. LOFTIE 
 
 OLIVER GOLDSMITH AT HYDE HOUSE FARM . . . 289 
 
 REV. W. J. LOFTIE 
 
 KEATS AT ENFIELD ... . 300 
 
 REV. W. J. LOFTIE 
 
 EDMUND SPENSER AT PENSHURST . . . .313 
 
 REV. W. J. LOFTIE 
 
 THOMAS MOORE IN WICKLOW .... 325 
 
 REV. W. J. LOFTIE 
 
 BURNS . . . . . . . 339 
 
 MICHAEL MACMILLAN 
 
 INDEX .... 359 
 
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Dove Cottage, Grasmere ..... Frontispiece 
 
 Shakespeare's Birthplace ... .2 
 
 The Grammar School, Stratford-on-Avon . . 8 
 
 Ann Hatha way's Cottage . 14 
 
 The Avon at Stratford ... .20 
 
 Trinity Church, Stratford-on-Avon . . 24 
 
 Alfoxden .... 26 
 
 The River Eden . . . .32 
 
 Rydal Water ... .36 
 
 Grasmere Church . . . . . . .42 
 
 Newstead Abbey . . ... 48 
 
 Garden of Newstead . .54 
 
 The Lake at Newstead . . 60 
 
 Byron's " Tomb " at Harrow . . .64 
 
 Coleridge's Cottage, Nether Stowey . 66 
 
 The Grove, Highgate . .74 
 
 The Quantock Hills . 80 
 
 The Pass of Leny . . 84 
 
 The Falls of Leny . 88 
 
 Ashiestiel . . -92 
 
 Melrose Abbey . . . . . . -98 
 
 Eton College Chapel from the Thames . .104 
 
 xiii 
 
xiv POETS' COUNTRY 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Bisham Abbey . .112 
 
 Chalfont St. Giles, Bucks . . . . .116 
 
 Milton's Cottage and Garden, Chalfont St. Giles . .120 
 
 Interior of Milton's Cottage . . . . .126 
 
 The Thames and Eton from the Terrace, Windsor Castle . 128 
 
 Prior Park, Bath . . . . . . .152 
 
 Windsor Castle from near Eton Lock . . .156 
 
 The Thames at Richmond from the Terrace . . . 160 
 
 Stoke Poges Manor . . . . .178 
 
 The Hall of Stoke Manor . . .182 
 
 The Poets' Walk at Eton . .186 
 
 Stoke Poges Churchyard . . . . .188 
 
 The Cenotaph at Stoke Poges . . . . .190 
 
 Winchester ... . .198 
 
 Olney ... . . 216 
 
 The Ouse at Olney . . . 232 
 
 St. John's College, Cambridge ..... 256 
 
 Lincolnshire Coast, Mablethorpe ..... 264 
 
 Blackdown Common . ... 272 
 
 Kingbury Green, near London ..... 290 
 
 Farmhouse in Hyde Lane ..... 296 
 
 The Vale of Health, Hampstead . . 304 
 
 Milfield Lane, Highgate . . . . . .312 
 
 The Vale of Avoca ...... 328 
 
 The Blackwater at Lismore Castle . . . 336 
 
 Ellisland .... ... 340 
 
 The River Boon .... . 346 
 
 The River Ayr at Failford ..... 352 
 
SHAKESPEARE 
 
 IT seems to be with Shakespeare as it is with Nature. 
 As she fashions in her impartial thoroughness of 
 workmanship, or reveals herself in her infinity of phases, 
 so he depicts. Like hers his touch is as precise and 
 finished in minutiae as in what is most eminent and 
 impressive. Responsive and faithful to her in her 
 most appalling and terrific manifestations, as in the 
 thunderstorm in Lear and the tempest at sea in Pericles, 
 in her scenes of awe-compelling grandeur as in his 
 picture of Dover Cliff, in her phenomena of mingled 
 grandeur and loveliness, her dawning and setting suns, 
 her rivers, her seas, her landscapes, he is equally 
 faithful to her in his representations of her minutest 
 and most insignificant creations. In a truth very 
 literal it may be said of Shakespeare as it was said of 
 Wordsworth's Wanderer 
 
 Early had he learned 
 To reverence the volume that displays 
 The mystery, the life which cannot die. 
 
 There did he see the writing ; all things there 
 Breathed immortality, revolving life 
 And greatness still revolving ; infinite : 
 
 1 T 
 
 1 
 
2 POETS' COUNTRY 
 
 There littleness was not ; the least of things 
 Seemed infinite ; and there his spirit shaped 
 Her prospects. .... 
 
 Thence he learned 
 
 In many a calmer hour of sober thought 
 To look on Nature with a humble heart, 
 Self-questioned where it did not understand, 
 And with a superstitious eye of love. 
 
 And that is the more remarkable, this minute care with 
 which Shakespeare studied natural phenomena, when 
 we remember that his work as a poet was in no way 
 immediately concerned with them ; at most they could 
 but furnish him with ornament, with what was 
 essentially subordinate and collateral in his themes and 
 in his aims. And now for a few illustrations which it 
 will be seen not only indicate the keen interest with 
 which they must have been regarded, as proved by the 
 impression made on memory, but the close scrutiny to 
 which most of them must have been submitted : 
 
 Cinque-spotted, like the crimson drops 
 1' the bottom of a cowslip. 
 
 Cymbeline, n. ii. 
 
 " .Furr'd moss" (Cymbeline, iv. ii.), " Slue-veined violets " 
 (Venus and Adonis, 125), "Cuckoo buds of yellow hue" 
 (Loves Labours Lost, v. ii.), "the ripest mulberry that 
 will not hold the handling" (Coriolanus, in. ii.), the 
 "willow that shows his hoar leaves in the glassy 
 stream" (Hamlet, iv. vii.), "the ousel- cock . . . 
 with orange-tawny bill" (Midsummer Night's Dream, 
 in. i.), "the russet-pated chough" (Midsummer Nights 
 
SHAKESPEARE'S BIRTHPLACE 
 
 Behind Shakespeare's birthplace at Stratford-on-Avon 
 lies the garden in which some fifty or sixty years ago were 
 planted the trees, flowers, and shrubs mentioned in his 
 plays. They have now grown into quite a picturesque old 
 English garden. 
 

SHAKESPEARE 3 
 
 Dream, in. ii.), "the shard-borne beetle" (Macbeth, 
 in. ii.), "sharded" (Cymbeline, HI. iii.), the "red-hippd 
 humble bee" (Midsummer Nights Dream, iv. i.), "the 
 gilded newt" (Timon of Athens, iv. iii.), "for men, like 
 butterflies, show not their mealy wings" (Troilus and 
 Cressida, in. iii.), " heavy -gaited toads" (Richard II., 
 in. ii.), "the staring owl" (Loves Labours Lost, v. ii.). 
 There is the same minute observation in the description 
 of the snail shrinking into its shell : 
 
 Or as the snail, whose tender horns being hit, 
 Shrinks backwards in his shelly cave with pain, 
 And there, all smother'd up, in shade doth sit, 
 Long after fearing to creep forth again. 
 
 Venus and Adonis, 1033 seqq. 
 
 So, too, this of the violet when faded : 
 
 The violet past prime, 
 And sable curls all silver'd o'er with white. 
 
 Sonnet xn. 
 
 It is not necessary to multiply these illustrations. 
 
 It is in the earlier years of life that all men are 
 most susceptible of impressions from external nature 
 which, becoming consecrated by memory and associa- 
 tion, grow more vivid and influential as youth recedes. 
 It was so with Sophocles and Theocritus, with Dante 
 and Chaucer, with Wordsworth and Scott, with Crabbe 
 and with Tennyson. And most assuredly it was 
 so with Shakespeare. It was, however, his lot never 
 wholly to be separated from his early surroundings, 
 for it is probable that he visited Stratford occasionally 
 
4 POETS' COUNTRY 
 
 during the whole course of his life, and his closing 
 years were certainly passed there. In considering him 
 as a nature-painter it is not often, of course, possible to 
 define and identify his pictures with particular localities, 
 because he paints nature as he paints men, typically 
 and in essence. But as he never depicted what he 
 never saw the individuals through a study of whom 
 he penetrated to universal humanity were the men and 
 women who surrounded him so in his pictures of 
 natural scenery, however generic might be his treat- 
 ment of it, he rarely strayed indeed, it was not 
 necessary for him to stray out of the sphere of what 
 had long been familiar to him at home. If we except 
 his pictures of the sea, they are not numerous ; his 
 pictures of mountains, they are meagre and still rarer ; 
 of Dover Cliff, it stands alone ; all his nature-paintings 
 resolve themselves into representations more or less 
 typical of what could be seen in or about Stratford or 
 within a radius of twenty miles of it. Illimitable as 
 his genius was, its activity and range were always 
 bounded, and bounded deliberately, by experience. 
 Had he seen the Tropics or the Arctic regions, or had 
 he crossed the Alps, can we doubt that we should have 
 had pictures rivalling those of the storm in Lear, the 
 sea-scenes in Othello and Pericles, and the idylls in the 
 Midsummer Nights Dream, the Winters Tale, and 
 Cymbeline ; or had he visited France or Italy or Spain, 
 could we doubt that he would have been to Nature 
 there what he was to Nature here ? 
 
SHAKESPEARE 5 
 
 Ruskin, commenting on the local influences affecting 
 Shakespeare's nature-painting, makes some remarks 
 which are worth transcribing : 
 
 There was only one thing belonging to hills that Shakespeare 
 seemed to feel as noble the pine-tree and that was because he 
 had seen it in Warwickshire, clumps of pine occasionally rising on 
 little sandstone mounds, as at the place of execution of Piers 
 Gaveston, above the lowland woods. He touches on this tree 
 fondly again and again : 
 
 As rough, 
 
 Their royal blood enchafed, as the rud'st wind 
 That by his top doth take the mountain pine, 
 And make him stoop to the vale. 1 
 
 The strong-based promontory 
 Have I made shake, and by the spurs pluck'd up 
 The pine and cedar. 2 
 
 Where note his observance of the peculiar horizontal roots of the 
 pine, spurred as it is by them like the claw of a bird, and partly 
 propped, as the aiguilles by those rock promontories at their bases 
 which I have always called their spurs ; this observance of the 
 pine's strength and animal-like grasp being the chief reason for his 
 choosing it, above other trees, for Ariel's prison. Again : 
 
 You may as well forbid the mountain pines 
 To wag their high tops, and to make no noise 
 When they are fretted with the gusts of heaven. 3 
 
 And yet again : 
 
 But when from under this terrestrial ball 
 He fires the proud tops of the Eastern pines. 4 
 
 We may judge, by the impression which this single feature of hill 
 scenery seems to have made on Shakespeare's mind, because he had 
 
 1 Cymbeline, iv. ii. 2 Tempest, v. i. 
 
 8 Merchant of Venice, iv. i. 4 Richard II., in. ii. 
 
6 POETS' COUNTRY 
 
 seen it in his youth, how his whole temper would have been 
 changed if he had lived in a more sublime country, and how 
 essential it was to his power of contemplation of mankind that 
 he should be removed from the sterner influences of Nature 
 (Modern Painters, vol. iv. Part v. chapter xx.). 
 
 Now let us take the characteristic Stratford scenery 
 the Avon and the meadows on its banks and see 
 how they are recalled in his work. The lines in the 
 Midsummer Nights Dream : 
 
 The nine men's morris is fill'd up with mud, 
 And the quaint mazes on the wanton green 
 For lack of tread are undistinguishable, 
 
 n. i. 
 
 simply photograph what may now be seen every spring, 
 when the weather has been rainy, in the meadows by 
 the theatre, the old game of Nine Men's Morris being 
 still not obsolete. Strutt, in his Sports and Pastimes 
 (Second Edition, p. 279), thus describes it : 
 
 In that part of Warwickshire where Shakespeare was born, and 
 the neighbouring parts of Northamptonshire, the shepherds and 
 other boys dig up the turf with their knives to represent a sort of 
 imperfect chessboard. It consists of a square, sometimes only a 
 foot in diameter, sometimes three and four yards, Within this is 
 another square, every side of which is parallel to the external 
 square. . . . These figures are always cut upon the green turf or 
 leys, as they are called, or upon the grass at the end of ploughed 
 lands, and in rainy seasons never fail to be choken with mud. 
 
 The quaint mazes are, of course, the faery rings so 
 conspicuous in these meadows. 
 
 In Titus Andronicus, in. i., we find what is one of 
 
SHAKESPEARE 7 
 
 the most prominent features of that scenery every 
 
 spring : 
 
 Meadows yet not dry, 
 With miry slime left on them by a flood ; 
 
 and in rich abundance every spring, 
 
 . . . daisies pied and violets blue, 
 
 And lady-smocks all silver white, 
 And cuckoo buds of yellow hue 
 
 Do paint the meadows with delight, 
 
 Love's Labour s Lost, v. ii. 
 
 when 
 
 Proud-pied April, dress'd in all his trim, 
 Hath put a spirit of youth in everything. 
 
 Sonnet xcvm. 
 
 To these scenes he was turning when he spoke of 
 Lucrece's hand as the " perfect white " which 
 
 Show'd like an April daisy on the grass, 
 With pearly sweat, resembling dew of night ; 
 
 and her eyes, 
 
 Like marigolds had sheathed their light, 
 
 the daisy and marigold being most conspicuous in those 
 richly fertile meadows. And what is the following but 
 an April photograph of the river-side from Chalcote to 
 the bathing-place ? 
 
 Thy banks with peonied and twilled brims, 
 Which spongy April at thy hest betrims 
 To make cold nymphs chaste crowns ; 
 
 Tempest, iv. i. 
 
 " peonied and twilled brims " being river-banks covered 
 
8 POETS' COUNTRY 
 
 with marigolds and reeds. How often may he have 
 seen on the Avon what he describes here 
 
 A dive-dapper peering through a wave, 
 Who, being look'd on, ducks as quickly in. 
 
 Venus and Adonis, 86-87. 
 
 And here 
 
 A vagabond flag l upon the stream 
 
 Goes to and back, lackeying the varying tide, 
 
 To rot itself with motion. 
 
 Antony and Cleopatra, i. iv. 
 
 Nor have we to go far to find many a spot which 
 might have been the original of 
 
 There is a willow grows aslant a brook, 
 
 That shows his hoar leaves in the glassy stream ; 
 
 Hamlet, iv. vii. 
 
 or the banks where poor Ophelia could gather her 
 " fantastic garland " of 
 
 Crow-flowers, nettles, daisies, and long purples 
 That liberal shepherds give a grosser name. 
 
 And how often might he have seen what Lysander 
 looked to see 
 
 To-morrow night, when Phoebe doth behold 
 Her silver visage in the wat'ry glass, 
 Decking with liquid pearl the bladed grass. 
 
 Midsummer Night's Dream, i. i. 
 
 Either the Avon itself, or perhaps one of the many 
 brooks in the forest of Arden, possibly the brook that 
 runs by Langley, near Clevedon, or the brook at 
 
 1 i.e. bulrush. 
 
THE GRAMMAR SCHOOL, STRATFORD-ON-AVON 
 
 The Grammar School, Stratford-on-Avon, founded 1482, 
 and in which Shakespeare was educated from 1572 to 1577, 
 is still in use as a school. The picture here given is one of 
 the class rooms, formerly the Council Chamber of the town. 
 In some of the others it is said Shakespeare first saw a play, 
 its impression probably influencing his career. 
 

SHAKESPEARE 9 
 
 Shottery, or, more likely perhaps, the brook at 
 Wellesbourne, gave him, doubtless, this charming 
 picture 
 
 The current that with gentle murmur glides 
 
 Thou know'st, being stopp'd, impatiently doth rage ; 
 
 But when his fair course is not hindered, 
 
 He makes sweet music with th' enamell'd stones, 
 
 Giving a gentle kiss to every sedge 
 
 He overtaketh in his pilgrimage : 
 
 And so by many winding nooks he strays 
 
 With willing sport to the wild ocean. 
 
 Two Gentlemen of Verona, n. vii. 
 
 The characteristic scenery of the neighbouring forest 
 of Arden, with its brooks and lawns and glades, appears 
 and reappears in his dramas. Here was the 
 
 Oak whose antique root peeps out 
 Upon the brook that brawls along this wood ; 
 
 As You Like It, n. i. 
 
 the oak 
 
 Whose boughs were moss'd with age, 
 And high top bald with dry antiquity ; 
 
 Idem, iv. iii. 
 
 the 
 
 Shade of melancholy boughs ; 
 
 Idem, ii. vii. 
 
 the 
 
 Shadowy, desert, unfrequented woods, 
 
 in which Valentine sought solace (Two Gentlemen of 
 F'erona, v. iv.). Here in one of the many glades 
 intersecting it he might have seen the 
 
 Poor sequester'd stag, 
 
 That from the hunter's aim had ta'en a hurt, 
 Did come to languish 
 
10 POETS' COUNTRY 
 
 And thus the hairy fool, 
 Much marked of the melancholy Jaques, 
 Stood on the extremest verge of the swift brook, 
 Augmenting it with tears. 
 
 Here might he often, in the hunting season, have 
 witnessed and heard what he so vividly describes in the 
 first scene of the fourth act of the Midsummer Night's 
 Dream : 
 
 Never did I hear 
 
 Such gallant chiding, for, besides the groves, 
 The skies, the fountains, every region near 
 Seem'd all one mutual cry : I never heard 
 So musical a discord, such sweet thunder ; 
 
 and what he depicts in the hunting scene in Titus 
 Andronicus, n. i. We seem to trace this same scenery 
 not only in As You Like It, but in the Midsummer 
 Nights Dream and in Timon of Athens, but we see it 
 only in glimpses. Shakespeare has nowhere given any 
 detailed description of a forest or even of trees. It is 
 on flowers that he dwells, and here his fancy absolutely 
 revels. Who can forget 
 
 O Proserpina, 
 
 For the flowers now, that frighted thou let'st fall 
 From Dis's waggon ! Daffodils 
 That come before the swallow dares, and take 
 The winds of March with beauty ; violets, dim, 
 But sweeter than the lids of Juno's eyes 
 Or Cytherea's breath ; pale primroses 
 That die unmarried, ere they can behold 
 Bright Phoebus in his strength a malady 
 Most incident to maids ; bold oxlips and 
 The crown imperial ; lilies of all kinds, 
 The flower-de-luce being one ; 
 
SHAKESPEARE 11 
 
 and indeed the whole of the scene in which this lovely 
 passage occurs (Winters Tale, iv. iii.) and the not less 
 magical passage in Cymbeline (iv. ii.) : 
 
 With fairest flowers, 
 
 Whilst Summer lasts and I live here, Fidele, 
 I'll sweeten thy sad grave : thou shalt not lack 
 The flower that's like thy face, pale primrose, nor 
 The azur'd harebell, like they veins, no, nor 
 The leaf of eglantine, whom not to slander 
 Outsweetens not thy breath : the ruddock would 
 With charitable bill, O bill ! sore shaming 
 Those rich-left heirs that let their fathers lie 
 Without a monument ! bring thee all this, 
 Yea, and furr'd moss besides, when flowers are none, 
 To winter-ground thy corse. 
 
 So, too, Marina in Pericles (iv. i.) : 
 
 No, 1 will rob Tellus of her weed 
 To strew thy green with flowers ; the yellows, blues, 
 The purple violets and marigolds, 
 Shall as a carpet hang upon thy grave, 
 While summer days do last. 
 
 How magical is the single line, 
 
 The cowslips tall her pensioners be ; 
 In their gold coats spots you see. 
 
 Midsummer Night's Dream, ir. i. 
 
 He seems to penetrate into the very life and soul of 
 these, Nature's loveliest creations. 
 
 From her fair and unpolluted flesh 
 May violets spring, 
 
 is the blessing on Ophelia. 
 
 There's rosemary, that's for remembrance ; and there's pansies, 
 
12 POETS' COUNTRY 
 
 that's for thoughts. . . . There's fennel for you, and columbines ; 
 there's rue for you. ... I would give you some violets, but they 
 withered all when my father died, 
 
 are poor Ophelia's bequests, just as Perdita afterwards, 
 in the Winter's Tale, distributes her presents, suiting 
 them to the various seasons of life. Illustrations 
 from them are always springing to his pen. Would 
 Belarius describe the boys Guiderius and Arviragus 
 (CymbeUne, iv. ii.), 
 
 They are as gentle 
 As zephyrs blowing below the violet, 
 Not wagging his sweet head, 
 
 or Montague the passion consuming Romeo, its victim is 
 
 As is the bud bit with an envious worm, 
 Ere he can spread his sweet leaves to the air, 
 Or dedicate his beauty to the sun ; 
 
 while Juliet prays that 
 
 This bud of love by Summer's ripening breath 
 May prove a beauteous flower when next we meet. 
 
 So Laertes warns Ophelia that 
 
 The canker galls the infants of the Spring 
 Too oft before their buttons be disclosed. 
 
 Indeed his dramas abound in such natural images as 
 surrounded him on all sides in his beautiful rural home. 
 A walk in the neighbourhood of Wire Brake Brank 
 would probably now give us the original of 
 
 So doth the woodbine the sweet honeysuckle 
 Gently entwist : the female ivy so 
 Enrings the barky fingers of the elm. 
 
 Midsummer Night's Dream, iv. i. 
 
SHAKESPEARE 13 
 
 The elm, to which Shakespeare so often refers, is, it 
 may be noted, a very prominent feature in and around 
 Stratford. At times we feel as if we could actually 
 localise his pictures. For example, the beautiful passage 
 in the Midsummer Night's Dream, 
 
 I know a bank whereon the wild thyme blows, 
 Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows, 
 
 ILL 
 
 might quite well have been the Scarbank above 
 Hampton Lucy, or the bank on the Evesham road 
 above Shottery, just as 
 
 The pleached bower 
 Where honeysuckles ripen' d by the sun 
 Forbid the sun to enter, 
 
 Much Ado about Nothing, in. i. 
 
 may still be seen at Clifford Chambers. A ramble any 
 late autumn day about the lanes near Stratford would 
 bring before us what is so magically depicted in the 
 seventy -third Sonnet : 
 
 That time of year thou mayst in me behold 
 When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang 
 Upon those boughs which shake against the cold, 
 Bare ruin'd choirs, where late the sweet birds sang ; 
 
 or at another season recall 
 
 The birds chant melody on every bush ; 
 
 The green leaves quiver with the cooling wind, 
 
 And make a chequer'd shadow on the ground. 
 
 And whilst the babbling echo mocks the hounds, 
 Replying shrilly to the well-tun'd horns, 
 Let us sit down. 
 
 Titus Andronicus, 11. ii. 
 
14 POETS' COUNTRY 
 
 On Shakespeare's reference to birds, whose songs 
 seem to have had the same charm for his ear that 
 flowers had for his eye, it is not necessary to dwell, but 
 of his accuracy with respect to them we have a striking 
 illustration in his noting that the nightingale's song 
 ceases early in summer : 
 
 As Philomel in summer's front doth sing, 
 And stops her pipe in growth of riper days ; 
 
 Sonnet en. 
 
 so different from Milton, who makes it " trill her thick- 
 warbled notes the summer long." 1 
 
 Of natural phenomena nothing seems to have had 
 so much attraction for Shakespeare as dawn and the 
 early morning, of which, it may be noted, he could 
 have had an excellent view from the upper windows of 
 his father's house in Henley Street. His descriptions, 
 indeed, are always masterpieces. Take the following : 
 
 Lo ! here the gentle lark, weary of rest, 
 From his moist cabinet mounts up on high, 
 And wakes the morning, from whose silver breast 
 The sun ariseth in his majesty, 
 
 Who doth the world so gloriously behold 
 That cedar-tops and hills seem burnish'd gold. 
 
 Venus and Adonis, 853-858. 
 
 Put this beside 
 
 Hark ! hark ! the lark at heaven's gate sings, 
 
 And Phrebus 'gins arise, 
 His steeds to water at those springs 
 
 On chalic'd flowers that lies ; 
 And winking Mary-buds begin 
 
 To ope their golden eyes : 
 
 1 Paradise Regained, IV. 248. 
 
ANN HATHAWAY'S COTTAGE 
 
 Showing the road leading to Stratford-on-Avon often 
 travelled by Shakespeare. 
 
. 
 
SHAKESPEARE 15 
 
 With everything that pretty is, 
 My lady sweet, arise : 
 Arise, arise. 
 
 Cymbeline, n. iii. 
 
 In the twenty -ninth Sonnet we find this beautiful 
 application of it : 
 
 Haply I think on thee, and then my state, 
 
 Like to the lark at break of day arising 
 
 From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven's gate. 
 
 He paints it indeed in all its phases : 
 
 Look, love, what envious streaks 
 Do lace the severing clouds in yonder east. 
 Night's candles are burnt out, and jocund day 
 Stands tiptoe on the misty mountain tops. 
 
 Romeo and Juliet, HI. v. 
 
 Again, with more detail, in the same play : 
 
 The grey-ey'd morn smiles on the frowning night, 
 Chequering the eastern clouds with streaks of light, 
 And flecked darkness like a drunkard reels 
 From forth day's path, and Titan's fiery wheels. 
 
 Idem, ii. ii. 
 
 So in Hamlet) i. i. : 
 
 But look, the morn, in russet mantle clad, 
 Walks o'er the dew of yon high eastern hill. 
 
 The ghost adds another touch : 
 
 The glow-worm shows the matin to be near, 
 And 'gins to pale his ineffectual fire. 
 
 So in the seventh Sonnet : 
 
 Lo ! in the orient when the gracious light 
 Lifts up his burning head, etc. 
 
16 POETS' COUNTRY 
 
 Now we have it reflected in water : 
 
 Even till the eastern gate, all fiery-red, 
 Opening on Neptune with fair blessed beams, 
 Turns into yellow gold his salt green streams. 
 
 Midsummer Night's Dream, in. ii. 
 
 So too in Sonnet thirty-three : 
 
 Full many a glorious morning have I seen 
 Flatter the mountain tops with sovereign eye, 
 Kissing with golden face the meadows green, 
 Gilding pale streams with heavenly alchemy. 
 
 Now in its effect on the dew : 
 
 As is the morning's silver-melting dew 
 Against the golden splendour of the sun. 
 
 Lucrece, 24-25. 
 
 Now on trees, how it 
 
 Fires the proud tops of the eastern pines. 
 
 Richard II. , in. ii. 
 
 How vivid is his picture of it breaking threateningly 
 for storm in 1 Henry IV., v. i. : 
 
 K. HENRY. How bloodily the sun begins to peer 
 
 Above yon bosky hill ! the day looks pale 
 At his distemperature. 
 
 PRINCE. The Southern wind 
 
 Doth play the trumpet to his purposes, 
 And by his hollow whistling in the leaves 
 Foretells a tempest and a blustering day. 
 
 Of sunset he has given, I think, only one detailed 
 description ; it is in King John, v. iv. : 
 
 This night, whose black contagious breath 
 Already smokes above the burning crest 
 Of the old, feeble, and day-wearied sun. 
 
SHAKESPEARE 17 
 
 Of the approach of night we have that magical 
 picture in eleven words : 
 
 Light thickens, and the crow 
 Makes wing to the rooky wood. 
 
 Macbeth, HI. ii. 
 
 Cloudland he had also watched with interest. 
 Where was it ever depicted more graphically than in 
 Antony and Cleopatra (iv. xiv.) ? 
 
 ANT. Sometime we see a cloud that's dragonish ; 
 
 A vapour sometime like a bear or lion, 
 
 A tower' d citadel, a pendent rock, 
 
 A forked mountain or blue promontory, 
 
 With trees upon't, that nod unto the world, 
 
 And mock our eyes with air : thou hast seen these signs ; 
 
 They are black Vesper's pageants. 
 
 EROS. Ay, my lord. 
 
 ANT. That which is now a horse, even with a thought 
 
 The rack dislimns, and makes it indistinct 
 
 As water is in water. 
 
 Fancy is no doubt mainly responsible for 
 
 As is a winged messenger of heaven 
 Unto the white upturned wond'ring eyes 
 Of mortals that fall back to gaze on him, 
 When he bestrides the lazy-pacing clouds 
 And sails upon the bosom of the air. 
 
 Romeo and Juliet, 11. ii. 
 
 How the starry heavens affected him is shown 
 by the passage, which it is scarcely necessary to 
 
 quote : 
 
 How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank J 
 
 Sit, Jessica : look how the floor of heaven 
 Is thick inlaid with patins of bright gold. 
 
18 POETS' COUNTRY 
 
 There's not the smallest orb which them behold'st 
 But in his motion like an angel sings, 
 Still quiring to the young-ey'd cherubins. 
 
 Merchant of Venice, v. i. 
 
 Nor must we forget his magical tribute to the " queen 
 o' the sky " : 
 
 Hail, many-colour'd messenger, that ne'er 
 Dost disobey the wife of Jupiter ; 
 Who with thy saffron wings upon my flowers 
 Diffusest honey-drops, refreshing showers, 
 And with each end of thy blue bow dost crown 
 My bosky acres, and my unshrubb'd down, 
 Rich scarf to my proud earth. 
 
 Tempest, iv. i. 
 
 The last three verses very exactly apply to what he 
 might often have witnessed in his native place. 
 
 It is not possible to localise the picture of Macbeth's 
 castle, but generically there were many country seats 
 within his ken in his Stratford days which might have 
 suggested it : 
 
 DUNCAN. This castle hath a pleasant seat : the air 
 Nimbly and sweetly recommends itself 
 Unto our gentle senses. 
 
 BANQUO. This guest of summer, 
 
 The temple-haunting martlet, does approve 
 By his lov'd mansionry that the heaven's breath 
 Smells wooingly here : no jutty, frieze, 
 Buttress nor coign of vantage, but this bird 
 Hath made his pendent bed and procreant cradle : 
 Where they most breed and haunt I have observ'd 
 The air is delicate. 
 
 Macbeth, i. vi. 
 
 But if his pencil labours most in painting Nature in 
 her calm and beauty, he has also painted her, with 
 
SHAKESPEARE 19 
 
 equal vividness, in her wrath. Take the picture of the 
 storm in Lear : 
 
 Alack ! the night comes on, and the bleak winds 
 Do sorely ruffle ; . . . 
 
 The to-and-fro conflicting wind and rain. 
 
 Things that love night 
 
 Love not such nights as these : the wrathful skies 
 Gallow the very wanderers of the dark, 
 And make them keep their caves. Since I was man 
 Such sheets of fire, such bursts of horrid thunder, 
 Such groans of roaring wind and rain, I never 
 Remember to have heard : man's nature cannot carry 
 
 The affliction nor the fear. 
 
 Lear, 11. iv., in. i. and ii. 
 
 So, too, though not in such graphic detail, the night 
 described by Lennox in Macbeth (n. ii.). Lightning he 
 always describes with singular vividness ; so in Lear 
 (in. ii.) : 
 
 You sulphurous and thought-executing fires, 
 Vaunt-couriers to oak-cleaving thunderbolts. 
 
 And iv. vii. : 
 
 Was this a face 
 
 To be exposed to the warring winds, 
 To stand against the deep dread-bolted thunder, 
 In the most terrible and nimble stroke 
 Of quick cross lightning ? 
 
 So in Pericles, in. i., we have the " nimble sulphurous 
 flashes." And in Julius Ccesar, i. iii. : 
 
 And when the cross blue lightning seem'd to open 
 The breast of heaven. 
 
 How admirably is sheet lightning described in Mid- 
 summer Night's Dream, i. i. : 
 
20 POETS' COUNTRY 
 
 Brief as the lightning in the collied night, 
 That, in a spleen, unfolds both heaven and earth, 
 And ere a man hath power to say, " Behold ! " 
 The jaws of darkness do devour it up. 
 
 And now let us turn to what he could not possibly 
 have witnessed in the scenes amid which his youth was 
 passed, and which have furnished him with so much 
 of the material of his poetry. Such would be his 
 superb description of Dover Cliff in Lear, iv. vi. : 
 
 Come on, sir, here's the place ; stand still. How fearful 
 
 And dizzy 'tis to cast one's eyes so low ! 
 
 The crows and choughs that wing the midway air 
 
 Show scarce so gross as beetles : half-way down 
 
 Hangs one that gathers samphire, dreadful trade ! 
 
 Methinks he seems no bigger than his head. 
 
 The fishermen that walk upon the beach 
 
 Appear like mice, and yon tall anchoring bark 
 
 Diminish'd to her cock, her cock a buoy 
 
 Almost too small for sight. The murmuring surge 
 
 That on the unnumber'd idle pebbles chafes 
 
 Cannot be heard so high. I'll look no more, 
 
 Lest my brain turn and the deficient sight 
 
 Topple down headlong. 
 
 There is one very vivid picture in the Rape of 
 Lucrece which may have been suggested to him by 
 what he saw on the Thames at London Bridge ; the 
 water there, in his day and long afterwards, rushed 
 like a cataract through the narrow middle arches : 
 
 As through an arch the violent roaring tide 
 Outruns the eye that doth behold his haste ; 
 
THE AVON AT STRATFORD 
 
 The Avon at "Str ate -ford" winds through meadow 
 fields. 
 
 The current that with gentle murmur glides, 
 
 Thou know'st, being stopp'd, impatiently doth rage ; 
 
 But when his fair course is not hindered, 
 
 He makes sweet music with th' enamell'd stones, 
 
 Giving a gentle kiss to every sedge 
 
 He overtaketh in his pilgrimage : 
 
 And so by many winding nooks he strays 
 
 With willing sport to the wild ocean. 
 
 Two Gentlemen of Verona. 
 

SHAKESPEARE 21 
 
 Yet in the eddy boundeth in his pride 
 Back to the strait that forc'd him on so fast ; 
 In rage sent out, recall'd in rage, being past. 
 
 Lucrece, 1667-1 671. 
 
 His indifference to mountain scenery, on which he 
 never dwells, to which, indeed, he scarcely ever refers, 
 Ruskin attributes to the fact that he never saw moun- 
 tains in early life, as they were no feature in the scenery 
 about his home. If I am not mistaken, there is only 
 one vivid touch of mountain picturing in all his works. 
 It is in the Midsummer Night's Dream (iv. i.) : 
 
 These things seem small and undistinguishable, 
 Like far-off mountains turned into clouds. 
 
 Certainly we have in Romeo and Juliet "jocund day " 
 standing on the " mountain's misty top." The only 
 other passage in which he dwells on them could hardly 
 have been written by a poet for whom they had 
 
 attraction : 
 
 As doth the melted snow 
 Upon the valleys, whose low vassal seat 
 The Alps doth spit and void his rheum upon. 
 
 Henry V., in. v. 
 
 But this certainly does not apply to a feature of Nature 
 to which in his early impressionable days supposing 
 he did not then leave Stratford he must have been 
 equally a stranger the sea. It is abundantly clear that 
 Shakespeare must have been well acquainted with the 
 sea, and that it must have had a great fascination for 
 him. No one who had not had his eye on his object 
 could possibly have written, 
 
22 POETS' COUNTRY 
 
 Upon the beached verge of the salt flood ; 
 Which once a day with his embossed froth 
 The turbulent surge shall cover. 
 
 Timon of Athens, v. i. 
 
 Or, 
 
 As fearfully as doth a galled rock 
 O'erhang and jutty his confounded base, 
 Swill'd with the wild and wasteful ocean. 
 
 Henry V., HI. i. 
 
 Or, 
 
 Gazing upon a late embarked friend, 
 
 Till the wild waves will have him seen no more, 
 
 Whose ridges with the meeting clouds contend ; 
 
 Venus and Adonis, 818-820. 
 
 though this last may possibly have been suggested by 
 Ovid. 
 
 Take, again, the following from Othello., n. i. : 
 
 MONTANO. What from the cape can you discern at sea ? 
 1 ST GENT. Nothing at all : it is a high-wrought flood : 
 
 I cannot 'twixt the heaven and the main 
 
 Descry a sail. 
 MON. Methinks the wind hath spoke aloud at land ; 
 
 A fuller blast ne'er shook our battlements ; 
 
 If it hath ruffian'd so upon the sea, 
 
 What ribs of oak, when mountains melt on them, 
 
 Can hold the mortise ? . 
 
 SND GENT. . . . . . 
 
 Do but stand upon the foaming shore, 
 
 The chidden billow seems to pelt the clouds ; 
 
 The wind-shak'd surge with high and monstrous mane 
 
 Seems to cast water on the burning bear, 
 
 And quench the guards of the ever-fixed pole. 
 
 Still more vivid is the picture in 2 Henry IV., in. i. : 
 
 Wilt thou upon the high and giddy mast 
 
 Seal up the ship-boy's eyes, and rock his brains 
 
SHAKESPEARE 23 
 
 In cradle of the rude imperious surge, 
 
 And in the visitation of the winds, 
 
 Who take the ruffian billows by the top, 
 
 Curling their monstrous heads, and hanging them 
 
 With deaf'ning clamour in the slippery clouds, 
 
 That with the hurly death itself awakes ? 
 
 See, too, the first scene of the third act of Pericles. 
 The triumphant conflict of man's handiwork with this 
 terrible adversary evidently appealed to his sympathy, 
 finding expression in two noble passages : 
 
 If after every tempest come such calms, 
 May the winds blow till they awaken death, 
 And let the labouring bark climb hills of seas, 
 Olympus-high, and duck again as low 
 As hell 's from heaven. 
 
 Othello, ii. L 
 
 The sea being smooth, 
 How many shallow bauble boats dare sail 
 Upon her patient breast, making their way 
 With those of nobler bulk ! 
 But let the ruffian Boreas once enrage 
 The gentle Thetis, and anon behold 
 The strong-ribb'd bark through liquid mountains cut, 
 Bounding between the two moist elements 
 Like Perseus' horse. 
 
 Troilus and Cressida, i. iii. 
 
 The picture in the Winter's Tale, m. iii. 
 
 Now the ship boring the moon with her mainmast, and anon 
 swallowed with yest and froth, as you'd thrust a cork into a 
 hogshead 
 
 could never have been painted without experience ; the 
 very epithet yesty (Macbeth, iv. i.) "the yesty waves 
 confound and swaUow navigation up" oddly enough 
 
24 POETS' COUNTRY 
 
 condemned in a Greek poet by Longinus as un- 
 dignified could only have come straight from observa- 
 tion. We have the same accurate sea-study in the line 
 in Lear (iv. v.), "whelk'd and wav'd like the enridged 
 sea," and in the beautiful line in Timon (iv. iii.) : 
 
 Lie where the light foam of the sea may beat 
 Thy grave-stone daily. 
 
 In 2 Henry F7., in. ii., we have a curiously accurate 
 and minute touch of sea-shore painting : 
 
 The splitting rocks cower'd in the sinking sands. 
 
 There can, indeed, be little doubt that, landsman 
 though he was, the sea had a fascination for Shake- 
 speare, and he must have known it and its surround- 
 ings well. His description we must allow for poetic 
 exaggeration of Dover Cliff and his frequent references 
 in various forms to that 
 
 Pale, that white-faced shore, 
 Whose foot spurns back the ocean's roaring tides, 
 
 might seem to indicate that it was at Dover he became 
 familiar with this feature of Nature. 
 
 Natural description necessarily holds an entirely 
 subordinate place in his work, and it is among the 
 many marvels associated with this prodigious genius 
 that his observation should have been as sleepless and 
 as accurate, his touch as masterly and as unfaltering 
 here as it is in all that pertains to the themes which 
 are so peculiarly his own. 
 
TRINITY CHURCH, STRATFORD-ON-AVON 
 
 Trinity Church, Stratford-on-Avon, in which Shakespeare 
 is buried, may be called Shakespeare's shrine ; viewed from 
 every point it is impressive, perhaps nowhere more so than 
 from the walk by the river between the bridge and the mill 
 where this sketch was taken. 
 
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH 
 
 1770-1850 
 
 LFTER he was turned five-and-twenty Wordsworth 
 snted or occupied five homesteads. 1 Each one 
 liffered from the other in size and character, but they 
 rere all of them country houses, interesting and 
 ittractive in themselves, and in the midst of beautiful 
 3enery. He was not born " in the purple," nor, on the 
 ther hand, in the "modest russet brown." Coleridge 
 rould have called his father's house at Cockermouth a 
 lansion. Seventeen windows (I have counted them 
 "from side to side") look across a low-walled garden 
 trip into the main street. Behind the house, at the 
 foot of the garden, flows the Derwent, close beneath 
 " a terrace walk." He tells us, in The Prelude, that 
 " the bright blue river " sent a voice " that flowed along 
 y dreams," and that its smooth breast reflected the 
 
 1 I have some personal knowledge of all five. Racedown and Dove 
 Jottage and Rydal Mount I have visited recently. But I am largely in- 
 lebted to the following works for most of the information contained in this 
 essay, viz. : Dove Cottage, by Stopford H. Brooke, 1890 ; Dove Cottage, by 
 Professor Knight, 1900 ; Literary Associations of the English Lakes, by the 
 Rev. H. D. Rawnsley, 2 vols. , 1906 ; The Poetical Works of W. Wordsworth, 
 edited by Professor Knight, 8 vols., 1896; and to the Oxford edition of 
 Wordsworth's Poems, edited by T. Hutchinson. 
 
 25 
 
26 POETS' COUNTRY 
 
 towers of Cockermouth Castle " a shattered monument 
 of feudal sway." Close at hand was, but is not, a small 
 mill-race which flowed through sandy fields " flowery 
 groves of yellow ragwort." Away to the west loomed 
 "Skiddaw's lofty height bronzed with deepest 
 radiance." If it is true that "a five-year child" he 
 used to "plunge and bask alternate" in the mill-race, 
 from morn to noon, from noon to eve of a long 
 summer's day, he must have been what " nurses call a 
 limb " ! It is no wonder that his mother was anxious, 
 and wondered whether her poetic child would turn out a 
 genius, or a wastrel, or " haply " both. 
 
 Very different, but even more inspiring, were his 
 surroundings at Hawkshead, where he attended the " free 
 grammar-school" from 1778 to 1787. His "Dame's" 
 cottage, where he boarded, was not a " cottage of 
 gentility." " It is," says Professor Knight, " a humble 
 dwelling of two storeys. The floor of the basement 
 flat, paved with blue flags of Coniston slate, is probably 
 just as it was in Wordsworth's time." Wordsworth's 
 bedroom, which faced south-west, is on the left of the 
 cottage. Once after he had gone to Cambridge he 
 revisited his old school, half-proud, half-ashamed of 
 his " gay attire." He had been unmindful of the past, 
 but the past returns to him as he lies in his " accustomed 
 bed": 
 
 That lowly bed whence I had heard the wind 
 Roar and the rain beat hard, where I so oft 
 Had lain awake on summer nights to watch 
 The moon in splendour couched among the leaves 
 
ALFOXDEN 
 
 Alfoxden, in which Wordsworth lived, 1797-1798, lies 
 among the trees. This view from above shows the island of 
 Steep Holme, the Bristol Channel, and Coast of Wales. 
 
 This burst of prospect, here the shadowy main, 
 Dim-tinted, there the mighty majesty 
 Of that huge amphitheatre of rich 
 And elmy fields. 
 
 Fears in Solitude COLERIDGE. 
 
WORDSWORTH 27 
 
 Of a tall ash, that near our cottage stood ; 
 
 Had watched her with fixed eyes, while to and fro 
 
 In the dark summit of the waving tree 
 
 She rocked with every impulse of the breeze. 
 
 Prelude, Book IV. 11. 85-92. 
 
 The earlier and greater books of The Prelude con- 
 tain an ample and illuminative record of Wordsworth's 
 school days, and of the effect of his " way of life " and of 
 the mountain scenery on his poetical and spiritual 
 development. Here and there it may be difficult to 
 repress a smile at the solemn paraphrases in which he 
 records his lapses from virtue in the matter of " springes 
 to catch woodcocks " : other men had laboured had 
 set the springes, but " the bird . . . became my prey." 
 "Carnage," as he afterwards maintained, is "God's 
 daughter " ; but " who commanded " this unsportsman- 
 like behaviour ? 
 
 But apart from these " variations," as Byron would 
 have called them, his self -revelation is, as Coleridge 
 called it, " an orphic song indeed " : 
 
 A song divine of high and passionate thoughts 
 To their own music chaunted ! 
 
 Two passages may be quoted which contain the 
 conclusion of the whole matter. They recount rather 
 than define the sources of "the visionary power" as 
 it came to him by night, and dwelt with him by day : 
 
 For I would walk alone, 
 Under the quiet stars, and at that time 
 Have felt whate'er there is of power in sound 
 To breathe an elevated mood, by form 
 
28 POETS' COUNTRY 
 
 Or image unprofaned ; and I would stand, 
 If the night blackened with a coming storm, 
 Beneath some rock, listening to notes that are 
 The ghostly language of the ancient earth, 
 Or make their dim abode in distant winds. 
 
 Prelude, Book II. 11. 302-310. 
 
 Oft before the hours of school 
 I travelled round our little lake, five miles 
 Of pleasant wandering, . . . 
 
 Nor seldom did I lift our cottage latch 
 Far earlier, ere one smoke-wreath had risen 
 From human dwelling, or the vernal thrush 
 Was audible ; and sate among the woods 
 Alone upon some jutting eminence, 
 At the first gleam of dawn-light, when the Vale, 
 Yet slumbering, lay in utter solitude. 
 
 Oft in these moments such a holy calm 
 Would overspread my soul, that bodily eyes 
 Were utterly forgotten, and what I saw 
 Appeared like something in myself, a dream, 
 A prospect in the mind. 
 
 Idem, 11. 330-352. 
 
 What is this but the beatific vision of the natural 
 divinity ? 
 
 Wordsworth spent the last fifty years of his life at 
 Grasmere and Rydal, but his boyhood and youth are 
 associated with the outskirts of the Lake District, with 
 Cockermouth, and Hawkshead, and, after his father 
 died, in 1783, with Penrith. A home which was no 
 home was somewhat grudgingly provided by his 
 maternal grandfather, a " mercer," who dwelt, so Canon 
 Rawnsley tells us, in the old Burrowgate. The Penrith 
 country, watered by the Eden, the Eamont, and the 
 
29 
 
 Lowther, unlike the lakes and mountains, is rich in 
 border castles and legendary associations. Nature and 
 " old Romance " are met together, and in their spiritual 
 union Wordsworth found a second inspiration. Part 
 of his second Long Vacation of 1789 was spent at 
 Penrith. His sister Dorothy was once more, "after 
 separation desolate," his companion the "Young 
 Lady" to whom he dedicated The Evening Walk, 
 written in 1789, but published in 1793. One of their 
 favourite excursions was to Brougham Castle, which 
 once commanded, and still looks down on, the meeting 
 of the Lowther and the Eamont. Then, as now, the 
 " mouldering towers " were neglected, unguarded, and, 
 happily, unrestored, and the curious or reverent visitor 
 could go round about them or climb them where he could 
 and as he dared. Then, as now, it was possible to lie 
 
 On some turret's head, 
 
 Catching from tufts of grass and harebell flowers 
 Their faintest whisper to the passing breeze. 
 
 Prelude, Book VI. 11. 220-222. 
 
 Eastward, across the Eden, stretches the vast rampart 
 of Cross Fell, seamed with misty hollows, "a distant 
 wall of opal hills." To the west and south-west are the 
 unfamiliar shapes of distant mountains, and near at 
 hand the park-like vale of the river Eamont, no longer 
 " unnamed in song," but named for ever in one of the 
 greatest of all songs, the Song of the Feast of 
 Brougham Castle. It was doubtless in these early 
 wanderings on Penrith Beacon, then a bare and open 
 
30 POETS' COUNTRY 
 
 fell, or nearer home by Arthur's Round Table and 
 Maybrough's "stones of mystic power," to Yanwath 
 Hall, that the brother and sister consecrated their 
 lives to each other and to the industry of song. The 
 Derwent sent his voice along his childhood's dream, the 
 Rotha (or, to be severely accurate, the Raise Beck) 
 flows by his grave, but "Eamont's murmur mingled" 
 with all the glad anticipations of " youth's golden gleam." 
 
 The six years which followed this home-coming 
 was one protracted " wander-year." They made and 
 unmade him a republican and a revolutionary. They 
 helped to mould the man by compressing and con- 
 centrating his aspirations, by informing him what he 
 should not do, and whither his steps should not turn, 
 but they left him as they found him, a poet and not a 
 man of the world. 
 
 A small legacy and the offer of a furnished house, a 
 garden, and an orchard rent-free brought his wanderings 
 to a final close. In October 1795 the brother and sister 
 took up their quarters at Racedown Lodge, a small 
 farmhouse on the north-west slope of Pilsdon Pen. 
 Lewston Hill (the " Lewesdon Hill " of Crowe's Poem), 
 its "tall twin brother," stands a little to the east. The 
 house, which is built foursquare to all the winds of 
 heaven, is not without its dignities and amenities in 
 respect of panelling and finely moulded ceilings. " Our 
 common parlour," wrote Dorothy, "is the prettiest little 
 room that can be." The upper rooms, which are not 
 so very little, command a view of upland woods and 
 
WORDSWORTH 31 
 
 " steepy " downs. Close to the house is a kitchen garden, 
 and on its walls and in many a chink and cranny of the 
 walls of the house clumps of hart's -tongue and wall- 
 rue and spleenwort find " a harbour and a hold." The 
 house stands back from the public road between 
 Crewkerne and Axminster, at the farther end of a park- 
 like field or paddock dotted with more than one huge 
 oak-tree. It was across this pathless field, "by which 
 he cut off an angle," that Coleridge at the end of a 
 forty-mile walk from Nether Stowey in Somersetshire, 
 "bounded," one summer evening in 1797, when he 
 paid his first visit to Racedown. " He did not keep to 
 the high road, but leapt over a gate." More than fifty 
 years afterwards the aged poet and his sister " retained 
 the liveliest possible image of his appearance." 
 
 During the eighteen months which Wordsworth 
 spent at Racedown he wrote his tragedy of The Borderers, 
 and he began the story of Margaret and the Ruined 
 Cottage which was afterwards incorporated in the First 
 Book of The Excursion. He says that "for several 
 passages describing the employment and demeanour of 
 Margaret during her affliction I am indebted to obser- 
 vations made in Dorsetshire " ; but there is hardly a 
 trace of Dorsetshire scenery in either the drama or the 
 poem. Of Pilsdon or Lewesdon, which reminded 
 Dorothy of " her native wilds," or of Lyme or Pinney, 
 " with its green chasms between romantic rocks," which 
 delighted Miss Austen, there is never a word. When 
 she was in Scotland by the "waters of Leven," 
 
32 POETS' COUNTRY 
 
 Dorothy missed "the smoke of the cottages rising in 
 distinct volumes towards the sky," as she had seen them 
 "in the vale or basin below Pilsdon in Dorsetshire"; 
 but her brother, lover of chimneys and lover of 
 smoke-wreaths as he was, left even the chimneys unsung. 
 Once, perhaps in The Borderers (Act in. lines 1294- 
 1296), one touch of Nature is transferred from seaward 
 Lewesdon or Blackdon to "Scotland's waste": 
 
 Here is a tree, ragged and bent and bare, 
 
 That turns its goat's-beard flakes of pea-green moss 
 
 From the stern breathing of the rough sea-wind ; 
 
 and in the description of the neglected cottage in the 
 First Book of The Excursion : 
 
 The honeysuckle, crowding round the porch, 
 and that bright weed, 
 
 The yellow stone-crop, suffered to take root 
 Along the window's edge ; 
 
 Book I. 11. 715-717. 
 
 or in that "image of tranquillity" which consoled the 
 Wanderer when all was over and " he returned fondly " 
 to the dead woman's deserted house : 
 
 Those very plumes, 
 
 Those weeds, and the high spear-grass on that wall 
 By mist and silent rain-drops silvered o'er, 
 
 11. 942-944. 
 
 we " rather feel than see " the breathing of the " gentle 
 south-west wind." 
 
 Again, in the first version of Goody Blake and 
 Harry Gill, as published in 1798, there was a verse 
 which actually fixes the scene as near to Racedown : 
 
THE RIVER EDEN 
 
 The Eden river from the rocks at Armthwaite painted 
 at the harvest moon time. 
 
 Eden ! till now thy beauty had I viewed 
 By glimpses only, and confess with shame 
 That verse of mine, whate'er its varying mood, 
 Repeats but once the sound of thy sweet name : 
 Yet fetched from Paradise that honour came, 
 Rightfully borne ; for Nature gives thee flowers 
 That have no rivals among British bowers ; 
 And thy bold rocks are worthy of their fame. 
 Measuring thy course, fair Stream ! at length I pay 
 To my life's neighbour dues of neighbourhood ; 
 But I have traced thee on thy winding way 
 With pleasure sometimes by this thought restrained 
 For things far off we toil, while many a good 
 Not sought, because too near, is never gained. 
 
 WORDSWORTH. 
 

 

 ^^r 
 
 J 
 
WORDSWORTH 33 
 
 This woman dwelt in Dorsetshire, 
 Her hut was on a cold hill-side, 
 And in that country coals are dear, 
 For they come far by wind and tide. 
 
 But alas ! for consistency and for theories, in 1820 this 
 stanza was suppressed and a genuine touch of poetic 
 reminiscence was substituted : 
 
 Remote from sheltered village-green, 
 On a hill's northern side she dwelt, 
 Where from sea-blasts the hawthorns lean, 
 And hoary dews are slow to melt. 
 
 It is not to be believed that Racedown, its aspects, 
 its prospects, or " the pleasant walks " in its neighbour- 
 hood made no impression on Wordsworth, or that he 
 despised the South, but his mind was preoccupied with 
 the greater memories of his youth. He had been born 
 " among the mountains," and there was nothing like or 
 second to their revelation of the mystery and majesty 
 of Nature. 
 
 In July 1797 the Wordsworths paid Coleridge a 
 return visit, and whilst they were staying at his cottage 
 at Nether Stowey, in the course of a " wander by them- 
 selves," they found out "a sequestered waterfall in a 
 dell formed by steep hills, covered with full-grown 
 timber trees." They were enchanted with the spot, 
 and amused themselves with some dreams of happiness 
 which might be realised in a cottage near the dell and 
 within reach of the "society of Coleridge." As luck 
 
 would have it, the manor-house of Alfoxden, a quarter of 
 
 D 
 
34 POETS' COUNTRY 
 
 a mile from the dell, was vacant, and, apparently with- 
 out returning to bid farewell to Racedown, they moved 
 from the cottage to " a large mansion, in a large park, 
 with seventy head of deer around us." 
 
 From Stowey the road winds uphill for two miles 
 or more, till you reach a broken common at the foot 
 of a steep grassy enclosure. Here are two or three 
 cottages (in one of them lived the old huntsman " Simon 
 Lee ") enclosed in tiny gardens crowded with fruit-trees. 
 A dark wood borders the common, and, close to the 
 cottages, is an entrance gate to a gentleman's seat or 
 place. Go through the gate there is a right-of-way, 
 a right of human as well as divine law and you will 
 find yourself in a long winding drive, with huge holly 
 and beech-trees on either hand. A quarter of a mile of 
 dark wood and you emerge into a park a park, not 
 a big field, though its size is small in comparison with 
 the featureless prairies of modern farming. On the 
 left the bracken - clad slope stretches up into the 
 Quantocks, and to the right there is the great inland 
 sea the Bristol Channel with the Welsh mountains 
 in the distance. The manor-house itself now double 
 in size to what it was in Wordsworth's day, is a many- 
 windowed, green-slated mansion, not unlike Kensington 
 Palace on a small scale. Beyond the manor-house and 
 up and beyond towards the hills is a long row of 
 magnificent beeches, on one of which Wordsworth is 
 said to have carved his name. In his opening lines 
 to The Excursion Wordsworth proclaims, perhaps a 
 
WORDSWORTH 35 
 
 little sententiously, " How exquisitely the individual 
 Mind 
 
 To the external World 
 Is fitted : and how exquisitely, too 
 The external World is fitted to the Mind ! 
 
 Well, it would be true to say of Alfoxden that the 
 hand of man has been guided by Nature, and that 
 Nature has blessed the handiwork of man. " The 
 house," wrote Dorothy, "is a large mansion, with 
 furniture enough for a dozen families like ours. . . . 
 The garden is at the end of the house, and our favourite 
 parlour, as at Racedown, looks that way. In front is a 
 little court, with grass-plat, gravel walk, and shrubs ; 
 the moss roses were in a full beauty a month ago." 
 Now it was in front of Alfoxden, in the road between 
 Stowey and Alfoxden, in the grove or groves of 
 Alfoxden, that most of the Lyrical Ballads of 1798 
 were composed, and yet these experiments in verse, 
 with their appeal from art to nature, present but few 
 pictures of the poet's home or of his wanderings in the 
 neighbourhood. They breathe the air of the country, 
 but not of the particular county in which they were 
 composed. But though he was singing in a strange 
 land, he does occasionally take note of the trees which 
 were therein. For instance, A Whirl-Blast from behind 
 the Hill, in the " language of conversation in the middle 
 and lower classes of society" (Preface to Lyrical 
 Ballads, 1798), may be described as a "snap-shot" of 
 a hailstorm in an undergrove of hollies : 
 
36 POETS' COUNTRY 
 
 But see ! where'er the hailstones drop, 
 The withered leaves all skip and hop ; 
 There's not a breeze no breath of air 
 Yet here, and there, and everywhere 
 Along the floor, beneath the shade 
 By those embowering hollies made, 
 The leaves in myriads jump and spring. 
 
 The "aged thorn" a mass of knotted joints, "A 
 wretched thing forlorn " grew on Quantock's edge, and 
 the " little muddy pond," which measured " three feet 
 long and two feet wide," was somewhere "Crookham 
 (i.e. Crowcombe) way," "an impressive object" to one 
 who had eyes to see, and Lyrical Ballads on the stocks ; 
 and in the Lines to my Sister, which contains a " shorter 
 catechism " of the " Wordsworthian faith and doctrine," 
 
 The red-breast sings from the tall larch 
 That stands beside our door. 
 
 Forty-three years later, when Wordsworth revisited 
 Alfoxden, the " larch " was in situ, but " it had not 
 improved in appearance as to size, nor had it acquired 
 anything of the majesty of age." Alas, poor larch ! 
 
 I've heard of hearts unkind, kind deeds 
 With coldness still returning ! 
 
 The aged poet should not have passed judgment on the 
 aged larch. 
 
 Finally, in The Danish Soy, which glances at the 
 Quantock legend that the clarions of dead Danish 
 warriors sounding their last retreat may still be heard 
 
RYDAL WATER 
 
 Rydal Water, hard by Rydal Mount, where Wordsworth 
 lived for thirty-seven years, shows the lake scenery in its 
 gentler aspect. In the group of trees to the right is a 
 large rock called the Poet's Seat, a favourite resort of 
 Wordsworth's. There he probably composed his lines on 
 " Rydal Mere," beginning 
 
 The linnet's warble, sinking towards a close, 
 Hints to the thrush 'tis time for their repose. 
 
. 
 

WORDSWORTH 37 
 
 on still days in summer, there is one perfect picture of 
 Quantock scenery with a tree in the foreground : 
 
 Between two sister moorland rills 
 There is a spot that seems to lie 
 Sacred to flowerets of the hills 
 And sacred to the sky. 
 And in this smooth and open dell 
 There is a tempest-stricken tree, etc. 
 
 Add to these some lines in A Night Piece descriptive 
 of "the sky spread over with one continuous cloud, 
 whitened by the light of the moon " (D. Wordsworth's 
 Journal, January 25, 1798), which reappear in 
 Christabel : 
 
 The thin gray cloud is spread on high, 
 It covers but not hides the sky ; 
 
 and the mention rather than the description of " Kilve's 
 smooth shore, by the green sea " and the list of " images 
 derived from the Nether Stowey environment" (Note 
 to the Ancient Mariner, by T. Hutchinson) is well-nigh 
 exhausted. 
 
 It was Coleridge who sang of the " hidden brook " and 
 the " never bloomless furze," of the songs of the nightin- 
 gales, of the prospect and the main. It was Coleridge, 
 not Wordsworth, who strung the " Harp of Quantock." 
 
 In June 1799 Wordsworth's lease of Alfoxden 
 expired, and as the fact that his uncle was a Canon of 
 Windsor did not atone for the fact that he was a friend 
 of Coleridge, and an acquaintance of Coleridge's friend 
 Thelwall, he was turned adrift. Early in July he 
 
38 POETS' COUNTRY 
 
 started for a walk on the banks of the Wye, and on 
 returning to Bristol he wrote the famous Lines com- 
 posed . . . above Tintern Abbey. It is worth noting 
 that on revisiting the auguster scenery of "sylvan 
 Wye," 
 
 Those waters rolling from their mountain springs 
 With a soft inland murmur. 
 
 those steep and lofty cliffs, 
 
 he returns to the more immediate service of Nature, 
 and remembers the days that were past : 
 
 The sounding cataract 
 Haunted me like a passion ; the tall rock, 
 The mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood, 
 Their colours and their forms, were then to me 
 An appetite ; a feeling and a love, 
 That had no need of a remoter charm. 
 
 At length (December 20, 1799), after a six months' 
 residence in the imperial city of Goslar, and a pro- 
 longed visit to their friends and future connections, 
 the Hutchinsons of Sockburn, on " peninsulatory " 
 Tees, William and Dorothy Wordsworth reached the 
 haven where they would be, the " one cottage " of their 
 hopes and dreams, then and for long afterwards known 
 as Town End, so called because it is the last house on 
 the road from Grasmere to Ambleside. In former days 
 it had been a wayside inn where " the Dove and Olive 
 Bough once hung," and hence some fifty or more years 
 ago it was renamed and misnamed " Dove Cottage " ; 
 but to Wordsworth and Coleridge and De Quincey, and 
 
WORDSWORTH 39 
 
 even within my own memory, it was Town End. Name 
 it as you please, it stands at the " bottom of the brow " 
 of White Moss, " a tossed and broken height of knolls 
 of rock and grass and pools," as Mr. Stopford Brooke 
 so well describes it, which all but divides the vale of 
 Grasmere from the vale of Rydal. It looked, but looks 
 no more, across the lake to Silver How and Hammer 
 Scar, and thence, to the right, to Helm Crag and 
 the overlapping folds and ridges of the Easedale 
 Mountains. To the south of the latter stood, and 
 stands, a yew tree, dark against the whitewashed wall, 
 and round the yew tree and " up the side of the wall " 
 grew a honeysuckle. Roses and jasmine made sweet 
 the front of the house, but, before these were fully 
 grown, the green leaves and scarlet flowers of the 
 runner bean were trained on threads for use and 
 "goodly show." It was not a very small cottage 
 after all "a lowly dwelling," no doubt, but not a 
 labourer's cottage. De Quincey depicts the interior 
 of the cottage as he saw it, for the second time, in 
 October 1807. He is not, perhaps, so minute or so 
 accurate as the Collegium Criticum " could have wished," 
 but he is accurate enough : " We lifted the latch, 
 passed underneath the porch, still covered with wild 
 flowers, . . . and stepped into the little inner vestibule 
 which prefaced the entrance, into what might be con- 
 sidered the principal room of the cottage. It was an 
 oblong square, not above eight and a half feet high, 
 sixteen feet long, and twelve broad, very prettily wain- 
 
40 POETS' COUNTRY 
 
 scotted with dark polished oak, slightly embellished with 
 carving. One window there was, a perfect and unpre- 
 tending cottage window, with little diamond panes 
 embowered at almost every season of the year with a 
 profusion of jasmine and other fragrant shrubs." Above 
 this " principal room," and almost of the same size, was 
 Wordsworth's book -room and living-room, where he 
 wrote his poems and received the few guests who came 
 to the cottage. Here (or was it in the room below ?) 
 "flapped the flame" of his "half-kitchen, half-parlour 
 fire," and here he would sit without "emotion, hope, 
 or aim," when no guests came and there was no occasion 
 for personal talk. There was a recess in which he kept 
 his books friends who might talk at will, and he would 
 listen with a ready ear. Adjoining this upper room 
 were Wordsworth's bedroom and a spare room for 
 guests oftenest, at first, for Coleridge and for Mary 
 and Sarah Hutchinson, and for Captain John Words- 
 worth but, afterwards, for such friends of " strength 
 and state" as Walter Scott, and Southey, and Thomas 
 Clarkson, and Sir George and Lady Beaumont. 
 Dorothy's bedroom was below Wordsworth's, on the 
 ground floor. To the east of the house and at the back 
 there was a small garden running up into a hanging 
 orchard. Wordsworth, with a neighbour's help, cut 
 steps in the rocky slope to ease the ascent to a short 
 terrace walk which looked down on the house and 
 commanded a view of the lake and mountains. Above 
 the steps to the right Coleridge discovered a rock seat 
 
WORDSWORTH 41 
 
 "by clearing away the brambles." Below the terrace 
 walk was a little well : 
 
 Here, thronged with primroses, the steep rock's breast 
 Glittered at evening like a starry sky ; 
 And in this bush our sparrow built her nest, 
 Of which I sang one song that will not die. 
 
 A Farewell, 11. 53-56. 
 
 It was in the orchard and, afterwards, in a " moss 
 arbour " at one end of the " terrace walk," " this Bower, 
 this Indian shed, Our own contrivance, Building with- 
 out peer," that most of the poems of the first year at 
 Grasmere were composed and written down. One only 
 need be named, " The Cuckoo," whose "wandering voice" 
 will sound " at once far off and near," as long as there is 
 any " demand " for poetry. He gave back what he had 
 received, the message from Nature to man ; not hints for 
 the better appreciation of artistic or scenic effects, not a 
 taste or fancy for the " wood and rills," but a revelation 
 of the things that are not seen, " the silence that is in 
 the starry sky, the sleep that is among the lonely hills." 
 
 Wordsworth married in 1802, and, as his family 
 increased (three children were born at Town End), he 
 was forced to move into a larger house. Now it chanced 
 that a Liverpool merchant, a Mr. Crump, had "pre- 
 sumed to build a new house for himself upon that 
 beautiful ridge which elbows out into the vale behind 
 the church." The new house, not yet named Allan 
 Bank, faced both ways towards Grasmere and towards 
 Easedale, and was full in view of "that magnificent 
 
42 POETS' COUNTRY 
 
 Temple which doth bound one side of the whole vale," 
 the side which is not visible from Town End. It was 
 a " large house with plenty of room," and before it was 
 finished Wordsworth secured possession, on a six 
 months' agreement. Allan Bank was the first villa 
 residence that "ever burst" into Grasmere. Words- 
 worth had denounced it as a " temple of abomination," 
 and prophesied that henceforth the vale would lose its 
 "character of simplicity and seclusion." But there is 
 a divinity which shapes our theories by our practical 
 requirements, and poetic or prosaic justice decreed that 
 for three years " this temple of abomination " should be 
 a temple of the Muses. It is here that he wrote the 
 greater part of The Excursion, and here where little 
 Catherine " the only funny child in the family " was 
 born that he described her " Characteristics," whilst she 
 was yet alive : 
 
 Loving she is, and tractable, though wild : 
 And Innocence hath privilege in her 
 To dignify arch looks and laughing eyes ; 
 And feats of cunning : and the pretty round 
 Of trespasses, affected to provoke 
 Mock-chastisement and partnership in play. 
 
 And it was here, too, that Coleridge projected a weekly 
 newspaper, that "literary, moral, and political" Friend, 
 
 Whom there were none to praise, 
 And very few to love. 
 
 Wordsworth's next home (1811-1812) was the old 
 Rectory or parsonage which faced the west end and 
 
GRASMERE CHURCH 
 
 Here is Wordsworth's grave. 
 
 The church among the mountains. 
 
 The Excursion. 
 
43 
 
 tower of Grasmere Church. This was a house of 
 sorrow, for here, in June 1812, he lost his little Catherine, 
 and before the year had closed his third child, Thomas, 
 lay by her side. The daily and hourly sight of their 
 graves was more than his heart could bear, and in March 
 1813 he removed to Rydal Mount. It was the home of 
 his choice, of his love and of his care, and it remained 
 his home for the rest of his life. Rydal Mount nestles 
 in a tree-clad spur of Nab Scar, a furlong off and above 
 the high-road from Grasmere to Ambleside. Bishop 
 Wordsworth in the Memoirs of his uncle has once for 
 all described the house and garden as it was when the 
 poet died in April 1850. " It is a modest mansion of a 
 sober hue, tinged with weather stains, with two tiers 
 of five windows ; on the right of these is a porch, and 
 above, and to the right, are two other windows ; the 
 highest looks out of what was the Poet's bedroom. . . . 
 The house is mantled over . . . with roses and ivy and 
 jessamine and Virginia creeper." In front of the house 
 there is a " semicircular area or platform of grey * gravel,' 
 and from this platform a flight of low stone steps 
 descends to the foot of the Mount. Yellow poppies and 
 bright maidenhair, growing where and as they can, make 
 glad this scala santa. The Mount itself consists of a 
 turf-clad ring surmounting an outer circle, and marks 
 the site of some prehistoric * goings on.' Westward of 
 the house are terraces, some 250 feet in length. The 
 upper terrace ends in a small summer-house lined with 
 fir-cones, from which there is, or rather was, before the 
 
44 POETS' COUNTRY 
 
 further door was removed, a * surprise view ' of Rydal 
 Lake and of Loughrigg Fell. Below the sloping terrace, 
 which is reached by a flight of fourteen steps, and parallel 
 to it, runs a level terrace which was specially constructed 
 for the use of Wordsworth's friend and amanuensis, Mrs. 
 Isabella Fenwick. Beyond the summer-house a 'far 
 terrace,' shaped by the poet and worn by his feet, winds 
 'in a serpentine line of about 150 feet,' and ends at a 
 little gate, beyond which is a beautiful well of clear 
 water, called 'the Nab Well.'" To the south of the 
 kitchen garden, which lies below the terraces, is " Dora's 
 field." Here was the pollard willow where primroses 
 sheltered a wren's nest, and here is the " elfin pool " 
 where the gold and silver fish, no longer confined to 
 their "glassy cell," enjoyed their liberty. I can recall 
 the terraces, and the summer-house, the platform of 
 grey gravel, the yellow poppies which "flattered" the 
 broad stone steps and the " fairy mound " when I visited 
 Rydal Mount in 1852 and 1853. I can testify that they 
 were in their place that " they kept the same," a few 
 months ago. " I have heard the hearers say " that 
 Wordsworth went "sounding on his way" murmur- 
 ing or booming his verses as he paced up and down 
 the level terrace, and I have heard the " wild-eyed " 
 Dorothy recite her own beautiful lines : 
 
 The worship of this Sabbath morn, 
 How sweetly it begins ! 
 With the full choral hymn of birds 
 Mingles no sad lament for sins. 
 
WORDSWORTH 45 
 
 I cannot recall her features, but I have never forgotten 
 the sound of her deep-toned impassioned voice. 
 
 "Turn wheresoe'er we may," to the tall ash 
 tree in the garden, to the laburnum in which the 
 osier cage of the doves was hung, or to the " Rydalian 
 laurels" which overhang the upper terrace, there is 
 some tender association with the memory of the great 
 poet "who gave us nobler loves and nobler cares." 
 Town End, or, if so it must be, "Dove Cottage," 
 is held in trust for the nation. Year by year the 
 number of visitors increases. Rydal Mount is not 
 shown to the public, but its inhabitants bear the 
 poet's name, and loyally and reverently "keep up the 
 traditions of the place." Never did poet merit or obtain 
 a fitter or fairer " home " than Rydal Mount. 
 
BYRON 
 
 SHELLEY alludes to Byron as " The Pilgrim of Eternity." 
 That he may have been or may be. It is certain that, 
 whilst he was a Pilgrim of Time, he had no abiding- 
 place ; that he lived or lodged in so many houses that 
 Time would fail to read the reckoning. I cannot 
 pretend, in his own words, to have " turned to pilgrim " 
 to more than one of these spots, and of the residue I 
 can only speak at second-hand. 
 
 George Gordon Byron was born, on January 23, 
 1782, in the back drawing-room of the first floor of 
 No. 16 Holies Street, Cavendish Square. It was after- 
 wards numbered 24, and is now destroyed. Only the 
 site remains. Byron passed his childhood in a " shabby 
 Scotch flat " in Aberdeen at first in Queen Street, then 
 in Virginia Street, then in Broad Street. Here are 
 shrines enough for a conscientious pilgrim. Some one 
 told Moore that Mrs. Byron and her " wee Geordie " 
 lodged at one end of Queen Street, and her husband, 
 who was not an exemplary character, at the other. 
 On one occasion, by request, the child passed the night 
 with its fond father. This happened " but once only." 
 
 46 
 
BYRON 47 
 
 Captain Byron had seen quite enough of his young 
 visitor. There is a picture of Byron aet. seven, a 
 ringleted wax figure, dressed up as an archer. He 
 appears in better guise as "the little boy in a red 
 jacket and nankeen trousers." Now he is being turned 
 out of the courtyard of the Grammar School ; and now 
 he is slowly hastening to the Plain Stanes, to unpack 
 his heart to his cousin Mary Duff ; and now, in defiance 
 of the adage, he is peering over " Balgounie's brig's 
 black wall " into " the black, deep, salmon stream below." 
 The only son of Mrs. Byron, he could not forget he 
 was " a mear's ae foal " ! But it was in the summer 
 holidays at a farmhouse at Ballaterich that he began, 
 in heart and soul, to be a poet. It was here that he 
 learned to swim in " the billows of Dee's rushing tide " ; 
 and there that he " climbed very well though he had 
 a limp ... by the footpath of Loch-an-euan " to the 
 top of "dark Loch-na-gar." Here, too, there was a 
 Mary Mary Robertson descended, so it is said, from 
 a Lord of the Isles. Gentle or simple, she died "at 
 Aberdeen, March 2, 1867, aged eighty-five years," and 
 she must have been a big girl of fourteen or fifteen 
 when Byron was nine and a half, and "loved her 
 even so." But while Marys, " Highland " or otherwise, 
 came and went, his love for Highland scenery was an 
 abiding passion. For pieces justificatives see The Island 
 (Canto ii. 11. 280-291), which was written at Genoa in 
 1823, and the accompanying footnote : 
 
48 POETS' COUNTRY 
 
 He who first met the Highlands' swelling blue 
 
 Will love each peak that shows a kindred hue, 
 
 Hail in each crag a friend's familiar face, 
 
 And clasp the mountain in his Mind's embrace. 
 
 Long have I roamed through lands which are not mine, 
 
 Adored the Alp, and loved the Apennine, 
 
 Revered Parnassus, and beheld the steep 
 
 Jove's Ida and Olympus crown the deep : 
 
 But 'twas not all long ages' lore, nor all 
 
 Their nature held me in their thrilling thrall ; 
 
 The infant rapture still survived the boy, 
 
 And Loch-na-gar with Ida looked o'er Troy, 
 
 Mixed Celtic memories with the Phrygian mount, 
 
 And Highland linns with Castalie's clear fount. 
 
 Forgive me, Homer's universal shade ! 
 
 Forgive me, Phoebus ! that my fancy strayed ; 
 
 The North and Nature taught me to adore 
 
 Your scenes sublime, from those beloved before. 
 
 Note. When very young, about eight years of age ... I was 
 removed . . . into the Highlands. Here I passed . . . some 
 summers, and from this period I date my love of mountainous 
 countries. I can never forget the effect, a few years afterwards, 
 in England ... of a mountain, in the Malvern Hills. After I 
 returned to Cheltenham, I used to watch them every afternoon, at 
 sunset, with a sensation which I cannot describe. 
 
 When he was ten years old, Byron succeeded to his 
 great-uncle's title and estates. Moore tells a story that 
 the first time the little boy in the red jacket heard his 
 name called out at school as "Dominus " Byron, he "stood 
 silent amid the general shout of his schoolfellows, and 
 at last burst into tears." Was he gifted with second 
 sight, and did "all things reel around him" as they 
 reeled long afterwards when he stood "before an 
 altar " ? A month or two later his mother quitted 
 
NEWSTEAD ABBEY 
 
 The remains of an Augustinian monastery founded by 
 Henry II. in expiation of the murder of Thomas a Becket. 
 
 Newstead ! fast-falling, once-resplendent dome ! 
 
 Religion's shrine ! repentant Henry's pride ! 
 Of Warriors, Monks, and Dames the cloister'd tomb, 
 
 Whose pensive shades around thy ruins glide, 
 
 Hail to thy pile ! more honour'd in thy fall 
 Than modern mansions in their pillar'd state ; 
 
 Proudly majestic frowns thy vaulted hall, 
 Scowling defiance on the blasts of fate. 
 
 Elegy on Newstead Alley BYROV. 
 
BYRON 49 
 
 Scotland for ever, and, with her "ae son" and his nurse 
 May Grey, travelled south to Newstead Abbey. We 
 have no record of his first impressions when he drove 
 past the lake and the cascade, and looked for the first 
 time at the fountain which stood in front of the Abbey, 
 and the " grand arch," the mighty window of the west 
 front of the Priory Church. Children take most things 
 for granted, but the "change from a shabby Scotch 
 flat to a palace" was of a kind to excite the dullest 
 and least emotional of "human boys" ; and that Byron 
 was unemotional is a point " unseized by the Germans 
 yet." It was, no doubt, a moment of triumph, but it 
 was soon over. In a few days or a few weeks he 
 was despatched with his nurse into lodgings in the 
 house of one Gill, who lived in St. James' Lane, Not- 
 tingham, and here he composed his first poem or 
 satire on an elderly lady who had incurred his dis- 
 pleasure : 
 
 In Nottingham county there lives at Swan Green 
 As curst an old lady as ever was seen ; 
 And when she does die, which I hope will be soon, 
 She firmly believes she will go to the moon. 
 
 Moore somewhat unkindly thought that it was " possible 
 these rhymes may have been caught up at second- 
 hand." Whoever "caught them up" did not catch 
 them up securely. Swan Green is a bowdlerised form 
 of " Swine Green," which is or was some kind of place 
 or area about a quarter of a mile to the east of St. 
 
 James' Lane. I am firmly convinced that Byron had 
 
 E 
 
50 POETS' COUNTRY 
 
 excellent reasons for disliking this old lady, and ex- 
 pressed himself as unpleasantly as he could. Some of 
 his later poems are satirical. 
 
 In the following autumn his mother, acting upon 
 the advice of her lawyers, sent him to Dr. Glennie's 
 Academy at Dulwich, then a private school of some 
 importance. Dulwich Grove stood on the west side 
 of Lordship Lane, and opposite the wooded footway 
 leading to the summit of Sydenham Hill. It was a 
 three-storied suburban villa with a projecting bay, 
 and with what Byron would have called a "balcony" 
 in front. Originally the "Dulwich Green Manor," it 
 had been rebuilt as a temporary residence for Lord 
 Thurlow, and when that very outspoken personage had 
 done with it, it was let or sold to Dr. Glennie. Some 
 years after Moore had begun his life of Byron the 
 Doctor died, the school was broken up, and the house 
 pulled down. The Grove Hotel, familiarly known as 
 " Bew's Corner," now occupies part of the site. 
 
 It was whilst he was at Dulwich that Byron made 
 "a first dash into poetry" "the ebullition of a 
 passion " for his cousin Margaret Parker. The verses 
 perished, but twenty years after he remembered and 
 recalled that " most beautiful of evanescent beings " 
 " her dark eyes her long eyelashes ! her completely 
 Greek cast of face and figure." Again we can picture 
 him, a heavily-built lad, with "a Greek cast of face," 
 though not of figure, breaking away from those 
 "athletic exercises" (cricket, as one might say) in 
 
BYRON 51 
 
 which Moore says he determined to excel, to dream 
 and sigh, and mouth his verses to himself. The 
 "suburb lane" (see Browning's Confessions) which 
 bordered the garden of Dulwich Grove and its play- 
 ing-ground and orchard must often have listened to 
 the same sound, when Robert Browning of Camberwell, 
 and, again, when John Ruskin of Herne Hill passed 
 that way. If, as Byron believed, places have spirits, 
 there must have been some communication and inter- 
 change of the " bodiless thought," 
 
 Whose half-beholdings through unsteady tears 
 Gave shape, hue, distance to the inward dream. 
 
 S. T. C. 
 
 Byron's next home (1801-1805), and it was, perhaps, 
 the happiest home he ever knew, was Dr. Drury's 
 house at Harrow-on-the-Hill. His early poems are 
 full of allusions to Harrow, dignified or disguised as 
 Ida. He tells us he would " recline " for hours on a 
 tombstone in Harrow churchyard, and there Tradition, 
 who is partial to tombstones, has " let him lay " ! But 
 he also tells us that he would wander round it is not 
 far to wander the " steep brow of the churchyard," 
 which looks towards Windsor, to watch the sunset ; 
 but Tradition, unmindful of sunsets, is silent. For- 
 gotten, too, if ever remembered, is his one allusion to 
 the plain or valley of the Brent, which lies below the 
 wooded hill of Ida. " But these," as he tells us in 
 Childish Recollections, 11. 133-136 (and "these" are they 
 who have shirked fielding at cricket) : 
 
52 POETS' COUNTRY 
 
 But these with slower steps direct their way, 
 Where Brent's cool waves in limpid currents stray ; 
 While yonder few search out some cool retreat, 
 And arbours shade them from the summer's heat. 
 
 It is a pretty picture, but Art and Nature are at 
 strife. The Brent, like Byron, is a " child of clay," and 
 could not have run " in limpid currents " a hundred or a 
 thousand years ago. Alders and hawthorn meet across 
 its crumbling mudbanks, and the kingfisher flits and 
 gleams beneath the overhanging branches. The Brent 
 has its charms, and merits the sacred bard, but its 
 waters, whether they glide or creep or swirl, are not 
 limpid save by poetic courtesy. Byron belongs to 
 Harrow. He carved the letters of his name on the 
 walls of one of the class-rooms, where they remain unto 
 this day. He is the patron saint, or watery god, of 
 Duck Pool, the " Ducker " of a generation that " takes 
 up " but does not read Childe Harold. But the scenery 
 of Middlesex did not and could not mould or sway the 
 fashioning of his verse. When he turned for a last 
 look at the verdant hill, " its spire was seen through a 
 tear " ; and at the close of his life he selected a spot in 
 Harrow for the last resting-place of his five-year-old 
 Allegra, " sole daughter " of an exile's hearth. 
 
 In October 1805 Byron went into residence at 
 Trinity College, Cambridge. His rooms were in 
 Neville's Court, and, the legend notwithstanding, he 
 was their sole tenant. His Lordship's bear " kept " 
 out of college, at a livery stable, perhaps at Fordham's 
 
BYRON 53 
 
 mews. So, at least, I was informed by the son of a 
 contemporary and eye-witness, who more than once 
 "saw plain" both Byron and the bear. Cambridge 
 suggested rather than inspired some dreary stanzas 
 entitled G-ranta, A Medley, and some lines in Hints 
 from Horace, but said nothing that was good or 
 beautiful to Byron. The best use which he made of 
 his time was " to dive for and pick up plates, eggs, and 
 even shillings." " I remember," he says, "... there 
 was a stump of a tree in the bed of the river in a spot 
 round which I used to cling, and * wonder how the 
 devil I came there.'" The spot, a bend of the Cam, is 
 still known as Byron's Pool. One year, 1807, he cut 
 all his terms and passed his time in lodgings in London, 
 or at his mother's house at Southwell. Burgage Manor, 
 which looks on Southwell Green, is an old-fashioned 
 villa, not to say mansion, with a portico in front. It 
 has an air of dignified comfort and unimpeachable 
 gentility. Byron found it dull, and it was partly for 
 this reason that whilst he was at Southwell he collected 
 his poems, wrote fresh ones, and sent them to Newark 
 to be printed. 
 
 His first venture was a small quarto which he 
 named Fugitive Pieces. The title is ominous, for the 
 little volume contained one poem too many, and, with 
 the exception of two or three copies, the entire issue 
 was committed to the flames. Poems on Various 
 
 L 
 
 Occasions sprang as it were from the ashes of Fugitive 
 Pieces, and as many praised and no one wanted to burn 
 
54 POETS' COUNTRY 
 
 them, he boldly "commenced author," and published 
 Hours of Idleness. In whatever ways those hours 
 were spent, it was not in the presence or service of 
 Nature. Of Mrs. Byron's scandal-loving neighbours, 
 of their daughters, or, possibly, their maid-servants, 
 Emmas, arid Lesbias, and Carolines, we hear enough and 
 too much ; but to Southwell itself, a pleasant place " on 
 a rising ground in the midst of an amphitheatre of 
 hills," he alludes but once, in a single stanza of the 
 Adieu, a poem "written under the impression the 
 author would soon die " : 
 
 Fields, which surround yon rustic cot, 
 
 While yet I linger here, 
 Adieu ! you are not now forgot, 
 
 To retrospection dear. 
 Streamlet ! along whose rippling surge 
 My youthful limbs were wont to urge, 
 
 At noontide heat, their pliant course ; 
 Plunging with ardour from the shore, 
 Thy springs will lave these limbs no more, 
 
 Deprived of active force. 
 
 The " rustic cot " may possibly have been Mrs. Pigot's 
 cottage, as I have elsewhere maintained, but it could 
 not have been Mrs. Pigot's house on Southwell Green, 
 which was not a " cot " or by any means rustic. It is 
 a deal likelier that Emma or Caroline, or a rustic 
 Mary, grew beside that door. 
 
 In April 1808, before he had attained his majority, 
 he regained possession of Newstead Abbey, and in 
 the following autumn he went into residence. He 
 
GARDEN OF NEWSTEAD 
 
 Monument to Byron's Newfoundland Dog Boatswain. 
 
 INSCRIPTION 
 
 To mark a Friend's remains these stones arise ; 
 I never knew but one and here he lies. 
 
 October 30, 1808. 
 
: \inolfi 
 
 
BYRON 55 
 
 must have been familiar with every nook and corner of 
 his heritage, for he had often stayed at Newstead 
 as the guest of his tenant, Lord Grey de Ruthyn ; but 
 at last he had come to his own, a poor thing, and yet a 
 great thing, and his very own. Ten years had elapsed 
 since his predecessor, the " Wicked Lord," had breathed 
 his last in the Prior's Lodgings, the one set of apartments 
 which time and the weather and the bailiffs had left 
 habitable. The first stanza of one of his first poems 
 (1803), printed on the first page of Fugitive Pieces 
 "On leaving N-st-d" is a lamentation over fallen 
 greatness : 
 
 Through the cracks in those battlements loud the winds whistle, 
 
 For the hall of my fathers is gone to decay ; 
 And in yon once gay garden the hemlock and thistle 
 
 Have chok'd up the rose, which once bloomed in the way. 
 
 Again, in the Elegy on Newstead Abbey, which was 
 written three years later, in 1806, he apostrophised the 
 " hall of his fathers " as " Newstead's fast falling, once 
 resplendent dome ! " The " holy and beautiful house," 
 which the Black Canons had dedicated to God and the 
 Virgin, which his ancestor " little Sir John Byron with 
 the great Beard " and his descendants had converted into 
 a baronial mansion, was a dwelling-place for the owls 
 and the bats. Something must have been done to 
 make it habitable, or it could not have been let, and 
 well let (1803-1808), as a shooting-box to Lord Grey 
 de Ruthyn, but when it was handed over to Byron, he 
 was forced to spend more money than he could afford 
 
56 POETS' COUNTRY 
 
 in repairing and re-furnishing some of the smaller rooms 
 for himself and his mother. A year later, when Childe 
 Harold and his " fellow Bacchanals " masqueraded as 
 Abbot and monks, and skylarked and "buffooned all 
 round the house," neglect and decay still reigned 
 supreme. The glory had departed, only the majesty 
 and beauty remained. 
 
 Newstead Abbey was built in the form of a hollow 
 square. Flanking the hollow are cloisters supporting, 
 on three sides, a range of corridors, once the cells of the 
 monks, and on the fourth side is a library built or 
 re-built in the sixteenth century. The hollow, or inner 
 square, is a grassy quadrangle, and in the centre of the 
 quadrangle stands a Gothic fountain, with a double 
 ring or frill of gargoyles. If you stand by the fountain 
 to examine the gargoyles, you look up to the windows 
 of the corridors and library, and above the north-west 
 corner of the cloisters you catch sight of the gable and 
 crockets of the west front of the Priory Chapel. In 
 Byron's day the fountain stood in front of the house, 
 but Colonel Wildman, who purchased the Abbey in 
 1817, restored it to its proper place, and Byron, 
 in Don Juan (Canto xiii. St. Ixv., February 1820) 
 writes accordingly : 
 
 Amidst the court a Gothic fountain played, 
 
 Symmetrical, but decked with carvings quaint 
 
 Strange faces, like to men in masquerade, 
 And here perhaps a monster, there a saint. 
 
 Byron must have loved those gargoyles, and, it may be, 
 
BYRON 57 
 
 made " strange faces " like them for his own and his 
 friends' amusement. 
 
 The ground floor of the west front of the Abbey 
 which is the front of the house consists of an entrance 
 hall, approached by a flight of stone steps, and a vaulted 
 chamber known as the Monks' Parlour. Above are the 
 Guests' Refectory, or Banqueting Hall, and an inner 
 room where the Prior dined by himself, or entertained 
 his royal guests. A corkscrew staircase ascends from 
 the level of the Prior's Parlour to these upper rooms 
 above, which Byron furnished for his own use a bed- 
 room and a dressing-room and a room for his page-in- 
 waiting. 
 
 These rooms are unchanged. The four-post bed- 
 stead, the four corners decorated with a baron's coronet, 
 is hung with its original Chinese-pattern chintz curtains. 
 The washstand still holds the Byronic jugs and basins. 
 The chests of drawers with " elliptic fronts " are of the 
 finest Spanish mahogany. Lovers of old furniture 
 would count them precious apart from their associations. 
 Portraits of Joe Murray, an old retainer of the old 
 Lord's, of Gentleman Jackson, his "corporeal pastor 
 and master," and a set of coloured engravings of Harrow 
 and Cambridge still hang on the walls. Here or 
 nowhere is a poet's home. The windows of the bed- 
 room look west, and command a view of "the lucid 
 lake" and the "deep cascade." How often must he 
 have looked out from these windows, when the lake 
 was a sheet of silver " in the noontide of the moon " ; 
 
58 POET'S COUNTRY 
 
 or, when the wind was "winged from one point of 
 heaven," have listened to that dolorous wail, " the dying 
 accent driven through the huge Arch ! " 
 
 Here, too, or hereabouts, in one of these three 
 rooms, or to and fro between the great dining-hall and 
 the Prior's Parlour, was the chosen haunt of the Black 
 Friar who did not appear to Don Juan. And still he 
 walks, if of late years the electric light has not put 
 him out. Touch a button and you lay a ghost ! 
 
 On the farther side of the quadrangle facing the 
 east are the Prior's Lodgings, the Orangery, once the 
 Chapter -House, and the "slype" or passage between 
 church and Chapter- House (Byron calls it the "ex- 
 quisite small chapel"), and, above, in the upper story, 
 range the state bedrooms, named after their royal 
 occupants, Edward III., Henry VII., and Charles II. 
 The Prior and Canons held their land on condition that 
 the King could command free quarters at the Abbey, 
 and it is said the right is still in force. Fronting the 
 south is the Xenodochium, or Guesten Hall, and, above, 
 the Guests' Refectory, now the Grand Drawing-Room. 
 On the north side, below, are cloisters, and, above, the 
 Library. These chambers and halls and galleries make 
 up the square block of monastic buildings, and; in 
 Byron's phrase, " for all the rest vide Guidebook." But 
 the main feature of the exterior of the Abbey which 
 distinguishes it from other great houses or palaces, 
 save, perhaps, Holyrood, is the west front of the 
 Priory Church, which is flush with the west front of the 
 
BYRON 59 
 
 mansion. It is a stone screen, that and nothing more, 
 for aisles and chancel have been laid low even to the 
 ground ; but, in itself, it is perfect and " beautiful 
 exceedingly." Save for the hollow arch, a "mighty 
 window," shorn of its tracery, and for a row of six 
 lancet windows above, the wall is solid. On either 
 side of the arch are " two blank windows overlaid with 
 delicate Gothic mouldings carved in relief on the solid 
 ashlar," and, at either extremity of the front, are 
 buttresses with canopied niches, which once contained 
 the statues of apostles or saints. Over the west door 
 is a much-worn figure of the Saviour, and, high above 
 the lancet windows, is a statuette of the Crowned 
 Virgin, with the Babe in her arms, which, as it were 
 by a miracle, escaped the shot and cannon-balls of 
 Cromwell's troops. Byron half believed that it was a 
 miracle : 
 
 But in a higher niche, alone, but crowned, 
 The Virgin-Mother of the God-born Child, 
 
 With her Son in her blessed arms, looked round, 
 
 Spared by some chance where all beside was spoiled. 
 
 Behind the ivied screen is a sward of close-mown 
 grass, and at the eastern extremity, where once the 
 High Altar stood, is the urn-crowned sepulchral monu- 
 ment of Byron's dog " Boatswain." It bears the well- 
 known " Inscription to a Newfoundland Dog." When 
 his mother died in August 1811, he made a will and 
 left directions that his body was to be buried in the 
 vault beneath this monument, and that his dog was 
 
60 POETS' COUNTRY 
 
 "not to be removed from the said vault." But the 
 only persons or things which lie buried at Newstead 
 are the monks and Boatswain, and, somewhere, in 
 some secret place, the famous "cup formed from a 
 skull"! 
 
 The Abbey lies in the midst of a fair domain. The 
 grant of lands which Henry II. assigned to the Black 
 Canons, the Novus Locus or New Stede, or station, 
 embraced the upper waters of the Leem, which rises 
 in Sherwood Forest and falls into the Trent at 
 Nottingham. To work their mills and to turn marsh- 
 land into pasturage the monks dammed the stream 
 and constructed a chain of lakes. One of the lakes, 
 Byron's "lucid lake," lies above the Abbey, to the 
 north-west. The "cascade" flows over and under 
 a sluice of stone -work into the second lake, which 
 borders the garden and runs almost parallel with 
 the south front of the Abbey. The oak tree which 
 Byron planted in 1806 stands about half-way between 
 the edge of this lake and the house. A third lake lies 
 about half a mile to the south-east. It is surrounded 
 with woods and overlooked by a cairn of huge boulders 
 of plum -pudding stone. There is a tale that the 
 "wicked Lord" built the cairn of malice prepense, 
 " expecting and hoping " that a day would come when 
 he would open the sluice-gates, mount his belvidere 
 and watch the devastation as the waters deluged the 
 country-side. It is an eerie spot, haunted by the shapes 
 and shadows of " old unhappy far-off things." If Byron 
 
THE LAKE AT NEWSTEAD 
 
 Before the mansion lay a lucid Lake, 
 
 Broad as transparent, deep and freshly fed 
 By a river, which its softened way did make 
 
 In currents through the calmer water spread 
 Around ; the wild fowl nestled in the brake 
 
 And sedges, brooding in their liquid bed : 
 The woods sloped downwards to its brink and stood 
 
 With their green faces fixed upon the flood. 
 
 Don Juan, c. xiii. st. Ivii. BYRON. 
 
 The upper or ' stable ' lake lies a little to the north-west 
 of the Abbey. "The forts upon the lake (built by the 
 fifth Lord Byron) were designed to give a naval appearance 
 to the waters." 
 
BYRON 61 
 
 wandered by that "lonely tide," or climbed the evil- 
 looking watch-tower, he kept his thoughts to himself. 
 It may be that before the trees were planted on the 
 margin of the lake there was no cover for "light- 
 loathing demons," or for pheasants. 
 
 At a half right angle to the chain of lakes there is 
 a chain of ponds Forest Pond to the north of the 
 Priory Church, the square "Eagle" Pond, and the 
 Monks' stew -pond, bordered with immemorial yews, 
 which stretch from side to side, and leave but a narrow 
 strip of sullen water for " the full-orbed moon " to turn 
 into a line of light when she pierces the impending 
 branches. Close by is St. Mary's well, a jet of water 
 which shoots out its " tiny cone of sand " with " sound- 
 less dance." It is hardly worth while to labour the 
 point that Newstead Abbey is a romantic spot, and 
 that Byron was a romantic poet, or, as Goethe would 
 have it, the Spirit of Romance incarnate. 
 
 In the late autumn of 1814 Byron paid his last visit 
 to Newstead, and in the spring of 1816 he left England 
 for the Continent. He had but eight years to live, and 
 during those eight years he was master or tenant of at 
 least eight dwelling-places. But their reckoning and 
 presentment are " matter for another tale." Home he 
 had none. Driven by pressure from without or by 
 inward restlessness he passed from land to land, from 
 city to city, still leaving behind him the tradition and 
 memories of his sojourn. He had been, as he after- 
 wards professed, a lover of mountains from his child- 
 
62 POETS' COUNTRY 
 
 hood. " Chimariot's dusky amphitheatre," and Mount 
 Tomaros, Parnassus, and Ida, had brought back the 
 sacred memories of Colbleen and of Loch-na-gar ; and 
 now, in the first months of his life-long exile, he lifted up 
 his eyes to the majesty and glory of Nature, in the vain 
 hope that he might forget himself and find an antidote 
 to remorse. It is true that Shelley " dosed " Byron with 
 Wordsworth, and that the latter half of the Third Canto 
 of Childe Harold, the first two Acts of Manfred and 
 the Prisoner of Chillon, and the Chillon Poems, which 
 were written during a four months' residence at the 
 Villa Diodati, on the southern shore of the Lake of 
 Geneva, bear traces of a vicarious inspiration. It is 
 true that, here and there, in the turn of a phrase, and, 
 more than this, in the formal recitation of a kind of 
 natural creed, Byron shows that he had come under a 
 new influence which he could not resist ; but the 
 result, the Nature -poetry which was the outcome 
 of this strange alliance or discipleship, was a new 
 development. Take, for instance, the famous Words- 
 worthian stanza (Ixxii.) of the Third Canto of Childe 
 Harold : 
 
 I live not in myself, but I become 
 Portion of that around me ; and to me 
 High mountains are a feeling, but the hum 
 Of human cities torture : I can see 
 Nothing to loathe in Nature, save to be 
 A link reluctant in a fleshly chain, 
 Classed among creatures, when the soul can flee, 
 And with the sky, the peak, the heaving plain 
 Of ocean, or the stars, mingle, and not in vain. 
 
BYRON 63 
 
 Or take this record of a poetic childhood (Manfred, 
 Act ii. Scene ii. 11. 62-73) : 
 
 My joy was in the wilderness, to breathe 
 
 The difficult air of the iced mountain's top, 
 
 Where the birds dare not build, nor insect's wing 
 
 Flit o'er the herbless granite ; or to plunge 
 
 Into the torrent, and to roll along 
 
 On the swift whirl of the new breaking wave . . . 
 
 In these my early strength exulted ; or 
 
 To follow through the night the moving moon, 
 
 The stars and their development ; . . . 
 
 Or to look, list'ning, on the scatter'd leaves, 
 
 While Autumn winds were at their evening song. 
 
 These were my pastimes, and to be alone. 
 
 Byron turns and returns to Nature, not with a " wise 
 passiveness" to receive what Nature alone can give, 
 and so to understand and love humanity the more, but 
 he flies to her in wrath and anguish, as to a partisan 
 and an ally, a sympathiser in his revolt against the 
 world. Nature stirred him to the depths and awoke 
 the passion which was the " very pulse of the machine," 
 the life-spring of his poetry. It is seldom that he looks 
 close enough at natural objects to attain to nicety or 
 subtlety of delineation. He is happiest in the descrip- 
 tion of striking and peculiar effects, such as the Lauter- 
 brunnen " curving over the rock like the tail of a white 
 horse streaming on the wind"; or the glacier, like "a 
 frozen hurricane " ; or " whole woods of feathered pines 
 ALL WITHERED " word-pictures which he noted in his 
 journal and reproduced in Manfred \ or that "illustra- 
 
64 POETS' COUNTRY 
 
 tion " of " Nemi navelled in the woody hills," its basin 
 the crater of an extinct volcano : 
 
 The oval mirror of thy glassy lake ; 
 And calm as cherished hate, its surface wears 
 A deep cold settled aspect nought can shake, 
 All coiled into itself and round, as sleeps the snake. 
 
 Byron was indeed, as he writes, " a lover of Nature, 
 an admirer of Beauty " in Nature, but, for the most part, 
 it is some great thing which sends him into song, such 
 as the sunset commingling with the moonrise which 
 
 Streams along the Alpine heights 
 Of blue Friuli's mountains, 
 
 and deep -dyes the Brenta with "the odorous purple 
 of a new-born rose " ; or the 
 
 Sweet hour of twilight ! in the solitude 
 
 Of the pine forest, and the silent shore 
 Which bounds Ravenna's immemorial wood. 
 
 Nature speaks to him not always " comfortably," but 
 with an answering echo to the tumult and the passion 
 that were at work within. But he had, too, another 
 "soul side." 
 
 Browning says that every artist, painter, or poet 
 seeks to indulge his genius by sometimes going out 
 of himself, by speaking in a language not his own, in 
 the fashion of another art : 
 
 He fain would paint a picture, 
 Put to proof art alien to the artist. 
 
 There is a ballad of the violet which serves as a 
 
BYRON'S "TOMB" AT HARROW 
 
 There is a tomb in Harrow Churchyard where Byron 
 " used to sit for hours and hours when a boy." 
 
 Where now alone I muse, who oft have trod, 
 With those I loved, thy soft and verdant sod. 
 
 BYRON. 
 
BYRON 65 
 
 kind of epilogue to that " Faustish kind of drama," The 
 Deformed Transformed, which Byron wrote at Pisa in 
 the early summer of 1822. The violet is of Italian 
 growth, but "her dewy eye of blue" woke memories 
 of " the North and Nature " : 
 
 The spring is come ; the violet's gone, 
 
 The first-born child of the early sun : 
 
 With us she is but a winter's flower, 
 
 The snow on the hills cannot blast her bower, 
 
 And she lifts up her dewy eye of blue 
 
 To the youngest sky of the self-same hue. 
 
 And when the spring comes with her host 
 Of flowers, that flower beloved the most 
 Shrinks from the crowd that may confuse 
 Her heavenly odour and virgin hues. 
 
 Pluck the others, but still remember 
 
 Their herald out of dim December 
 
 The morning star of all the flowers, 
 
 The pledge of daylight's lengthened hours ; 
 
 Nor, midst the roses, e'er forget 
 
 The virgin, virgin Violet. 
 
S. T. COLERIDGE 
 
 1772-1834 
 
 COLERIDGE was country-born, but town-bred. Nature 
 in the sense of the country the country which, accord- 
 ing to Varro (On Things Rustic] and to Cowper is 
 emphatically if not exclusively divine, affected him with 
 the charm of novelty. He falls in love with it as with 
 something outside himself, which is not familiar to 
 him, and which he does not take for granted as necessarily 
 and naturally lovable. In the five-and-twenty poems 
 written at Christ's Hospital, the genuine product of his 
 boyish Muse, there is but one allusion to his birthplace, 
 one single confession of love for or delight in wood or 
 stream or field. He was reared 
 
 In the great city, pent 'mid cloisters dim, 
 And saw nought lovely but the sky and stars ; 
 
 and from the sky and stars he received the first impulse 
 to translate the language of Nature into the language 
 of Poetry. In the Sonnet To the Autumnal Moo?i, 
 written at the close of his sixteenth year, he paints as 
 vividly and as truthfully as words can paint one of those 
 
 66 
 
COLERIDGE'S COTTAGE, NETHER STOWEY 
 
 Coleridge's cottage, Nether Stowey, Somerset, in which 
 the Ancient Mariner, Christabel, and other poems were 
 written, was often visited by Wordsworth, Charles Lamb, 
 and Southey. 
 
 And now, beloved Stowey ! I behold 
 
 Thy church-tower, and, methinks, the four huge elms 
 
 Clustering, which mark the mansion of my friend ; 
 
 And close behind them, hidden from my view, 
 
 Is my own lowly cottage, where my babe 
 
 And my babe's mother dwell in peace ! With light 
 
 And quickened footsteps thitherward I tend. 
 
 Fears in Solitude COLERIDGE. 
 
t YFP 
 
COLERIDGE 67 
 
 moonscapes which swam into his ken, as he lay on " the 
 leaded roof of that wide edifice, his school and home " : 
 
 Mild Splendour of the various- vested Night ! 
 Mother of wildly-working visions ! hail ! 
 I watch thy gliding, while with watery light 
 Thy weak eye glimmers through a fleecy veil ; 
 And when thou lovest thy pale orb to shroud 
 Behind the gather'd blackness lost on high ; 
 And when thou dartest from the wind-rent cloud 
 Thy placid lightning o'er the awaken'd sky. 
 
 Two years later he addressed a sonnet to " his earliest 
 affection, the evening star." It was written, he tells us, 
 "as I was returning from the New River, and it looked 
 newly-bathed as well as I." 
 
 O meek attendant of Sol's setting blaze, 
 
 I hail, sweet Star, thy chaste effulgent glow ; 
 
 On thee full oft with fixed eye I gaze, 
 Till I, methinks, all spirit seem to grow. 
 
 O first and fairest of the starry choir, 
 
 O loveliest 'mid the daughters of the Night, etc. 
 
 The passion, the joy in this "thing of beauty" bursts 
 through and escapes from the hackneyed phraseology. 
 He is enamoured less of the " maid I love " than of the 
 " Star benign," which suggests and symbolises her gentle 
 brilliance. Again, in Genevieve, written, perhaps, in 
 1789, he compares the " maiden's eye " to the " star of 
 eve," and in Lines to a Young Lady, a Cambridge 
 poem, in dwelling on his " early youth " he tells us that 
 
 of Sorrow would I sing. 
 Aye as the star of evening flung its beam 
 In broken radiance on the wavy stream 
 
68 POETS' COUNTRY 
 
 the " wavy stream " being the Thames at Greenwich, 
 or as looked down upon from old London Bridge. 
 Nature was his teacher, but it was Nature seated 
 in her heavenly, her "silver chair," not Nature as 
 Village Schoolmistress, who set him his earliest 
 lessons. 
 
 His first acquaintance with rustic things is revealed 
 in Life, a sonnet written in September 1789, after he 
 had revisited Ottery St. Mary, to take a last farewell of 
 his sister Nancy, who was dying of consumption. On 
 the road homeward to Axminster and London, as he 
 turned off the cross-road from Ottery, he is roused from 
 his melancholy forebodings by the beauty of "the 
 glorious prospect " : 
 
 At every step it widen'd to my sight, 
 
 Wood, Meadow, verdant Hill, and dreary Steep, 
 
 Following in quick succession of delight, 
 Till all at once did my eye ravish'd sweep ! 
 
 This is but a profession, or, rather, an exclamation of 
 delight, an attempt to catalogue the features of the 
 landscape. Afterwards, when many revisitings had 
 blended the newer impressions with the recollections of 
 his childhood, he painted one simple scene, as it fixed 
 itself on the eye of a poet : 
 
 Dear native Brook ! wild streamlet of the West ! 
 How many various-fated years have past, 
 What happy and what mournful houi's, since last 
 I skimmed the smooth thin stone along thy breast, 
 Numbering its light leaps ! Yet so deep imprest 
 
COLERIDGE 69 
 
 Sink the sweet scenes of childhood, that mine eyes 
 
 I never shut amid the sunny ray, 
 But straight with all their tints thy waters rise, 
 
 Thy crossing plank, thy marge with willows grey, 
 And bedded sand that vein'd with various dyes 
 Gleam'd through thy bright transparence, etc. 
 
 The lines which form part of a Sonnet to the River 
 Otter may be assigned to the summer of 1793, but 
 the description of " Otter's sleep-persuading stream," in 
 the Songs of the Pixies (1793), is less exact and 
 less original. It is only here and there in the early 
 poems published in 1796 and 1797 that we have 
 " glimpses that would make us less forlorn," of wood or 
 stream, or of the blessed fields. He was a dweller in 
 cities, in London or Cambridge or Bristol, and only 
 now and then on a summer excursion was he face to face 
 with the verities of Nature. For instance, in Lines 
 composed while climbing the Left Ascent of Brockley 
 Coomb (May 1795), he breaks with conventional usage 
 and describes not what he ought to have seen, but what 
 he actually saw : 
 
 Up scour the startling stragglers of the flock 
 
 That on green plots o'er precipices browse : 
 
 From the forc'd fissures of the naked rock 
 
 The Yew-tree bursts ! Beneath its dark green boughs 
 
 (Mid which the May-thorn blends its blossoms white), 
 
 Where broad smooth stones jut out in mossy seats, 
 
 I rest. 
 
 Again, in the lines On observing a Blossom on the 
 First of February 1796, his indictment of "This 
 dark, frieze-coated, hoarse, teeth- chattering month " is 
 
70 POETS' COUNTRY 
 
 engrossed by Nature's pen. The poet was " on tour," 
 soliciting subscriptions for his forthcoming periodical The 
 Watchman, and on the top of stage-coaches, and in the 
 dreary streets of Sheffield and of Nottingham, he had 
 " learnt in suffering " how and what to " teach in song "! 
 The two Clevedon poems, The Eolian Harp and 
 Reflections on having left a Place of Retirement, "the 
 prologue and epilogue to the honeymoon," bespeak 
 the charms of rural retreat, as well as the fulfillment of 
 domestic bliss. The vignette or aquarelle : 
 
 Our cot, our cot o'ergrown 
 With white-flowered Jasmin, and the broad-leaved Myrtle ; 
 
 . . . the scents 
 
 Snatched from yon bean-field ! and the world so hush'd ! 
 The stilly murmur of the distant sea ; 
 
 or the goodly scenes, the reward of the " perilous toil " 
 of scaling a Somersetshire down : 
 
 The bare bleak mountain speckled thin with sheep ; 
 Grey clouds, that shadowing spot the sunny fields ; 
 
 And seats, and lawns, the abbey and the wood, 
 And cots, and hamlets, and faint city spire ; 
 
 these and other deliberate appreciations of the 
 picturesque betray the strangeness and the astonish- 
 ment of the discoverer or explorer of the unknown. 
 Bristowa's citizen who "eyed our cottage," or Cottle, 
 when he " rode down to pay his respects to the newly- 
 married couple," would, an they could, have indulged 
 in similar transports. All is true to nature, but the 
 
COLERIDGE 71 
 
 enumeration of details and the choice of details suggest 
 a certain inexperience of Nature. 
 
 A minuter and more intimate appreciation of Nature 
 is displayed in a poem to Charles Lloyd ( To a Young 
 Friend, etc. [? September 1796]). He pictures him- 
 self and his young friend poetising on some " mount," 
 perhaps in Derbyshire, perhaps in dreamland : 
 
 O then 'twere loveliest sympathy, to mark 
 
 The berries of the half-uprooted ash 
 
 Dripping and bright ; and list the torrent's dash, 
 
 Beneath the cypress, or the yew more dark, 
 
 Seated at ease, on some smooth mossy rock, etc. 
 
 A month or two later, when he had reason to hope 
 that his " crazy ark " would rest on some " Ararat " of 
 Somersetshire, he tells Charles Lloyd's father that the 
 last but not the least of the six companions who would 
 form his society would be " Nature looking at me in a 
 thousand looks of beauty and speaking to me in a 
 thousand melodies of love." He had begun to set his 
 heart upon the country. 
 
 On January 1, 1797, Coleridge took up his abode 
 at a little roadside cottage or hovel on the outskirts of 
 the market- village of Nether Stowey in Somersetshire. 
 He dreamt of making a substantial livelihood by 
 "horticulture," that is, by cultivating a small garden 
 plot and orchard which lay at the back of the cottage. 
 In the intervals of gardening he could write for the 
 reviews and fulfil his mission as a poet. The fact that 
 Wordsworth and his sister had settled in a farmhouse 
 
72 POETS' COUNTRY 
 
 in a remote part of Dorsetshire may perhaps have 
 suggested this escape from the "vast city," but the 
 choice of a cottage in Nether Stowey was determined 
 by the proximity of a "patronal" friend and disciple, 
 Tom Poole. He would rear, or in plain prose rent, 
 
 " a lowly shed," 
 
 Beside one friend, 
 Beneath the impervious covert of one oak. 
 
 Now it was within the four walls of this " lowly shed " 
 that the greater part of his great poems were written, 
 or, at least, written down. A miserable cottage it was, 
 unadorned by myrtle, or " window-peeping rose " ; but 
 the garden, which contained a "jasmin harbor," was a 
 pleasant place, from which the grassy ramparts of Stowey 
 Castle and Dousborough's "airy roof" were visible. 
 There was " a sweet sequestered orchard plot " where the 
 poet and his wife could sit and watch the apple blossoms 
 
 Stirred by the faint gale of departing May, 
 Send their loose blossoms slanting o'er our heads ! 
 
 In July 1797 Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy 
 settled at Alfoxden, a small country seat some three 
 miles distant from Stowey, which was let furnished 
 for twenty -three pounds a year, including rent and 
 taxes. The manor-house is built on a spur of the 
 Quantocks, in the midst of a small deer park. The 
 front looks to the south, " but it is screened from the 
 sun by a high hill. . . . This hill is ... scattered 
 irregularly . . . w r ith trees and topped with fern. . . . 
 Wherever we turn we have woods, smooth downs, and 
 
COLERIDGE 73 
 
 valleys with small brooks running from them . . . the 
 hills that cradle these valleys are either covered with 
 fern and bilberries or oak woods." From the drive or 
 avenue which runs through a wood to the park and 
 house you catch sight of the "shadowy main dim- 
 tinted," the " dun waters of the Severn sea " bounded 
 by the " pale outline of the Welsh mountains." 
 
 The first-fruits of this second withdrawal to a " place 
 of retirement "was the tragedy of Osorio, the first draft 
 of Remorse, which was begun in the spring of 1797, 
 before Wordsworth came to Alfoxden, and finished by 
 the middle of October. It is to be noted that as the 
 drama proceeds there is an increasing tendency to 
 heighten the passion by an appeal to Nature. Take, 
 for instance, this confession of " natural " piety : 
 
 O . . . that they could return, 
 
 Those blessed days, that imitated heaven, 
 
 When we two wont to walk at eventide ; 
 
 When we saw nought but beauty ; when we heard 
 
 The voice of that Almighty One, who lov'd us, 
 
 In every gale that breath'd, and wave that murmur'd ! 
 
 Act iv. ii. 287-292. 
 
 Or this profession of " natural " faith : 
 
 With other ministrations thou, O Nature ! 
 Healest thy wandering and distemper'd child ! 
 Thou pourest on him thy soft influences, 
 Thy sunny hues, fair forms, and breathing sweets ; 
 Thy melodies of woods, and winds, and waters ! 
 Till he relent, and can no more endure 
 To be a jarring and a dissonant thing 
 Amid this general dance and minstrelsy. 
 
 Act v. ii. 126-133. 
 
74 POETS' COUNTRY 
 
 Or take this study in autumn foliage. The poet 
 forgets that the scene is laid on the coast of Granada, 
 and paints instead a Somersetshire coomb when autumn 
 had begun to lay " a fiery finger on the leaves " : 
 
 The hanging woods, that touch' d by autumn seem'd 
 As they were blossoming hues of fire and gold, 
 The hanging woods, most lovely in decay. 
 
 Act v. i. 39-41. 
 
 Two or three months before these last Acts of Osorio 
 were written, in the lines entitled This Lime -Tree 
 Sower my Prison, which may be regarded as the 
 prelude to a fuller inspiration, he had given proof both 
 of the will and the power to come to close quarters 
 with Nature. Debarred from accompanying his friends 
 the Wordsworths and Charles Lamb in their ramble 
 " on springy heath along the hill-top ledge," he is fain 
 to content himself with the humbler beauties of " the 
 little lime-tree bower," Tom Poole's garden : 
 
 Pale beneath the blaze 
 
 Hung the transparent foliage ; and I watched 
 Some broad and sunny leaf, and loved to see 
 The shadow of the leaf and stem above, 
 Dappling its sunshine. 
 
 If this attitude of heart and soul toward Nature had 
 been quickened and stimulated by Wordsworth, it was 
 Wordsworth who diverted Coleridge from the seen to 
 the unseen, from " this fair earth and its divinities " to 
 the "goings on" of those "invisible natures" which 
 live and move behind the veil of the senses. Following 
 metaphorically and following literally in Wordsworth's 
 
THE GROVE, HIGHGATE 
 
 Showing the house in which Coleridge lived during the 
 latter years of his life, and in which he died. 
 

 
 
OF 
 
 J 
 
COLERIDGE 75 
 
 footsteps, he had begun to " make studies " for a poem 
 to be named The Brook. "I sought for a subject," 
 he says, " that should give equal room and freedom 
 for description, incident, and impassioned reflections on 
 men, nature, and society. . . . Such a subject I con- 
 ceived myself to have found in a stream, traced from 
 its source in the hills among the yellow-red moss and 
 conical glass -shaped tufts of bent to the first break 
 or fall, where its drops become audible, and it begins 
 to form a channel, . . . but circumstances, evil and 
 good, interfered to prevent the completion of the poem " 
 (Biographia Literaria, chap. x.). One circumstance 
 may have been Wordsworth's conviction that the 
 proper sphere of his friend's genius was "the super- 
 natural," and that he would be tempted to substitute 
 a minute and elaborate tabulation of scenic effects for 
 the creative work of the imagination. The " Time and 
 Place " of the great Stowey poem, The Ancient Mariner, 
 Christabel, and Kubla Khan are " not from hence," and 
 only here and there and incidentally does the inspired 
 fabulist betray the immediate source of his word- 
 pictures. One or two instances must suffice. 
 
 The hidden brook 
 
 That to the sleeping woods all night 
 Singeth a quiet tune 
 
 flowed and still flows through Holford Wood, which is 
 close to Alfoxden. " The moss that wholly hides the 
 old oak stump " ; the 
 
76 POETS' COUNTRY 
 
 Brown skeletons of leaves that lag 
 My forest-brook along, 
 
 and the " Ivy-tod that is heavy with snow " were familiar 
 objects of his rambles among the " sloping coombes of 
 Quantock" during the late spring of 1798. In the 
 First Part of Christabel there are several of these 
 " studies " or etchings of the sky by night and of 
 woodland or roadside scenery. There is, for instance, 
 " the thin grey cloud that covered but not hid the sky," 
 the round full moon which looked "both small and 
 dull," and the " one red leaf the last of its clan," which 
 danced like a thing of life, as it was blown hither and 
 thither by the wind. Are not these things written in 
 Dorothy Wordsworth's Alfoxden Journal a proof, if 
 proof were needed, that she " gave eyes " alike to her 
 brother and her brother's friend ? Still more unmistak- 
 able traces of Quantock scenery may be found in the 
 " meditative " pieces of 1798, Fears in Solitude, and in 
 The Nightingale. Even in France: an Ode, there is 
 a further allusion to the " hanging woods " " midway the 
 perilous slope inclined," and in the final apostrophe to 
 Liberty he dwells fondly on 
 
 that sea-cliff's verge, 
 
 Whose pines, scarce travelled by the breeze above, 
 Had made one murmur with the distant surge. 
 
 Now we know that Wordsworth and Coleridge 
 lived at the foot of wooded hills and were within easy 
 reach of " Kilve's delightful shore," and that day in 
 and day out they would climb by wooded ways to 
 
COLERIDGE 77 
 
 the ridge of the Quantocks or descend to " a favourite 
 seat behind the bank on the seaside." Poetry does not 
 depend on these " accidents " it is born of the spirit : 
 but the perception and recognition of its accidents 
 make for the understanding and realisation of poetry. 
 
 In the autumn of 1798 Coleridge went to Germany, 
 and for the space of two years he wrote but little 
 original poetry. Of his ten months' sojourn in Germany 
 the sole poetical record consists of a description of the 
 scenery of the Hartz Forest, which forms part of 
 Lines written in the Album at Elbingerode : 
 
 Heavily my way 
 
 Downward I dragged through fir-groves evermore, 
 Where bright green moss heaves in sepulchral forms 
 Speckled with sunshine ; and, but seldom heard, 
 The sweet bird's song became an hollow sound ; 
 And the breeze murmuring indivisibly 
 Preserved its solemn murmur most distinct 
 From many a note of many a waterfall, 
 And the brook's chatter ; 'mid whose islet-stones 
 The dingy kidling with its tinkling bell 
 Leaped frolicsome, or old romantic goat 
 Sat, his white beard slow waving. 
 
 A mountain excursion had roused the slumbering 
 
 o 
 
 passion of his Muse. 
 
 The second period of Coleridge's poetical career 
 begins with the composition of the Second Part of 
 Christabel (September 1800), and ends with that cry 
 of despair, The Pains of Sleep (September 1803). 
 Then, if ever, he was a Lake Poet. Of the second 
 vintage there was but a scanty yield, and the fruit of 
 
78 POETS' COUNTRY 
 
 the vine but seldom favours or betrays the soil and 
 aspect of the vineyard. In the Second Part of 
 Christabel the place names, Windermere and Dungeon 
 Ghyll and Borrowdale, give evidence of new sur- 
 roundings, and towards the close of The Picture; 
 or, The Lover's Resolution (1802), there is a finished 
 " study " of a " circular vale . . . land-locked," which is 
 certainly somewhere in Westmoreland or Cumberland, 
 and may possibly have been suggested by Watendlath. 
 In the Keepsake (1800) the "tedded hay and corn- 
 sheaves in one field" and an autumnal foxglove are 
 characteristic of the Lake Country, and in A Strange 
 Minstrel, in The Knights' Tomb, and in the Thought 
 suggested by a View of Saddleback 
 
 On stern Blencartha's perilous height 
 The winds are tyrannous and strong,- 
 
 the verse, in Byron's phrase, is " a breather of the 
 mountain-tops." But, for the most part, in what he 
 says and leaves unsaid he confirms the truth of his own 
 confession, in Dejection : an Ode : 
 
 I may not hope from outward forms to win 
 
 The passion and the life, whose fountains are within. 
 
 "Joy" which had wedded Nature to him had gone 
 beyond recall, and his marriage portion, " A new Earth 
 and a new Heaven," had been taken from him and 
 given to another. But once, and that once by the 
 aid of borrowed plumage, does his wing take flight. 
 The Hymn before Sunrise in the Vale of Chamouni is in 
 
COLERIDGE 79 
 
 part, perhaps a quarter of the whole, a translation from 
 the German of Friederike Brim, but the remaining lines, 
 which purport to be descriptive of Alpine scenery, were 
 inspired by a solitary walk on Sea Fell. The critics, 
 noticing the plagiarism and misliking the reiterated 
 invocation of the Deity, 
 
 God ! let the torrents, like a shout of nations, 
 Answer ! and let the ice-plains echo, God ! 
 
 have written down this triumphant hymn of praise as 
 pompous and artificial. Whether it be pompous or 
 no is a question of taste, but that it was a genuine 
 and spontaneous outburst of poetic enthusiasm may be 
 demonstrated by a study of contemporary letters and 
 journals. As he was brought for the first time face to 
 face with the majesty of Nature, " his heart grew hot 
 within him, the fire kindled, and he spake with his 
 tongue." 
 
 But little as Coleridge merited the disgrace or 
 deserved the honour of being nicknamed a Lakist, it 
 was not from want of physical activity or from any 
 failure to perceive the charms and wonders of 
 mountain scenery that his Muse was silent. Notebook 
 in hand he wandered far and near over the Keswick 
 and Wastwater mountains, and as he passed from crag 
 to crag or " hunted the waterfalls," he jotted down in 
 pencil the minutest features of the scene. Often, too, 
 he noted the effects of mist and sunshine on the hills, 
 of cloud and shadow on the Lakes as he sat in the 
 " Organ Room " at Greta Hall. Here is a typical 
 
80 POETS' COUNTRY 
 
 word-picture of Lake scenery. The date is October 
 21, 1803 : 
 
 A drizzling rain. Heavy masses of shapeless vapour upon 
 the mountains (Oh, the perpetual forms of Borrowdale !) yet it is 
 no unbroken tale of dull sadness. Slanting pillars travel across 
 the lake at long intervals, the vaporous mass whitens in large 
 stains of light on the lakeward ridge of that huge arm-chair of 
 Lodore fell a gleam of softest light, that brought out the rich 
 hues of the late autumn. . . . Little woolpacks of white bright 
 vapour rest on different summits and declivities. The vale is 
 narrowed by the mist and cloud, yet through the wall of mist you 
 can see into a bower of sunny light, in Borrowdale ; the birds are 
 singing in the tender rain, as if it were the rain of April, and the 
 decaying foliage were flowers and blossoms (Anima Poetae, 1895, 
 p. 34). 
 
 The greater part of these topographical notes were, 
 no doubt, originally composed with a view to writing 
 a Guide-book to the Lake district, but long after that 
 visionary scheme had been abandoned the habit 
 remained of confiding his impressions to his note-books, 
 " the confidants who have not betrayed me, the friends 
 whose silence is not detraction, and the inmates before 
 whom I was not ashamed to complain, to yearn, to 
 weep, and even to pray." In April 1804 Coleridge 
 left England for a two years' sojourn on the Continent. 
 Thenceforth, until his death in 1834, he wrote but 
 little verse, and on the rare occasions when the " genial 
 ray " returned, the inspiration was from within, and of 
 place, circumstance, or of communion with Nature there 
 is only an occasional intimation. But neither " abstruse 
 research," nor sickness, nor sorrow, nor " the poisons of 
 
The Quaritock Hills, from Alfoxden Glen, with Dous- 
 borough in the distance, are described in the lines : 
 
 But now the gentle dew-fall sends abroad 
 The fruit-like perfume of the golden furze : 
 The light has left the summit of the hill, 
 Though still a sunny gleam lies beautiful, 
 Aslant the ivied beacon. Now farewell, 
 Farewell, awhile, O soft and silent spot ! 
 On the green sheep-track, up the heathy hill, 
 Homeward I wind my way. 
 
 Fears in Solitude COLERIDGE. 
 

COLERIDGE 81 
 
 self-harm " could make him a stranger or an alien in the 
 courts of Nature. He gives proof of this in some stanzas 
 entitled Recollections of Love, which were written on 
 revisiting Nether Stowey in the summer of 1807 : 
 
 Eight springs have flown since last I lay 
 On seaward Quantock's heathy hills, 
 Where quiet sounds from hidden rills 
 
 Float here and there, like things astray, 
 And high o'er head the sky-lark shrills. 
 
 Or take this glimpse of early morning on a hillside, 
 from Alice du Clos, a later poem of uncertain date : 
 
 There stands the flow'ring may-thorn tree ! 
 From thro' the veiling mist you see 
 
 The black and shadowy stem ; 
 Smit by the sun the mist in glee 
 Dissolves to lightsome jewelry 
 
 Each blossom hath its gem ! 
 
 Or this momentary response to the sweet influences of a 
 sunny day in February 1827 : 
 
 All Nature seems at work. Slugs leave their lair 
 
 The bees are stirring birds are on the wing 
 
 And Winter, slumbering in the open air, 
 
 Wears on his smiling face a dream of Spring ! 
 
 And I the while, the sole unbusy thing, 
 
 Nor honey make, nor pair, nor build, nor sing. 
 
 Work without Hope, from which these lines are 
 taken, and the exquisite Garden of Boccaccio (sole 
 poetic testimony of a visit to Italy) were written in 
 Coleridge's later days when "he sat on the brow of 
 
 Highgate Hill," when Nature in her homelier or in her 
 
 G 
 
82 POETS' COUNTRY 
 
 wilder aspects was but a memory of the past, when it 
 sufficed him to pace slowly along Lovers' Lane, or 
 among the trees in front of "The Grove," or to look 
 from his attic window across Lord Mansfield's woods to 
 the country beyond. But the day had been when 
 Philosophy had borne "no other name but Poesie," 
 and to the last he kenned " the banks where amaranths 
 blow." Though he had deserted Nature, Nature ne'er 
 deserted him. Let him speak for himself : 
 
 The love of Nature is ever returned double to us, not only the 
 delighter in our delight, but by linking our sweetest, but, of them- 
 selves, perishable feelings to distinct and vivid images. . . . She 
 is the preserver, the treasurer of our joys. . . . And even when 
 all men have seemed to desert us and the friend of our heart has 
 passed on, with one glance from his "cold disliking eye" yet, 
 even then, the blue heaven spreads it out and bends over us, and 
 the little tree still shelters us under its plumage as a second cope, 
 a domestic firmament, and the low creeping gale will sigh in the 
 heath-plant, and soothe us by sound of sympathy till the lulled 
 grief lose itself in fixed gaze on the purple heath-blossom, till the 
 present beauty becomes a vision of memory (Anima Poetae, p. 
 246). 
 
SCOTT 
 
 NOT less than Wordsworth's the Muse of Scott is the 
 child and lover of Nature, and "Nature mourns her 
 worshipper," where "the sound of all others most 
 delicious to his ear, the gentle ripple of Tweed over 
 its pebbles," murmurs by Sir Walter's tomb at Dry- 
 burgh. Scott has remarked in Rob Roy on the 
 personal feeling of affection, and almost of reverence, 
 which his countrymen entertain for the rivers of their 
 native land, like the Greeks, and a legend tells of a 
 lady who loved Tweed as dearly as Tyro, in Homer, 
 loved Enipeus, "far the fairest of all streams that 
 wander through the world." Though born in Edin- 
 burgh, Scott was a son of the Tweed ; from Tweed- 
 side, and from the tributaries of the Tweed, Ettrick, 
 Yarrow, and Teviot, came the forefathers who be 
 queathed to him his spirit and his memories of the 
 past. His "fancy's wakening hour," he says, was 
 passed, indeed, 
 
 where no broad river swept along, 
 and 
 
 scarce a puny streamlet's speed 
 Claimed homage from the shepherd's reed. 
 83 
 
84 POETS' COUNTRY 
 
 But Smailholme Tower and Sandyknowe farm, where 
 his fancy awoke, were, at least, in Tweeddale, and the 
 vigorous lame child could soon visit the Border waters 
 on his pony. He fell in love with the pastoral streams, 
 as every Borderer does ; he knew them in every aspect, 
 whether flowing clear in summer from pool to pool, or 
 rushing " great and muckle o' spate," foaming red from 
 brim to brim ; or full and dark, of the colour that the 
 salmon-fisher loves. It was his joy to ride the most 
 dangerous fords, and to light the black woods at night 
 with the flame of the salmon-leisterer, no less than to 
 fish the summer clearness with the fly, or to dream 
 beneath a tree above the flowing water. To him, his 
 bare grey hills were more charming than even the 
 raven-haunted precipices and black, enchanted lochs of 
 Skye ; and ces bosses verddtres, as Prosper Merimee 
 described the hills of Tweedside, were to him enchanted 
 land. Born in a city which has at least the most 
 beautiful of all situations, if it lacks the colour of 
 Athens, Sir Walter was also born in an old house, " at 
 the head of the College Wynd," whence nothing more 
 beautiful than squalid streets was to be seen. But the 
 house stood on the site of a mystery and a tragedy, 
 the Kirk o' Field, where Darnley was murdered. 
 
 As if by a combination of early influences, memory 
 of the storied past was, from childhood, blended in 
 Scott's fancy with love of Nature. For him, river and 
 burn, loch and hill were not in themselves enough : 
 he must know what befell the ancient dwellers in these 
 
THE PASS OF LENY 
 
 The Pass of Leny is seen to full advantage from the 
 ascent of Ben Ledi. I was fortunate enough to view it 
 during a storm. Loch Lubnaig in the distance appeared 
 and disappeared through the rain-clouds ; their shadows 
 passing over the hills and valley made a scene to illustrate 
 the " Land of the Mountain." p g ^ 
 
SCOTT 85 
 
 places know their fortunes, their joys and sorrows, and 
 their dreams ; know the fairies and ghosts that had 
 haunted them of old. He saw Nature in a kind of 
 mirage of the past, and every landscape was haunted, 
 for him, by Border riders and Celtic warriors, by maids 
 glad or despairing, by foredoomed kings and unhappy 
 queens of the Stuart line. The Dowie Dens of Yarrow 
 are exquisitely fair, whether the term be applied to the 
 deep, dark pools by Harehead, or to the green holms 
 where stands the stone inscribed in barbaric Latin. It 
 is not the beauty alone of the river, and its pastoral 
 melancholy, that inspire Scott, but recollections of 
 "Willie drowned in Yarrow," and of lovers slain in 
 desperate duel beside the water. The most bare and 
 unlovely of Fifeshire moors captivated him, because here 
 he remembered the pursuit and slaughter of Archbishop 
 Sharp by a crew of godly ruffians who deemed them- 
 selves inspired. 
 
 His first memories were of Smailholme, the tall, 
 dark, narrow peel -tower standing black against the 
 sky-line on its naked cliff, above its rushy tarn. There 
 
 was poetic impulse given 
 By the green hill and clear blue heaven. . . . 
 
 It was a barren scene and wild, 
 Where naked cliffs were rudely piled ; 
 But ever and anon between 
 Lay velvet tufts of loveliest green ; 
 And well the lonely infant knew 
 Recesses where the wallflower grew, 
 And honeysuckle loved to crawl 
 Up the low crag and ruin'd wall. 
 
86 POETS' COUNTRY 
 
 The child is taken by what lies at its feet, what its 
 hands can touch, before it has learned to look abroad 
 over the vast level land, the fighting ground of Scots 
 and English. But, almost at once, the child is taught 
 to look " all down Teviotdale," 
 
 When some strange tale bewitched my mind, 
 
 Old forayers, who, with headlong force, 
 
 Down from that strength had spurred their horse. 
 
 From " that strength " 
 
 The Baron of Smaylho'me rose with day, 
 
 He spurr'd his courser on 
 Without stop or stay down the rocky way 
 
 That leads to Brotherston. 
 
 Many of Scott's landscapes are seen from horseback, 
 during "grand gallops on the hills," "when I was 
 thinking of Marmion" This poet did not sit under a 
 suburban tree at Hampstead, listening to and out- 
 singing the nightingale, like Keats : he composed in 
 the saddle, and his verse went to 
 
 The cavalry canter of Bonny Dundee. 
 
 You hear the jingle of the reins, and the clash of sword 
 on stirrup, and with twilight comes the Court of the 
 Fairy Queen, riding to meet Thomas of Ercildoune 
 " beneath the Eildon Tree." 
 
 Even at three or four years of age the Border poet 
 mingled Nature with visions out of the lost years : 
 
 Methought that still, with trump and clang, 
 The gateway's broken arches rang ; 
 
SCOTT 87 
 
 Methought grim features, seam'd with scars, 
 
 Glared through the window's rusty bars, 
 
 And ever, by the winter hearth, 
 
 Old tales I heard of woe or mirth, 
 
 Of lovers' slights, of ladies' charms, 
 
 Of witches' spells, of warriors' arms ; 
 
 Of patriot battles, won of old 
 
 By Wallace wight and Bruce the bold ; 
 
 Of later fields of feud and fight, 
 
 When, pouring from their Highland height, 
 
 The Scottish clans, in headlong sway, 
 
 Had swept the scarlet ranks away. 
 
 The child, gazing 
 
 where the triple pride 
 Of Eildon overlooks Strathclyde, 
 
 hears the tramp and sees the fires of the Roman 
 legionaries who held their station below the hill. He 
 believes that in a cavern of the rock slumbers Thomas 
 the Rhymer, among a company of sleeping men-at- 
 arms, who shall rise and ride at Scotland's need. He 
 knows the fairy dell, later his own, where True Thomas 
 met his unearthly paramour, and whence he wandered 
 with her across red-running streams, 
 
 For a' the bluid that's shed on earth 
 Flows in the stream of this countrie. 
 
 He knows how 
 
 Ancram Moor 
 
 Ran red with English blood ; 
 Where the Douglas true, and the bold Buccleuch 
 'Gainst keen Lord Evers stood. 
 
 He has seen the stone called " Turn Again," where the 
 
88 POETS' COUNTRY 
 
 Scotts, in their flight, turned against the Kers, in the 
 last great clan battle, when 
 
 Gallant Cessford's heart-blood dear 
 Reek'd on dark Elliot's Border spear. 
 
 Already the child has heard of Prince Charles, his 
 victories and his defeat, and resents the bloody assize of 
 Carlisle. He peoples the landscape with "Wat of 
 Harden, Wight Willie of Aikwood, Jamie Telfer of the 
 Fair Dodhead," and other heroes ; " not forgetting " the 
 celebrated Deil of Littledean, " who married his great- 
 grand-aunt." Who can revive " the stories, grave and 
 gay, comic and warlike," of the Deil of Littledean ? 
 Caret vote sacro. Ballads enough the child already 
 knew, and thus he was cradled in romance, after a 
 fashion unexampled in the history of modern poets, 
 in the history of any poets, since Homer learned the 
 legends of every river and hill and town of heroic 
 Greece. 
 
 Always the first scenery in Sir Walter's mind is that 
 of the Border. He knew scenes much more beautiful : 
 the landscapes of the West Highland coast, and of the 
 islands, the mountains so rich, soft, and various in 
 colour, so distinguished in outline, with the swift tides 
 flowing and receding, like great translucent rivers, far 
 into the recesses of the hills. He knew these things of 
 beauty, but only as a visitor, they were not places in 
 his own country ; his life had not been passed among 
 them, they made no part of his earliest memories. 
 

 THE FALLS OF LENY 
 
 The Falls of Leny are in the Pass of the same name. 
 The best time to see them is when the river is " in spate/' 
 giving some idea of "The Land of the Flood." 
 
SCOTT 89 
 
 Much as he knew of Highland tradition, he had not 
 the language of the people who preserve it ; in fact, the 
 far more beautiful mountains of Moydart and Morvern 
 were not so haunted, for him, as his own green or 
 heather-clad, round-shouldered knowes. These undu- 
 lations and protuberances of the soil commonly as 
 destitute of outline as the Countess disdainfully referred 
 to by Mr. Mantalini Sir Walter was pleased to call 
 " mountains." His partiality for them was as tender, as 
 pardonable, and as excessive as the partiality of a 
 mother for her plain children. The alien who visits the 
 Border with Scott's poetry in his mind is, I must admit, 
 apt to be disappointed. Scott, in his mind, "has a 
 vision of his own," like the lover's vision of his lady. 
 The rest of mankind did not see the Cid as Chimene 
 saw him, or Chimene as the Cid saw her ; and in the 
 same way Scott's love of his own country idealised her 
 honest, sonsy features, and made his sheriffdom "an 
 unsubstantial fairy place." In his Epistle to the 
 Rev. John Marriott, M.A. (Marmion, Introduction to 
 Canto II.), Sir Walter thus describes the loch of St. 
 Mary's, at the head of Yarrow : 
 
 Oft in my mind such thoughts awake, 
 
 By lone Saint Mary's silent lake ; 
 
 Thou know'st it well, nor fen, nor sedge, 
 
 Pollute the pure lake's crystal edge ; 
 
 Abrupt and sheer, the mountains sink 
 
 At once upon the level brink ; 
 
 And just a trace of silver sand 
 
 Marks where the water meets the land. 
 
90 POETS' COUNTRY 
 
 Far in the mirror, bright and blue, 
 
 Each hill's huge outline you may view ; 
 
 Shaggy with heath, but lonely bare, 
 
 Nor tree, nor bush, nor brake, is there, 
 
 Save where, of land, yon slender line 
 
 Bears thwart the lake the scatter'd pine, 
 
 Yet even this nakedness has power, 
 
 And aids the feeling of the hour : 
 
 Nor thicket, dell, nor copse you spy, 
 
 Where living thing conceal'd might lie ; 
 
 Nor point, retiring, hides a dell, 
 
 Where swain, or woodman lone, might dwell ; 
 
 There's nothing left to fancy's guess, 
 
 You see that all is loneliness : 
 
 And silence aids though the steep hills 
 
 Send to the lake a thousand rills ; 
 
 In summer-tide, so soft they weep, 
 
 The sound but lulls the ear asleep ; 
 
 Your horse's hoof-tread sounds too rude, 
 
 So stilly is the solitude. 
 
 If " thou knowest it well " could be said with truth to 
 Mr. Marriott, he must have smiled when he read this 
 landscape in rhyme. 
 
 Moi aussi, I know " lone St. Mary's silent lake " 
 very well, and am much attached to it, when it is lonely, 
 and not sonorous with the whoops of excursionists 
 playing at kiss-in-the-ring. But the pure lake is not 
 " crystal," the water is of the wonted mossy brown. It 
 is by a wonderful stretch of loving memory that Scott 
 ventures to say : 
 
 Abrupt and sheer, the mountains sink 
 At once upon the level brink. 
 
 There are no mountains, nothing is "abrupt," nothing 
 
SCOTT 91 
 
 is " sheer " ; green, grassy slopes descend placidly to the 
 loch on one side, the other side is a plain, to which hills 
 fall easily. It is quite true that there are no trees, 
 except where the " slender line " of land parts St. Mary's 
 from the Loch of the Lowes. There is even no " trace 
 of silver sand," there is merely the white margin of dry 
 stones, ordinary stones, whatever their formation may 
 be. As to "a thousand rills," unless you call Meggat 
 water a "rill" (it is a sizable burn), I do not think 
 there is a rill about the place. 
 
 Pardon me, St. Mary of the Lowes, and Spirit of 
 Sir Walter ! but affection designed the picture, which 
 is destitute of topographical accuracy. The poet, in 
 short, is in love with the haunted loneliness where 
 stands "Dryhope's ruined tower," and he "thinks on 
 Yarrow's faded flower," his ancestress, and on "the 
 Wizard Priest" buried in the chapel that his clan 
 destroyed, because they could not find there a gentle- 
 man whose throat they were anxious to cut. 
 
 They burn'd the chapel for very rage, 
 
 And cursed Lord Cranstoun's Goblin Page 
 
 a circumstance charming to Scott, as the Cranstouns 
 were his intimate friends. 
 
 He goes on to write of dark Loch Skene as if it 
 were no less wild and romantic than Loch Coruisk, 
 whereas it is a black, desolate, windy tarn enough, with 
 a scathed kind of look, while its waters do escape down 
 a perpendicular steep into a respectable cascade. The 
 
92 POETS' COUNTRY 
 
 peculiarity of this lochan of the heights is the sudden 
 onfall of dense white fogs, into which to walk is more 
 than a man's life is worth. Loch Skene, I confess, is 
 an uncanny place, and thereby Hob Dob and Davie 
 Din met and overcame the Accuser of the Brethren ; 
 but Loch Skene is not so grandiose as Sir Walter 
 painted it. Many years ago a lady made these 
 comments to the late Lord Napier, whose dwelling was 
 in upper Ettrick. "The hills," she said, "are like a 
 series of green dish-covers." His Lordship was devoted 
 to " his ain countrie," but he answered, with a twinkle 
 of the eye, that " all his life he had been trying not to 
 think so." 
 
 " Thus plainly speaketh Montaigne concerning cats," 
 says Izaak Walton, who clearly looked on cats in a 
 proper spirit of reverence. Following the candid 
 example of Montaigne, I have ventured to speak 
 plainly about the Border hills, which disappoint a 
 stranger as they disappointed Washington Irving. 
 But there are Border hills and Border hills. No one 
 should be disappointed who approaches them, as Scott 
 did for several of his happiest years, from Ashestiel, 
 his home on the upper Tweed. Here the river no 
 longer flows through mere green uplands, but is beset 
 by steep, wooded banks, the knees of the heather-clad 
 hills which divide Tweed from Ettrick and Yarrow. 
 Though not high, they are beautiful in colour, and 
 the Weirdlaw and Ettrickpen have charm of outline. 
 They are not visible from Abbotsford, but from 
 
ASHIESTIEL 
 
 Ashiestiel on Tweed, the house in which Scott wrote 
 parts of Marmian, is seen from the bridge. It just appears 
 through the trees that line the river, which is here perhaps 
 at its loveliest. 
 
SCOTT 93 
 
 Cauldshields Loch, a tarn lying high on the Abbotsford 
 estate. Behind Ashestiel, up the Peel burn, it is an 
 easy walk or ride to summits which look down on the 
 vale of Yarrow, and on Minchmuir, across which 
 Montrose rode in the flight from the fatal field of 
 Philiphaugh. While Tweed from Peebles to the 
 lovely site of Yair is always variously beautiful, it 
 attains its highest charm below Abbotsford, from 
 Melrose, so nobly sung of in The Lay of the Last 
 Minstrel, through' Gladswood, Makerstoun, and Mer- 
 toun. William of Deloraine's ride, in the Lay, com- 
 bines pictures of all the landscapes from Branxholme 
 in upper Teviotdale, to Ail and Tweed, ending with 
 the lines on fair Melrose, too familiar for quotation, 
 while the Introductory Epistle to the First Canto of 
 Marmion describes the little old house of Ashestiel as 
 it is when 
 
 November's sky is chill and drear, 
 November's leaf is red and sear. 
 
 Every one has regretted that Scott, when obliged to 
 leave Ashestiel, fixed his home on " a bare haugh and 
 a bank " at Abbotsford. Here he was in the centre of 
 his own country, but the site and the views from the 
 site are not beautiful. The artist has chosen to 
 illustrate Melrose Abbey and the Tweed at Ashestiel 
 for his Border sketches. For the Highland landscapes 
 he has selected the Pass and the Falls of Leny, the 
 gates of Scott's other enchanted land, the Highlands, 
 within cry of Benledi and Benvoirlich. He had a drop 
 
94 POETS' COUNTRY 
 
 of Campbell blood, through a grandmother, though he 
 was not especially partial to the great anti-Jacobite 
 clan in his writings. His heart, at least, was with the 
 clans that fought for Charlie Stewarts, Macdonalds, 
 Macleans, and the disinherited tribe of Macgregors. 
 Yet, so evenly was Sir Walter's heart balanced by 
 his head, that, had he lived in 1745, he might have 
 mounted the Black Cockade and served King George, 
 not King James, as one of the rather inglorious Edin- 
 burgh Volunteers. However that may have been, from 
 infancy, like most children, he favoured the Rightful 
 Cause, and in the Macgregors and Macdonalds re- 
 cognised men who, up to his grandfather's time, lived 
 much like his own Border ancestors. 
 
 The Highlands, though he knew them less well, 
 were nearest to the Border in his sympathies. He 
 was not more than fifteen when, as a lawyer's clerk, 
 and on a very unsympathetic errand, he first rode 
 through the passes from Perth, among the glens 
 whither he later conducted Waverley and Montrose. 
 The Pass of Leny is described in the opening of The 
 Legend of Montrose ; above this beautiful gateway of 
 the hills the great Marquis meets the no less immortal 
 Dugald Dalgetty, though how Dalgetty, coming from 
 the Continent, found himself there is an unsolved 
 mystery. His first view of Perth, at the age of fifteen, 
 Scott describes in the Introduction to The Fair Maid 
 of Perth : " I recollect pulling up the reins without 
 meaning to do so, and gazing on the scene before me 
 
SCOTT 95 
 
 as if I had been afraid it would shift, like those in a 
 theatre, before I could distinctly observe its different 
 parts, or convince myself that what I saw was real. 
 Since that hour the recollection of that inimitable 
 landscape has possessed the strongest influence over 
 my mind, and retained its place as a memorable thing, 
 while much that was influential on my fortunes has 
 fled from my recollection." 
 
 What could be more "influential on his own 
 fortunes" than the scenes that were to make him 
 celebrated because he celebrated them ? The aspect 
 of Glencoe, beheld on a day of storm, remained equally 
 memorable to Dickens, but for the Massacre and the 
 legends of Glencoe Dickens appears not to have cared. 
 Scott, on the other hand, felt near Perth that he was 
 standing where Agricola may have stood, comparing in 
 his mind the Tay with his native Tiber, the Inch of Perth 
 with the Campus Martius. In the town at his feet Scott 
 remembered that James I. was cruelly murdered ; that 
 here Knox had witnessed the destruction of palace and 
 monasteries, that hither James VI. had ridden from 
 Falkland to that ill dinner whereafter the Ruthvens, 
 his hosts, were slain in their own halls. Here 
 Queen Mary, fresh from France, was insulted in 
 the Protestant pageants, and received the gift of a 
 diamond cross from some loyal hand ; here James 
 VIII. loitered hopeless, in 1715-1716; here Prince 
 Charles rested in the first hopes of the march 
 to Prestonpans ; and far beyond lay the hills of 
 
96 POETS' COUNTRY 
 
 romance. The place was as rich in many memories 
 as in beauty. 
 
 For an intimate knowledge of scenes more remote 
 and romance less distant Scott presently became indebted 
 to Stewart of Invernahyle, who had been out in 1715 
 and 1745, and had fought a sword-and-target duel with 
 Rob Roy. He penetrated into the green hills of 
 Appin, then still held by the Stewarts a land rich in 
 traditions of war and of fairies, and in the second-sight. 
 Journeying with a military escort for the eviction of 
 Maclaren tenants of Stewart of Appin, he first saw 
 Loch Katrine and the Trossachs, which he brought half 
 the world to see, by the spells of The Lady of the 
 Lake. 
 
 Boon nature scatter'd, free and wild, 
 Each plant or flower, the mountain's child. 
 Here eglantine embalm'd the air, 
 Hawthorn and hazel mingled there ; 
 The primrose pale and violet flower, 
 Found in each cliff a narrow bower ; 
 Fox-glove and night-shade, side by side, 
 Emblems of punishment and pride, 
 Grouped their dark hues with every stain 
 The weather-beaten crags retain. 
 With boughs that quaked at every breath, 
 Grey birch and aspen wept beneath ; 
 Aloft, the ash and warrior oak 
 Cast anchor in the rifted rock ; 
 And, higher yet, the pine-tree hung 
 His shatter'd trunk, and frequent flung, 
 Where seem'd the cliffs to meet on high, 
 His boughs athwart the narrow'd sky. 
 Highest of all, where white peaks glanced, 
 Where glist'ning streamers waved and danced, 
 
SCOTT 97 
 
 The wanderer's eye could barely view 
 The summer heaven's delicious blue ; 
 So wondrous wild, the whole might seem 
 The scenery of a fairy dream. 
 
 Onward, amid the copse 'gan peep 
 A narrow inlet, still and deep, 
 Affording scarce such breadth of brim 
 As served the wild duck's brood to swim. 
 Lost for a space, through thickets veering, 
 But broader when again appearing, 
 Tall rocks and tufted knolls their face 
 Could on the dark-blue mirror trace ; 
 And farther as the Hunter stray'd, 
 Still broader sweep its channels made. 
 The shaggy mounds no longer stood, 
 Emerging from entangled wood, 
 But, wave-encircled, seem'd to float, 
 Like castle girdled with its moat ; 
 Yet broader floods extending still 
 Divide them from their parent hill, 
 Till each, retiring, claims to be 
 An islet in an inland sea. 
 
 The Highland landscapes, farther north and in the 
 Isles, Scott did not know till he sailed round the 
 coasts, after writing Waver ley, in 1814. They are 
 reflected in The Lord of the Isles the desolate peaks 
 and the black lochs of Skye, and the ruined castles of 
 the Celtic princes : 
 
 Each on its own dark cape reclined, 
 And listening to its own wild wind, 
 
 and reminiscent of its own wilder history of cruel clan 
 wars. It is a fact little known, if we may trust to 
 
 tradition for facts, that, as late as the Restoration, 
 
 H 
 
98 POETS' COUNTRY 
 
 Lochaber was the scene of slayings more fierce, between 
 men of the same name and kin, than those which used 
 to desolate heathen or half -converted Iceland six 
 centuries earlier. The stories told by "John Sobieski 
 and Charles Edward Stuart" concerning "the Feuds 
 of Keppoch," in their Lays of the Deer Forest, 
 merely stagger the Lowland reader. Scott does not 
 dwell on these astonishingly picturesque events in his 
 poetry, but he knew more legends than any other 
 Sassenach, though, unluckily, he never acquired Gaelic. 
 His excursions into that tongue make the learned smile 
 and sigh ! None the less, like Yama the discoverer of 
 Death, in the Rig Veda, "he opened a path unto 
 many " into the Highlands. He never ceased to love 
 them. In his dying days, in Italy, he beheld Lake 
 Avernus, and astonished an English companion by 
 muttering, 
 
 Up the rocky hill-side, 
 
 And down the scroggy glen, 
 We daurna gang a-milking, 
 
 For Charlie and his men ! 
 
 Why he thus spoke, there, I never could guess till I 
 read in Lockhart's MS. Diary that " Lake Avernus is 
 like a third-rate Highland loch." 
 
 Has not Sir Walter, appropriately, but careless of 
 prosody, quoted 
 
 Moritur et moriens dulces reminiscitur Argos ? 
 
 On his way to death, in Italy, his heart was in the 
 Highlands. He could not stay in Rome, and leave his 
 
MELROSE ABBEY 
 
 Melrose Abbey by moonlight. Of the many legends 
 connected with it, the following, told to me while I was at 
 work, is new to me. The builder, a holy man, could not 
 satisfy himself with designs of the windows, and to seek 
 inspiration went on a pilgrimage to the Holy Laud. There 
 he saw in a vision what he had long sought after, and 
 hastening home, found the work as revealed to him already 
 wrought by angel hands. p g -^y. 
 

SCOTT 99 
 
 ashes near the dust of the Royal line. He hurried 
 back to lay himself where, in a love-letter to his bride, 
 long ago, he had expressed his wish to lie at last, in 
 the ruined abbey of Dryburgh, within the sound of the 
 water of the Tweed. 
 
 The deep and strong affection of his nature had 
 transfigured each hill and burn, river, loch, and crum- 
 bling tower of his own and his father's land, that is now 
 to the world a sacred place. The haunted crests of the 
 cloven hill of Eildon are his monument, as Ida of the 
 many springs is the monument of Homer. 
 
SHELLEY AND NATURE 
 
 THE truth about Shelley's poetical relation to Nature 
 may be attained, with mathematical precision, by 
 reversing everything that has been said in the case of 
 Scott. Sir Walter with half his soul inhabited the 
 past : Shelley hated the past, detested the study of 
 History, and dwelt in his own ideal future. Scott, 
 though intellectually a friend of the principles of the 
 Reformation, displays in his poems and novels a great 
 tenderness for the ancient faith ; while Shelley, in a 
 soaring effort, wrote of 
 
 Bloody Faith, the foulest spawn of Time. 
 
 Scott rejoiced in local traditions, but I cannot 
 remember that Shelley ever alluded to those of his 
 own neighbourhood, for example, to the headless ghost 
 that leaped up behind solitary riders, though he spoke 
 of the monstrous serpent which, " in the time of King 
 James I., was seen to walk upon feet ... a serpent 
 of countenance very proud." The animal was supposed, 
 by local naturalists, to be on the point of developing 
 wings. 
 
 100 
 
SHELLEY 101 
 
 Shelley's natal chamber looked out over "placid 
 Sussex grass-land," a featureless landscape, while "the 
 mountainous outline of Hindhead" (T quote from 
 Professor Dowden) is visible from the garden. The 
 mountainous outline of Hindhead had not the romantic 
 associations of the Wardlaw Hill or of Smailholme 
 Tower; and Shelley, from childhood upwards, con- 
 structed his romances with no local reference. In 
 place of reading, when a boy, the Border ballads and 
 Ariosto, he rejoiced, like other boys, in the crude 
 inventions of " sixpenny shockers " ; and while, unlike 
 Dickens and Scott, he found Fielding and Smollett 
 "tame," he seems to have rejoiced, like Sir Walter, 
 in the romances of Mrs. Radcliffe. She, who had 
 never been in Italy, may have turned his thoughts, 
 by her description of Italian mountains, in the direction 
 of that land of robbers' castles and of murderous priests. 
 From such books as hers Shelley derived the Italy 
 tenanted by the bold bad hero of his schoolboy romance, 
 Zastrozzi. At Eton, Shelley's one battle was so far 
 Homeric in that his prowess resembled that of Paris 
 in his duel with Menelaus. The placid scenery of Eton 
 only once recognisably inspires his Muse, nor does "the 
 mountainous outline " of Shotover appear in his verse. 
 He left the Oxford landscape to Matthew Arnold : 
 the Thames was associated in his mind with tea, rolls, 
 eggs, and radishes. The British landscape before him 
 was transfigured in his dreams, and English Nature 
 became a mere point de repere, whence he built up 
 
102 POETS' COUNTRY 
 
 visions of stupendous beauty ; alps shivered by lightning 
 and thunder ; " airy battlements that surmount the 
 universe." Shelley's soul was always wandering in 
 lands which his feet never trod. He commenced poet 
 with an epic (mainly unpublished) on " The Wandering 
 Jew," the foregoer of such roamers as his hero in 
 Alastor and his Prince Athanase. Deserts uninhabited, 
 unsailed seas, mountain gorges of unfathomed depth, 
 and the vast and vaporous fields and lakes of air make 
 up Shelley's favourite landscape. Like Euripides he 
 is " a meteoric poet " ; the Nature which charms him 
 most is elemental : snow and fire and empty illimitable 
 sea, not the quiet fields in which are the homes of 
 Englishmen. 
 
 In 1810 The Wandering Jew was offered to 
 Ballantyne and Co., "Co." being Mr. Walter Scott. 
 One or other of the Ballantynes (Professor Dowden 
 says that it was John) replied that, as The Lady of 
 the Lake had been assailed by the Presbyterian 
 ministers for "atheistical doctrines," it was too 
 dangerous to publish The Wandering Jew. That 
 Hebrew can scarcely have been an atheist at least 
 he must have been a very stiff-necked person if he 
 was but probably the poem was hardly orthodox. 
 
 Shelley has left, by a kind of accident, a description 
 of an Oxford landscape : nothing can be less like the 
 gorgeous panoramas of Alastor and The Revolt of 
 Islam. " We suddenly turned the corner of a lane, 
 and the view, which its high banks and hedges had con- 
 
SHELLEY 103 
 
 cealed, presented itself. The view consisted of a wind- 
 mill, standing in one among many plashy meadows, 
 enclosed with stone walls ; the irregular and broken 
 ground between the wall and the road in which we 
 stood ; a long low hill behind the windmill ; and a grey 
 covering of uniform cloud spread over the evening sky. 
 It was that season when the last leaf had just fallen 
 from the scant and stunted ash." Here, in few words, 
 is painted a scene that lives before " the inner eye " : 
 probably the place is somewhere on the river near 
 Godstow. Shelley goes on : " The effect which it pro- 
 duced on me was not such as could have been expected. 
 I suddenly remembered to have seen that exact scene 
 in some dream of long ..." A blank follows, and 
 then the note, " Here I was obliged to leave off, over- 
 come by thrilling horror." 
 
 Writing five years after the event which, to the 
 ordinary mind seems merely rather curious Shelley 
 was unable to complete the record, so extraordinary 
 was the impression made on his imagination by the 
 sense 
 
 " I have been here before, 
 But how or when I cannot tell." 
 
 More than other poets, at least in his early years, 
 Shelley moved "in worlds not realised," worlds of 
 dream and vision. The scenery of Queen Mob is not 
 earthly but cosmic. 
 
 The chariot's way 
 Lay through the midst of an immense concave, 
 
104 POETS' COUNTRY 
 
 Radiant with million constellations, tinged 
 With shades of infinite colour, 
 And semicircled with a belt 
 Flashing incessant meteors. 
 
 We are far enough away here from the scenes that 
 Shelley knew ; "the meadows and the quiet trees"; the 
 windmill, the low hill, the plashy fields, the stunted 
 leafless ash, and the uniform vault of grey. Shelley 
 prefers to inhabit 
 
 Those far clouds of feathery gold 
 Shaded with deepest purple, gleam 
 Like islands on a dark blue sea, 
 
 and to gaze down from " the overhanging battlement " 
 of the fairy's cloud palace on " Palmyra's ruined palaces," 
 and the Pyramids by old Nile, while Queen Mab 
 (never was fairy so didactic!) discourses on the 
 mutability of human existence. Meanwhile, listening 
 
 to Mab, 
 
 The Spirit, 
 
 In ecstasy of admiration, felt 
 All knowledge of the past revived, 
 
 including some hints on the civilisation of prehistoric 
 Greenland. 
 
 We are not sorry when the sermon of the advanced 
 fairy is over, and 
 
 Speechless with bliss the Spirit mounts the car, 
 
 and drives home to lanthe. As Mrs. Shelley says, in 
 Qiieen Mab Shelley "made the whole universe the 
 object and subject of his song." On the other hand, 
 the eastern hemisphere sufficed as the subject of 
 
ETON COLLEGE CHAPEL FROM THE THAMES 
 
 A characteristic reach of the Thames associated with 
 Shelley, who was passionately fond of boating ; though it is 
 not certain that he was a " wet bob " at school. 
 
SHELLEY 105 
 
 Alastor. Shelley had now tasted the joys of a wander- 
 ing existence, travelling with a donkey, like Mr. 
 Stevenson, through France to Switzerland, visiting 
 the source of the Thames, and making a voyage in a 
 wherry from Windsor to Cricklade. " Alastor was 
 composed on his return." Another poet might now 
 have been inspired to treat Nature in the spirit of The 
 Scholar Gipsy. Not so Shelley. He makes his poet 
 " seek strange truths in undiscovered lands," and 
 
 His wandering step 
 Obedient to high thoughts, has visited 
 The awful ruins of the days of old : 
 Athens, and Tyre, arid Balbec, and the waste 
 Where stood Jerusalem, the fallen towers 
 Of Babylon, the eternal pyramids, 
 Memphis and Thebes, and whatsoe'er of strange 
 Sculptured on alabaster obelisk, 
 Of jasper tomb, or mutilated sphinx, 
 Dark Ethiopia in her desert hills 
 Conceals. Among the ruined temples there, 
 Stupendous columns, and wild images 
 Of more than man, where marble daemons watch 
 The Zodiac's brazen mystery, and dead men 
 Hang their mute thoughts on the mute walls around, 
 He lingered, poring on memorials 
 Of the world's youth, through the long burning day 
 Gazed on those speechless shapes, nor, when the moon 
 Filled the mysterious halls with floating shades 
 Suspended he that task, but ever gazed 
 And gazed, till meaning on his vacant mind 
 Flashed like strong inspiration, and he saw 
 The thrilling secrets of the birth of time. 
 
 Starting from Athens, the pilgrim of the poem 
 begins a pedestrian tour to Balbec, Babylon, Memphis, 
 
106 POETS' COUNTRY 
 
 the Soudan, Arabia, Persia, and so through Central 
 Asia and the Oxus to Cachmire, returning by way of 
 Aornos and Balk to "the lone Chorasmian shore," 
 where he is fortunate enough to find a casual boat in 
 
 a wide and melancholy waste 
 Of putrid marshes. 
 
 The boat not being padlocked, he goes on board, and 
 pushes off. 
 
 At midnight 
 
 The moon arose : and lo ! the ethereal cliffs 
 Of Caucasus, whose icy summits shone 
 Among the stars like sunlight, and around 
 Whose caverned base the whirlpools and the waves 
 Bursting and eddying irresistibly 
 Rage and resound for ever. Who shall save ? 
 The boat fled on, the boiling torrent drove, 
 The crags closed round with black and jagged arms, 
 The shattered mountain overhung the sea, 
 And faster still, beyond all human speed, 
 Suspended on the sweep of the smooth wave, 
 The little boat was driven. A cavern there 
 Yawned, and amid its slant and winding depths 
 Ingulphed the rushing sea. The boat fled on 
 With unrelaxing speed. " Vision and Love ! " 
 The poet cried aloud, " I have beheld 
 The path of thy departure. Sleep and death 
 Shall not divide us long." 
 
 The poet finally expires, alone, on the brink of a 
 tremendous chasm. 
 
 Such were, on Shelley's genius, the singular results 
 of a view of the Alps, and a boating tour on the 
 Thames. He was incapable of following the advice of 
 
SHELLEY 107 
 
 Sidney Smith, "Take short views." His powers were 
 still immature ; he had not yet " found himself," but 
 he already was and he remained a cosmic, not an earthly 
 poet. In the Revolt of Islam he sees the world and 
 life in the light of 
 
 A wandering Meteor by some wild wind sent, 
 Hung high in the green dome, to which it lent 
 A faint and pallid lustre. 
 
 It seemed as if Shelley could not come down to 
 earth, except to brand priests and kings with his 
 wrath, to describe the hecatombs of their victims, 
 and to watch 
 
 the sad pageant of man's miseries. 
 
 His pleasure is taken in enchanted boats, floating 
 through the ocean of air ! At Oxford, however, he was 
 not a boating man 
 
 My soul is an enchanted boat, 
 
 Which, like a sleeping swan, doth float 
 Upon the silver waves of thy sweet singing ; 
 
 And thine doth like an angel sit 
 
 Beside a helm conducting it, 
 Whilst all the winds with melody are ringing. 
 
 It seems to float ever, for ever, 
 
 Upon that many-winding river, 
 
 Between mountains, woods, abysses, 
 
 A paradise of wildernesses ! 
 Till, like one in slumber bound, 
 Borne to the ocean, I float down, around, 
 Into a sea profound, of ever-spreading sound 
 
108 POETS' COUNTRY 
 
 Meanwhile thy spirit lifts its pinions 
 In music's most serene dominions ; 
 Catching the winds that fan that happy heaven. 
 And we sail on, away, afar, 
 Without a course, without a star, 
 But, by the instinct of sweet music driven ; 
 Till through Elysian garden islets, 
 By thee, most beautiful of pilots, 
 Where never mortal pinnace glided, 
 The boat of my desire is guided : 
 Realms where the air we breathe is love, 
 Which in the winds and on the waves doth move, 
 Harmonising this earth with what we feel above. 
 
 We have pass'd Age's icy caves, 
 
 And Manhood's dark and tossing waves, 
 And Youth's smooth ocean, smiling to betray : 
 
 Beyond the glassy gulphs we flee 
 
 Of shadow-peopled Infancy, 
 Through Death and Birth, to a diviner day ; 
 
 A paradise of vaulted bowers, 
 
 Lit by downward-gazing flowers, 
 
 And watery paths that wind between 
 
 Wildernesses calm and green, 
 Peopled by shapes too bright to see, 
 And rest, having beheld ; somewhat like thee ; 
 Which walk upon the sea, and chaunt melodiously ! 
 
 " Oh that a chariot of cloud were mine " is always 
 his aspiration. His dwelling is in the cave of "The 
 Witch of Atlas," and it is in her boat that he voyages, 
 high above the less remote of the fixed stars. 
 
 Where, like a meadow which no scythe has shaven, 
 Which rain could never bend or whirl-blast shake, 
 
 With the Antarctic constellations paven, 
 
 Canopus and his crew, lay the Austral lake 
 
SHELLEY 109 
 
 There she would build herself a windless haven 
 Out of the clouds whose moving turrets make 
 The bastions of the storm, when through the sky 
 The spirits of the tempest thundered by. 
 
 A haven beneath whose translucent floor 
 The tremulous stars sparkled unfathomably, 
 
 And around which the solid vapours hoar, 
 Based on the level waters, to the sky 
 
 Lifted their dreadful crags, and like a shore 
 Of wintry mountains, inaccessibly 
 
 Hemmed in with rifts and precipices gray, 
 
 And hanging crags, many a cove and bay. 
 
 Mrs. Shelley frankly confesses that she wished her 
 lord to " adopt subjects that would more suit the popular 
 taste than a poem conceived in the abstract and dreamy 
 spirit of The Witch of Atlas" " His poems ought to be 
 more addressed to the common feelings of men." 
 " But my persuasions were vain, the mind could not be 
 bent from its natural inclination." "As to real flesh 
 and blood," Shelley wrote to Gisborne, " you know that 
 I do not deal in these articles ; you might as well go to 
 a gin-shop for a leg of mutton, as expect anything 
 human or earthly from me." Still his loves, in fact, 
 were human enough, though in verse they were 
 sublimated into faint and fragrant essences not of this 
 world. "I think," Shelley says, "one is always in love 
 with something or other ; the error and I confess it is 
 not easy for spirits in flesh and blood to avoid it- 
 consists in seeking in a mortal image the likeness of 
 what is, perhaps, eternal." The story of Emilia Viviani 
 is entirely human : hardly human is the invitation, in 
 
110 POETS' COUNTRY 
 
 Epipsychidion, to a Paradise earthly indeed, but not 
 to be found on earth. 
 
 Emily, 
 
 A ship is floating in the harbour now, 
 A wind is hovering o'er the mountain's brow. 
 There is a path on the sea's azure floor, 
 No keel has ever ploughed that path before ; 
 The halcyons brood around the foamless isles ; 
 The treacherous Ocean has forsworn its wiles ; 
 The merry mariners are bold and free : 
 Say, my heart's sister, wilt thou sail with me ? 
 Our bark is as an albatross whose nest 
 Is a far Eden of the purple East ; 
 And we between her wings will sit, while Night 
 And Day, and Storm, and Calm, pursue their flight, 
 Our ministers, along the boundless Sea, 
 Treading each other's heels, unheededly. 
 It is an isle under Ionian skies, 
 Beautiful as a wreck of Paradise, 
 And, for the harbours are not safe and good, 
 This land would have remained a solitude 
 But for some pastoral people native there, 
 Who from the Elysian, clear, and golden air 
 Draw the last spirit of the age of gold, 
 Simple and spirited ; innocent and bold. 
 The blue JEgean girds this chosen home, 
 With ever-changing sound and light and foam 
 Kissing the sifted sands and caverns hoar ; 
 And all the winds wandering along the shore 
 Undulate with the undulating tide : 
 There are thick woods where sylvan forms abide ; 
 And many a fountain, rivulet, and pond, 
 As clear as elemental diamond, 
 Or serene morning air ; and far beyond, 
 The mossy tracks made by the goats and deer 
 (Which the rough shepherd treads but once a year), 
 Pierce into glades, caverns, and bowers, and halls 
 Built round with ivy, which the waterfalls 
 
SHELLEY 111 
 
 Illumining, with sound that never fails 
 Accompany the noonday nightingales ; 
 And all the place is peopled with sweet airs ; 
 The light clear element which the isle wears 
 Is heavy with the scent of lemon-flowers, 
 Which floats like mist laden with unseen showers, 
 And falls upon the eyelids like faint sleep ; 
 And from the moss violets and jonquils peep, 
 And dart their arrowy odour through the brain, 
 Till you might faint with that delicious pain. 
 
 Shelley's landscapes are seldom more terrestrial than 
 this enchanted island. Shelley, unlike Wordsworth, 
 scarcely ever writes " with his eye on the object." The 
 Lines written among the Euganean Hills are his closest 
 approach to direct study of landscape. 
 
 Ay, many flowering islands lie 
 
 In the waters of wide Agony : 
 
 To such a one this morn was led, 
 
 My bark by soft winds piloted : 
 
 'Mid the mountains Euganean 
 
 I stood listening to the paean, 
 
 With which the legioned rooks did hail 
 
 The sun's uprise majestical ; 
 
 Gathering round with wings all hoar, 
 
 Through the dewy mist they soar 
 
 Like gray shades, till the eastern heaven 
 
 Bursts, and then, as clouds of even, 
 
 Flecked with fire and azure, lie 
 
 In the unfathomable sky, 
 
 So their plumes of purple grain, 
 
 Starred with drops of golden rain, 
 
 Gleam above the sunlight woods, 
 
 As in silent multitudes 
 
 On the morning's fitful gale 
 
 Thro the broken mist they sail, 
 
112 POETS' COUNTRY 
 
 And the vapours cloven and gleaming 
 Follow down the dark steep streaming, 
 Till all is bright, and clear, and still, 
 Round the solitary hill. 
 
 Beneath is spread like a green sea 
 The waveless plain of Lombardy, 
 Bounded by the vaporous air, 
 Islanded by cities fair ; 
 Underneath day's azure eyes 
 Ocean's nursling, Venice lies, 
 A peopled labyrinth of walls, 
 Amphitrite's destined halls, 
 Which her hoary sire now paves 
 With his blue and beaming waves. 
 Lo ! the sun upsprings behind, 
 
 Broad, red, radiant, half-reclined 
 
 On the level quivering line 
 
 Of the waters crystalline ; 
 
 And before that chasm of light, 
 
 As within a furnace bright, 
 
 Column, tower, and dome, and spire, 
 
 Shine like obelisks of fire, 
 
 Pointing with inconstant motion 
 
 From the altar of dark ocean 
 
 To the sapphire-tinted skies ; 
 
 As the flames of sacrifice 
 
 From the marble shrines did rise, 
 
 As to pierce the dome of gold 
 
 Where Apollo spoke of old. 
 
 Shelley's last home, if this wandering spirit could be 
 said to have a home, was the Villa Magni on the bay of 
 Lerici ; behind lie the Carrara hills. " Went ashore to 
 see some fishermen drag their nets," writes Williams, 
 when he and Shelley visited the place in search of a 
 house. I, too, remember seeing the fishers drag their 
 
BISHAM ABBEY 
 
 Bisham Abbey, near Great Marlow, where Shelley lived 
 when he wrote the Revolt of Islam, in his boat Mrs. Shelley 
 states, while it floated under the beech groves of Bisham. 
 

SHELLEY 113 
 
 nets, and rejoice in the capture of a few small fish, on 
 the shingle under the Villa Magni : in stormy weather the 
 waves break against the terrace of the gaunt, melancholy 
 dwelling. Beside the bay Shelley wrote the lines which 
 follow ; they are rather concerned with his own emotions 
 when " she left me " (" she " was perhaps Jane Williams) 
 than with the watery plain under his eyes. But he notes 
 one local detail : like Quintus Smyrnaeus, so long ago, 
 he saw the fisher's lamp, luring fish to be speared. 
 
 She left me at the silent time 
 
 When the moon had ceased to climb 
 
 The azure path of Heaven's steep, 
 
 And like an albatross asleep, 
 
 Balanced on her wings of light, 
 
 Hovered in the purple night, 
 
 Ere she sought her ocean nest 
 
 In the chambers of the West. 
 
 She left me, and I stayed alone 
 
 Thinking over every tone 
 
 Which, though silent to the ear, 
 
 The enchanted heart could hear, 
 
 Like notes which die when born, but still 
 
 Haunt the echoes of the hill ; 
 
 And feeling ever oh, too much ! 
 
 The soft vibration of her touch, 
 
 As if her gentle hand even now, 
 
 Lightly trembled on my brow ; 
 
 And thus, although she absent were, 
 
 Memory gave me all of her 
 
 That even Fancy dares to claim : 
 
 Her presence had made weak and tame 
 
 All passions, and I lived alone 
 
 In the time which is our own ; 
 
 The past and future were forgot, 
 
 As they had been, and would be, not. 
 
114 POETS' COUNTRY 
 
 But soon, the guardian angel gone, 
 
 The daemon reassumed his throne 
 
 In my faint heart. I dare not speak 
 
 My thoughts, but thus disturbed and weak 
 
 I sat and saw the vessels glide 
 
 Over the ocean bright and wide, 
 
 Like spirit-winged chariots sent 
 
 O'er some serenest element 
 
 For ministrations strange and far ; 
 
 As if to some Elysian star 
 
 Sailed for drink to medicine 
 
 Such sweet and bitter pain as mine. 
 
 And the wind that winged their flight 
 
 From the land came fresh and light, 
 
 And the scent of winged flowers, 
 
 And the coolness of the hours 
 
 Of dew, and sweet warmth left by day, 
 
 Were scattered o'er the twinkling bay. 
 
 And the fisher with his lamp 
 
 And spear, about the low rocks damp 
 
 Crept, and struck the fish which came 
 
 To worship the delusive flame. 
 
 Too happy they, whose pleasure sought 
 
 Extinguishes all senses and thought 
 
 Of the regret that pleasure leaves, 
 
 Destroying life alone, not peace ! 
 
 Shelley's genius was ever seeking to lose itself in the 
 cosmos, as the Neo-Platonists strove to lose themselves 
 in God. Almost his last lines appear to prophesy his own 
 fate : 
 
 The breath whose might I have invoked in song 
 Descends on me ; my spirit's bark is driven 
 
 Far from the shore, far from the trembling throng 
 Whose sails were never to the tempest given ; 
 The massy earth and sphered skies are riven ! 
 
 I am borne darkly, fearfully, afar ! 
 
SHELLEY 115 
 
 Whilst, burning through the inmost veil of heaven, 
 The soul of Adonais, like a star, 
 Beacons from the abode where the Eternal are. 
 
 He was "lost in the light and the night of the sea." 
 
 Visiting Villa Magna, long ago, I went into the dark 
 wood on the cliff to the left hand of the house. The 
 day was still and grey ; there came a rustling in the 
 tree- tops, and a great sea-bird flew forth, like the spirit 
 of Shelley, to the sea. Not in houses built by man, not 
 among " the labours of men and oxen," not in any human 
 affection, not in any system of faith or of denial, could 
 the homeless heart of Shelley find repose. His " dwell- 
 ing is the light of setting suns," it is of himself that he 
 seems to speak in his lament for Keats. 
 
 He is made one with Nature : there is heard 
 
 His voice in all her music, from the moan 
 Of thunder to the song of night's sweet bird ; 
 
 He is a presence to be felt and known 
 
 In darkness and in light, from herb and stone, 
 Spreading itself where'er that Power may move 
 
 Which has withdrawn his being to its own ; 
 Which wields the world with never-wearied love, 
 Sustains it from beneath, and kindles it above. 
 
 He is a portion of the loveliness 
 
 Which once he made more lovely : he doth bear 
 His part, while the One Spirit's plastic stress 
 
 Sweeps through the dull dense world, compelling there 
 
 All new successions to the forms they wear ; 
 Torturing the unwilling dross that checks its flight 
 
 To its own likeness, as each mass may bear ; 
 And bursting in its beauty and its might 
 From trees and beasts and men into the heaven's light. 
 
MILTON 
 
 WHAT blindness must have meant to Milton can only 
 be fully understood by those who have followed closely 
 the Nature-pictures painted by him before he lost his 
 sight and compared them with their originals. We 
 have only to go to the scenes represented by them, 
 and which suggested and inspired them, to see that at 
 one time at least Nature must have been to him what 
 it was to Dante and Tennyson, that " felt in the heart 
 and felt along the blood," he studied it with minute 
 and loving accuracy. To him, as to the Ancients and 
 to Shakespeare, its phenomena were always, no doubt, 
 of subordinate interest and importance to man and 
 human life, and from the very first the world of books 
 was with him as near and intimate as the world of 
 Nature. As life advanced, the more potent influences 
 gradually intensifying seem so much to have prevailed 
 that the natural images impressed on his mind as he 
 wandered among the scenes of his youth appear to 
 have become almost obliterated. No one can read 
 Paradise Lost without being struck by the clairvoyant 
 
 116 
 
CHALFONT ST. GILES, BUCKS 
 
 An English pastoral scene ; shows Milton's cottage, to 
 which he retired during the Great Plague of London. He 
 had at that time written Paradise Lost, and it is said, by his 
 secretary Elwood the Quaker, he here wrote Paradise 
 Regained. 
 
MILTON 117 
 
 power with which his memory recalls and recalls with 
 the minutest particularity all that the vast range of 
 his early reading had imprinted on it. Out of every 
 nook and corner of ancient and modern literature the 
 veriest trifles spring to its summons. In antiquities 
 and topography not a detail, however recondite or 
 minute, seems to escape it. We have only to turn to 
 the description of the heathen deities and their habitats 
 in the First Book of Paradise Lost, to the map of the 
 world in the Eleventh Book, to the pictures of the 
 Eastern world, of ancient Rome and of the Roman 
 dominions, and of ancient Athens, in the Third and 
 Fourth Books of Paradise Regained for illustrations. 
 But in his descriptions of Nature all this particularity 
 disappears. Most of the Eden scenes are rather com- 
 piled reminiscences of the Greek, Roman, and Italian 
 poets than pictures recalled from what he had seen. 
 All that seems to have remained to him of early experi- 
 ences is the general impression made by them : in no 
 touch is there any indication that the eye of memory, 
 so to speak, was on the object recalled. Take the fol- 
 lowing : 
 
 Now came still Evening on, and Twilight gray 
 Had in her sober livery all things clad : 
 Silence accompanied ; for beast and bird, 
 They to their grassy couch, these to their nests 
 Were slunk, all but the wakeful nightingale, 
 She all night long her amorous descant sung : 
 Silence was pleased : now glowed the firmament 
 With living sapphires : Hesperus, that led 
 The starry host, rode brightest, till the moon 
 
118 POETS' COUNTRY 
 
 Rising in clouded majesty, at length 
 Apparent queen, unveiled her peerless light 
 And o'er the dark her silver mantle threw. 
 
 Par. Lost, Book IV. 
 
 exquisite, and very far indeed from falsetto, but 
 epideictic and informed rather by imagination than by 
 memory. In the following the last touch no doubt 
 recorded what he had both felt and witnessed : 
 
 As, when from mountain-tops the dusky clouds 
 Ascending, while the North-wind sleeps, o'erspread 
 Heaven's cheerful face, the louring element 
 Scowls o'er the darkened landskip snow or shower, 
 If chance the radiant sun, with farewell sweet, 
 Extend his evening beam, the fields revive, 
 The birds their notes renew, and bleating herds 
 Attest their joy, that hill and valley rings. 
 
 Idem, Book II. 
 
 One passage there is in Paradise Lost in which he 
 did no doubt draw directly from early associations and 
 from what they recalled, and in which his love for the 
 country scenes familiar to him in his youth finds 
 enthusiastic expression : 
 
 As one who, long in populous city pent, 
 
 Where houses thick and sewers annoy the air, 
 
 Forth issuing on a summer's morn, to breathe 
 
 Among the pleasant villages and farms 
 
 Adjoined, from each thing met conceives delight 
 
 The smell of grain or tedded grass, or kine 
 
 Or dairy, each rural sight, each rural sound. 
 
 Idem, Book IX. 
 
 Perhaps it is not fanciful to suppose that the 
 following passage, which in precision of detail stands 
 
MILTON 119 
 
 alone in his great Epic, was a reminiscence of what 
 met his view in his wanderings in the neighbourhood 
 of Horton or of Forest Hill; certainly it finds in its 
 chief features its counterpart in Cooper's Hill as it is 
 seen on the Datchet road, or at Forest Hill, where it 
 looks towards Shotover : 
 
 A rural mound, the champaign head 
 Of a steep wilderness, whose hairy sides 
 With thicket overgrown, grotesque and wild, 
 Access denied : and overhead upgrew 
 Insuperable height of loftiest shade, 
 Cedar, and pine, and fir, and branching palm, 
 A sylvan scene, and, as the ranks ascend, 
 Shade above shade, a woody theatre 
 Of stateliest view. Par ^ Book Iy 
 
 But to come to the scenery which was undoubtedly 
 painted by him in L' Allegro and 77 Penseroso, in 
 Comus and in Arcades, and which inspired much of 
 these poems. 
 
 In Lord Teignmouth's Life of Sir William Jones 
 there is a very interesting letter written by him in 
 September 1769 to Lady Spencer, in which, after 
 quoting a passage from II Penseroso which will be 
 given directly, he tells her how he had identified the 
 description with what he saw at Forest Hill, near 
 Oxford, where it will be remembered Milton's first wife 
 lived, and where he married her. 
 
 It was neither the proper season of the year nor the time of 
 day to hear all the rural sounds and see all the objects mentioned, 
 but by a pleasing concurrence of circumstances we were saluted 
 on our approach to the village with the music of the mower and 
 
120 POETS' COUNTRY 
 
 his scythe : we saw the ploughman intent upon his labour and the 
 milkmaid returning from her cows. As we ascended the hill the 
 variety of beautiful objects, the agreeable stillness, and the natural 
 simplicity of the whole scene gave us the highest pleasure. We 
 at length reached the spot whence Milton undoubtedly took most 
 of his images. It is on the top of the hill from which there is a 
 most extensive prospect on all sides : the distant hills which seem 
 to support the clouds, the villages and turrets, partly shaded with 
 trees of the finest verdure and partly raised above the groves that 
 surround them ; the dark plains and meadows of a greyish colour, 
 where the sheep were feeding at large ; in short, the view of the 
 stream and rivers convinced us that there was not a single useless 
 or idle word in the above-mentioned description, but that it was 
 a most exact and lively representation of Nature. ... It must 
 not be omitted that the groves near the village are famous for 
 nightingales. Most of the cottage windows are overgrown with 
 sweet-briars and honeysuckles. 
 
 If we suppose, as it generally is supposed, that 
 Milton's intimate acquaintance with Forest Hill did 
 not begin till his visit there in the spring of 1643, 
 when he married Mary Powell, while L? Allegro, 
 II Penseroso, Comus, and Arcades were almost certainly 
 written between 1632 and 1635, when he was at Horton 
 in Buckinghamshire, we must naturally conclude that 
 Sir William Jones was mistaken in identifying the 
 scenery of this place with that described in the poems. 
 And yet he may be right, after all. We know from 
 legal documents that there had been business relations 
 between Milton's father and the Powells as early as 
 1627, when Milton was in the third year of his residence 
 at Cambridge. It is quite possible that he visited the 
 Powells more than once during the vacations, and that 
 
MILTON'S COTTAGE AND GARDEN, 
 CHALFONT ST. GILES 
 
 A fine specimen, in excellent preservation, of the cottage 
 of his period. Professor Masson states that Milton always 
 lived in a garden-house surrounded hy flowers, even during 
 his blindness. 
 
 O dark, dark, dark, amid the blaze of noon ! 
 
 S/nnson Agonistes. 
 
MILTON 121 
 
 his marriage with Mary Powell was not a sudden 
 arrangement, but was the result of an attachment 
 formed in her childhood and confirmed by frequent 
 visits to her home. What, therefore, does directly 
 recall Forest Hill and its neighbourhood in these poems 
 may have been, as Sir William Jones conjectured, 
 actually suggested by them. On this point, however, 
 it is impossible to speak with any confidence, for there 
 is little if anything to differentiate the characteristic 
 features of Forest Hill from the characteristic features 
 of Horton except the presence of uplands and hills. 
 
 The hamlet at which Milton resided after leaving 
 Cambridge, and where he passed nearly six of the most 
 critical, and certainly the happiest, years of his life, is 
 about four miles from Eton. It lies between Colnbrook 
 on the north, Wraysbury on the south, Middlesex on 
 the east, and that part of Stoke Pogis which looks 
 toward Datchet and Windsor on the west. As you 
 enter the hamlet from the Datchet road, the first object 
 which strikes you is a noble elm, standing solitary on 
 what in Milton's time was the village green, but which 
 is now the centre of a space where three roads meet. 
 On the right, as you proceed up the straggling, thinly- 
 populated village, you pass Horton Cottage, which 
 abuts on the road, and Horton Manor with its well- 
 wooded park standing back some way from the road. 
 A few yards farther on you come to the churchyard, 
 which is surrounded on all sides by stately elm trees 
 picturesquely variegated by pines and other trees, 
 
122 POETS' COUNTRY 
 
 conspicuous amongst which is a fir tree thickly mantled 
 with ivy. As you enter the churchyard, you see on 
 the left two ancient yew trees long preceding Milton's 
 time, objects on which his eyes must often have rested. 
 A straight path takes you into the church, which has a 
 square tower with walls chequered with flints, and 
 brickwork once picturesquely covered with ivy but now 
 bare and bald. Within the main porch there is a fine 
 old Norman arch, within the church a nave with two 
 aisles and a chancel, between them short circular 
 columns supporting arches. Filling the exact centre of 
 the chancel and directly fronting the Communion Table 
 is a plain, blue, flat stone inscribed with the words : 
 
 Here lyeth the Body of Sara 
 Milton the wife of John Milton 
 who died the 3rd of April 1637. 
 
 This marks the resting-place of the poet's mother. 
 Leaving the church and continuing our way through 
 the village, we pass on the left Berkyn Manor, a 
 glaringly modern house standing surrounded by trees 
 and about two hundred yards from the road. On the 
 site now occupied by its vestibule and front portion 
 stood Milton's house, of which not so much as a stone 
 remains. It is in passing over the bridge which spans 
 two branches of the river Coin, about five hundred yards 
 beyond Berkyn Manor, in the view from the garden of 
 the parsonage at the other end of the village, in the 
 view on the road to Colnbrook, and in the general 
 features of the place and its surroundings, particularly 
 
MILTON 123 
 
 in its wealth of woodland and pasturage and its 
 association with rustic and agricultural pursuits, that 
 we realise how faithfully its features are portrayed by 
 Milton. In one of the Prolusiones Oratoriae, Academic 
 exercises written by him when at Cambridge, he has re- 
 corded his delight in such scenes, the passage unmistak- 
 ably referring to a summer vacation spent at Horton. 
 
 And I myself call to witness the groves and rivers and beloved 
 village elms under which I joyfully remember that during the last 
 past summer I had the utmost delight with the Muses : where 
 methinks among rural scenes and remote glades I could have 
 silently grown up and vegetated. 
 
 The scene along the road to Colnbrook, with its 
 flat landscape of pasture and ploughland intersected by 
 runnels of water, and the scene from the parsonage 
 garden with Windsor in the distance, are evidently the 
 inspiration of these lines : 
 
 Sometime walking, not unseen, 
 By hedgerow elms, on hillocks green, 
 Right against the eastern gate 
 Where the great Sun begins his state, 
 Rob'd in flames and amber light, 
 The clouds in thousand liveries dight ; 
 While the ploughman, near at hand 
 Whistles o'er the furrowed land, 
 And the milkmaid singeth blythe, 
 And the mower whets his scythe, 
 
 Straight mine eye hath caught now pleasures, 
 While the landscape round it measures : 
 Russet lawns and fallows gray, 
 Where the nibbling flocks do stray ; 
 
124 POETS' COUNTRY 
 
 Meadows trim, with daisies pied, 
 Shallow brooks and rivers wide ; 
 Towers and battlements it sees 
 Bosomed high in tufted trees. 
 
 While the preceding lines 
 
 Oft listening how the hounds and horn 
 Cheerly rouse the slumbering Morn, 
 From the side of some hoar hill, 
 Through the high wood echoing shrill, 
 
 recall a scene with which every one in Horton is familiar 
 even now, when the royal huntsmen in Windsor Park 
 are out. Neither at Horton nor at Forest Hill had he 
 to go far to find 
 
 Arched walks of twilight groves 
 
 And shadows brown, that Sylvan loves, 
 
 Of pine, or monumental oak, 
 
 Where the rude axe, with heaved stroke, 
 
 Was never heard the nymphs to daunt, 
 
 Or fright them from their hallowed haunt. 
 
 At neither place was there, it is true, either 
 
 A wide-watered shore 
 Swinging slow with sullen roar ; 
 
 or, 
 
 Mountains, on whose barren breast 
 The labouring clouds do often rest. 
 
 Other familiar features at Horton would be 
 
 The folded flocks, penned in their wattled cotes . . . 
 Or whistle from the lodge, or village cock 
 Count the night-watches to his feathery dames ; 
 
 There, too, are to-day 
 
 The rushy-fringed bank 
 Where grows the willow and the ozier dank ; 
 
MILTON 125 
 
 The valleys low, where the mild whispers use 
 
 Of shades, and wanton winds, and gushing brooks ; 
 
 and 
 
 The shady roof 
 Of branching elm star-proof; 
 
 but above all the nightingale. Horton is one of its 
 favourite haunts, and no doubt the following is, like the 
 exquisite sonnet to the Nightingale, but the record of a 
 frequent experience during his residence there : 
 
 Sweet bird, that shunnest the noise of folly, 
 Most musical, most melancholy ! 
 Thee, chantress, oft, the woods among, 
 I woo, to hear thy even-song ; 
 And, missing thee, I walk unseen 
 On the dry, smooth-shaven green, 
 To behold the wandering Moon, 
 Riding near her highest noon, 
 Like one that had been led astray 
 Through the heaven's wide pathless way, 
 And oft, as if her head she bowed, 
 Stooping through a fleecy cloud. 
 
 The scene of this was, in all probability, Horton 
 Park, just as that of the Sonnet was, we cannot but 
 feel certain, his father's garden. From the windows of 
 that house almost certainly festooned with 
 
 The sweet-briar and the vine, 
 Or the twisted eglantine, 
 
 he could 
 
 Hear the lark begin his flight, 
 And, singing, startle the dull night, 
 From his watch-tower in the skies, 
 Till the dappled dawn doth rise ; 
 
126 POETS' COUNTRY 
 
 while a few paces off 
 
 The cock, with lively din, 
 Scatters the rear of darkness thin ; 
 And to the stack, on the barn door, 
 Stoutly struts his dame before. 
 
 Nor, later in the day, would he have far to go for the 
 
 original of 
 
 Hard by, a cottage chimney smokes, 
 
 From betwixt two aged oaks, 
 
 Where Corydon and Thyrsis, met, 
 
 Are at their savoury dinner set 
 
 Of herbs, and other country messes, 
 
 Which the neat-handed Phyllis dresses; 
 
 And then in haste her bower she leaves, 
 
 With Thestylis to bind the sheaves ; 
 
 Or, if the earlier season lead, 
 
 To the tanned haycock in the mead. 
 
 Certainly if not at Horton, at Forest Hill he might 
 often have seen the original of 
 
 Sometimes, with secure delight, 
 The upland hamlets will invite, 
 When the merry bells ring round, 
 And the jocund rebecks sound 
 To many a youth and many a maid 
 Dancing in the checkered shade. 
 
 No better commentary indeed on L? Allegro and on 
 // Penseroso could possibly be found than would be 
 afforded by a ramble about Horton and Forest Hill, for 
 the scenery most characteristic of both places, with 
 touches, no doubt, of other rural haunts beloved in 
 early days by the young Milton, simply penetrates 
 these poems. 
 
INTERIOR OF MILTON'S COTTAGE 
 
 I understand this room and fireplace are in the same 
 condition as when used by the poet. He is introduced as 
 if dictating Paradise Regained. -p. S. W. 
 

 
SIR JOHN DENHAM & "COOPER'S HILL" 
 
 SOME two years before Milton gave L? Allegro, II 
 Penseroso, Lyddas, Arcades, and Comus to the world, 
 appeared a poem the merits of which were extra- 
 ordinarily overrated by the poets and critics of the 
 seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, but which is 
 certainly of some historical importance. We smile now 
 at Pope's " Majestic Denham " ; at such a eulogy as 
 
 On Cooper's Hill eternal wreaths shall grow, 
 
 While lasts the mountain or while Thames shall flow ; 
 
 at such a compliment as is implied in what Sheffield 
 says of a poem, " 'Tis not an Iliad or a Coopers Hill " ; 
 or in what Swift says : 
 
 This hill may keep the name of Drapier, 
 
 In spite of envy flourish still, 
 
 And Drapier's vie with Cooper's Hill ; 
 
 and at Johnson's absurd exaltation of him into " one of 
 the fathers of our poetry." The reason for this estimate 
 of him and for the celebrity of his poem is no doubt 
 correctly explained by Johnson. " He seems to have 
 
 127 
 
128 POETS' COUNTRY 
 
 been, at least among us, the author of a species of 
 composition that may be denominated local poetry, of 
 which the fundamental subject is some particular 
 landscape, to be poetically described, with the addition 
 of such embellishments as may be supplied by historical 
 retrospection or incidental meditation." And certainly 
 Denham became the founder of a long dynasty of poets, 
 who with various modifications took his experiment for 
 their pattern such would be Garth's Clare?nont, 
 Tickell's Oxford, and Pope's Windsor Forest, in which, 
 as in Denham's case, description is made predominant 
 to the " embellishments " referred to by Johnson. In- 
 deed, Garth's Claremont, like Tickell's Kensington 
 Garden, is rather an Ovidian phantasy than a descriptive 
 poem. Otway's Winsdor Castle is little more than a 
 panegyric on Charles II. and James II. In Dyer's 
 Grongar Hill, John Scott's Am,well, Jago's Edgehitt, 
 Charlotte Smith's Beachy Head, Langhorne's Studley 
 Park, and Crowe's Lewesdon Hill a poem much ad- 
 mired by Wordsworth pure description predominates. 
 
 Denham's other claims to notice do not concern us, 
 and we must confine ourselves to Coopers Hill. It 
 was published at Oxford on the eve of the great Civil 
 War, in 1643, just after Denham, who was a staunch 
 Royalist, had resigned the governorship of Farnham 
 Castle and had retreated to Oxford. 
 
 To understand the poem we should make our way 
 to the exact site, or as near as possible to the exact site, 
 on which Denham must have stood as he contemplated 
 
THE THAMES AND ETON FROM THE TERRACE, 
 WINDSOR CASTLE 
 
 Though deep, yet clear, though gentle, yet not dull, 
 Strong, without rage ; without o'erflowing full, 
 
 (DENHAM) 
 
 perhaps best describes the river ; but other views than that 
 of Cooper's Hill give a finer idea of it pictorially, as well 
 as its surroundings ; also the pictures of the river at 
 Richmond, Eton, and Bisham bear on his lines. 
 
SIR JOHN DENHAM 129 
 
 the scene described by him. This is not difficult. If 
 we pass through the town of Egham and, ascending the 
 hill for a few hundred yards, take the first turning to 
 the right, we make our way to an elevated plateau. 
 Following the right - hand path and descending a 
 green lane, we find ourselves at what is locally 
 known as the "Look-Out" at the back of Kingswood 
 House. Thence we have a glorious view of the whole 
 valley of the Thames, the vast landscape expanding 
 before our eyes, more thickly wooded, probably, than 
 in Denham's time, but otherwise unchanged. Far 
 away to the left a towering sombre mass, bulking out 
 from green foliage, is Windsor Castle ; in front the land- 
 scape stretches level right away to the horizon a 
 variegated panorama of scattered clumps of trees, sunlit 
 meadows, and cornfields, with the Thames winding, a 
 silver thread, through the rich tilth and boskage. Below 
 in front of you, stretching along left and right, is 
 Runnymede, and farther to the left Magna Charta 
 Island. Not far from Magna Charta Island, on the 
 Bucks side of the river, are some old and interesting 
 ruins portions of a wall with windows in it nearly 
 hidden by masses of ivy all that now remains of 
 Ankerwyke Priory. This was a small nunnery of 
 the order of St. Benedict, dedicated to St. Mary 
 Magdalen and founded about the time of Henry II. 
 by Sir Gilbert de Montfichet and his son Richard. 
 After the dissolution of the Monasteries the house and 
 
 site of the Priory were, in 1540, granted by Henry 
 
 K 
 
130 POETS' COUNTRY 
 
 VIII. to Andrew Lord Windsor, and a mansion was 
 built there either by him or by Sir Thomas Smith, to 
 whom the estate came in 1556, after reverting to the 
 Crown. This, in 1805, was demolished, and the present 
 Ankerwyke House was built. Thus one of the features 
 in Denham's landscape disappeared. It may be noticed, 
 in passing, that in the grounds of Ankerwyke is a noble 
 old yew tree, under which so local tradition goes 
 Henry VIII. used secretly to meet Anne Boleyn, 
 before he married her. 
 
 Denham begins his poem with what he allows to be 
 a flight of fancy, namely, the view of London and of 
 St. Paul's, which, if discernible, could only be dis- 
 cernible in the way he describes : 
 
 Through untrac'd ways and airy paths I fly, 
 More boundless in my fancy than my eye 
 My eye which, swift as thought, contracts the space 
 That lies between, and first salutes the place 
 Crown'd with that sacred pile, so vast, so high, 
 That, whether 'tis a part of earth or sky, 
 Uncertain seems, and may be thought a proud 
 Aspiring mountain, or descending cloud. 
 
 Then, with a compliment to Charles I. and Henrietta 
 Maria, he turns to Windsor : 
 
 Windsor the next (where Mars with Venus dwells, 
 Beauty with strength) above the valley swells 
 Into my eye, and doth itself present 
 With such an easy and unforced ascent, 
 That no stupendous precipice denies 
 Access, no horror turns away our eyes. 
 
 He then goes on to deal with the historical associations 
 
SIR JOHN DENHAM 131 
 
 of the place, resuming his description with Ankerwyke 
 Priory : 
 
 But my fix'd thoughts my wandering eye betrays, 
 Viewing a neighbouring hill, whose top of late 
 A chapel crown'd, till in the common fate 
 The adjoining abbey fell. 
 
 Again he digresses into reflections on the sacrilege 
 involved in the destruction of the religious houses, re- 
 covering not ungracefully the thread of description : 
 
 Parting from thence 'twixt anger, shame, and fear, 
 These for what's past and this for what's too near, 
 My eye, descending from the hill, surveys 
 Where Thames among the wanton vallies strays : 
 Thames, the most lov'd of all the Ocean's sons 
 By his old sire, to his embraces runs ; 
 Hasting to pay his tribute to the sea, 
 Like mortal life to meet Eternity. 
 
 Other reflections on the river follow, and then, 
 inserted in the second edition of the poem, comes the 
 justly famous apostrophe and aspiration : 
 
 O, could I flow like thee, and make thy stream 
 My great example, as it is my theme ! 
 Though deep, yet clear ; though gentle, yet not dull ; 
 Strong without rage, without o'erflowing, full. 
 
 He then goes on to describe and comment on the 
 curious contrasted features of the scene the shaggy 
 tree-thronged hill, the calm water flowing at its foot, 
 and Runnymede, and how Nature harmonises all : 
 
 Wisely she knew the harmony of things, 
 As well as that of sounds, from discord springs. 
 Such was the discord, which did first disperse 
 Form, order, beauty through the universe ; 
 
132 POETS' COUNTRY 
 
 While dryness moisture, coldness heat resists, 
 All that we have, and what we are, subsists ; 
 While the steep, horrid roughness of the wood 
 Strives with the gentle calmness of the flood, 
 Such huge extremes when Nature doth unite, 
 Wonder from thence results, from thence delight. 
 The stream is so transparent, pure, and clear, 
 That had the self-enamoured youth gaz'd here, 
 So fatally deceived he had not been, 
 While he the bottom, not his face had seen. 
 But his proud head the aiiy mountain hides 
 Among the clouds ; his shoulders and his sides 
 A shady mantle clothes ; his curled brows 
 Frown on the gentle stream, which calmly flows, 
 While winds and storms his lofty forehead beat : 
 The common fate of all that's high or great. 
 Low at his feet a spacious plain is plac'd, 
 Between the mountain and the stream embrac'd, 
 Which shade and shelter from the hill derives, 
 While the kind river wealth and beauty gives. 
 
 Then follows a very animated description of a stag- 
 hunt at the foot of the hill in Runnymede. The great 
 transaction of which this meadow was the scene is next 
 referred to, and with some reflections very pertinent to 
 the critical time at which the poem was composed, it 
 concludes. 
 
 Nothing could illustrate more strikingly the treat- 
 ment of Nature by the poets of the Critical school, soon 
 to culminate in Dryden and Pope, than this poem with 
 its thin perception of the picturesque, its insensibility 
 to colour and charm, its absence of enthusiasm, its 
 complete subordination of the beauties of Nature to 
 ethical and political reflection. 
 
WALLER, COWLEY, AND DRYDEN 
 
 WE must go forward to Dry den to find a poet so 
 utterly indifferent to Nature and Nature's works as 
 Waller. There is scarcely a natural image, except of 
 the most commonplace character, to be found in his 
 poetry. Though he has twice celebrated Penshurst, he 
 says not a word about its scenery beyond the ridiculous 
 remark that the trees, when Dorothea sits down, crowd 
 bowing in a circle round her. There is a touch of 
 sentiment in his 
 
 Fade, flowers ! fade. Nature will have it so ; 
 'Tis but what we must in our autumn do ! 
 And as your leaves lie quiet on the ground, 
 The loss alone by those who lov'd them found ; 
 So in the grave shall we as quiet lie. 
 
 But this, commonplace as it is, is paraphrased from the 
 French. His only descriptive poem is St. James's Park, 
 which, like Ben Jonson's Penshurst and Marvell's Bil- 
 borow and Appleton House, Dr. Johnson seems to have 
 forgotten when he attributed to Denham the intro- 
 duction of the "local poem" into English literature. 
 
 133 
 
134 POETS' COUNTRY 
 
 The whole poem is as artificial as the scene it describes, 
 and Waller characteristically avoids dwelling on natural 
 objects, what he says about them being practically 
 confined to the 
 
 Young trees upon the banks 
 Of the new stream appear in even ranks ; 
 
 to the fact that it is 
 
 With a border of rich fruit-trees crown' d, 
 Whose loaded branches hide the lofty mound ; 
 
 and to the 
 
 Living gallery of aged trees ; 
 
 Bold sons of earth, that thrust their arms so high, 
 As if once more they would invade the sky. 
 
 Perhaps his instincts as a sportsman led him to the 
 only vivid natural touch in the whole poem, the startled 
 flight of some wild-fowl : 
 
 Overhead a flock of new-sprung fowl 
 Hangs in the air, and does the sun control, 
 Dark'ning the sky ; they hover o'er, and shroud 
 The wanton sailors with a feather'd cloud. 
 
 What applies to Waller most certainly does not 
 apply to his younger contemporary. A prominent 
 place among English poets who have felt the power 
 and charm of Nature must certainly be assigned to 
 Cowley. This, indeed, is no more than might be 
 expected from the author of those delightful prose 
 essays on Solitude, Agriculture, and The Garden. In 
 his Elegy on the death of his Cambridge friend, William 
 
WALLER, COWLEY, AND DRYDEN 135 
 
 Hervey, we have something approaching to the note of 
 Matthew Arnold's Thyrsis anticipated by more than two 
 centuries : 
 
 Ye fields of Cambridge, our dear Cambridge, say, 
 Have ye not seen us walking every day ? 
 Was there a tree about which did not know 
 
 The love betwixt us two ? 
 Henceforth, ye gentle trees, for ever fade, 
 
 Or your sad branches darker join, 
 
 And into darksome shades combine, 
 Dark as the grave wherein my friend is laid ! 
 
 No tuneful birds play with their wonted cheer, 
 
 And call the learned youth to hear ; 
 
 No whistling winds through the glad branches fly : 
 
 But all, with sad solemnity 
 
 Mute and unmoved be, 
 Mute as the grave wherein my friend does lie. 
 
 His Liber Plantarum, which being in Latin does 
 not concern us, shows with what minute attention he 
 had studied flowers, and how he delighted in the 
 retreats where they were to be found. The greater 
 part of his poetry treats of themes into which 
 natural description could not very well enter, and like 
 all poets whose taste had been formed on the Latin 
 classics, he did not intrude such descriptions. But 
 in the second of his Odes he gives the rein to his 
 enthusiasm : 
 
 Give me a river which doth scorn to show 
 An added beauty ; whose clear brow 
 May be my looking-glass to see 
 
 What my face is, and what my mind should be ! 
 
136 POETS' COUNTRY 
 
 Here waves call waves, and glide along in rank 
 \nd prattle to the smiling bank. 
 
 Daisies, the first-born of the teeming spring, 
 On each side their embroidery bring ; 
 Here lilies wash, and grow more white, 
 
 And daffodils, to see themselves, delight. 
 
 Thus I would waste, thus end, my careless days ; 
 
 And robin redbreasts, whom men praise 
 
 For pious birds, should, when I die, 
 Make both my monument and elegy. 
 
 A staunch Royalist, he knew little rest for many 
 years, having no leisure either for study or poetry. 
 He served his party well, but was poorly rewarded, 
 and, soured and disappointed, buried himself in retire- 
 ment, first at Barn Elms and then at Chertsey. Here 
 he wrote his essays, and the poems and translations in 
 which his love for Nature and for communion with it is 
 most eloquently displayed. He translated, or, to speak 
 more correctly, paraphrased sympathetically portions of 
 the poems in which Virgil, Horace, and Martial have 
 sung the praises of country life. But nothing he 
 paraphrased exceeds in charm his own expression of 
 what Nature was to him. The garden and grounds 
 of his house, which were on the level of the meadows 
 which lay in the midst of a picturesque, thickly-wooded 
 district, may still be traced, and we may feel pretty 
 sure that it was in this delightful retreat, and with 
 reference to its features, that he wrote : 
 
WALLER, COWLEY, AND DRYDEN 137 
 
 Hail, old patrician trees, so great and good ! 
 
 Hail, ye plebeian underwood ! 
 
 Where the poetic birds rejoice, 
 And for their quiet nests and plenteous food 
 
 Pay with their grateful voice. 
 
 Hail, the poor Muses' richest manor-seat ! 
 
 Ye country-houses, and retreat, 
 
 Which all the happy gods so love, 
 That for you oft they quit their bright and great 
 Metropolis above. 
 
 Here Nature does a house for me erect, 
 
 Nature, the wisest architect, 
 
 Who those fond artists does despise 
 That can the fair and living trees neglect, 
 
 Yet the dead timber prize. 
 
 Here let me, careless arid unthoughtful lying, 
 Hear the soft winds above me flying, 
 With all their wanton boughs dispute, 
 
 And the more tuneful birds to both replying, 
 Nor be myself, too, mute. 
 
 A silver stream shall roll his waters near, 
 
 Gilt with the sunbeams here and there : 
 On whose enamell'd bank I'll walk, 
 
 And see how prettily they smile, and hear 
 How prettily they talk. 
 
 We can quite understand what Pope meant when 
 he wrote of Cowley 
 
 Who now reads Cowley ? If he pleases yet, 
 His moral pleases not his pointed wit. 
 Forgot his Epic, nay, Pindaric art, 
 But still I love the language of his heart. 
 
138 POETS' COUNTRY 
 
 Could Cowley have shaken off the trammels of 
 the metaphysical school and, instead of aspiring to rival 
 Pindar and Virgil, contented himself with the expression 
 of his own natural genius, he might have been a really 
 charming poet. 
 
 In passing from Cowley to Dryden, we pass to a 
 poet of a very different temper. Of the beauties of 
 Nature Dryden appears to have been absolutely in- 
 sensible. If I am not mistaken, there is only one 
 attempt at elaborate Nature-painting in the whole of 
 his works, and it is a passage which for fustian and 
 falsetto it would be difficult to beat : 
 
 All things are hush'd, as Nature's self lay dead ; 
 The mountains seem to nod their drowsy head ; 
 The little birds, in dreams, their songs repeat, 
 And sleeping flowers beneath the night-dew sweat. 
 Even lust and envy sleep. 
 
 Indian Emperor. 
 
 It is remarkable that in the Epistle in Praise of a 
 Country Life addressed to his kinsman John Dryden, 
 there is not a single touch of natural description. 
 Wherever, in translating or paraphrasing Virgil or 
 Chaucer, he has to deal with such passages, he in- 
 variably spoils or falsifies them. All that can be 
 said for him is that in one or two places he stumbles 
 on a graphic touch, as in the Annus Mirabilis, 
 499-500 : 
 
 So sicken waning moons too near the sun, 
 And blunt their crescents on the edge of day. 
 
WALLER, COWLEY, AND DRYDEN 139 
 
 As a rule, such tawdry rhetoric as the following 
 serves his turn : 
 
 Above our shady bowers 
 
 The creeping jessamine thrusts her fragrant flowers ; 
 The myrtle, orange, and the blushing rose, 
 With bending heaps so nigh their blooms disclose, 
 Each seems to swell the flavour which the other blows : 
 By these the peach, the guava, and the pine, 
 And, creeping 'twixt them all, the mantling vine 
 Does round their trunks her purple clusters twine. 
 
 State of Innocence, iii. 1 . 
 
 Dryden's indifference to inanimate nature is the 
 more remarkable because his pictures of animals and 
 their experiences, when he attempts them, are often as 
 accurate as they are vivid, as in the following in the 
 Annus Mirabilis, 520-28 : 
 
 So have I seen some fearful hare maintain 
 A course, till tir'd, before the dog she lay : 
 
 Who, stretch'd behind her, pants upon the plain, 
 Past power to kill, as she to get away. 
 
 With his loll'd tongue he faintly licks his prey ; 
 
 His warm breath blows her flix up as she lies ; 
 She, trembling, creeps upon the ground away, 
 
 And looks back to him with beseeching eyes. 
 
 Dryden, like Lucan and Juvenal, was pre-eminently 
 a rhetorician, a man of robust but somewhat coarse 
 temper, to whom facts and truths appealed not as they 
 affected him aesthetically, but as they affected him 
 intellectually and ethically. Nature was to him what 
 it had always been to the poets of the school to which 
 he belongs, and of which in our literature he was the 
 typical representative. 
 
THE DESCRIPTIVE POETRY OF THE 
 EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 
 
 IF we take a comprehensive view of the poetry dealing 
 with Nature-painting during the eighteenth century in 
 England and in the English language, it will be con- 
 venient to regard it as it found expression during what 
 is commonly called the Augustan Age, that is, between 
 1700 and 1745, and as it expressed itself between that 
 time and the appearance of the Lyrical Ballads in 1798. 
 Its landmarks are easily discernible. We have first 
 the purely conventional school the centre of which 
 was Pope, prominent members of which were Gay, 
 John Philips, Ambrose Philips, Tickell, and Savage. 
 The model of Pope's one descriptive poem, Windsor 
 Forest, was Denham's Coopers Hill and the Mosella 
 of Ausonius. Gay followed Pope, adding nothing. 
 John Philips in his Cyder imitated Virgil's Georgics, 
 and wrote about Nature chiefly because Virgil had 
 written about it. Ambrose Philips conceived that he 
 was imitating Theocritus, and Tickell and Savage were 
 more or less conventional in their treatment and 
 
 140 
 
EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY POETRY 141 
 
 certainly added no new elements. Lady Anne Win- 
 chester has been singled out by Wordsworth for special 
 notice, because of the touches of vivid realism in one 
 of her poems, The Nocturnal Reverie, but these touches 
 are few and confined to that poem. But the Winter 
 of Thomson, which, appearing in 1726, was followed 
 by the other Seasons between that date and 1730, 
 struck a new note, and initiated the most important 
 era in the whole history of Nature-description in verse. 
 Before the work was completed he had found an 
 imitator in Mallet, whose Excursion appeared in 1728, 
 and it may be safely said that half the purely descriptive 
 poetry of the eighteenth century either took its ply 
 from Thomson or was more or less affected by him. 
 In the very year in which Thomson's Winter appeared, 
 appeared a poem heralding the advent of another 
 descriptive poet who had as little in common as 
 Thomson had with the conventional school. This 
 poem was Grongar Hill, by John Dyer. This he 
 afterwards followed with the Ruins of Rome and the 
 Fleece. In the Fleece natural description was sub- 
 ordinate to a most prosaic theme, but Dyer taken 
 altogether stands with Thomson at the head of the 
 descriptive poets in the first half of the eighteenth 
 century. But in the very midst of the Augustan Age 
 an important note had been struck, if struck faintly. 
 In Parnell as the author of the Hymn to Contentment 
 and more particularly the Night-Piece on Death, and 
 in Matthew Green, we catch a new strain, or rather a 
 
142 POETS' COUNTRY 
 
 variant of Milton's note in L? Allegro and // Penseroso, 
 but which in any case anticipated a subsequent 
 important development of descriptive poetry. By 
 Akenside and Armstrong, in both of whom we discern 
 something of a feeling for Nature, natural descrip- 
 tion was, as with their classical archetypes, Lucretius 
 and Manilius, purely subordinate to their themes 
 and didactic purpose, and employed only as em- 
 broidery. 
 
 After the death of Thomson in 1748 we find a great 
 advance in descriptive poetry. Two years before had 
 appeared the Odes of Collins, in which the note struck 
 so faintly by Parnell and Green not only vibrated in 
 fullest tone, but one of the most exquisite varieties of 
 descriptive poetry was fully initiated. With the Ode 
 to Evening and the Ode on the Death of Thomson, 
 written two years later, what Arnold calls natural 
 magic came into our poetry. Gray, with less inspira- 
 tion but with sensibility as exquisite, followed in 1749 
 with the Ode on the Prospect of Eton College, and in 
 1750 with the Elegy. 
 
 By Smart in his Hop-Garden, by Dodsley in his 
 Agriculture, and by Grainger in his Sugar -Cane, 
 natural description was employed to enliven the more 
 prosaic species of poetry fashionable in this century. 
 John Gilbert Cooper, in the second book of his Power 
 of Harmony, had shown himself no unworthy disciple 
 of Thomson. 
 
 In 1762 its bounds were enlarged by Falconer, 
 
EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY POETRY 143 
 
 whose Shipwreck initiated a new species of this poetry 
 by elaborating what had before been incidental. Two 
 years later appeared Goldsmith's Traveller, which 
 struck again, though with infinitely more power and 
 complexity, the note which Addison had struck sixty 
 years before. Two years after the Traveller came The 
 Deserted Village, a new revelation in descriptive poetry. 
 
 But one of the most interesting varieties of this 
 poetry sprang directly out of the revolution effected by 
 Kent, Brown, and their disciples in landscape-gardening. 
 The leader of this school was William Mason, whose 
 English Garden is to poetry what the most repre- 
 sentative works of these artists were to the pleasaunces 
 of the aristocracy of these times. And this impressed 
 a peculiar characteristic on descriptive poetry, reflected 
 successively in Shenstone passim, in Lyttelton's Blenheim, 
 in Langhorne's Studley Park, and in Cowper's Task. 
 
 By Langhorne and Beattie new elements were 
 imported into it. Both anticipated Wordsworth by 
 insisting on the educational power of Nature, the one 
 by moralising and deducing lessons from it, the other 
 by representing it as the nursery of genius and virtue. 
 But this enthusiasm for Nature, which, as early as 1740, 
 had found passionate expression in Joseph Warton's 
 Enthusiast, had led to protests on the part of the older 
 school. In a singularly interesting poem by William 
 Whitehead, the poet laureate between 1758 and 1785, 
 having, possibly from design, the same title, he represents 
 Reason rebuking one who would renounce man and 
 
144 POETS' COUNTRY 
 
 social life for Nature. " Begone, vile world," says the 
 Enthusiast 
 
 Begone, vile world : the learn'd, the wise, 
 The great, the busy I despise, 
 And pity e'en the gay. 
 
 These, these are joys alone, I cry ; 
 'Tis here, divine Philosophy, 
 
 Thou deign' st to set thy throne. 
 Here Contemplation points the road 
 Through Nature's charms to Nature's God, 
 
 These, these are joys alone. 
 
 Adieu, ye vain low-thoughted cares, 
 Ye human hopes, ye human fears- 
 Ye pleasures and ye pains. 
 
 But Reason replies that man was made for man : 
 
 The fair variety of things 
 Are merely life's refreshing springs 
 To soothe him on his way. 
 
 Meanwhile, Nature -painting had been progressing 
 apace. Joseph Warton had followed up the Enthusiast 
 with other poems in the same strain. His brother 
 Thomas had followed in his footsteps, and if his note 
 had been somewhat academic, it had been genuine. 
 
 In 1765 Jago had made Edgehill and the prospect 
 from it the theme of the most elaborate local poem 
 which had yet appeared in our language. About the 
 same time, though the poem was published some years 
 later, John Scott had made Am well the subject of a 
 poem which was no unworthy anticipation of what 
 Cowper was to do for Weston. In 1783 appeared 
 
EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY POETRY 145 
 
 Crabbe's Village, and in 1788 Crowe's Lewesdon Hill. 
 The next year appeared the first instalment of Bowies' 
 Sonnets, which undoubtedly mark an era in descriptive 
 poetry, though they scarcely imported into it any dis- 
 tinctly new elements. 
 
 The descriptive poetry of the first part of the 
 eighteenth century has scarcely any intrinsic value, with 
 the exception of that produced by Thomson, Dyer, and 
 Collins. The interest of that produced during the 
 second part is chiefly historical : it lies in its anticipa- 
 tion, faint it must be owned and feeble, of what the 
 poets of the fuller day of the revolutionary period 
 developed and matured. But it may be said with truth 
 that, in an embryonic form, almost all the elements 
 entering into the composition of that poetry may be 
 distinctly traced. We have Wordsworth, we have 
 Coleridge, we have Scott, we have Shelley, we have 
 Byron, we have even Keats and Tennyson, in rude and 
 crude adumbration. To study this poetry is to trace 
 what is most charming and most powerful in modern 
 masters to its sources. We are not concerned with 
 doing that here, as our sole business is with Nature- 
 poetry. Let a brief illustration of what has been said, 
 confining itself strictly to the subject under considera- 
 tion, suffice. So far as the mere materials of natural 
 description are concerned, they had, as we have seen, 
 been exhausted by the poets of the eighteenth century. 
 They had presented Nature in all her forms and in all her 
 
 aspects, in all her simple and native picturesqueness and 
 
 L 
 
146 POETS' COUNTRY 
 
 beauty, in the aspects she assumed when controlled and 
 modified by art. They had painted her in broad, free 
 fresco ; they had painted her in miniature. Resolving 
 her into her constituent parts, they had described with 
 minute particularity her minutest objects. When John- 
 son observed, or rather makes Imlac in his Rasselas 
 observe, that "the poet does not number the streaks of 
 the tulip, or describe the different shades in the verdure 
 of the forest," he does not seem to be aware that this 
 was just what his contemporaries were beginning to do. 
 Tennyson himself is no more microscopically observant 
 than Scott of Am well and Crabbe. Nor was this all. 
 They had insisted on the educational power of Nature, 
 on the moral discipline derived from close communion 
 with her. They had felt and expressed her association 
 with peace and joy, and had, like Wordsworth after- 
 wards, both learnt and taught from the contemplation 
 of her the cheerful faith 
 
 That all that we behold is full of blessings. 
 
 Keats, when he wrote, in the well-known lines in 
 Sleep and Poetry, of the later seventeenth and the 
 eighteenth century poets, 
 
 Ah, dismal-soul' d ! 
 
 The winds of heaven blew, the ocean roll'd 
 Its gathering waves ye felt it not. The blue 
 Bared its eternal bosom and the dew 
 Of summer nights collected still to make 
 The morning precious : beauty was awake ! 
 Why were ye not awake ? But ye were dead 
 To things ye knew not of, 
 
EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY POETRY 147 
 
 however it may apply to the poetry typical of the 
 Augustan Age, most certainly does not apply to the 
 descriptive poetry typical of the latter half of the 
 century. 
 
 How is it, then, that the Nature -poetry of the 
 eighteenth century ceases to appeal to us, and has been 
 so completely superseded by that of the nineteenth 
 century ? The question is easily answered. It is one 
 thing to initiate, it is another thing to perfect ; it is one 
 thing to work in shackles and in the dark, quite another 
 thing to work untrammelled and in the light. The 
 poets of the eighteenth century were clogged and 
 encumbered with traditions and surroundings eminently 
 unpropitious to the study and treatment of Nature. 
 They lived in an age of commonplaces, conventionality, 
 and prose, their interests being typified by such themes 
 as many of them chose even as occasions for their 
 homage to Nature. One, as we have seen, expounded 
 the art of preserving health, another celebrated hop- 
 gardens, another the production of sugar, and one of the 
 most inspired of them the breeding of sheep and the 
 manufacture of woollen. Their style, in addition to 
 being as a rule diffuse and cumbrous, was not merely 
 artificial, but artificial in the worst sense of the term, 
 deformed by the falsetto of pseudo-classicism and by 
 the falsetto of an absurdly stilted phraseology, at once 
 trivial and pompous. An indiscriminating realism, with 
 a, tendency to dwell unduly on unimportant and insigni- 
 ficant particulars, marks their descriptions. What is in 
 
148 POETS' COUNTRY 
 
 the poetry of the nineteenth century in that of Words- 
 worth and Shelley, for instance the suffusion of the 
 divine and spiritual element, is in theirs mere con- 
 ventional Christianity. There are, however, exceptions 
 to this, as notably in Thomson's Hymn appended to the 
 Seasons, but such exceptions are rare. Save here and 
 there, as in Collins, for example, no imagination and no 
 fancy modify the laborious accumulation of particulars 
 which commonly make up their landscapes. But 
 perhaps their greatest defect as painters of Nature is 
 that with very few exceptions, notably Collins and 
 Gray, they had not discovered the secret of which 
 Tennyson was such a consummate master, namely, that 
 onomatopoeia, in other words, that rhythm and word- 
 sounds are to descriptive poetry what colours are in a 
 painting. It is by a double appeal an appeal to the 
 ear as well as by an appeal to the mind that such 
 poetry produces its effect. It is here that Thomson 
 fails, and this is one of the reasons why his descriptions, 
 even when his epithets and choice of phrase are in 
 themselves felicitously graphic, so often leave us 
 unsatisfied. 
 
 The poets of the nineteenth century worked under 
 very different conditions. The old impediments had 
 been removed : all was light, freedom, emancipation. 
 In nothing was this more apparent than in the change 
 which came over descriptive poetry. Purged of the 
 dross of a prosaic age, and cleared of the old lumber of 
 Augustan and pseudo- classical tradition, it "sprang 
 
EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY POETRY 149 
 
 upward like a pyramid of fire." It became penetrated 
 with enthusiasm and power. With a brilliance and 
 vividness never before approached, Scott painted Nature 
 in her superbest and most picturesque forms. In 
 Wordsworth it was not Nature's semblance but Nature 
 herself that found expression, and Nature in almost all 
 her aspects, and in almost all her moods. In a sphere 
 more restricted the same may be said with literal truth 
 of Coleridge. Byron was a more doubtful votary, but if 
 at his worst he is a splendid rhetorician, at his best he is the 
 trumpet voice of storm and mountain and cataract. It is 
 no figure of speech to say that Shelley became her very 
 harp. Keats caught her witchery, and may we not say 
 that in Tennyson were blended all that distinguished 
 these poets ? In the nineteenth century, indeed, 
 descriptive poetry in all its branches was carried to a 
 perfection which it has never attained before, either in 
 our own or in any other literature in the world. 
 
IN or about 1700, Pope's father removed from London 
 to a house at Binfield near Wokingham in Berkshire, 
 in the midst of the tract known as the Royal Hunt, the 
 poet then being a child in his thirteenth or fourteenth 
 year. It was here that his genius awoke, and it was 
 here that he educated himself, and it was here that all 
 his early poems were written. The house, of which 
 nothing now remains but one room according to 
 tradition, Pope's study stood on the highest ground, 
 commanding on all sides most extensive and picturesque 
 views. From it can be seen the open heaths lying 
 around Ascot, the undulating bosky ranges of hills 
 towards Windsor, and on the horizon, blue in the dis- 
 tance, the Oxfordshire hills as they descend to the river 
 above Marlowe. Since Pope's time much of the timber 
 has been cut down, and what was then a woody solitude 
 has, in many places, and particularly in the immediate 
 neighbourhood of the house, been built over. Still, 
 however, a row of stately Scotch firs, on which Pope's 
 
 150 
 
POPE AND THE MINOR POETS 151 
 
 eye must often have rested, remains to illustrate his 
 description of his home : 
 
 A little house with trees a-row, 
 And, like its master, very low. 
 
 Here, suggested to the young poet by Denham's 
 Coopers Hill, but inspired by the scene which was 
 every day before him, Windsor Forest was written. 
 As we stand where he stood, however commonplace it 
 may be, we at least recognise the general truth of the 
 description : 
 
 Here hills and vales, the woodland and the plain, 
 Here earth and water seem to strive again ; 
 Not chaos-like together crushed and bruis'd, 
 But, as the world, harmoniously confus'd : 
 Where order in variety we see, 
 And where, though all things differ, all agree ; 
 Here waving groves a chequer'd scene display, 
 And part admit and part exclude the day. 
 
 There, interspers'd in lawns and op'ning glades, 
 Thin trees arise that shun each other's shades. 
 Here in full light the russet plains extend, 
 There, wrapt in clouds the blueish hills ascend. 
 E'en the wild heath displays her purple dyes, 
 And midst the desert fruitful fields arise, 
 That, crown'd with tufted trees and springing corn, 
 Like verdant isles the sable waste adorn. 
 
 The minute care with which he had studied natural 
 objects is apparent throughout the whole poem in the 
 well-known description of the death of the pheasant, in 
 the epithets he applies to the various tributaries of the 
 
152 POETS' COUNTRY 
 
 Thames, and in his characterisation of the fish found 
 in them. 
 
 The silver eel in shining volumes roll'd 
 
 is most happy. The only other passage in his poems, 
 besides what has been quoted from Windsor Forest, 
 displaying any sense of the picturesque in Nature is in 
 Eloisa to Abelard, where the modern note of sub- 
 jectivity infusing natural objects with sentiment is 
 effective : 
 
 The darksome pines that o'er yon rocks reclin'd 
 
 Wave high, and murmur to the hollow wind, 
 
 The wand'ring streams that shine between the hills, 
 
 The grots that echo to the tinkling rills, 
 
 The dying gales that pant upon the trees, 
 
 The lakes that quiver to the curling breeze ; 
 
 No more these scenes my meditation aid, 
 
 Or lull to rest the visionary maid. 
 
 But o'er the twilight groves and dusky caves, 
 
 Long-sounding aisles and intermingled graves, 
 
 Black Melancholy sits, and round her throws 
 
 A deathlike silence and a dead repose : 
 
 Her gloomy presence saddens all the scene, 
 
 Shades ev'ry flower and darkens ev'ry green, 
 
 Deepens the murmur of the falling floods, 
 
 And breathes a browner horror on the woods. 
 
 That Pope had a feeling for Nature is abundantly 
 evident from his prose correspondence, in which he not 
 infrequently gave the rein to such descriptions, which 
 he seems to have thought more appropriate for prose 
 than for poetry. In his poetry, indeed, he speaks 
 contemptuously, like Horace, of "pure description," 
 holding " the place of sense." And indeed his poetry, 
 
PRIOR PARK, BATH 
 
 Prior Park,, Bath, although not associated with Pope as 
 a poet, has an avenue there called "Pope's Walk," his 
 favourite resort when he was with Fielding a visitor to 
 Ralph Allen. The grounds are laid out in the landscape 
 gardening manner of his period, with bits of classical 
 architecture and artificial ponds, one of the latter being 
 shown in this picture. 
 
POPE AND THE MINOR POETS 153 
 
 like his famous grotto, owed much more to art than to 
 nature. 
 
 Perhaps the most favourable specimen which can be 
 quoted from his disciple Gay is the following evening 
 scene from Rural Sports : 
 
 Or when the ploughman leaves the task of day, 
 And, trudging homeward, whistles on his way : 
 When the big-udder'd cows with patience stand, 
 Waiting the strokings of the damsel's hand, 
 No warbling cheers the woods : the feathered choir 
 To court kind slumbers to their sprays retire ; 
 When no rude gale disturbs the sleeping trees, 
 Nor aspen leaves confess the gentlest breeze ; 
 
 Far in the deep the sun his glory hides, 
 A streak of gold the sea and sky divides ; 
 The purple clouds their amber lining show, 
 And, edg'd with flame, rolls every wave below. 
 
 Over Garth's Claremont, which, like Pope's Windsor 
 Forest, was suggested by Denham's poem, as it contains 
 very little description, we need not pause, nor need a 
 word be said about any of the Pastorals from Pope's to 
 Gay's, from Gay's to Scott of Amwell's, or about Am- 
 brose Philips's once celebrated Epistle from Copenhagen., 
 a winter-piece which Pope pronounced to be noble, or 
 about the local scenes sketched in John Philips's Cyder 
 for nothing could be more commonplace. Somerville's 
 Chase deserves a passing notice, for, verbose and prolix 
 though most of it is, it abounds in vivid pictures drawn 
 with enthusiasm from the hunting - fields. Tickell, 
 Addison's friend, has in the artificial style of the age 
 
154 POETS' COUNTRY 
 
 given a really charming picture of the grounds of War- 
 wick House, consecrated by the memory of his master 
 
 Thou hill, whose brow the antique structures grace, 
 Rear'd by bold chiefs of Warwick's noble race ; 
 Why, once so lov'd, whene'er thy bower appears, 
 O'er my dim eyeballs glance the sudden tears ? 
 How sweet were once thy prospects, fresh and fair, 
 Thy sloping walks, and unpolluted air ! 
 How sweet the glooms beneath thy aged trees, 
 Thy noontide shadow, and thine evening breeze ! 
 His image thy forsaken bowers restore : 
 Thy walks and airy prospects charm no more ; 
 No more the summer in thy glooms allay 'd, 
 Thy evening breezes, and thy noontide shade. 
 
 But over two of the minor poets of this age, in 
 which description had quite a subordinate place, we 
 must pause Thomas Parnell and Matthew Green. 
 Parnell, so intimately associated with Pope and Swift, 
 is of course generally known by the Hermit, but 
 among his poems are two the Night-Piece on Death 
 and A Hymn to Contentment which in their union of 
 sentiment with description anticipate Gray. Certainly 
 a high place among the descriptive poets of his age 
 must be assigned to the following passage from the 
 first poem : 
 
 How deep yon azure dyes the sky ! 
 Where orbs of gold unnumber'd lie ; 
 While through their ranks, in silver pride, 
 The nether crescent seems to glide. 
 The slumbering breeze forgets to breathe, 
 The lake is smooth and clear beneath, 
 Where once again the spangled show 
 Descends to meet our eyes below. 
 
POPE AND THE MINOR POETS 155 
 
 The grounds, which on the right aspire, 
 In dimness from the view retire : 
 The left presents a place of graves 
 Whose wall the silent water laves. 
 That steeple guides thy doubtful sight 
 Among the livid gleams of night. 
 
 Those graves, with bending osier bound, 
 That nameless heave the crumbled ground. 
 
 It will be seen that Gray took from this last line 
 one of the most graphic touches of description in the 
 
 Elegy- 
 
 Where heaves the turf in many a mouldering heap. 
 
 Parnell stands quite alone among the poets of his age 
 it will be remembered that he was born in 1679 and 
 died in 1718 in striking this note. 
 
 To find Matthew Green singled out for a place 
 among descriptive poets may seem very surprising to 
 those who only know him generally in connection with 
 his singularly original poem Tlie Spleen. And yet he 
 is fairly entitled to such a place. The Spleen is one of 
 the most delightful and original poems in the English 
 language : it is indeed thick-sown with unforgettable 
 couplets. Where have scribblers in verse been so 
 happily touched off as in the couplet 
 
 Who buzz in rhyme, and, like blind flies, 
 Err with their wings for want of eyes. 
 
 How good in their various ways are 
 
156 POETS' COUNTRY 
 
 And when he can't prevent foul play, 
 Enjoys the folly of the fray. 
 
 Nor runs, with wisdom's Sirens caught, 
 
 On quicksands swallowing shipwrecked thought. 
 
 A stranger into life I'm come, 
 Dying may be our going home, 
 Transported here by angry Fate, 
 The convicts of a prior state. 
 
 Though pleased to see the dolphins play, 
 I mind my compass and my way. 
 
 Nor bigots, who but one way see, 
 Through blinkers of authority. 
 
 Or where he says of himself 
 
 In life's rough tide I sunk not down, 
 But swam, till Fortune threw a rope, 
 Buoyant on bladders fill'd with hope. 
 
 But our business is with its touches of natural 
 description, and they lie in touches and in little cameos 
 rather than in elaborated pictures. How charming is 
 the following : 
 
 May my humble dwelling stand 
 Upon some chosen spot of land : 
 A pond before full to the brim, 
 Where cows may cool, and geese may swim ; 
 Behind, a green, like velvet neat, 
 Soft to the eye and to the feet, 
 Where odorous plants in evening fair 
 Breathe all around ambrosial air. 
 
 Where the half-cirque, which vision bounds, 
 
 Like amphitheatre surrounds : 
 
 And woods impervious to the breeze, 
 
WINDSOR CASTLE FROM NEAR ETON LOCK 
 
 Close by those meads for ever crowned with flowers, 
 Where Thames with pride surveys his rising towers. 
 
 Rape of the Lock, canto iii. POPE. 
 
) HO8C 
 
 tafaKH) yl 
 
POPE AND THE MINOR POETS 157 
 
 Thick phalanx of embodied trees ; 
 From hills through plains in dusk array 
 Extended far, repel the day ; 
 Here stillness, height, and solemn shade 
 Invite, and contemplation aid : 
 
 And dreams beneath the spreading beech 
 Inspire, and docile fancy teach ; 
 While soft as breezy breath of wind 
 Impulses rustle through the mind. 
 
 There see the clover, pea, and bean 
 
 Vie in variety of green ; 
 
 Fresh pastures speckled o'er with sheep, 
 
 Brown fields their fallow Sabbaths keep ; 
 
 Plump Ceres golden tresses wear, 
 
 And poppy top-knots deck her hair, 
 
 And silver streams through meadows stray, 
 
 And Naiads on the margin play, 
 
 And lesser nymphs on side of hills, 
 
 From plaything urns pour down the rills. 
 
 Few poets and a real poet Green was, finely 
 touched and finely tempered stole through life so 
 noiselessly, all that is known of him practically being 
 that he was born in 1696, was a Dissenter, probably a 
 Quaker, had some appointment in the Custom-House, 
 and died in his forty-second year at a lodging in Nag's- 
 head Court, Gracechurch Street, in 1737. Pope and 
 Goldsmith recognised his merits ; and Gray, who has 
 borrowed more than one happy expression from him, 
 said of his poetry : " There is wit everywhere. Reading 
 would have formed his judgment and harmonised his 
 ear, for even his wood-notes often break out into 
 strains of real poetry and music." To general readers 
 
158 POETS' COUNTRY 
 
 Green is not known so well as he ought to be, but it 
 would be difficult to imagine any one who loves good 
 things who would not be grateful for an introduction 
 to him. 
 
 A word in passing must be said for Richard Savage, 
 whose melancholy story Johnson has told so patheti- 
 cally. His Wanderer was published in 1729. It 
 abounds with laboured pictures of natural objects, and 
 its delineation of landscape is, though too conventional, 
 not without picturesqueness. 
 
 Two short extracts must suffice. One is a sunset 
 sky : 
 
 Near down th' etherial steep 
 The lamp of day hangs hovering o'er the deep. 
 Dun shades, in rocky shapes up ether roll'd, 
 Project long, shaggy points, deep- ting' d with gold. 
 Others take faint th' unripen'd cherry's dye, 
 And paint amusing landscapes on the eye. 
 Their blue-veil'd yellow, through a sky serene 
 In swelling mixture forms a floating green, 
 Streak'd through white clouds a mild vermilion shines, 
 And the breeze freshens, as the heat declines. 
 
 Wanderer, Canto V. 
 
 The other a mountain winter scene : 
 
 On this bleak height tall firs, with ice-work crown'd, 
 Bend, while their flaky winter shades the ground : 
 Hoarse and direct a blustering north wind blows, 
 On boughs, thick-rustling, crack the crisped snows, 
 Tangles of frost half fright the wilder'd eye 
 By heat oft blacken'd like a lowering sky. 
 Hence down the side two turbid rivulets pour, 
 And devious two, in one huge cataract roar. 
 
POPE AND THE MINOR POETS 159 
 
 Yon rocks in rough assemblage rush in view, 
 
 In form an amphitheatre they rise, 
 
 And a dark gulf in their broad centre lies. 
 
 Close with this stage a precipice combines, 
 Whence still the spacious country far declines ; 
 The herds seem insects in the distant glades, 
 And men diminish' d, as at noon their shades. 
 
 Canto I. 
 
 Cumbrous but faithful. 
 
 THOMSON AND DYER 
 
 In Thomson and Dyer we come to the more 
 elaborate Nature -painters of the eighteenth century. 
 As it is the object of this work to localise descriptions 
 as much as possible, and so to associate them directly 
 with the personal surroundings of the several poets, it 
 is not necessary to enter into any general account of 
 these two poets, but to deal with them almost entirely 
 in relation to what may be called the topical element 
 in their poetry. 
 
 James Thomson, the son of a Scotch Presbyterian 
 minister, was born at Ednam in Roxburghshire, in 
 September 1700, a place the surroundings of which are 
 flat and uninteresting. But some two months after the 
 poet's birth his father removed to Southdean, a larger 
 parish near Jedburgh in the same county. This was 
 a most picturesque spot. The manse nestled at the 
 foot of Southdean Law, and fine and noble was the 
 
160 POETS' COUNTRY 
 
 scenery around it. It was here that Thomson was 
 introduced to Nature and derived his earliest inspiration. 
 In Autumn the scene which met his eyes is described 
 in a more or less generalised description of Scotland : 
 
 Here awhile the Muse, 
 
 High-hovering o'er the broad cerulean scene, 
 Sees Caledonia in romantic view : 
 Her airy mountains, from the waving main, 
 Invested with a keen diffusive sky, 
 Breathing the soul acute ; her forests huge 
 Incult, robust, and tall, by Nature's hand 
 Planted of old ; her azure lakes between, 
 Poured out extensive, and of wat'ry wealth 
 Full ; winding deep, and green, her fertile vales ; 
 With many a cool, translucent, brimming flood 
 Washed lovely, from the Tweed (pure parent stream, 
 Whose pastoral banks first heard my Doric reed, 
 With, sylvan Jed, thy tributary brook) 
 To where the north-inflated tempest foams 
 O'er Orca's l or Berubium's 2 highest peak. 
 
 Some of the winter scenes at the beginning of 
 the poem describing that season were plainly drawn 
 from what he had often witnessed here. In 1725 he 
 came up to London ; next year Wintet* appeared, and 
 between that date and 1730, Spring., Summer, and 
 Autumn, the collected poems being published, with 
 the last instalment and with the closing Hymn, under 
 the title of The Seasons, in 1730. 
 
 The revisions were many and important, the most 
 remarkable being embodied in an interleaved copy of 
 the edition of 1738, from which the current text is 
 
 1 The Orkneys. 2 The Cape of St. Andrew. 
 
THE THAMES AT RICHMOND FROM THE 
 TERRACE 
 
 Considered by Bulwer Lytton to be " the loveliest view 
 of England's loveliest river/' and has been painted by many 
 artists, amongst others Turner ; but I do not remember one 
 by moonlight. Higher up the hill is a tablet erected to 
 Thomson. p g_ \y t 
 

 
JL.II3 i 
 
 ;; 
 
POPE AND THE MINOR POETS 161 
 
 printed, some of the most felicitous alterations and 
 additions being attributed to Pope. The Seasons are 
 full of local pictures drawn from scenes with which 
 Thomson was familiar, such as Hagley, the seat of 
 Lord Lyttelton, thus described in Spring : 
 
 Through Hagley Park you stray, 
 Thy British Tempe ! There along the dale, 
 With woods o'erhung and shagg'd with mossy rocks, 
 Whence on each hand the gushing waters play, 
 And down the rough cascade white dashing fall, 
 Or gleam in lengthened vista through the trees, 
 You silent steal ; or sit beneath the shade 
 Of solemn oaks that tuft the swelling mounts 
 Thrown graceful round by Nature's careless hand, 
 And pensive listen to the various voice 
 Of rural peace : the herds, the flocks, the birds, 
 The hollow-whispering breeze, the plaint of rills 
 That, purling down amid the twisted roots 
 Which creep around, their dewy murmurs shake 
 On the soothed ear. 
 
 Then, referring to the view from the higher grounds 
 in Hagley Park, and the house itself, he continues : 
 
 Meanwhile you gain the height, from whose fair brow 
 
 The bursting prospect spreads immense around : 
 
 And, snatch'd o'er hill and dale, and wood and lawn, 
 
 And verdant field, and darkening heath between, 
 
 And villages embosom'd soft in trees, 
 
 And spiry towns by surging columns marked 
 
 Of household smoke, your eye excursive roams ; 
 
 Wide-stretching from the Hall, in whose kind haunt 
 
 The Hospitable Genius lingers still, 
 
 To where the broken landscape, by degrees 
 
 Ascending, roughens into rigid hills ; 
 
 O'er which the Cambrian mountains, like far clouds 
 
 That skirt the blue horizon, dusky rise. 
 
 M 
 
162 POETS' COUNTRY 
 
 Another spot well known to him was Bubb Dod- 
 ington's seat at Eastbury, in Dorsetshire, which he 
 describes with laboured infelicity in Autumn : 
 
 Oh, lose me in the green delightful walks 
 
 Of, Dodington, thy seat, serene and plain ; 
 
 Where simple Nature reigns, and every view, 
 
 Diffusive, spreads the pure Dorsetian downs 
 
 In boundless prospect ; yonder shagg'd with wood, 
 
 Here rich with harvest, and there white with flocks ! 
 
 New beauties rise with each revolving day, 
 
 New columns swell, and still the fresh Spring finds 
 
 New plants to quicken and new groves to green. 
 
 Here, as I steal along the sunny wall, 
 
 Where Autumn basks, with fruit empurpled deep, 
 
 My pleasing theme continual prompts my thought : 
 
 Presents the downy peach ; the shining plum, 
 
 With a fine bluish mist of animals 
 
 Clouded ; the ruddy nectarine ; and, dark 
 
 Beneath his ample leaf, the luscious fig. 
 
 Stowe, then the seat of Lord Cobham, was also 
 visited by Thomson, and found in him its laureate. 
 But the glories of Stowe are things of the past, and as 
 Thomson's description has not much intrinsic merit or 
 interest it may be passed without citation. Let us 
 now pass to the place where Thomson passed the last 
 twelve years of his life, where he revised the Seasons, 
 introducing many a touch drawn from what he daily 
 saw, and where he breathed his last. It was a cottage 
 in Kew Foot Lane, at Richmond, looking down upon 
 the Thames and commanding the distant landscape ; 
 
POPE AND THE MINOR POETS 163 
 
 behind this was his garden. For many years this most 
 interesting memorial of the poet was piously preserved. 
 After his death the cottage and grounds were purchased 
 by a Mr. Ross, who, though he enlarged both, was 
 most careful to preserve both. Then, after becoming 
 the property of the Hon. Francis Boscawen, it passed 
 into the hands of the Earl of Shaftesbury, who built 
 a villa on the site of it, but, for the sake of pre- 
 serving it, incorporated the cottage, making it the 
 vestibule of his villa. When Howitt visited it about 
 1846, the room which Thomson used was still intact, 
 a plain mahogany Pembroke belonging to him stand- 
 ing where it stood when he sat at it, with this 
 inscription on it : 
 
 On this table James Thomson constantly wrote. It was 
 therefore purchased of his servant, who also gave these brass hooks 
 on which his hat and cane were hung in this his sitting-room. 
 
 The garden, too, was carefully preserved, together 
 with all its trees, as well as the alcove in which 
 Thomson so often sat, a simple wooden structure with 
 a plain back and two outward sloping sides and a bench 
 running round it, the only thing changed being its 
 position. Within the last few years everything has 
 been swept away by the vandalism characteristic of 
 the last half - century. It is now part of the Royal 
 Hospital, the only trace of the old place being a 
 part of the en trance -hall and possibly the private 
 apartment of the matron of the institution, and the 
 
164 POETS' COUNTRY 
 
 garden, but alcove and every other souvenir have 
 vanished. 
 
 What could then be seen from Thomson's "rural 
 domain," as he called it, and can now be seen from the 
 prospect, he describes in Summer : 
 
 Shall we ascend, 
 
 While radiant Summer opens all its pride, 
 Thy hill, delightful Shene ? Here let us sweep 
 The boundless landscape : now the raptur'd eye, 
 Exulting swift, to huge Augusta 1 send, 
 Now to the sister-hills 2 that skirt her plain, 
 To lofty HaiTow now, and now to where 
 Majestic Windsor lifts his princely brow. 
 In lovely contrast to this glorious view, 
 Calmly magnificent, then will we turn 
 To where the silver Thames first rural grows. 
 There let the feasted eye unwearied stray ; 
 Luxurious, there, rove through the pendent woods 
 That nodding hang o'er Harrington's retreat ; 
 And, stooping thence to Ham's embowering walks. 
 
 Slow let us trace the matchless vale of Thames, 
 Fair-winding up to where the Muses haunt 
 In Twickenham's bowers, 
 
 O vale of bliss ! O softly swelling hills ! 
 
 Heav'ns ! what a goodly prospect spreads around 
 Of hills, and dales, and woods, and lawns, and spires, 
 And glittering towns, and gilded streams, till all 
 The stretching landscape into smoke decays ! 
 
 The Seasons, it must be admitted, does not hold 
 the same place in modern estimation as it did in that 
 of our forefathers. It is a poem heavily clogged with 
 
 1 London. 2 Highgate and Hampstead. 
 
POPE AND THE MINOR POETS 165 
 
 diffuse commonplace, and still more intolerable didactic 
 platitudes. Its versification is frequently harsh and 
 cumbrous, its diction vicious ; it is a poem with very 
 little imagination and with no architecture. But 
 Thomson was an inspired poet : he had true enthusiasm. 
 To the student of Nature the poem must always be a 
 delight, so minutely accurate, fresh, and original are his 
 pictures. " Gray," says Nicholls in his Reminiscences, 
 " thought Thomson had one talent beyond all other poets, 
 that of describing the various appearances of Nature," 
 adding that " he failed when he ventured to step out of 
 this path " (Gray's Letters, Ed. Tovey, vol. ii. p. 280). 
 Let us take him, that we may leave him, at his best ; 
 but even here he occasionally jars on us : 
 
 The meek-eyed morn appears, mother of dews, 
 
 At first faint-gleaming in the dappled east ; 
 
 Till far o'er ether spreads the widening glow, 
 
 And from before the lustre of her face 
 
 White breaks the clouds away. With quickened step 
 
 Brown night retires. Young day pours in apace. 
 
 And opens all the lawny prospect wide. 
 
 The dripping rock, the mountain's misty top 
 
 Swell on the sight, and brighten with the dawn. 
 
 Blue through the dusk the smoking currents shine ; 
 
 And from the bladed field the fearful hare 
 
 Limps awkward ; while along the forest glade 
 
 The wild deer trip, and, often turning, gaze 
 
 At early passenger. 
 
 There is rich beauty in the following : 
 
 Gay castles in the clouds that pass 
 For ever flushing round a summer sky ; 
 
166 POETS' COUNTRY 
 
 and magic in the picture of the Hebrides, 
 
 Plac'd far amid the melancholy main. 
 
 The minute accuracy of his observation is illustrated 
 by his description in Winter of the earlier stage in the 
 freezing of water : 
 
 An icy gale, oft shifting, o'er the pool 
 Breathes a blue film and in its mid career 
 Arrests the bickering stream. 
 
 These are typical, and the work of which these are 
 typical has in it the elements of permanence. 
 
 Thomson was fortunate in his theme ; not so the 
 poet who comes next to him in power of description. 
 " If," wrote Wordsworth to Lady Beaumont, " you 
 have not read The Fleece, do so. 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 upon processes 
 which, however important in themselves, were un- 
 susceptible 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 Milton." 
 
 The poet of whom Wordsworth wrote this was 
 born, most probably in Carmarthenshire, in or about 
 1700. After abandoning the law, to which he was 
 bred, he became an artist, studying under Jonathan 
 Richardson. In 1724 he went to Rome for the 
 
POPE AND THE MINOR POETS 167 
 
 purposes of his profession, and there gathered the 
 materials for his Ruins of Rome, published some time 
 afterwards. In 1726 he returned to England, and in 
 the same year published in a miscellany the first 
 draft of Grongar Hill and The Country Walk. 
 Later in life he was ordained, and finally settled at 
 Coningsby, in Lincolnshire, where he wrote The Fleece, 
 which appeared in 1757, the year before he died. 
 
 Dyer has left three poems, each in different styles 
 and each in their way memorable : Grongar Hill, 
 which is an elaborate rural picture ; The Ruins of Rome, 
 which is a study in the picturesque blended with 
 ethical sentiment; and The Fleece, which is a technically 
 didactic poem embroidered with much local Nature- 
 painting. Grongar Hill, the first in date and the first 
 in charm, was in its mature shape evolved from some 
 verses in the heroic couplet written in his sixteenth 
 year, and again recast and revised from an irregular 
 ode which appeared in Savage's Miscellany. The site 
 from which Dyer contemplated the scene which he so 
 vividly described may be almost exactly identified, for 
 if it is not precisely marked by the blackthorn to which 
 tradition points, it must have been close by it. It is 
 perhaps the loveliest and most picturesque scene in 
 South Wales, commanding a comprehensive prospect 
 of the vale of the Towy. In Gilpin's Observations on 
 the Wye will be found an admirable critical commentary 
 on the poem, which is discussed locally from the point 
 of view of a landscape artist. The poem begins, it 
 
168 POETS' COUNTRY 
 
 must be owned, very badly, because of the awkward- 
 ness of the diction involving both obscurity and a 
 grammatical blunder : 
 
 Silent Nymph, with curious eye, 
 Who the purple evening lie 
 On the mountain's lonely van. 
 
 Indeed, the whole of the opening is cumbrous and 
 lame, but amends are soon made. The descriptions 
 are so detailed and exact that one or two notes are all 
 that are needed by way of commentary. 
 
 Now I gain the mountain's brow, 
 What a landscape lies below ! l 
 No clouds, no vapours intervene, 
 But the gay and 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 2 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 unnumber'd rise, 8 
 Beautiful in various dyes : 
 The glossy pine, the poplar blue, 
 The yellow beech, the sable yew, 
 
 1 The prospect from the summit of Grongar Hill. 
 
 2 Castle Kilkenning, Castle Carrig, Dinevawr Castle, Drusloin Castle. 
 
 3 A very accurate description of the wood below the hill. 
 
POPE AND THE MINOR POETS 169 
 
 The slender fir, that taper grows, 
 
 The sturdy oak, with broad-spread boughs. 
 
 And beyond the purple grove, 
 
 Haunt of Phyllis, Queen of Love ! 
 
 Gaudy as the opening dawn 
 
 Lies a long and level lawn, 
 
 On which a dark hill, steep and high, 1 
 
 Holds and charms the wandering eye ! 
 
 Deep are his feet in Towy's flood, 
 
 His sides are clothed with waving wood, 
 
 And ancient towers crown his brow, 
 
 That cast an awful look below ; 
 
 Whose ragged walls the ivy creeps 
 
 And with her arms from falling keeps. 
 
 And see the rivers, how they run 
 Thro' woods and meads, in shade and sun, 
 Sometimes swiftly, sometimes slow, 
 Wave succeeding wave, they go. 
 
 
 
 Ever charming, ever new, 
 When will the landscape tire the view ! 
 The fountain's fall, the river's flow, 
 The wooded valleys, warm and low, 
 The windy summit, wild and higli 
 Roughly rushing on the sky ! 
 
 See, on the mountain's southern side, 
 Where the prospect opens wide, 
 Where the evening gilds the tide, 
 How close and small the hedges lie ! 
 What streaks of meadow cross the eye ! 
 A step, methinks, may pass the stream, 
 So little distant dangers seem. 
 
 The Country Walk, though minutely detailed and 
 proving close and accurate observation, is more common- 
 
 1 This is Dinevawr, or possibly Newton Castle. 
 
170 POETS' COUNTRY 
 
 place. In The Ruins of Rome the note is more rhetorical, 
 but the pictures are vivid : 
 
 The rising sun 
 
 Flames on the ruins, in the purer air 
 Towering aloft. 
 
 Or again 
 
 The setting sun displays 
 His visible great round between yon towers, 
 As through two shady cliffs. 
 
 And certainly the poem contains one of the finest 
 onomatopoeic effects in our language, to say nothing 
 of the fine imaginative power of the passage : 
 
 The pilgrim oft 
 
 At dead of night, 'mid his orison hears 
 Aghast the voice of Time, disparting towers, 
 Tumbling all precipitate down-dash' d, 
 Rattling around, loud thund'ring to the moon. 
 
 The descriptive passages in The Fleece have all the 
 excellence of the particular kind indicated by Words- 
 worth. Take a typical passage all who are acquainted 
 with the parts of England here described will recognise 
 the accuracy of the picture : 
 
 Such the spacious plain 
 
 Of Sarum, spread like Ocean's boundless round, 
 Where solitary Stonehenge, gray with moss, 
 Ruin of ages, nods : such, too, the leas 
 And ruddy tilth, which spiry Ross beholds, 
 From a green hillock, o'er her lofty elms ; 
 And Lemster's brooky tract, and airy Croft ; 
 And such Harleian Eyewood's swelling turf, 
 Wav'd as the billows of a rolling sea : 
 
POPE AND THE MINOR POETS 171 
 
 And Shobden, for its lofty terrace famed, 
 Which from a mountain's ridge, elate o'er woods 
 And girt with all Siluria, sees around 
 Regions on regions blended in the clouds. 
 
 The Fleece is, it must be owned, very heavy reading, 
 "buried in woollen," as a contemporary critic wittily 
 observed of its author ; and as the descriptive passages 
 are strictly subordinate to the didactic portion, their 
 felicity lies rather in their terse and graphic force, 
 such as 
 
 Enormous rocks on rocks, in ever- wild 
 Posture of falling. 
 
 And this description of a calm in the Tropics : 
 
 The downy feather on the cordage hung, 
 Moves not : the flat sea shines like yellow gold 
 Fus'd in the fire. 
 
 Dyer is, indeed, a most pleasing poet, and few would 
 dispute what Wordsworth has expressed in his Sonnet 
 to him : 
 
 A grateful few, shall love thy modest Lay, 
 Long as the shepherd's bleating flock shall stray, 
 Long as the thrush shall pipe on Grongar Hill ! 
 
AKENSIDE, ARMSTRONG, SHENSTONE, 
 GRAINGER, MALLET, AND SMOLLETT 
 
 THERE is little to detain us in Akenside and Armstrong, 
 who are rather rhetoricians than poets, and yet The 
 Pleasures of the Imagination is in some respects a 
 memorable poem, and at times not without the note 
 of nobility, and The Art of Preserving Health deserves 
 more readers than it finds. Natural description in 
 Akenside is strictly subordinated to his didactic 
 purpose. He was born in November 1721, at 
 Newcastle-on-Tyne, and in a fragment of an intended 
 Fourth Book to his chief poem, written in the last year 
 of his life, he thus refers, not without pathos, to the 
 haunts of his youth : 
 
 O ye dales 
 
 Of Tyne, and ye most ancient woodlands ; where 
 Oft as the giant flood obliquely strides, 
 And his banks open and his lawns extend, 
 Stops short the pleased traveller to view, 
 Presiding o'er the scene, some rustic tower 
 Founded by Norman or by Saxon hands : 
 O ye Northumbrian shades, which overlook 
 172 
 
AKENSIDE 173 
 
 The rocky pavement and the mossy falls 
 Of solitary Wensbeck's limpid stream ! 
 How gladly I recall your well-known seats, 
 Belov'd of old, and that delightful time 
 When all alone, for many a summer's day, 
 I wandered through your calm recesses, led 
 In silence by some powerful hand unseen. 
 
 The two passages in his poem which are his most 
 elaborate Nature -pictures are his description in the 
 Second Book of the wild spot where the Genius who 
 describes to him "the gracious ways of providence" 
 confronts him, and the following passage in the Third 
 Book, where he shows how man reads into Nature " the 
 inexpressive semblance of himself, of thought and 
 passion " : 
 
 Mark the sable woods 
 
 That shade sublime yon mountain's nodding brow : 
 With what religious awe the solemn scene 
 Commands your steps ! as if the reverend form 
 Of Minos or of Numa should forsake 
 Th' Elysian seats, and down the embowering glade 
 Move to your pausing eye ! Behold the expanse 
 Of yon gay landscape, where the silver clouds 
 Flit o'er the heavens before the sprightly breeze : 
 Now their gay cincture skirts the doubtful sun ; 
 Now streams of splendour, through their opening veil 
 Effulgent, sweep from off the gilded lawn 
 The aerial shadows, on the curling brook, 
 And on the shady margin's quivering leaves 
 With quickest lustre glancing. 
 
 Armstrong's prosaic theme, with its subdivisions of 
 "Air," "Diet," "Exercise," "The Passions," does not 
 promise much poetry, and poetry we do not find, but his 
 
174 POETS' COUNTRY 
 
 touches of natural description have often distinction 
 and even beauty ; such as 
 
 The horrors of the solemn wood 
 While the soft evening saddens into night. 
 
 The sounding forest fluctuates in the storm. 
 
 The impending trees 
 Stretch their extravagant arms athwart the gloom. 
 
 The tower that long had stood 
 The crash of thunder and the warring winds. 
 
 The roughening deep expects the storm, as sure 
 As red Orion mounts the shrouded heaven. 
 
 A purely didactic poem so essentially prosaic in its 
 theme, sown with lines like these, is at least memorable. 
 But when Armstrong attempts, as he does, in the 
 First Book, a panoramic view of the scenery around 
 London, he so often collapses, and collapses so dismally, 
 into grotesque commonplace and bathos that it is im- 
 possible to quote him. 
 
 When Johnson observed of Shenstone that his 
 pleasure was all in his eye, he pierced to the heart of 
 the truth about him. His poetry has gone the way of 
 his once famous Leasowes, which imitated Nature only 
 to falsify it. The Leasowes, which is situated halfway 
 down the descent from Hales-Owen, and is about four 
 miles from Hagley in Herefordshire and seven from 
 Birmingham, may still be seen in neglect and ruin ; 
 his poems have still a place in the corpus of our 
 national poets, but the life has gone out of them, and 
 
SHENSTONE 175 
 
 only the curious turn to them. Two -thirds of his 
 poetry is pure falsetto : at the best it is but pretty. 
 His ambitious poetry is dulness incarnate. It is 
 significant that the two best things which came from 
 his pen are a sentence in Latin, inscribed on an urn 
 dedicated to the memory of Miss Dolman, "Heu 
 quanto minus est cum reliquis versari quam tui 
 meminisse," and the cynical verses written in an 
 Inn at Henley. If he possessed what he affected, 
 an enthusiasm for Nature, it finds expression in one 
 passage only ; it is a stanza in a poem entitled Rural 
 Elegance : 
 
 Lo ! not an hedgerow hawthorn blows, 
 Or humble harebell paints the plain, 
 Or valley winds, or fountain flows, 
 
 Or purple heath is ting'd in vain : 
 For such the rivers dash the foamy tides, 
 The mountain swells, the dale subsides ; 
 E'en thriftless furze detains their wandering sight, 
 And the rough barren rock grows pregnant with delight. 
 
 This is his best Nature poem, and stands quite alone. 
 
 To Dr. James Grainger, the author of Solitude, a 
 feeble ode ludicrously overpraised by Johnson, and 
 the Sugar- Cane, a didactic poem on the therne 
 indicated, a place among those who contributed to the 
 Romantic movement belongs by courtesy. David 
 Mallet, who is now remembered chiefly for his really 
 beautiful ballad, IVilliam and Margaret, was as a 
 descriptive poet, that is, as the author of The Excursion, 
 published in 1728, and of a long narrative poem in 
 
176 POETS' COUNTRY 
 
 blank verse (1747), an imitator of Thomson, but has 
 left no passage worth quoting. It is somewhat startling 
 to find the author of Peregrine Pickk and of Roderick 
 Random among the poets of Nature, and yet he has 
 feelingly celebrated the charms of Leven Water : 
 
 Pure stream, in whose transparent wave 
 
 My youthful limbs I wont to lave ; 
 
 No torrents stain thy limpid source, 
 
 No rocks impede thy dimpling course, 
 
 That sweetly warbles o'er its bed, 
 
 With white, round, polish'd pebbles spread ; 
 
 While, lightly pois'd, the scaly brood 
 
 In myriads cleave thy crystal flood ; 
 
 The springing trout in speckled pride, 
 
 The salmon, monarch of the tide ; 
 
 The ruthless pike, intent on war, 
 
 The silver eel, and mottled par. 
 
 Devolving from thy parent lake, 
 
 A charming maze thy waters make, 
 
 By bowers of birch, and groves of pine, 
 
 And edges flowered with eglantine. 
 
 It is when we place a poem like this beside Words- 
 worth's Lines to a Highland Girl that we can measure 
 the whole distance between the realism of the eighteenth 
 century at its best and elements imported into that 
 poetry by the genius of Romanticism. 
 
GOLDSMITH, COLLINS, AND GRAY 
 
 WE have now arrived at the three poets who are 
 pre-eminent during the period which extends from the 
 death of Pope to the appearance of Wordsworth and 
 Coleridge, who have enriched our poetry with some of 
 the most precious contributions which have ever been 
 made to it, and who may be regarded in various ways 
 and from different points of view as the initiators of 
 modern poetry in some of its most exquisite manifesta- 
 tions. In dealing with them here it will be necessary 
 to confine ourselves strictly to their descriptive poetry, 
 and as far as possible to treat it in relation to the 
 scenes which suggested and inspired it. In the case 
 of Goldsmith and Gray this can be done fully and 
 satisfactorily ; in the case of Collins this is not always 
 easy. 
 
 Goldsmith marks with singular preciseness the 
 transition from the poetry characteristic of the 
 eighteenth century to that characteristic of the 
 nineteenth, but he belongs much more to the first 
 than to the second. His Traveller appeared in 1764. 
 
 177 N 
 
178 POETS' COUNTRY 
 
 his Deserted Village in 1770. Except in the infusion 
 of sentiment, the world of The Traveller is the world 
 of Addison's Epistle from Italy and Pope's Windsor 
 Forest. The ethical element completely predominates 
 over the scenic and picturesque. Simplicity and 
 humanity are there, but there only occasionally. Man 
 is contemplated not so much individually and in relation 
 to himself as socially and politically. The style is 
 pointed and epigrammatic, and has the note of rhetoric. 
 But in The Deserted Village this is reversed. What is 
 occasional and more or less accidental in the other poem 
 is here ubiquitous and of the essence of the work. It 
 is the heart speaking to the heart, and in essentials all 
 as a rule is simplicity and nature ; it is only here and 
 there that the old falsetto jars on us. The politics of 
 the poem spring out of its humanity. 
 
 It was well said by Campbell that " fiction in poetry 
 is not the reverse of truth, but her soft and enchanted 
 resemblance," and this ideal beauty of Nature has seldom 
 been united with so much sober fidelity as in the groups 
 and scenery of The Deserted Village. Macaulay com- 
 plains that The Deserted Village, being as it is a picture 
 blended from reminiscences of Lissoy and of some typical 
 English village, presumably in Kent, is incongruous and 
 unreal. It is fortunate for Macaulay that his reputation 
 does not depend on his criticisms of poetry. There can 
 be no doubt at all that Auburn was in the main drawn 
 from Lissoy, where Goldsmith passed his boyhood, that 
 it was founded on fact, and that its scenery and its 
 
STOKE POGES MANOR 
 
 Stoke Poges Manor, adjoining the churchyard, was for a 
 time the residence of Gray. It dates from the Edwards' 
 time, and contrasts with the scenes of the Elegy. 
 
GOLDSMITH, COLLINS, AND GRAY 179 
 
 associations were those with which Goldsmith, when 
 living at Lissoy, was familiar. This is placed beyond 
 doubt by Dr. Strean he was the successor of Henry 
 Goldsmith, the poet's brother, in the curacy of Kilkenny 
 West who in a letter to Edward Mangin, dated 
 December 1807, writes as follows. The letter is quoted 
 by Forster, but must be given here : 
 
 The poem of The Deserted Village took its origin from the 
 circumstance of General Robert Napper (the grandfather of the 
 gentleman who now lives in the house, within half a mile of 
 Lissoy, and built by the General) having purchased an extensive 
 tract of the country surrounding Lissoy or Auburn ; in consequence 
 of which many families here called colliers were removed to make 
 room for the intended improvements of what was now to become 
 the domain of a rich man, warm with the idea of changing the 
 face of his new acquisition ; and were forced " with fainting steps " 
 to go in search of " torrid tracts " and " distant climes." This fact 
 alone might be supposed to establish the seat of the poem ; but 
 there cannot remain a doubt in any unprejudiced mind when the 
 following are added, viz. that the character of the village 
 preacher, the above-named Henry, is copied from nature. He is 
 described exactly as he lived, and his "modest mansion" as it 
 existed. Burn, the name of the village master, and the site of his 
 school-house ; and Catherine Giraghty, a lonely widow 
 
 The wretched matron, forc'd in age for bread 
 
 To strip the brook with mantling cresses spread 
 
 (and to this day the brook and ditches near the spot where her 
 cabin stood abound with cresses), still remain in the memory of 
 the inhabitants, and Catherine's children live in the neighbourhood. 
 The pool, the busy mill, the house "where nut-brown draughts 
 inspired," are still visited on the poetic scene ; and the " hawthorn 
 bush," growing in an open space in front of the house, which I 
 
180 POETS' COUNTRY 
 
 knew to have three trunks, is now reduced to one ; the other two 
 having been cut, from time to time, by persons carrying pieces of 
 it away to be made into toys, etc., in honour of the bard and of 
 the celebrity of his poem. All these contribute to the same 
 proof; and the "decent church," which I attended for upwards of 
 eighteen years, and which " tops the neighbouring hill,"" is exactly 
 described as seen from Lissoy, the residence of the preacher. 
 
 This was written only thirty -three years after 
 Goldsmith's death, the position of the writer as curate 
 of Kilkenny West and successor of Henry Goldsmith 
 being sufficient guarantee for his accuracy. In or about 
 1846 William Howitt visited the place, and found it all 
 ruins, squalor, and desolation. But there can be no 
 doubt that as Goldsmith sat in his Chambers at Brick 
 Court, with anxieties and difficulties accumulating 
 round him, and death not so very far away, his memory 
 wandered back to these early scenes. "Whatever 
 vicissitudes we experience in life" he had written 
 some years before "however we toil or wheresoever 
 we wander, our fatigued wishes still recur to home for 
 tranquillity : we long to die in that spot which gave us 
 birth, and in that pleasing expectation we find an opiate 
 for every calamity." l No doubt 
 
 Remembrance woke with all its busy train, 
 Swell'd at his heart, and turned the past to pain, 
 
 and imagination glorified and consecrated what memory 
 recalled. We need not suspect the intervention of any 
 
 1 Citizen of the World, ciii. 
 
GOLDSMITH, COLLINS, AND GRAY 181 
 
 English village as Forster and others do. Lissoy and 
 Lissoy only was in his mind, but it was the Lissoy of 
 his youth and of his dreams. 
 
 It may be doubted whether Nature in the abstract 
 had much attraction for Goldsmith, whether its mere 
 phenomena in themselves had power to charm him. In 
 his novel and in his History of Animated Nature there 
 are many delightful touches of description, but with 
 him Nature is always associated with man and with 
 animal life. 
 
 The first published poem by Collins, the Persian 
 Eclogues, gave no promise of the poems on which his 
 fame rests and which stand absolutely alone in the 
 poetry of the eighteenth century, anticipating all that is 
 most exquisite in the lyric of Coleridge and in the lyric 
 of Tennyson. A critic who should be confronted with 
 such a passage as this : 
 
 With eyes uprais'd, as one inspired, 
 
 Pale Melancholy sat retired ; 
 
 And from her wild sequestered seat, 
 
 In notes by distance made more sweet, 
 Poured through the mellow horn her pensive soul : 
 
 And dashing soft from rocks around, 
 
 Bubbling runnels join'd the sound ; 
 Through glades and glooms the mingled measure stole : 
 
 Or o'er some haunted spring, with fond delay, 
 
 Round an holy calm diffusing, 
 
 Love of peace and lonely musing, 
 
 In hollow murmurs died away 
 
 might well be forgiven for pronouncing that such a 
 passage was an impossibility in the poetry of the middle 
 
182 POETS' COUNTRY 
 
 eighteenth century. Yet so it was : till Tennyson 
 appeared no such magical note had been sounded in 
 descriptive poetry. Collins was born at Chichester in 
 December 1721. In 1742, just after he left Oxford, 
 he published the Persian Eclogues, and in December 
 1746 the golden volume of his Odes. It is in the Ode 
 to Evening and the Ode on the Death of Thomson that 
 he appears as the poet of Nature. Can they be 
 localised ? Whoever is acquainted with the neighbour- 
 hood of Chichester, and has wandered along the roads 
 through the fields there when the shades of evening 
 are falling, will have no difficulty in understanding what 
 suggested and what inspired this incomparable sketch : 
 
 O nymph reserved, while now the bright-haired sun 
 Sits in yon Western tent, whose cloudy skirts, 
 
 With brede ethereal wove, 
 
 O'erhang his wavy bed : 
 
 Now air is hush'd, save where the weak-eyed bat, 
 With short shrill shriek, flits by on leathern wing ; 
 
 Or where the beetle winds 
 
 His small but sullen horn, 
 
 As oft he rises 'midst the twilight path, 
 Against the pilgrim borne in heedless hum. 
 
 It ought not to be forgotten that Collins revised 
 this Ode, and in this revision, for the stanza which ran in 
 the first edition and which is commonly printed now : 
 
 Then let me rove some wild and heathy scene, 
 Or find some ruin 'midst its dreary dells, 
 
 Whose walls more awful nod 
 
 By thy religious gleams. 
 
THE HALL OF STOKE MANOR 
 
 The coat-of-arms over the fireplace is of the Hastings 
 family, and may have suggested the lines : 
 
 The boast of heraldry, the pomp of pow'r, 
 And all that beauty, all that wealth e'er gave, 
 Awaits alike th' inevitable hour. 
 The paths of glory lead but to the grave. 
 
 Elegy. 
 

GOLDSMITH, COLLINS, AND GRAY 183 
 
 was substituted : 
 
 Then lead, calm votaress, where some sheety lake 
 Cheers the lone heath, or some time-hallow'd pile, 
 
 Or upland fallows grey 
 
 Reflect its last cool gleam. 
 
 In the next stanzas he blends what is characteristic 
 of Chichester scenery with such a prospect as we might 
 have from Ben Lomond or Snowdon : 
 
 But when chill blustering winds, or driving rain, 
 Prevent my willing feet, be mine the hut 
 
 That from the mountain's side 
 
 Views wilds and swelling floods, 
 
 And hamlets brown, and dim-discover'd spires, 
 And hears their simple bell, and marks o'er all 
 
 Thy dewy fingers draw 
 
 The gradual dusky veil. 
 
 In the Ode on the Death of Thomson he conducts 
 to the scene which Thomson himself had so vividly 
 described the scene of the Thames and the meadows 
 from Richmond Hill : 
 
 Remembrance oft shall haunt the shore, 
 When Thames in summer wreaths is drest ; 
 
 And oft suspend the dashing oar, 
 To bid his gentle spirit rest ! 
 
 And oft as ease and health retire 
 
 To breezy lawn, or forest deep, 
 The friend shall view yon whitening spire, 
 
 And 'mid the varied landscape weep. 1 
 
 1 Richmond Church. 
 
184 POETS' COUNTRY 
 
 But them, lorn stream, whose sullen tide 
 No sedge-crown' d Sisters now attend, 
 
 Now waft me from the green hill's side 
 Whose cold turf hides the buried friend I 
 
 And see, the fairy valleys fade, 
 
 Dun night has veiled the solemn view ! 
 
 Yet once again, dear parted Shade, 
 Meek Nature's Child, again adieu ! 
 
 The genial meads, assign'd to bless 
 Thy life, shall mourn thy early doom ! 
 
 Their herds and shepherd girls shall dress 
 With simple hands thy rural tomb. 
 
 Long, long thy stone and pointed clay 
 Shall melt the musing Briton's eyes : 
 
 O vales and wild woods, shall he say, 
 In yonder grave your Druid lies ! 
 
 Whether Collins ever visited the Highlands of 
 Scotland does not appear, but there are fine touches 
 of description, the truthfulness of which has often been 
 commented on, in his Ode on the Superstitions in the 
 Scottish Highlands. It is said that he designed to write 
 a series of scenes from Nature, after the manner of the 
 Ode to Evening, but that the miserable indifference of 
 his contemporaries to his Odes which, in consequence, 
 he indignantly bought up and destroyed so far as he 
 could procure them prevented this and other projects. 
 Criticism abounds in curiosities, and strange indeed 
 have been the mismeasurements which contemporary 
 men of genius have made of each other, but that Gray 
 should not have seen the extraordinary merit of Collins' 
 lyrics is inexplicable. Yet so it was. "Have you 
 
GOLDSMITH, COLLINS, AND GRAY 185 
 
 seen," he writes to his friend Wharton, " the work of 
 two young authors, a Mr. Warton and a Mr. Collins, 
 both writers of Odes ? " he is referring to Joseph 
 Warton 's Odes, which came out at the same time as 
 Collins's " It is odd enough, but each is the half of a 
 considerable man, and one the counterpart of the other. 
 The first has but little invention, very poetical choice 
 of expression, and a good ear ; the second a fine fancy 
 modelled upon the antique, a bad ear, great variety of 
 words and images, and no choice at all. They both 
 deserve to last some years, but will not." 
 
 What Weston was to Cowper, Stoke Pogis was to 
 Gray. A visit to the churchyard and its immediate 
 neighbourhood is even now the best of all commentaries 
 on the Ode on the Spring, Ode on the Distant Prospect 
 of Eton, on The Long Story, and on the Elegy. His 
 mother's life had been a very unhappy one, and leaving 
 her husband she had joined her sister Mary Antrobus 
 in setting up a kind of India warehouse in Cornhill. 
 The business prospered, her husband died, and the two 
 sisters, in October 1742, went to live with a widowed 
 sister, a Mrs. Rogers, at Stoke Pogis, in Buckingham, 
 which is about three miles from Slough. The house 
 in which they lived was called West End House, and 
 was situated in the northern end of the parish, and is 
 within a mile or so of Burnham Beeches. It was a 
 farmhouse, two storeys high, with a rustic porch over 
 the door, and it stood in a hollow screened by trees. 
 A small stream ran through the garden, and on one 
 
186 POETS' COUNTRY 
 
 side of the cottage extended an upland field, at the 
 summit of which was an artificial mound with a 
 summer-house upon it giving a full prospect of Eton 
 and Windsor. All, unhappily, is changed now : the 
 cottage has disappeared, with it the garden, and a 
 modern Elizabethan mansion with proportionately ex- 
 tensive grounds has taken its place. But it is with 
 the church and the scenery round it that Gray is more 
 particularly associated ; this, happily, is very little 
 changed. The church, which is dedicated to St. Giles, 
 is a small Gothic structure, situated on the edge of a 
 slight ridge which continues eastward and westward on 
 either side, and slopes gradually southward towards the 
 Thames. A few years ago the church had a wooden 
 spire prettily overgrown, as Gray described it, with ivy ; 
 but this is now gone. Trees, chiefly elms and Scotch 
 firs, tower up on each side of the churchyard, and 
 opposite the porch are two very old yew trees, in the 
 shade of which the turf still "heaves" with nameless 
 graves. We have only to take away the wall dividing 
 the churchyard from Stoke Park, and this in Gray's 
 time did not exist, to restore the landscape as it met 
 his eyes. From the churchyard to West End there was 
 a path still open to pedestrians across the meadows 
 on by the lane leading to Stoke Common. But 
 the neighbourhood was familiar to Gray some years 
 before his mother settled there, for he used to 
 stay, while still a schoolboy at Eton and an under- 
 graduate at Cambridge, with his uncle at Britweil, 
 
THE POETS' WALK AT ETON 
 
 The Poets' Walk, Eton College grounds, is associated 
 with the names of Gray and Walpole their favourite walk. 
 
GOLDSMITH, COLLINS, AND GRAY 187 
 
 near Burnham. Thus we find him writing to Walpole 
 in 1737 : 
 
 My comfort amid all this is that I have, at the distance of half 
 a mile through a green lane, a forest the vulgar call it a common 
 all my own, at least as good as so, for I spy no human being 
 in it but myself. It is a little chaos of mountains and precipices ; 
 mountains, it is true, that do not ascend much above the clouds, 
 nor are the declivities quite as amazing as Dover Cliff, but just 
 such hills as people who love their necks as well as I do may 
 venture to climb, and crags that give the eye as much pleasure as 
 if they were more dangerous. Both vale and hill are covered with 
 most venerable beeches and other very reverend vegetables, that, 
 like most other people, are always dreaming over their old stories 
 to the winds. 
 
 And as they bow their hoary tops relate, 
 
 In murm'ring sounds, the dark decrees of Fate ; 
 
 While visions, as poetic eyes avow, 
 
 Cling to each leaf, and swarm on every bough. 
 
 At the foot of one of these squats me, I, il penseroso, and there 
 grow to the trunk for a whole morning. The timorous hare and 
 sportive squirrel gambol around me like Adam in Paradise, before 
 he had his Eve ; but I think he did not use to read Virgil, as I 
 commonly do here. 
 
 After his mother settled at West End House, Gray 
 spent all his vacations with her, regularly coming from 
 Cambridge. It was here he studied and meditated. 
 The feud with Walpole and the death of his beloved 
 friend, Richard West, initiated him in life's saddening 
 experiences ; then came the death of his aunt, Mary 
 Antrobus in 1749, which is said to have induced him 
 to finish the Elegy, begun some years before. It is 
 
188 POETS' COUNTRY 
 
 interesting to note how the inspiration of all his early 
 poems came from what met his eyes or was suggested 
 by what occupied his mind at Stoke. His earliest 
 extant poem is the Ode on Spring. Its scenery is 
 photographed from the garden at West End and in 
 Stoke Park : 
 
 Where'er the oak's thick branches stretch 
 
 A broader browner shade ; 
 Where'er the rude and moss-grown beech 
 
 O'ercanopies the glade ; 
 Beside some water's rushy brink 
 With me the Muse shall sit 
 
 and there is not a touch in the poem which might not 
 have been suggested by what surrounded him. Can 
 we doubt that his first printed poem, the Ode on a 
 Distant Prospect of Eton, occurred to him as he 
 meditated with that prospect actually before him in 
 the little summer-house still discernible both from 
 Skinner's Pond Field and the Pond Field ? 
 
 Ye distant spires, ye antique towers, 
 That crown the watery glade. 
 
 And ye, that from the stately brow 
 Of Windsor's heights th' expanse below 
 
 Of grove, of lawn, of mead survey ; 
 Whose turf, whose shade, whose flowers among 
 Wanders the hoary Thames along 
 
 His silver- winding way ! 
 
 The scenery of the Elegy was a literal transcript to 
 the minutest detail of what he could see any evening 
 as he stood in the churchyard, and the magical power 
 
STOKE POGES CHURCHYARD 
 
 The yew-trees in Stoke Poges churchyard, said to be 
 nine hundred years old, are undoubtedly those referred to 
 in the Elegy : 
 
 Beneath those rugged elms, that yew-tree's shade, 
 Where heaves the turf in many a mould'ring heap, 
 Each in his narrow cell for ever laid, 
 The rude Forefathers of the hamlet sleep. 
 

GOLDSMITH, COLLINS, AND GRAY 189 
 
 with which the very soul of the scene passed in quint- 
 essence into the poem may still be felt by any one who 
 will, as evening falls, visit the spot. Here may still 
 be heard " the drowsy tinklings " " lulling " " the dis- 
 tant folds " ; may be seen 
 
 The yew-tree's shade, 
 Where heaves the turf in many a mouldering heap, 
 
 The nodding beech 
 That wreathes its old fantastic roots so high. 
 
 Nor have we to go far either for " the upland lawn," 
 " the green-wood side " of the rejected stanza or for 
 the " babbling brook." It has been suggested that the 
 churchyard of the village of Upton, which is about a 
 mile to the north-east of Windsor, was the scene of the 
 Ekgy, on the ground that elm trees abound there, 
 whereas Scotch firs predominate at Stoke Pogis. To 
 this it may be answered that the Scotch firs have sprung 
 up since Gray's time, and that as elms abound in the 
 park, they probably preceded the firs. 
 
 Near the south-east window of Stoke Church, on a 
 plain brick altar tomb, may be read an inscription from 
 Gray's pen : 
 
 In the vault beneath are deposited, in hope of a joyful resur- 
 rection, the remains of Mary Antrobus. She died unmarried, 
 Nov. 5, 1749, aged sixty-six. In the same pious confidence, beside 
 her friend and sister, here sleep the remains of Dorothy Gray, 
 widow ; the tender, careful mother of many children, one of whom 
 alone had the misfortune to survive her. She died March 11, 
 1753, aged sixty-seven. 
 
 Of Gray himself, though he rests in the same tomb, 
 
190 POETS' COUNTRY 
 
 no word is said. But these are not the only associa- 
 tions with Gray at Stoke Pogis. As we stand on the 
 south side of the churchyard, just at the entrance, we 
 see through the trees of the Park, on the right, two 
 chimneys. If we make our way to them, which we can 
 do by a pathway running parallel with the church wall, 
 we see that they belong to a venerable, ivy-draped 
 building. This is one wing, all that remains of the old 
 Stoke Manor, once a fine Gothic mansion with high 
 gables, projecting windows, built in 1555 by the Earl of 
 Huntingdon, and occupied successively, so tradition 
 says, by Sir Christopher Hatton, though this is doubtful, 
 and by Sir Edward Coke, who, in 1601, entertained 
 Queen Elizabeth there. In Gray's time it was the 
 residence of the Viscountess Cobham. In 1789, when 
 the present Stoke Park was built, all but the wing pre- 
 served was demolished. It is interesting to know that 
 for some time it was fitted up as a studio for Sir Edwin 
 Landseer, and it was when at work here in 1852 that 
 he suddenly became deranged. A call made on Gray 
 by two relatives of Lady Cobham's, Miss Speed and 
 Lady Schaub, who were staying with her, was the 
 occasion of his poem, The Long Story. 
 
 In a recent visit to Stoke Pogis, I was sorry to see 
 that the hand of "improvement" had been busy, and 
 that both the church and churchyard are becoming 
 most disgustingly trim and modern. Surely every 
 alteration is a mistake. In a place with such associa- 
 tions, conservatism can scarcely be carried too far. 
 
THE CENOTAPH AT STOKE POGES* 
 
 On the cenotaph at Stoke Poges, the scene of Gray's 
 Elegy, is inscribed the lines : 
 
 Haply some hoary-headed swain may say, 
 Oft have we seen him at the peep of dawn 
 Brushing with hasty steps the dews away 
 To meet the sun upon the upland lawn. 
 
FALCONER AND MARINE SCENERY, 
 MASON, THE WARTONS, AND BEATTIE 
 
 WITH very little education, uncultivated taste, and 
 with Pope's Homer for his model of style and verse, 
 Falconer essayed to record his experiences as a sailor, 
 and has produced a poem which stands absolutely alone 
 in our poetry. The contrast between the truth and 
 vividness of his descriptions and his vicious diction, 
 with its cheap pomp and stilted artificiality, is some- 
 times startling even to ludicrousness. And yet the 
 merits of his poem are really great : it is excellently 
 constructed an epic, with the conflict between man's 
 skill and courage and the power of the terrible element 
 in collision with it for its theme. In the first canto 
 man musters his forces, and the crew and the ship are 
 described ; in the second, man is confronted with his 
 adversary, and the sea and a ship's ordinary experiences 
 on it are detailed ; in the third, off Cape Colonna, battle 
 is joined, and man has lost. All Falconer's descriptions 
 are drawn from experience ; they have, like Crabbe's, 
 the merit of truth. He was himself the second mate of 
 
 191 
 
192 POETS' COUNTRY 
 
 a vessel employed in the Levant trade, and was ship- 
 wrecked in a passage from Alexandria to Venice, three 
 only of the crew being saved. By a tragical irony the 
 poet of the shipwreck perished by shipwreck. He 
 sailed from England on the Aurora in September 
 1769. After they left the Cape nothing more 
 was heard of her, not a vestige being found ; it is 
 supposed that she went down in the Mozambique 
 Channel. 
 
 In selecting two or three of Falconer's descriptions, 
 I will not mark the omissions by asterisks. Let us take 
 first the rising and effects of a sudden squall : 
 
 But see ! in confluence borne before the blast, 
 Clouds roll'd on cloud, the dusky moon o'ercast : 
 The blackening ocean curls, the winds arise, 
 And the dark scud in swift succession flies. 
 Four hours the Sun his high meridian throne 
 Had left, and o'er Atlantic regions shone ; 
 Still blacker clouds, that all the skies invade, 
 Draw o'er his sullied orb a dismal shade : 
 A lowering squall obscures the southern sky, 
 Before whose sweeping breath the waters fly. 
 It comes resistless ! and with foamy sweep 
 Upturns the whitening surface of the deep : 
 The clouds, with ruin pregnant, now impend, 
 And storm and cataracts tumultuous blend. 
 Deep, on her side, the reeling vessel lies : 
 Brail up the mizen quick ! the master cries, 
 Man the clue-garnets ! Let the main-sheet fly ! 
 It rends in thousand shivering shreds on high ! 
 The main-sail, all in streaming ruins tore, 
 Loud fluttering, imitates the thunder's roar. 
 
 Canto II. 
 
FALCONER 193 
 
 The following are from the last scene : 
 
 High o'er the poop th' audacious seas aspire, 
 
 Uproll'd in hills of fluctuating fire ; 
 
 With lab'ring throes she rolls on either side, 
 
 And dips her gunnels in the yawning tide. 
 
 The gale howls doleful through the blocks and shrouds, 
 
 And big rain pours a deluge from the clouds. 
 
 In vain the cords and axes were prepar'd, 
 For every wave now smites the quivering yard ; 
 High o'er the ship they throw a dreadful shade, 
 Then on her burst in terrible cascade ; 
 Across the founder'd deck o'erwhelming roar, 
 And foaming, swelling, bound upon the shore. 
 Swift up the mounting billow now she flies, 
 Her shatter'd top half-buried in the skies. 
 
 Canto III. 
 
 Take, too, the picture of a shoal of dolphin : 
 
 But now, beneath the lofty vessel's stern, 
 A shoal of sportive dolphins they discern 
 Beaming from burnish'd scales refulgent rays, 
 Till all the glowing ocean seems to blaze : 
 In curling wreaths they wanton on the tide, 
 Now bound aloft, now downward swiftly glide ; 
 Awhile beneath the waves their tracks remain, 
 And burn in silver streams along the liquid plain. 
 
 Canto II. 
 
 Not without beauty, if of a somewhat commonplace 
 order, is another of his marine scenes : 
 
 The sun's bright orb, declining all serene, 
 Now glanc'd obliquely o'er the woodlaiid scene : 
 The glassy ocean hush'd forgets to roar, 
 But trembling murmurs on the sandy shore : 
 
194 POETS' COUNTRY 
 
 And lo ! his surface lovely to behold 
 Glows in the west, a sea of living gold ! 
 While, all above, a thousand liveries gay 
 The skies with pomp ineffable array. 
 
 Canto I. 
 
 William Mason is now chiefly, perhaps only, 
 remembered as the friend and biographer of Gray. 
 But in the history of descriptive poetry he holds a 
 conspicuous place, for his English Garden, an elaborate 
 poem in four books, places us in the midst of the 
 controversy between the votaries of Art and the votaries 
 of Nature in the science of landscape-gardening, re- 
 presented on the one hand by William Kemp, Lancelot 
 Brown and their school, and on the other by the 
 Chinese vagaries of Sir William Chambers and his 
 followers. The controversy had arisen early in the 
 century. Pope had led the reaction against the Dutch 
 style and the formality of Le Notre, and had ridiculed 
 the gardens where 
 
 No pleasing intricacies intervene, 
 
 No artful wildness to perplex the scene ; 
 
 and where 
 
 Grove nods at grove, each alley has a brother, 
 And half the platform just reflects the other. 
 
 Brown and Kemp, with their disciples, had revolu- 
 tionised all this, substituting not Art for Nature, but 
 calling Art to the assistance of Nature. The principles 
 on which they proceeded are, at least from a technical 
 point of view, described so well by Mason that the 
 passage may be transcribed : 
 
MASON 195 
 
 Of Nature's various scenes the painter culls 
 
 That for his fav'rite theme, where the fair whole 
 
 Is broken into ample parts, and bold ; 
 
 Where to the eye three well-mark'd distances 
 
 Spread their peculiar colouring vivid green, 
 
 Warm brown, and black opaque the foreground bears 
 
 Conspicuous ; sober olive coldly marks 
 
 The second distance ; thence the third declines 
 
 In softer blue, or, less'ning still, is lost 
 
 In faintest purple. When thy taste is call'd 
 
 To adorn a scene where Nature's self presents 
 
 All these distinct gradations, then rejoice, 
 
 As does the painter, and, like him, apply 
 
 Thy colours : plant thou on each separate part 
 
 Its proper foliage. Chief, for there thy skill 
 
 Has its chief scope, enrich with all the hues 
 
 That flowers, that shrubs, that trees can yield, the sides 
 
 Of that fair path from whence our sight is led 
 
 Gradual to view the whole. Where'er thou wind'st 
 
 That path, take heed between the scene and eye 
 
 To vary and to mix thy chosen greens. 
 
 Here for a while with cedar and with larch, 
 
 That from the ground spread their close foliage, hide 
 
 The view entire. Then o'er some lowly tuft 
 
 Where rose and woodbine bloom, permit its charms 
 
 To burst upon the sight : now through a copse 
 
 Of beech, that rear their smooth and stately trunks, 
 
 Admit it partially, and half exclude 
 
 And half reveal its graces : in this path 
 
 How long soe'er the wanderer roves, each step 
 
 Shall wake fresh beauties ; each short point present 
 
 A different picture, new, and yet the same. 
 
 Book I. 
 
 The whole long poem is a detailed picture of 
 an ideal paradise constructed on Brown's principles, 
 pompous and monotonous in style and in versification, 
 even intolerably so, but producing with curious fidelity 
 
196 POETS' COUNTRY 
 
 something of the same effect on the imagination as his 
 laboured artifices for the "improvement" of Nature 
 produce on the eye. With what provoked Mason to 
 write the poem, which appeared at intervals between 
 1772 and 1782, and the satire An Heroic Epistle to 
 Sir William Chambers, which appeared just after the 
 publication of the first Book, we can sympathise. 
 Chambers, in a Dissertation published in 1772, had 
 observed that " Nature affords us but few materials to 
 work with. Plants, grounds, and water are her only 
 productions ; and though both the forms and arrange- 
 ments of these may be varied to an incredible degree, 
 yet they have but few striking varieties, the rest being 
 of the nature of changes rung upon bells, which, though 
 in reality different, still produce the same uniform kind 
 of jingling, the variation being too minute to be easily 
 perceived." Art, consequently, must supply the scanti- 
 ness of Nature. And this scantiness he proposed to 
 supply by introducing the barbarous fantasticalities of 
 the Chinese style. 
 
 Mason is a voluminous and accomplished poet, but 
 stilted and conventional, and, though he invoked sim- 
 plicity, was pompously artificial. That Gray, who was 
 his friend, should have overrated him is natural, but 
 that he should have pronounced two lines in one of 
 his friend's odes : 
 
 While through the West, where sinks the crimson day, 
 Meek Twilight slowly sails, and waves her banners grey 
 
 superb, is not easily explained. 
 
THE WARTONS 197 
 
 Few men contributed more to the Romantic Revival 
 than the brothers Joseph and Thomas Warton. Joseph 
 was born in 1722, received his early education at 
 Winchester, where Collins was one of his schoolfellows, 
 matriculated from Oriel College, Oxford, and, taking 
 his degree in 1744, was not long afterwards ordained. 
 In 1766 he became headmaster of Winchester School, 
 over which he presided with much celebrity till 1793, 
 when he retired to his living at Wickham, where he 
 died in 1800. His Essay on Pope, the first volume of 
 which appeared in 1757, may be said to mark the re- 
 action against the Augustan School of English poetry, 
 its object being to vindicate the superiority of our older 
 poets to those of the Classical School, and to that re- 
 action, passing as the work did through several editions, 
 it undoubtedly contributed. What he inculcated in 
 his writings he enforced as a schoolmaster, and among 
 his pupils was Bowles, whose Sonnets were many years 
 later so powerfully to affect Coleridge. As a poet and 
 his earliest poem, The Enthusiast, or the Lover of Nature, 
 is dated 1740 he also contributed to the same move- 
 ment. The Enthusiast is an imitation of Thomson, 
 and one of the most pleasing of his Nature -poems. 
 The Ode to Fancy is more or less an imitation of 
 Milton's L? Allegro and // Penseroso. His Ode to 
 Content furnished Collins with the model for the 
 Ode to Evening. The most pleasing passage in his 
 poems is perhaps the following from the Ode to 
 Fancy : 
 
198 POETS' COUNTRY 
 
 O lover of the desert, hail ! 
 
 Say in what deep and pathless vale, 
 
 Or on what hoary mountain's side, 
 
 'Midst falls of water, you reside ; 
 
 'Mid broken rocks a rugged scene, 
 
 With green and grassy dales between ; 
 
 'Mid forests dark of aged oak, 
 
 Ne'er echoing with the woodman's stroke, 
 
 Where Nature seemed to sit alone, 
 
 Majestic on a craggy throne. 
 
 This, though commonplace, is at least pretty. 
 
 Much more celebrated and influential was his 
 brother Thomas, born six years later. The greater 
 part of his life was spent at Oxford as commoner, 
 scholar, and Fellow of Trinity College for he matricu- 
 lated from that college in his seventeenth year, and, 
 after residing there for seven-and-forty years, received 
 his death -summons, a stroke of paralysis, in the 
 Common Room, dying the next day. He held several 
 distinguished posts. Between 1757 and 1767 he was 
 Professor of Poetry ; in 1785 Camden Professor of 
 History ; and in the same year succeeded Cibber as 
 Poet Laureate. His History of English Poetry is still 
 a classical work. His edition of Theocritus and his 
 Latin poems, and his edition of Milton's Minor Poems, 
 are also proofs of his accomplishments as a scholar and 
 a critic. Like Gray, with whose career his own was 
 singularly analogous, he was also a humorist ; and like 
 Gray a poet, but of a very inferior order. The interest 
 of Warton is, like that of his brother, almost entirely 
 historical, but in that respect he is really important, 
 
WINCHESTER 
 
 Collins, Philips, and War ton were educated at Win- 
 chester School. In this view of Winchester the school 
 stands in the mid distance, the cathedral beyond, and the 
 site of Alfred the Great's Palace on this side of it. 
 
 The city of Winchester was the first capital of England, 
 and there was held the first Parliament. 
 

 
 
THE WARTONS 199 
 
 for he contributed much to the Romantic movement, 
 in his Crusade, and more particularly in his Grave of 
 King Arthur, he anticipated Sir Walter Scott, the 
 last poem being almost indistinguishable from Scott's 
 best narrative. His Sonnets anticipate Bowles, and 
 that on the River Lodon Wordsworth. The poem 
 of The Suicide, a most powerful poem, had the end 
 sustained the beginning, has quite the modern note, 
 particularly in the suffusion of the scenery with senti- 
 ment. But his descriptive poetry, best illustrated in 
 The Hamlet, written in Wychwood Forest, in the 
 Poem sent to a Friend on his leaving a Favourite 
 Village in Hampshire, and the Approach of Summer, 
 though very pleasing, just stop short of distinction, 
 and are imitative. He has never the touch of magic, 
 never the touch which redeems from commonplace. 
 
 There is, however, something of Gainsborough in 
 the following from the lines written in Wychwood 
 Forest. He is speaking of the rustics round : 
 
 When morning's twilight-tinctur'd beam 
 Strikes their low thatch with slanting gleam, 
 They rove abroad in ether blue, 
 To dip the scythe in fragrant dew ; 
 The sheaf to bind, the beech to fell, 
 That nodding shades a craggy dell. 
 'Midst gloomy glades, in warbles clear, 
 Wild Nature's sweetest notes they hear : 
 On green untrodden banks they view 
 The hyacinth's neglected hue : 
 In their lone haunts, and woodland rounds, 
 They spy the squirrel's airy bounds ; 
 
200 POETS' COUNTRY 
 
 And startle from her ashen spray, 
 Across the glen the screaming jay ; 
 Each native charm their steps explore 
 Of Solitude's sequester'd store. 
 
 Their little sons, who spread the bloom 
 Of health around the clay-built room, 
 Or through the primrose coppice stray, 
 Or gambol in the new-mown hay ; 
 Or quaintly braid the cowslip twine, 
 Or drive afield the tardy kine ; 
 Or hasten from the sultry hill, 
 To loiter at the shady rill ; 
 Or climb the tall pine's gloomy crest, 
 To rob the raven's ancient nest. 
 
 One would have been glad to find in Warton what 
 Oxford had to wait for more than a century to find, 
 a worthy laureate of her beauties ; but the utmost that 
 poor Warton could do for her is seen in the following 
 lines from his Isis : 
 
 Ye fretted pinnacles, ye fanes sublime, 
 
 Ye towers that wear the mossy vest of time ; 
 
 Ye massy piles of old munificence, 
 
 At once the pride of learning and defence ; 
 
 Ye cloisters pale, that, lengthening to the sight, 
 
 To contemplation, step by step, invite ; 
 
 Ye high -arch' d walks, where oft the whisper clear 
 
 Of harps unseen have swept the poet's ear ; 
 
 Ye temples dim, where pious duty pays 
 
 Her holy hymns of ever-echoing praise ; 
 
 Lo ! your loved Isis, from the bordering vale, 
 
 With all a mother's fondness bids you hail ! 
 
 Most of Warton's ambitious poems, with their 
 archaisms, quaintness, and centos from the old poets, 
 
THE WARTONS 201 
 
 too often justify, it must be owned, Johnson's well- 
 known sarcastic epigram upon them : 
 
 Where'er I turn my view, 
 All is strange yet nothing new : 
 Endless labour all along, 
 Endless labour to be wrong, 
 Phrase that Time hath flung away, 
 Uncouth words in disarray, 
 Tricked in antique ruff and bonnet 
 Ode and elegy and sonnet. 
 
 Still more historical importance than belongs to the 
 poetry of the Wartons must be assigned to Beattie's 
 Minstrel, the extraordinary popularity of which during 
 the latter part of the eighteenth century shows how 
 much the public taste had reacted in favour of a return 
 to Nature. Beattie's poem was suggested, as he 
 himself says, by that epoch-making work, Percy's 
 Reliques of Ancient English Poetry. Its purpose was to 
 trace the progress of a poet moulded by communion 
 with Nature. The poet is a Scotch shepherd, his 
 surroundings the scenery characteristic of those parts 
 of Scotland afterwards celebrated by Scott. But 
 Beattie never describes in detail, his pictures are 
 general. He has true enthusiasm for Nature. There 
 is no mistaking the accent of such a stanza as this : 
 
 O how canst thou renounce the boundless store 
 Of charms which Nature to her votary yields ! 
 The warbling woodland, the resounding shore, 
 The pomp of groves, and garniture of fields ; 
 
202 POETS' COUNTRY 
 
 All that the genial ray of morning gilds, 
 
 And all that echoes to the song of even, 
 
 All that the mountain's sheltering bosom shields, 
 
 And all the dread magnificence of heaven, 
 
 O how canst thou renounce, and hope to be forgiven ! 
 
 His tone and touch are often, it is true, con- 
 ventional, but occasionally he has real charm, as in : 
 
 When o'er the sky advanced the kindling dawn, 
 The crimson cloud, blue main, and mountain grey, 
 And lake, dim-gleaming on the smoky lawn. 
 
 The following, too, is both picturesque and 
 powerful : 
 
 Oft when the winter storm had ceased to rave, 
 He roamed the snowy waste at even, to view 
 The cloud stupendous, from th' Atlantic wave 
 High-towering, sail along th' horizon blue ; 
 Where, 'midst the changeful scenery, ever new, 
 Fancy a thousand wondrous forms descries, 
 More wildly great than ever pencil drew ; 
 Rocks, torrents, gulfs, and shapes of giant size, 
 And glitt'ring cliffs on cliffs, and fiery ramparts rise. 
 
 Beattie anticipates, if very faintly, Byron on one side 
 and Wordsworth on the other. It would be scarcely too 
 much to say that the first two cantos of Ckilde Harold are 
 not only more or less modelled on The Minstrel, Harold 
 being Edwin Byronised, but it recalls it in many details, 
 the most striking, perhaps, being the concluding stanzas 
 of the second canto, which, though founded on fact, 
 have a very striking resemblance to those concluding 
 the second canto of Beattie's poem. In Beattie's 
 
BEATTIE 203 
 
 "lone enthusiast" we have more than the adumbration 
 of Wordsworth's ideal poet, that poet in whose educa- 
 tion Nature is the central informing power, who in her 
 finds inspiration and wisdom, and who in her light reads 
 man and life. He is fully entitled to the praise of an 
 initiator, and this is his highest praise. Regarded 
 independently and in relation to its purely intrinsic 
 merit, his poetry is scarcely likely to find readers now. 
 He is one of those minor lights which, like so many 
 others, have disappeared in the effulgence of the 
 luminaries who succeeded them. 
 
AMONG the most pleasing of the minor Nature poets 
 of the latter half of the eighteenth century was Dr. 
 John Langhorne, who is now, perhaps, better known 
 popularly as co-translator with his brother of Plutarch's 
 Lives. He belonged to, if indeed he was not the 
 founder of, what may be called the Sentimental School. 
 He struck many of the notes which were afterwards 
 sounded more powerfully by Wordsworth. His most 
 elaborate purely descriptive poem is Studley Park, and 
 he was also the laureate of the River Eden and the 
 Valley of Irwan. The first in heroic couplets is in the 
 conventional style ; six lines are, perhaps, worth 
 
 quoting : 
 
 Fancy bends her eye, 
 
 Longs o'er the cliffs and deep'ning lawns to fly. 
 Enchanted sees each silv'ry-floating wave 
 Beat thy green banks, thy lonely vallies lave : 
 And now delighted, now she joys to hear 
 Thy deep, slow falls, long-lab'ring through her ear. 
 
 But it is in his insistence that in Nature and in 
 
 204 
 
LANGHORNE 205 
 
 Nature only that man's moral salvation lies that he 
 is chiefly interesting. Thus in a poem entitled an 
 Inscription on the Door of a Study he writes : 
 
 Has fair Philosophy thy love ? 
 Away ! she lives in yonder grove. 
 If the sweet Muse thy pleasure gives ; 
 With her in yonder grove she lives : 
 And if Religion claims thy care ; 
 Religion, fled from books, is there 
 For first from Nature's works we drew 
 Our knowledge, and our virtue too. 
 
 In his Fables of Flora he anticipates Wordsworth 
 by enlisting Nature in the service of moral teaching, 
 and when Wordsworth wrote 
 
 One impulse from a vernal wood 
 May teach you more of man, 
 Of moral evil and of good, 
 Than all the sages can, 
 
 he simply repeated what Langhorne had preached nearly 
 forty years before him. Thus in his tenth fable Lang- 
 horne writes, in reference to Nature's phenomena : 
 
 Whatever charms the ear or eye, 
 
 All beauty and all harmony ; 
 
 If sweet sensations these produce, 
 
 I know they have their moral use ; 
 
 I know that Nature's charms can move 
 
 The springs that strike to virtue's love. 
 
 Nor is this all. Like Wordsworth, he insists, and 
 it is the main burden of his poems, that the true ends 
 
206 POETS' COUNTRY 
 
 of life are peace and joy, which can be found in 
 Nature alone, for in Nature God reveals Himself and 
 speaks. 
 
 Langhorne was a weak man and not master of 
 himself, but he had real genius, and sometimes surprises 
 us with his flashes of unexpected power. As when, 
 speaking of a ruin, he says, 
 
 Where longs to fall that rifted spire, 
 As weary of th' insulting air, 
 
 which is surely a fine imaginative touch. 
 
 Genius most certainly cannot be claimed for Richard 
 Jago. A schoolfellow and friend of Shenstone, he 
 became a servitor of University College, Oxford, in 
 which University he took his Master's degree in 1738. 
 He subsequently took orders and became vicar of 
 Snitterfield in Warwickshire, where in 1767 he pro- 
 duced his only poem of any importance, Edge Hill. On 
 a work so essentially mediocre it would be absurd to 
 enlarge, but in any account of descriptive poetry it 
 must find a place, for it is the most elaborate local 
 poem in our language. 
 
 The poet takes his stand on Edge Hill, and the view 
 from the eminence, however tamely described, is at 
 least accurate and not without vividness : 
 
 The summit's gain'd ! and, from its airy height, 
 The late-trod plain looks like an inland sea, 
 View'd from some promontory's hoary head, 
 With distant shores environ'd ; nor with face 
 
JAGO 207 
 
 Glassy and uniform, but when its waves 
 Are gently ruffled by the southern gale, 
 And the tall masts like waving forests rise. 
 
 Such is the scene ! that, from the terrac'd hill, 
 Displays its graces ; intermixture sweet 
 Of lawns and groves, of open and retir'd. 
 Vales, farms, towns, villas, castles, distant spires, 
 And hills on hills, with ambient clouds enrob'd, 
 In long succession court the lab'ring sight, 
 Lost in the bright confusion. 
 
 He then in the course of his four Books surveys in 
 detail all that can be discerned, first from the south- 
 west of the hill, which occupies the morning ; then from 
 Ratley Hill in the centre, which occupies the noon and 
 afternoon ; then from the north-east, which occupies the 
 evening ; intermingling his descriptions with legendary, 
 historical, and antiquarian particulars. Warwick is 
 surveyed ; Coventry, in connection with which the story 
 of Godiva is told, not exactly in the style of Tennyson ; 
 Kenilworth, with its ancient glories, 
 
 Vanished like the fleeting forms 
 Drawn in an evening cloud ; 
 
 Solihull, Birmingham, the Dasset Hills, Farnborough, 
 Wormleighton, Shuckburgh, Leame, and other places, 
 the poem concluding with an account of the great event 
 of which the hill was the scene, with appropriate reflec- 
 tions. Jago, probably with a view to preferment, is 
 careful to introduce flattering descriptions of all the 
 great houses and seats of important people which come 
 within his survey. The poem is really interesting, and 
 
208 POETS' COUNTRY 
 
 with the scene before us it is impossible not to admire 
 the ingenuity and scrupulous thoroughness with which 
 the author we wish we could call him the poet has 
 performed his task. 
 
 What Jago aspired to do for Warwickshire, John 
 Scott aspired to do for a more limited sphere. Scott, 
 whose name will be familiar to readers of Boswell's Life 
 of Johnson, was a Quaker, the son of a maltster who 
 had settled, in 1740, at Am well in Hertfordshire, a 
 favourite haunt, it will be remembered, of old Isaac 
 Walton, the scene of his Anglers' Dialogue being the 
 neighbouring vale of Lee, between Tottenham and 
 Ware. In Scott's time his poem appeared in 1776 
 Amwell was one of the prettiest hamlets in England, 
 and the surrounding country, particularly the road 
 leading from Langley-bottom to Widbury Hill, truly 
 lovely and picturesque. Not much can be said for the 
 poetical quality of Scott's poem, which is not in- 
 frequently at once pompous and prosaic, but it is 
 vividly realistic. Thus of Langley-bottom he writes in 
 verse which, anticipating, would not have disgraced 
 Cowper : 
 
 Elysian scene ! 
 
 At ev'ning often, while the setting sun 
 On the green summit of thy Eastern groves 
 Pour'd full his yellow radiance ; while the voice 
 Of Zephyr whispering 'midst the rustling leaves, 
 The sound of water murmuring through the sedge, 
 The turtle's plaintive call, and music soft 
 Of distant bells, whose ever varying notes 
 In slow sad measure mov'd. 
 
SCOTT 209 
 
 And here is his picture of the scene from Amwell, 
 as we view it from below the neighbourhood of the 
 church. We smile at his prosaic "how picturesque," 
 but we must remember that the word when he wrote 
 had not the banale association it has now, but was new 
 to our language. 
 
 How picturesque the view ! where up the side 
 Of that steep bank, her roofs of russet thatch 
 Rise mix'd with trees, above whose swelling tops 
 Ascends the tall church tow'r, and loftier still 
 The hill's extended ridge. How picturesque ! 
 Where slow beneath that bank the silver stream 
 Glides by the flowering isle, and willow groves 
 Wave on its northern verge. . . . How picturesque 
 The slender group of airy elm, the clump 
 Of pollard oak, or ash, with ivy brown 
 Entwin'd ; the walnut's gloomy breadth of boughs, 
 The orchard's ancient fence of rugged pales, 
 The haystack's dusky cone, the moss-grown shed, 
 The clay-built barn ; the elder-shaded cot, 
 Whose white-wash'd gable prominent through green 
 Of waving branches, shows . . . 
 
 . . . The wall with mantling vines 
 
 O'erspread, the porch with climbing woodbine wreath'd, 
 And under sheltering eves the sunny bench 
 Where brown hives range. 
 
 This is an excellent illustration of the Nature-painting 
 characteristic of the eighteenth century, when this poetry 
 became elaborated : not a touch of imagination, not a 
 touch of fancy, and without any appeal to either ; body 
 without soul, accident without essence. 
 
 Nor was Amwell the only contribution of Scott to 
 descriptive poetry. In the preface to his Amcebcean 
 
210 POETS' COUNTRY 
 
 Eclogues he observed that " much of the rural imagery 
 which our country affords has already been introduced 
 in poetry, but many obvious and pleasing appearances 
 seem to have totally escaped notice." This he aspired 
 to supply, and he supplied it by minutely discriminated 
 descriptions of flowers, herbs, trees, and the common 
 objects of the country, managed principally by epithets, 
 thus anticipating Crabbe, though he has nothing of 
 Crabbe's felicity. His descriptions are rendered ludi- 
 crous by the form he employs amcebsean delineations 
 of natural objects being surely more ridiculous than 
 burlesque. 
 
 Far superior to Scott and Jago was Charlotte 
 Smith, whose Elegiac Sonnets and Other Poems ran 
 through many editions, and had indeed extraordinary 
 popularity between 1784 and 1797. They were highly 
 praised by Miss Mitford, a very competent judge, who 
 told Mrs. Browning that she never took a spring walk 
 without feeling Charlotte Smith's love of Nature and 
 power of describing it, and who observed in one of her 
 letters that this poetess had, "with all her faults, the 
 eye and the mind of a landscape poet." At such praise 
 a modern reader would smile, for it may be doubted 
 whether any more favourable illustrations of Mrs. 
 Smith's merits could be found than the following : 
 
 Again the wood and long-withdrawing vale 
 In many a tint of tender green are drest, 
 
 Where the young leaves, unfolding, scarce conceal 
 Beneath their early shade, the half-form'd nest 
 
CHARLOTTE SMITH 211 
 
 Of finch and woodlark ; and the primrose pale, 
 
 And lavish cowslip, wildly scatter'd round, 
 Give their sweet spirits to the sighing gale. 
 
 Sonnet VIII. 
 
 Clouds, gold and purple, o'er the western ray 
 
 Threw a bright veil, and catching lights between, 
 Fell on the glancing sail, that we had seen 
 
 With soft, but adverse winds, throughout the day 
 
 Contending vainly. 
 
 Sonnet LXIX. 
 
 While Charlotte Smith was in the full tide of her 
 modest popularity, a small volume of Sonnets, some- 
 thing in the style of her own, though in merit differing 
 not merely in degree but in kind, stole into the world. 
 This was entitled Fourteen Sonnets written chiefly on 
 Picturesque Spots during a Journey, and it was 
 published in Bath in 1789. The author of the volume 
 was William Lisle Bowles, who had been a pupil of 
 Joseph Warton at Winchester and of Thomas Warton 
 at Trinity College, Oxford. These sonnets, whose 
 influence on Coleridge is well known, as he has both in 
 prose and verse expressed his indebtedness to them 
 both in the way of stimulus and inspiration, may be 
 said to mark an era in the development of the Romantic 
 School. Bowles is undoubtedly as much a pupil of the 
 Wartons in poetry as he was a scholar, but he had 
 more simplicity, sensibility, refinement, and charm. 
 The little volume became exceedingly popular, and to 
 these Sonnets others were added in the same style. 
 
 Perhaps the most typical of those would be the first, 
 and that I will transcribe : 
 
212 POETS' COUNTRY 
 
 AT TYNEMOUTH PRIORY 
 
 AFTER A TEMPESTUOUS VOYAGE 
 
 As slow I climb the cliff's ascending side, 
 Much musing on the track of terror past, 
 When o'er the dark wave rode the howling blast, 
 Pleased I look back, and view the tranquil tide 
 That laves the pebbled shore : and now the beam 
 Of evening smiles on the grey battlement, 
 And yon forsaken tower that time has rent : 
 The lifted oar far off with transient gleam 
 Is touched, and hushed is all the billowy deep ! 
 
 Soothed by the scene, thus on tired Nature's breast 
 A stillness slowly steals, and kindred rest ; 
 While sea-sounds lull her, as she sinks to sleep, 
 Like melodies that mourn upon the lyre, 
 Waked by the breeze, and, as they mourn, expire ! 
 
 In a similar strain are the Sonnets on Bamburgh 
 Castle, the River Wainsbeck, the River Itchin, the 
 Tweed, Clydesdale, Dover Cliffs, the Cher well, Netley 
 Abbey, and Malvern ; little cameos penetrated with 
 pensive sentiment. His more elaborate descriptive 
 poems, such as Ban-well Hill, were written many years 
 later, and belong to the next century. On the whole, 
 an important and distinguished place must be assigned 
 to Bowles in the history of descriptive poetry. In his 
 Sonnets culminated what had found successive expres- 
 sion in Langhorne, in the Wartons, and in Charlotte 
 Smith, and thus he is the connecting-link between the 
 descriptive poetry of the eighteenth and nineteenth 
 centuries. 
 
 In 1788 Jago had a disciple, but a disciple very 
 
CROWE 213 
 
 superior to his master, in William Crowe, who did for 
 Lewesdon Hill what Jago had done for Edge Hill. 
 Crowe was Public Orator at Oxford and rector of 
 Alton Barnes in Wiltshire, which in 1787 he had 
 exchanged for that of Stoke Alias in Dorsetshire, not 
 far from the scene of his poem. 
 
 Lewesdon Hill is in the western part of Dorsetshire, 
 and commands an extensive prospect over the neigh- 
 bouring country. The poet represents himself as 
 standing on the top of the hill on a May morning, his 
 theme being the prospect before him : 
 
 How changed is thy appearance, beauteous hill, 
 Thou hast put off thy wintry garb, brown heath 
 And russet fern, thy seemly-colour 'd cloak, 
 To hide the hoary frosts and dropping rains 
 Of chill December, and art gaily robed 
 In livery of the Spring : upon thy brow 
 A cap of flowery hawthorn, and thy neck 
 Mantled with new-sprung furze and spangles thick 
 Of golden broom : nor lack thee tufted woods 
 Adown thy sides : tall oaks of lusty green, 
 The darker fir, light ash, and the fresh tops 
 Of the young hazel join to form thy skirts 
 In many a waving fold of verdant wreath. 
 
 From this proud eminence on all sides round 
 
 Th' unbroken prospect opens to my view ; 
 
 On all sides large, save only when the head 
 
 Of Pillesdon rises, Pillesdon's lofty pen 
 
 Which, like a rampire, bounds the vale beneath. 
 
 There woods, there blooming orchards, there are seen 
 
 Herds ranging, or at rest beneath the shade 
 
 Of some wide-branching oak : there goodly fields 
 
 Of corn and verdant pasture, whence the kine 
 
214 POETS' COUNTRY 
 
 Returning with their milky treasure home, 
 Store the rich dairy. 
 
 See how the sun, here clouded, afar off 
 Pours down the golden radiance of his light 
 Upon the enridged sea, where the black ship 
 Sails on the phosphor-seeming waves. 
 
 Such are favourable extracts from a poem which 
 Wordsworth pronounced to be excellent, which Rogers 
 said was full of noble passages, and which with Paradise 
 Lost he studied as a model for his Italy. It is easy to 
 see that Crowe had a more artistic eye and much better 
 ear than Jago, but would any modern critic go further 
 in praise of him ? 
 
 Contemporary with Crowe was another Oxford 
 dignitary who, in 1793, was Professor of Poetry in 
 that University James Hurdis. Hurdis, a somewhat 
 voluminous poet, author of The Village Curate, The 
 Favourite Village, and other poems, is a mild and 
 colourless imitator of Cowper, holding pretty much 
 the same place among descriptive poets as his friend 
 Hayley holds among didactic. 
 
 This was the state of descriptive poetry of the 
 average and popular order when the eighteenth century 
 passed into the nineteenth. 
 
WILLIAM COWPER 
 
 OLNEY AND WESTON 
 
 WITH the possible exception of Tennyson, no eminent 
 English poet is so intimately associated with the scenes 
 amidst which he lived as Cowper. The greater part, 
 indeed almost the whole, of Cowper's descriptive poetry 
 is little less than a series of photographs of what sur- 
 rounded him at Olney and Weston. Nothing can be 
 more delightful than to wander over these scenes with 
 his poems in our hands, for they are a very mirror of 
 what we see. Probably no places in England have so 
 little changed since the middle of the eighteenth 
 century, when the prince of landscape-gardeners, 
 Lancelot Brown, commonly known by the nickname 
 coined from a favourite phrase of his, "Capability 
 Brown," was at the height of his vogue. With his 
 handiwork we have, in dealing with Cowper's de- 
 scriptive poetry, almost as much to do as with 
 Nature's. 
 
 A short general account of Olney and Weston, 
 and of the incidents in Cowper's life so intimately 
 
 215 
 
216 POETS' COUNTRY 
 
 connected with them, is a necessary preliminary to 
 this sketch. 
 
 It will be remembered that, after his first attack 
 of insanity in 1763, he went, on his recovery, in the 
 summer of 1765, into lodgings at Huntingdon, that he 
 might be near his brother John, who was a Fellow of 
 Bennet College, Cambridge. At Huntingdon he made 
 the acquaintance, through their son, of the Rev. Morley 
 Unwin and his wife, with whom he became so intimate 
 that he took up his residence with them. In the 
 summer of 1767 Mr. Unwin was thrown from his horse, 
 and killed. This, however, did not separate Cowper 
 from the family, for between him and Mrs. Unwin, 
 who was five or six years his senior, had sprung up the 
 closest affection ; he loving her " as a mother," she him 
 "as a son." While still undecided where to settle, 
 the Rev. John Newton, then curate of Olney, a very 
 remarkable and interesting man, who was to become 
 with Cowper co-author of the famous Olney Hymns, 
 happened to call on them. He suggested that they 
 should take a house near him, either at Olney or 
 Emberton. His advice was taken, and on September 
 14, 1767, Cowper settled with the Unwins at a large 
 house, or rather in the western portion of it, for they 
 never occupied the whole, in the market-place at Olney, 
 called Orchard Side, which became their home for 
 nineteen years. The little town, which is about 
 thirteen miles from Bedford, is the most northerly in 
 Buckinghamshire. As we enter it from the railway 
 

 OLNEY 
 
 Cowper's garden in Olney looks out on orchards. When 
 this picture was painted they were in full blossom and the 
 fields a mass of buttercups. 
 
 The spire is of Olney Church, and the house the Vicarage, 
 round which were his favourite walks. 
 
COWPER 217 
 
 station, one long broad street widening southward 
 into a spacious triangular market-place conducts in 
 an almost straight line to the house now so famous. 
 Fronting the market-place, a large, red-brick house 
 with stone dressings, two doors and five windows, it 
 is the most conspicuous object in its neighbourhood 
 and instantly attracts the eye. It has, mainly owing 
 to the efforts of Mr. Thomas Wright, the latest editor 
 and biographer of Cowper, been most piously preserved, 
 and is now a Museum rich in relics and mementos of 
 the poet. Here we are in the very midst of all that is 
 familiar to us in his poems and correspondence the 
 little parlour, a square room with two windows, referred 
 to in the opening of the Fourth Book of The Task ; the 
 small casement at the back through which Puss, Tiny, 
 and Bess came leaping out to their evening gambols 
 on the Turkey carpet ; his bedroom ; the summer- 
 house in the garden, at the back " not much bigger 
 than a sedan-chair" now, it is true, separated by a 
 wall from the poet's own garden, but absolutely intact, 
 where he passed so many sad and so many happy 
 hours. The door, too, which was made through the 
 vicarage garden wall may be still traced in the brick- 
 work ; and the Guinea Field, though no longer an 
 orchard, still retains its name. All that has quite 
 disappeared is the greenhouse. 
 
 The town of Olney, as Cowper himself more than 
 once ruefully observed, has in itself little beauty ; but 
 this is not the case with Weston, whither he removed 
 
218 POETS' COUNTRY 
 
 in November 1786, to occupy Weston Lodge, a large 
 and comfortable house in the very middle of the village, 
 where he lived till July 1795. Weston Underwood is 
 only about a mile and a quarter from Olney ; the only 
 difference it made to him was that instead of having to 
 walk that distance to view the scenes which he has so 
 vividly described, he was in the midst of them. He 
 has himself, in a letter to his friend, Mrs. Hill, described 
 his situation here : 
 
 The opposite object to the Lodge, and the only one, is an 
 orchard, so well planted, and with trees of such growth, that we 
 seem to look into a wood, or rather to be surrounded by one. 
 Thus, placed as we are in the midst of a village, we have none of 
 those disagreeables that belong to such a position, and the village 
 itself is one of the prettiest I know : terminated at one end by 
 the church tower, seen through the trees, and at the other by a 
 very handsome gateway opening into a fine grove of elms belong- 
 ing to our neighbour Courtenay. 
 
 The shrubbery at the back of the house, of which 
 he so often speaks, and which he describes as being 
 "very generally admired, being a delightful labyrinth, 
 composed of flowering shrubs and adorned with gravel 
 walks having convenient seats placed at appropriate 
 distances," has lately been converted into an orchard. 
 It was here, while threading its winding walk, that he 
 meditated, as he has himself told us, his projected poem 
 on The Four Ages, a project unfortunately never carried 
 out : 
 
 Thus while grey evening lull'd the wind, and call'd 
 Fresh odours from the shrubbery at my side, 
 Taking my lonely winding walk, I mused. 
 
COWPER 219 
 
 At Weston he was within almost a stone's throw of 
 the mansion of the family to whom the place owed so 
 much Weston Hall, the seat of the Throckmortons. 
 Weston Hall stood on the right side of the road leading 
 from Weston to Olney, just outside the village. It was 
 demolished twenty-seven years after Cowper's death, in 
 1827, all that remains of it now being only the iron 
 gates with four stone piers, and a portion of the stabling 
 and granary topped by a cupola. But the park and 
 grounds laid out under the instructions of the first 
 baronet, Robert Throckmorton, by Lancelot Brown 
 remain just as they were in Cowper's time. With the 
 fifth baronet, Sir John Courtenay Throckmorton, who 
 died in 1819, Cowper, who became acquainted with 
 him in 1784, was on very friendly terms, as his corre- 
 spondence and several of his poems show. 
 
 One of the advantages he had at Weston was that 
 he was within a few hundred yards of the grounds 
 which at Olney were more than a mile from him. To 
 them he had access here through a door in the boundary 
 wall, letting himself in from the road by a private key. 
 
 Let us now accompany him step by step for we 
 can do so with ease through the scenes which he has 
 painted so vividly for all time. Leaving Orchard Side 
 and proceeding along the Weston road for about a 
 quarter of a mile, we turn into a field on the right- 
 hand side. This brings us into what is known as The 
 Pightle. Crossing this, we make our way along a 
 grass -grown, rutty cart-road up a gently -ascending 
 
220 POETS' COUNTRY 
 
 eminence, three or four hundred yards bringing us very 
 gradually to the highest point We now have before 
 us what is photographed in the First Book of The Task 
 (134-179). It was here, on this eminence, that Cowper, 
 with Mrs. Unwin on his arm, delighted to pause : 
 
 How oft upon yon eminence our pace 
 
 Has slacken'd to a pause, and we have borne 
 
 The ruffling wind, scarce conscious that it blew, 
 
 While Admiration, feeding at the eye, 
 
 And still unsated, dwelt upon the scene. 
 
 Thence with what pleasure have we just discern'd 
 
 The distant plough slow moving, and beside 
 
 His labouring team, that swerv'd not from the track, 
 
 The sturdy swain diminished to a boy ! 
 
 Here Ouse, slow winding through a level plain 
 
 Of spacious meads with cattle sprinkl'd o'er, 
 
 Conducts the eye along his sinuous course 
 
 Delighted. There, fast rooted in their bank, 
 
 Stand, never overlook'd, our favourite elms, 
 
 That screen the herdsman's solitary hut ; 
 
 While far beyond, and overthwart the stream, 
 
 That, as with molten glass, inlays the vale, 
 
 The sloping land recedes into the clouds ; 
 
 Displaying on its varied side, the grace 
 
 Of hedge-row beauties numberless, square tower, 1 
 
 Tall spire, 2 from which the sound of cheerful bells 
 
 Just undulates upon the listening ear, 
 
 Groves, heaths, and smoking villages, remote. 
 
 Scenes must be beautiful which, daily view'd, 
 
 Please daily, and whose novelty survives 
 
 Long knowledge and the scrutiny of years. 
 
 In the Sixth Book (58-84) the same scene is 
 sketched in winter : 
 
 1 Cliftou Reyiies church steeple. 2 Olney steeple. 
 
COWPER 221 
 
 Now at noon 
 
 Upon the southern side of the slant hills, 
 And where the woods fence off the northern blast, 
 The season smiles, resigning all its rage, 
 And has the warmth of May. The vault is blue 
 Without a cloud, and white without a speck 
 The dazzling splendour of the scene below. 
 Again the harmony comes o'er the vale ; 
 And through the trees I view the embattled tower, 
 Whence all the music. I again perceive 
 The soothing influence of the wafted strains, 
 And settle in soft musings as I tread 
 The walk, still verdant, under oaks and elms, 
 Whose outspread branches overarch the glade. 
 The roof, though moveable through all its length 
 As the wind sways it, has yet well suffic'd, 
 And, intercepting in their silent fall 
 The frequent flakes, has kept a path for me. 
 No noise is here, or none that hinders thought. 
 The redbreast warbles still, but is content 
 With slender notes, and more than half suppressed ; 
 Pleased with his solitude, and flitting light 
 From spray to spray, where'er he rests he shakes 
 From many a twig the pendent drops of ice, 
 That tinkle in the wither'd leaves below. 
 Stillness, accompanied with sounds so soft, 
 Charms more than silence. 
 
 In the latter part of this description we can easily 
 see that he had moved on to the coppice or spinny 
 some quarter of a mile onward. To the sound of 
 the Emberton bells, which still falls on our ear, as we 
 stand there, just as it did on Cowper's more than a 
 century ago, he refers again in a beautiful passage at 
 the beginning of the Book (1-12) : 
 
 There is in souls a sympathy with sounds, 
 And as the mind is pitch'd the ear is pleased 
 
222 POETS' COUNTRY 
 
 With melting airs or martial, brisk or grave ; 
 Some chord in unison with what we hear 
 Is touch'd within us, and the heart replies. 
 How soft the music of those village bells, 
 Falling at intervals upon the ear 
 In cadence sweet, now dying all away, 
 Now pealing loud again, and louder still, 
 Clear and sonorous, as the gale comes on ! 
 With easy force it opens all the cells 
 Where Memory slept. 
 
 Before passing on, we may pause to note that in the 
 valley meadow opposite this eminence, and just outside 
 the town where Goosey Bridge spans the Ouse, occurred 
 the incident commemorated in The Dog and the Water- 
 Lily. One feature in the landscape has, unhappily, 
 disappeared : 
 
 The bridge 
 
 That with its wearisome but needful length 
 Bestrides the wintry flood. 
 
 This, having become hopelessly dilapidated, was taken 
 down in 1832. Continuing our walk, we pass through 
 a gate where a descent begins into a wide-stretching 
 field of springy turf, undulating with molehills. 
 On an eminence in front of us to the right is the 
 Peasant's Nest, in Cowper's time a picturesque, thatch- 
 roofed little cottage half-hidden in trees now a trim 
 modern farm roofed with tiles : 
 
 Once went I forth, and found, till then unknown, 
 
 A cottage, whither oft we since repair : 
 
 'Tis perch'd upon the green hill-top, but close 
 
 Environ'd with a ring of branching elms, 
 
 That overhang the thatch, itself unseen 
 
COWPER 223 
 
 Peeps at the vale below ; so thick beset 
 With foliage of such dark redundant growth, 
 I called the low-roof d lodge the Peasant's Nest. 
 
 The Task, I. 221-227. 
 
 Now, striking to the left and making our way down 
 a clover -sown, descending field, and passing over a 
 shallow brook through a little gate, we find ourselves in 
 the First Spinnie, as it is locally called ; the Shrubbery, 
 as Cowper generally calls it. We are in the grounds of 
 the Throckmortons, and in the very centre of the haunts 
 so loved and so lovingly described by the poet. We 
 are in a delicious thick -wooded solitude with trees 
 and shrubs on both sides, the trees overarching and 
 the shrubs admitting only at intervals the narrowest of 
 paths. A couple of hundred yards to the right brings 
 us to the site of the Moss House, which, as Cowper 
 knew it, was a simple stone structure with thatched 
 roof overgrown with ivy and moss, having on one side 
 of it a weeping willow and in front a circular sheet of 
 water. Now all these have disappeared, and all that 
 remains is the site, a cleared space with two yew trees 
 on each side of it ; the bed of what was the sheet of 
 circular water is still, however, clearly discernible in a 
 shallow hollow in the greenery. Impressive indeed it 
 is to stand there and to recall two scenes of which it 
 was the witness one associated with the happy days 
 preceding the breach with Lady Austen, and one of 
 which a poem is the record. 
 
 Yesterday we [Cowper, Mrs. Unwin, Mr. and Mrs. Jones, and 
 Lady Austen] all dined together in the Spinnie, a most delightful 
 
224 POETS' COUNTRY 
 
 retirement. Lady Austen's lackey and a lad that waits on me in 
 the garden drove a wheelbarrow full of eatables and drinkables to 
 the scene of our fete champetre, A board laid over the top of the 
 wheelbarrow served us for a table : our dining-room was a root- 
 house lined with moss and ivy. At six o'clock the servants, who 
 had dined under a great elm upon the ground, at a little distance, 
 boiled the kettle, and the said wheelbarrow served us for a tea- 
 table. We then took a walk into the Wilderness about half a mile 
 off, and were at home again a little after eight, having spent the 
 day together from noon till evening without one cross occurrence 
 or the least weariness of each other : a happiness few parties of 
 pleasure can boast of. 1 
 
 Of a very different mood the poem is the record. 
 THE SHRUBBERY 
 
 WRITTEN IN A TIME OF AFFLICTION 
 
 O happy shades to me unblest ! 
 
 Friendly to peace, but not to me ! 
 How ill the scene that offers rest, 
 
 And heart that cannot rest, agree ! 
 
 This glassy stream, that spreading pine, 
 These alders quivering to the breeze, 
 
 Might soothe a soul less hurt than mine, 
 And please, if any thing could please. 
 
 For all that pleased in wood or lawn, 
 
 While Peace possessed these silent bowers, 
 
 Ker animating smile withdrawn, 
 Has lost its beauties and its powers. 
 
 The Saint or Moralist should tread 
 This moss-grown alley musing, slow ; 
 
 They seek like me the secret shade, 
 But not like me to nourish woe ! 
 
 1 Southey's Cowper, vol. iv. 118-119. 
 
COWPER 225 
 
 We leave the Moss House and, threading our way 
 along the narrow path, in the direction of the Peasant's 
 Nest, come to a gate which opens on to a hilly field. 
 Here, and in the immediate neighbourhood, or possibly 
 a little farther on and nearer Weston, may be confidently 
 located what is described in the following passage in 
 The Winter Walk at Noon (296-320) : 
 
 Neither mist, 
 
 Nor freezing sky nor sultry, checking me, 
 Nor stranger, intermeddling with my joy. 
 E'en in the spring and playtime of the year, 
 That calls the unwonted villager abroad 
 With all her little ones, a sportive train, 
 To gather kingcups in the yellow mead, 
 And prink their hair with daisies, or to pick 
 A cheap but wholesome salad from the brook, 
 These shades are all my own. The tim'rous hare, 
 Grown so familiar with her frequent guest, 
 Scarce shuns me ; and the stock-dove un alarmed 
 Sits cooing in the pine-tree, nor suspends 
 His long love-ditty for my near approach. 
 Drawn from his refuge in some lonely elm, 
 That age or injury has hollowed deep, 
 Where, on his bed of wool and matted leaves, 
 He has outslept the winter, ventures forth 
 To frisk awhile, and bask in the warm sun, 
 The squirrel, flippant, pert, and full of play ; 
 He sees me, and at once, swift as a bird, 
 Ascends the neighbouring beech ; there whisks his brush, 
 And perks his ears, and stamps, and scolds aloud, 
 With all the prettiness of feign'd alarm, 
 And anger insignificantly fierce. 
 
 Passing through this field with its leaf- covered brook, 
 the Ho-brook, Cowper's "weedy ditch" it had been 
 
 Q 
 
226 POETS' COUNTRY 
 
 running parallel with us all through the Spinnie on our 
 right hand we come to the Second Spinnie. A 
 narrow, grassy path winding through a bosky solitude 
 of beeches, chestnuts, and hazels, conducts to a sombre 
 congregation of yew trees the Yew Grove. On 
 emerging from the Yew Grove we enter the fine 
 Chestnut Avenue. 
 
 Not distant far, a length of Colonnade 
 Invites us. Monument of ancient taste, 
 Now scorned. 
 
 Thanks to Benevolus : he spares me yet 
 These chestnuts ranged in corresponding lines ; 
 And, though himself so polished, still reprieves 
 The obsolete prolixity of shade. 
 
 The Task, I. 252-265. 
 
 On our left hand is a noble sweep of thickly-wooded 
 semicircle ; a deep-rutted, grass-grown lane conducts us 
 through the avenue which suddenly forms a steep 
 descent leading through a little gate to the Rustic 
 Bridge. 
 
 Descending now (but cautious, lest too fast,) 
 A sudden steep, upon a Rustic Bridge 
 We pass a gulf, in which the willows dip 
 Their pendent boughs, stooping as if to drink. 
 
 Idem, 266-269. 
 
 The willows have, alas, disappeared and the gulf is 
 now in summer a dry hollow. And now we can either 
 go straight along through an avenue of oaks up a steep 
 ascent, or ascend, on the left, a broad, open expanse of 
 springy turf, undulating with mole-hills, making our 
 
COWPER 227 
 
 way to the northern extremity of the park, as Cowper 
 describes : 
 
 Hence, ancle deep in moss and flowery thyme, 
 We mount again, and feel at every step 
 Our foot half sunk in hillocks green and soft, 
 Raised by the mole, the miner of the soil. 
 
 Idem, 270-273. 
 
 We have now gained the summit, and right in front 
 of us is the Alcove ; here every detail is photographed 
 by Cowper, even to the defacements on the walls of 
 the Alcove. The Alcove, rebuilt or much repaired 
 since Cowper's time, protected by rails in front, is 
 hexagon in shape, with three sides open, and was built 
 by John Higgins for Sir Robert Throckmorton in 1753. 
 The view as we stand in front of it is superb, being 
 especially remarkable for the sylvan pomp of extra- 
 ordinarily diversified trees. But we leave Cowper to 
 describe it : 
 
 The summit gained, behold the proud alcove 
 That crowns it ! yet not all its pride secures 
 The grand retreat from injuries impressed 
 By rural carvers, who with knives deface 
 The panels, leaving an obscure, rude name, 
 In characters uncouth, and spelt amiss. 
 
 
 
 Now roves the eye ; 
 And, posted on this speculative height, 
 Exults in its command. The sheepfold here 
 Pours out its fleecy tenants o'er the glebe. 
 At first, progressive as a stream, they seek 
 The middle field ; but, scatter'd by degrees, 
 Each to his choice, soon whiten all the land. 
 There from the sunburnt hay-field homeward creeps 
 
228 POETS' COUNTRY 
 
 The loaded wain ; while, lightened of its charge, 
 The wain that meets it passes swiftly by. 
 
 Nor less attractive is the woodland scene, 
 
 Diversified with trees of every growth, 
 
 Ah'ke, yet various. Here the grey smooth trunks 
 
 Of ash, or lime, or beech, distinctly shine 
 
 Within the twilight of their distant shades ; 
 
 There, lost behind a rising ground, the wood 
 
 Seems sunk, and shortened to its topmost boughs. 
 
 No tree in all the grove but has its charms, 
 
 Though each its hue peculiar ; paler some, 
 
 And of a wannish grey ; the willow such, 
 
 And poplar, that with silver lines his leaf, 
 
 And ash far-stretching his umbrageous arm ; 
 
 Of deeper green the elm ; and deeper still, 
 
 Lord of the woods, the long-surviving oak. 
 
 Some glossy-leaved and shining in the sun, 
 
 The maple, and the beech of oily nuts 
 
 Prolific, and the lime at dewy eve 
 
 Diffusing odours ; nor unnoted pass 
 
 The sycamore, capricious in attire, 
 
 Now green, now tawny, and ere autumn yet 
 
 Have changed the woods, in scarlet honours bright. 
 
 O'er these, but far beyond (a spacious map 
 
 Of hill and valley interposed between,) 
 
 The Ouse, dividing the well-watered land, 
 
 Now glitters in the sun, and now retires, 
 
 As bashful, yet impatient to be seen. 
 
 The Sofa, 279-325. 
 
 About forty yards in front of the Alcove the 
 ground suddenly dips into a narrow runnel which, 
 dry in summer but flooded in winter, intersects the 
 grassy expanse and then as suddenly ascends into a 
 steepy eminence. 
 
 So Cowper continues : 
 
COWPER 229 
 
 Hence the declivity is sharp and short, 
 And such the re-ascent ; between them weeps 
 A little Naiad her impoverished urn 
 All summer long, which winter fills again. 
 
 Idem, 326-328. 
 
 In a line with the Alcove, just in front of it, about 
 a quarter of a mile distant, is a superb lime-tree avenue, 
 traversed by a grassy path. But let Cowper describe : 
 
 Ye fallen avenues ! once more I mourn 
 Your fate unmerited, once more rejoice 
 That yet a remnant of your race survives. 
 How airy and how light the graceful arch, 
 Yet awful as the consecrated roof 
 Re-echoing pious anthems ! while beneath 
 The checker'd earth seems restless as a flood 
 Brushed by the wind. So sportive is the light 
 Shot through the boughs, it dances as they dance, 
 Shadow and sunshine intermingling quick, 
 And darkening and enlightening, as the leaves 
 Play wanton, every moment, every spot. 
 
 Idem, 338-348. 
 
 From the Lime Avenue we pass into the Wilderness. 
 
 We tread the Wilderness, whose well-roll'd walks 
 With curvature of slow and easy sweep 
 Deception innocent give ample space 
 To narrow bounds. 
 
 This was Cowper's favourite haunt, both when he was 
 at Olney and when he was at Weston, a private key 
 letting him into the enclosure. The rooks still cease- 
 lessly caw in the elms near ; there are the walks 
 intersecting it through which he so often wandered 
 both alone and with his friends, and there the Gothic 
 
230 POETS' COUNTRY 
 
 Temple which has recently been repaired. But the 
 glories among which Cowper strayed : 
 
 Laburnum, rich 
 
 In streaming gold ; Syringa, ivory pure ; 
 The scentless and the scented Rose ; this red, 
 And of an humbler growth, the other tall 
 And throwing up into the darkest gloom 
 Of neighbouring Cypress, or more sable Yew, 
 Her silver globes, light as the foamy surf 
 That the wind severs from the broken wave ; 
 The Lilac, various in array, now white, 
 Now sanguine, and her beauteous head now set 
 With purple spikes pyramidal, as if 
 Studious of* ornament, yet unresolved 
 Which hue she most approved, she chose them all ; 
 Copious of flowers the Woodbine, pale and wan, 
 But well compensating their sickly looks 
 With never-cloying odours, early and late ; 
 Hypericum all bloom, so thick a swarm 
 Of flowers, like flies clothing her slender rods, 
 That scarce a leaf appears ; Mezereoii too, 
 Though leafless, well attired, and thick beset 
 With blushing wreaths, investing every spray ; 
 Althaea with the purple eye ; the Broom, 
 Yellow and bright, as bullion unalloyed, 
 Her blossoms ; and luxuriant above all 
 The Jasmine, throwing wide her elegant sweets, 
 The deep dark green of whose unvarnished leaf 
 Makes more conspicuous, and illumines more 
 The bright profusion of her scattered stars 
 
 (Winter Walk at Noon, 149-176) 
 
 some of these remain, but most have disappeared. 
 The broad walk which borders the northern side of the 
 Wilderness has more than one object vividly recalling 
 the poet. We find, for instance, the urn on which is 
 
COWPER 231 
 
 engraved the well-known epitaph on Sir John Throck- 
 morton's pointer, beginning 
 
 Here lies one who never drew 
 Blood himself, yet many slew, etc. ; 
 
 and another urn to the memory of Fop, Lady Throck- 
 morton's puppy, with the epitaph written by Cowper 
 inscribed on the pedestal. Here, too, may be seen the 
 bust of Homer, with the Greek distich from Cowper's 
 pen, which was presented to him by his friend Johnson, 
 and which formerly stood in the " Shrubbery " at 
 Weston Lodge. 
 
 But there are other localities about Weston and 
 Olney not included in the semicircle just traversed 
 by us, which have also found their laureate in Cowper 
 and which are quite as intimately associated with him. 
 We pass out of the Wilderness into a lane running 
 parallel with the Lime Walk Avenue not, as Cowper 
 could do, through a door in the boundary -wall, 
 but from the high-road. A few hundred yards brings 
 us parallel with the Alcove ; we turn sharply to the 
 right and pass along the lane running at the back of 
 the Alcove. A gate leads us into "Stumpy Field." 
 We make our way over its steepy undulating surface, 
 and see on an eminence to the right Hungry Hall, 
 with its spinnie trees dotted with magpies' nests. 
 Then, making our way by a level-crossing, we pass over 
 the Midland Railway, a richly-wooded country on all 
 sides of us. To our left, a thick mass of green foliage, 
 is Dinglederry ; just in front, slightly inclining towards 
 
232 POETS' COUNTRY 
 
 the left, is " Kilwick's echoing wood." In the field we 
 are traversing we have the scene of The Needless Alarm : 
 
 There is a field, through which I often pass, 
 Thick overspread with moss and silky grass, 
 Adjoining close to Kilwick's echoing wood. 
 
 A narrow brook, by rushy banks conceal'd, 
 Runs in a bottom, and divides the field ; 
 Oaks intersperse it, that had once a head, 
 But now wear crests of oven-wood instead. 
 
 Sheep graz'd the field ; some with soft bosom press'd 
 The herb as soft, while nibbling stray'd the rest. 
 
 But see the whole charming poem. 
 
 A gate admits us into the wood. As we enter we see 
 in front of us a long, rutty, grassy vista, till we come to 
 a point with an avenue to the right and an avenue to 
 the left. We take the turn to the left, along a grassy 
 path fragrant with the perfume of wild mint, trees on 
 each side of us, some of them festooned with twining 
 woodbine and trailers. Here, perhaps, Cowper found 
 the original of: 
 
 As woodbine weds the plant within her reach, 
 Rough elm, or smooth-grained ash, or glossy beech, 
 In spiral rings ascends the trunk, and lays 
 Her golden tassels on the leafy sprays. 
 
 Retirement, 229-232. 
 
 At the end a gate admits us into what is now known 
 as Cowper's Oak Field, and right in front of us, in 
 imposing singularity, is the famous Yardley Oak : 
 
THE OUSE AT OLNEY 
 
 The Ouse at Olney does uot look an attractive river, but 
 lias much quiet charm as it winds from Weston through 
 what may be called "The Cowper Country." So imper- 
 ceptible is its flow, there is no current to break the reflections 
 of sky or foliage ; the clouds repeat themselves in its waters, 
 even the rays of light, suggesting the calm scenes from 
 which Cowper drew his inspiration. 
 

COWPER 233 
 
 Survivor sole, and hardly such, of all 
 That once lived here, thy brethren! at my birth 
 (Since which I number threescore winters past) 
 A shattered veteran, hollow-trunked perhaps, 
 As now, and with excoriate forks deform. 
 
 Time made thee what thou wast, king of the woods, 
 And Time hath made thee what thou art a cave 
 For owls to roost in. Once thy spreading boughs 
 O'erhung the champaign ; and the numerous flocks 
 That grazed it stood beneath that ample cope 
 Uncrowded, yet safe-sheltered from the storm. 
 No flock frequents thee now. Thou hast outlived 
 Thy popularity, and art become 
 (Unless verse rescue thee awhile) a thing 
 Forgotten, as the foliage of thy youth. 
 
 First a seedling, hid in grass ; 
 Then twig ; then sapling ; and, as century rolled 
 Slow after century, a giant-bulk 
 Of girth enormous, with moss-cushioned root 
 Upheaved above the soil, and sides embossed 
 With prominent wens globose, till at the last 
 The rottenness, which Time is charged to inflict 
 On other mighty ones, found also thee. 
 
 Thine arms have left thee. Winds have rent them off 
 Long since, and rovers of the forest wild 
 With bow and shaft have burnt them. Some have left 
 A splintered stump, bleached to a snowy white : 
 And some memorial none, where once they grew. 
 Yet Life still lingers in thee, and puts forth 
 Proof not contemptible of what she can, 
 Even where Death predominates. The Spring 
 Finds thee not less alive to her sweet force 
 Than yonder upstarts of the neighbouring wood, 
 So much thy juniors, who their birth received 
 Half a millennium since the date of thine. 
 
234 POETS' COUNTRY 
 
 More than a century and a quarter has passed since 
 the eyes of Cowper rested on it, and he recorded what 
 he saw. Since then scarcely any change is perceptible 
 in its remains ; we see it as Cowper saw it. No doubt 
 he would have been gratified had he witnessed what 
 is now a conspicuous feature in it, thougli it scarcely 
 adds to its beauty, a placard bearing the following 
 inscription : 
 
 Out of respect to the memory of the poet Cowper, the Marquis 
 of Northampton is particularly desirous of preserving this oak. 
 Notice is hereby given that any person defacing or otherwise 
 injuring it will be prosecuted according to law 
 
 a pious if prosaic provision which has no doubt pre- 
 vented this memorable relic from being carried bodily 
 away by relic-hunters. 
 
 A few yards to the left is another oak, which must 
 also have existed in Cowper's time. 
 
 Leaving the oak behind us, we now enter Yardley 
 Chase. 
 
 The grassy swarth, close cropped by nibbling sheep, 
 And skirted thick with intertexture firm 
 Of thorny boughs 
 
 a favourite haunt of Cowper's. About a mile onward, 
 near what was in his time known as Chase Farm, but 
 what is now called the Ranger's Lodge, there is another 
 gigantic oak known to him as " Judith," because there 
 was a tradition that it had been planted by the Lady 
 Judith, niece to William the Conqueror and the wife of 
 Earl Waltheof, but now usually called " Gog." 
 
COWPER 235 
 
 Of Yardley Chase we have a vivid sketch in The 
 Sofa, 526 seqq. : 
 
 The common, overgrown with fern, and rough 
 With prickly gorse, that, shapeless and deformed, 
 And dangerous to the touch, has yet its bloom, 
 And decks itself with ornaments of gold, 
 Yields no unpleasing ramble ; there the turf 
 Smells fresh, and, rich in odoriferous herbs 
 And fungous fruits of earth, regales the sense 
 With luxury of unexpected sweets. 
 
 Then, as now, it was a favourite resort of gipsies, 
 and what he describes in the lines : 
 
 I see a column of slow-rising smoke 
 O'ertop the lofty wood that skirts the wild. 
 
 A kettle, slung 
 
 Between two poles upon a stick transverse, 
 Receives the morsel flesh obscene of dog, 
 Or vermin, or at best of cock purloin'd 
 From his accustom'd perch, 
 
 may still often be seen as the tourist explores these 
 haunts. 
 
 It remains to notice one or two other favourite 
 haunts of Cowper, descriptions of which may be found 
 in his poems. For this purpose we must return to 
 Olney. He would often make his way along the foot- 
 path to Clifton Reynes, passing the Church, the Rectory, 
 and the Hall of which all that remains now is one of 
 its appurtenances, the circular dovecot. On his way 
 he would linger by the old water-mill, and here one 
 
236 POETS' COUNTRY 
 
 winter morning he saw what he so vividly describes in 
 the Fifth Book of The Task :- 
 
 On the flood, 
 
 Indurated and fixed, the snowy weight 
 Lies undissolv'd ; while silently beneath, 
 And unperceived, the current steals away. 
 Not so where, scornful of a check, it leaps 
 The mill-dam, dashes on the restless wheel, 
 And wantons in the pebbly gulf below : 
 No frost can bind it there ; its utmost force 
 Can but arrest the light and smoky mist, 
 That in its fall the liquid sheet throws wide. 
 And see where it has hung the embroidered banks 
 With forms so various, that no powers of art, 
 The pencil or the pen, may trace the scene ! 
 Here glittering turrets rise, upbearing high 
 (Fantastic misarrangement !) on the roof, 
 Large growth of what may seem the sparkling trees 
 And shrubs of fairy land. The crystal drops, 
 That trickle down the branches, fast congeal'd, 
 Shoot into pillars of pellucid length, 
 And prop the pile they but adorned before. 
 
 The wet, marshy track through the fields between 
 Olney and Clifton Reynes is the scene of the amusing 
 poem, The Distressed Travellers. The beautiful view 
 from the ridge of Clifton Hill furnishes him, like that 
 " from the Eminence," with all the details of his most 
 characteristic prospect-pictures. 
 
 Another favourite walk for some years was to the 
 poplar field at Lavendon Mill. "There was," he 
 says in a letter to Lady Hesketh, dated May 1, 1786, 
 " in a neighbouring parish called Lavendon, a field, one 
 side of which formed a terrace, and the other was planted 
 
COWPER 237 
 
 with poplars, at whose foot ran the Ouse, that I used to 
 account a little paradise ; but the poplars have been 
 felled, and the scene has suffered so much by the loss 
 that, though still in point of prospect beautiful, it 
 has not charm sufficient to attract me now." This 
 forms the subject of one of the most charming of 
 his poems, The Poplar Field : 
 
 The poplars are felled ; farewell to the shade, 
 And the whispering sound of the cool colonnade ; 
 The winds play no longer and sing in the leaves, 
 Nor Ouse on his bosom their image receives. 
 
 Twelve years have elapsed, since I last took a view 
 Of my favourite field, and the bank where they grew ; 
 And now in the grass behold they are laid, 
 And the tree is my seat, that once lent me a shade. 
 
 The blackbird is fled to another retreat, 
 Where the hazels afford him a screen from the heat, 
 And the scene, where his melody charm'd me before, 
 Resounds with his sweet-flowing ditty no more. 
 
 My fugitive years are all hasting away, 
 
 And I must ere long lie as lowly as they, 
 
 With a turf on my breast, and a stone at my head, 
 
 Ere another such grove shall arise in its stead. 
 
 At the beautiful old mansion of Gayhurst, so 
 intimately associated with the Gunpowder Plot con- 
 spiracy, he was a frequent visitor. Under its then 
 owner, a Mr. Wrighte, it was celebrated for its pine- 
 apples, a present of which inspired Cowper's graceful 
 little apologue, The Pineapple and the Bee. 
 
238 POETS' COUNTRY 
 
 It must certainly remain matter for congratulation 
 that there still remain, in these all-transforming times, 
 scenes which recall so exactly a world long passed away 
 a world consecrated by a poet who for very many of 
 his fellow-men can never lose his charm. No one can 
 traverse them with his poems in their hands without 
 the liveliest admiration for the studious and happy 
 fidelity with which he painted what he saw. As 
 minutely and scrupulously truthful as Gilbert White, 
 he has done for Olney and Weston what White did for 
 Selborne ; but, a true poet, he has done incomparably 
 more he has consecrated as well as described. 
 
CRABBE AND ALDBOROUGH 
 
 WHAT Stoke Pogis and its neighbourhood was to Gray, 
 what Olney and Weston were to Cowper, that is 
 Aldborough to Crabbe. Crabbe's descriptive poetry 
 is essentially local, its source was always from what 
 surrounded him and daily met his eyes. He was 
 associated with other places besides Aldborough with 
 Woodbridge, with Stathern in Rutlandshire, with 
 Muston in Leicestershire, with Parham, Glemham, and 
 Rendham in Suffolk, and lastly with Trowbridge in 
 Wiltshire, where he lived for the last eighteen years of 
 his life. And the scenery of most of these places and of 
 those in the neighbourhood may be traced occasionally 
 in his poetry. But more than two-thirds of what he has 
 described centres round Aldborough. Here in humble 
 life, the son of one of the collectors of the salt-duties, in 
 the town, he was born on Christmas Eve in 1754. Here 
 he lived till his eighteenth year in the heart of its marine 
 life, with every nook and cranny of it familiar to him 
 the sea in all its moods and aspects, the dreary marsh 
 wastes, the river, the mud-banks, the shingly beach, 
 the arid sand tracks, and " the wild amphibious race " 
 
 239 
 
240 POETS' COUNTRY 
 
 which people its fishing-smacks and its hovels. Here, 
 after walking the hospitals in London, he set up in 
 practice, dismally to fail ; and here too, after starvation, 
 literally staring him in the face, had driven him to 
 exchange Medicine for the Church, he had his first 
 curacy. It was thus associated with the most im- 
 pressionable and the most momentous period of his 
 whole life, and indeed his work generally as a poet 
 took its ply and its colour from these early associa- 
 tions. 
 
 Beyond the general features of its sea and back- 
 ground, there is nothing in the Aldborough of to-day 
 which reminds us of the Aldborough of Crabbe's 
 photographs. In his time it consisted of two parallel 
 and unpaved streets running between mean and scram- 
 bling cabins occupied by seafaring men, fishermen, and 
 pilots. " The beach " let me borrow the description 
 given by Crabbe's son in his admirable biography of 
 his father "consists of successive ridges, large rolled 
 stones, then loose shingles, and at the fall of the tide a 
 strip of fine hard sand. . . . The broad river called the 
 Aid approaches the sea close to Aldborough within a 
 few hundred yards, and then turning abruptly continues 
 to run about ten miles parallel with the beach, from 
 which, for the most part, a dreary strip of marsh and 
 waste alone divides it, until it at length finds its 
 embouchure at Orford. " Crabbe has given us pictures 
 of the whole line of the coast from Orford to Dun wick, 
 Slaughden Quay in particular being elaborated, as 
 
CRABBE AND ALDBOROUGH 241 
 
 his son says, with all the minuteness of a Dutch 
 landscape. 
 
 With ceaseless motion comes and goes the tide, 
 Flowing, it fills the channel vast and wide ; 
 Then back to sea, with strong majestic sweep 
 It rolls, in ebb yet terrible and deep ; 
 Here Samphire-banks and Saltwort bound the flood, 
 There stakes and sea-weeds withering on the mud ; 
 And higher up, a ridge of all things base, 
 Which some strong tide has roll'd upon the place. 
 
 The Borough, Letter 1. 
 
 In the Twenty-Second Letter of the same poem is 
 painted this scene on the River Aid as it flows past 
 Slaughden Quay : 
 
 At the same time the same dull views to see, 
 
 The bounding marsh-bank and the blighted tree ; 
 
 The water only, when the tides were high, 
 
 When low, the mud half-cover'd and half-dry ; 
 
 The sunburnt tar that blisters on the planks, 
 
 And bank-side stakes in their uneven ranks ; 
 
 Heaps of entangled weeds that slowly float, 
 
 As the tide rolls by the impeded boat. 
 
 When tides were neap, and, in the sultry day, 
 
 Through the tall bounding mud-banks made their way, 
 
 Which on each side rose swelling, and below 
 
 The dark, warm flood ran silently and slow ; 
 
 There anchoring, Peter chose from man to hide, 
 
 There hang his head, and view the lazy tide 
 
 In its hot, slimy channel slowly glide; 
 
 Where the small eels that left the deeper way 
 
 For the warm shore, within the shallows play ; 
 
 Where gaping muscles, left upon the mud, 
 
 Slope their slow passage to the fallen flood : 
 
 Here, dull and hopeless, he'd lie down and trace 
 
 How sidelong crabs had scrawl'd their crooked race, 
 
 R 
 
242 POETS' COUNTRY 
 
 Or sadly listen to the tuneless cry 
 
 Of fishing gull or clanging golden-eye ; 
 
 What time the sea-birds to the marsh would come, 
 
 And the loud bittern, from the bull-rush home, 
 
 Gave from the salt ditch side the bellowing boom. 
 
 The Borough, Letter XXII. 
 
 In the Ninth Letter we have the same scene by 
 moonlight : 
 
 What time the moon arising shows the mud, 
 
 A shining border to the silver flood ; 
 
 When, by her dubious light, the meanest views, 
 
 Chalk, stones, and stakes, obtain the richest hues ; 
 
 And when the cattle, as they gazing stand, 
 
 Seem nobler objects than when viewed from land ; 
 
 Then anchor'd vessels in the way appear, 
 
 And sea-boys greet them as they pass " What cheer ? " 
 
 The sleeping shell-ducks at the sound arise, 
 
 And utter loud their unharmonious cries ; 
 
 Fluttering they move their weedy beds among, 
 
 Or, instant diving, hide their plumeless young. 
 
 The Borough, Letter IX. 
 
 Not less vivid in its elaborate realism is the picture 
 given in The Lover's Journey of the scenery between 
 Aldborough and Beccles : 
 
 On either side 
 
 Is level fen, a prospect wild and wide, 
 With dikes on either hand by Ocean's self supplied. 
 Far on the right the distant sea is seen, 
 And salt the springs that feed the marsh between ; 
 Beneath an ancient bridge, the straiten'd flood 
 Rolls through its sloping banks of slimy mud ; 
 Near it a sunken boat resists the tide, 
 That frets and hurries to th' opposing side ; 
 The rushes sharp, that on the borders grow, 
 
CRABBE AND ALDBOROUGH 243 
 
 Bend their brown flow'rets to the stream below, 
 
 Impure in all its course, in all its progress slow ; 
 
 Here a grave Flora scarcely deigns to bloom, 
 
 Nor wears a rosy blush, nor sheds perfume ; 
 
 The few dull flowers that o'er the place are spread 
 
 Partake the nature of their fenny bed ; 
 
 Here on its wiry stem, in rigid bloom, 
 
 Grows the salt lavender that lacks perfume ; 
 
 Here the dwarf sallows creep, the sept-foil harsh, 
 
 And the soft, slimy mallow of the marsh ; 
 
 Low on the ear the distant billows sound, 
 
 And just in view appears their stony bound ; 
 
 No hedge nor tree conceals the glowing sun, 
 
 Birds, save a wat'ry tribe, the district shun, 
 
 Nor chirp among the reeds where bitter waters run. 
 
 Tales, X. 
 
 Now, turning from these marine pictures, let us take 
 a companion one of the heath track adjoining the coast : 
 
 Lo ! where the heath, with withering brake grown o'er, 
 Lends the light turf that warms the neighbouring poor : 
 From thence a length of burning sand appears, 
 Where the thin harvest waves its wither'd ears ; 
 Rank weeds, that every art and care defy, 
 Reign o'er the land, and rob the blighted rye : 
 There thistles stretch their prickly arms afar, 
 And to the ragged infants threaten war ; 
 There poppies nodding, mock the hope of toil ; 
 There the blue bugloss paints the sterile soil ; 
 Hardy and high, above the slender sheaf, 
 The slimy mallow waves her silky leaf; 
 O'er the young shoot the charlock throws a shade, 
 And clasping tares cling round the sickly blade ; 
 With mingled tints the rocky coasts abound, 
 And a sad splendour vainly shines around. 
 
 The Village, Book I. 
 
 How vivid, too, is his picture of the approach to 
 
244 POETS' COUNTRY 
 
 the sea from the inland fields and the walk along 
 the shore : 
 
 Through the green lane, then linger in the mead, 
 Stray o'er the heath in all its purple bloom, 
 And pluck the blossom where the wild bees hum ; 
 Then through the broomy bound with ease they pass, 
 And press the sandy sheep-walk's slender grass, 
 Where dwarfish flowers among the gorse are spread, 
 And the lamb browses by the linnet's bed ; 
 Then 'cross the bounding brook they make their way 
 O'er its rough bridge and there behold the bay ! 
 The ocean smiling to the fervid sun 
 The waves that faintly fall and slowly run 
 The ships at distance and the boats at hand. 
 
 Ships softly sinking in the sleepy sea : 
 Now arm in arm, now parted, they behold 
 The glitt'ring waters on the shingles roll'd. 
 
 And search for crimson weeds, which spreading flow, 
 Or lie like pictures on the sand below ; 
 With all those bright red pebbles, that the sun 
 Through the small waves so softly shines upon ; 
 And those live lucid jellies which the eye 
 Delights to trace as they swim glittering by. 
 
 The Borough, Letter XXIII. 
 
 In the following passage we have a wonderfully 
 graphic picture of the wide barren heathlands which 
 stretch beyond Leiston Common towards Dunwick : 
 
 " This neat low gorse," said he, " with golden bloom, 
 Delights each sense, is beauty, is perfume ; 
 And this gay ling, with all its purple flowers, 
 A man at leisure might admire for hours ; 
 This greeii-fring'd cup-moss has a scarlet tip." 
 
CRABBE AND ALDBOROUGH 245 
 
 Onward he went, and fiercer grew the heat, 
 Dust rose in clouds before his horse's feet ; 
 For now he pass'd through lanes of burning sand. 
 Bounds to thin crops or yet uncultur'd land ; 
 Where the dark poppy flourish'd on the dry 
 And sterile soil, and mock'd the thin-set rye. 
 
 The very lane has sweets that all admire, 
 The rambling suckling, and the vigorous brier ; 
 See ! wholesome wormwood grows beside the way, 
 Where, dew-press'd yet, the dog-rose bends the spray ; 
 Fresh herbs the fields, fair shrubs the banks adorn, 
 And snow-white bloom falls flaky from the thorn. 
 
 A botanist and zoologist, he delights, like Tenny- 
 son, in minutely discriminating particulars, as in the 
 epithets in the lines already quoted : 
 
 Here on its wiry stem, in rigid bloom, 
 Grows the salt lavender that lacks perfume ; 
 Here the dwarf sallows creep, the sept-foil harsh, 
 And the soft, slimy mallow of the marsh ; 
 
 or take the description of Lepraria Jolithus in the 
 Second Letter of The Borough : 
 
 See how Nature's work is done, 
 How slowly true she lays her colours on ; 
 When her least speck upon the hardest flint 
 Has mark and form, and is a living tint ; 
 And so embodied with the rock, that few 
 Can the small germ upon the substance view. 
 
 There, in the rugged soil, [seeds] safely dwell, 
 Till showers and suns the subtle atoms swell, 
 And spread th' enduring foliage ; then we trace 
 The freckled flower upon the flinty base ; 
 These all increase, till in unnoticed years 
 The stony tower as grey with age appears ; 
 
246 POETS' COUNTRY 
 
 With coats of vegetation, thinly spread, 
 Coat above coat, the living on the dead : 
 These then dissolve to dust, and make a way 
 For bolder foliage, nurs'd by their decay. 
 
 The sea in all its moods and phases, in all its infinite 
 variety, with all its associations and phenomena, the life 
 that fills it, the birds that haunt it, its splendours and 
 its glooms from sun and moon and night and sweeping 
 or brooding cloud, he has painted as no poet since 
 Homer has done. Look at the following : 
 
 Then the broad bosom of the ocean keeps 
 An equal motion ; swelling as it sleeps, 
 Then slowly sinking ; curling to the strand, 
 Faint, lazy waves o'ercreep the rigid sand, 
 Or tap the tarry boat with gentle blow, 
 And back return in silence, smooth and slow. 
 The Borough, Letter I. 
 
 When were sea-gulls painted like this ? 
 
 Pleasant it was to view the sea-gulls strive 
 
 Against the storm, or in the ocean dive 
 
 With eager scream, or when they dropping gave 
 
 Their closing wings, to sail upon the wave ; 
 
 Then as the winds and waters rag'd around, 
 
 And breaking billows mix'd their deafening sound, 
 
 They on the rolling deep securely hung, 
 
 And calmly rode the restless waves among. 
 
 Nor pleased it less around me to behold, 
 
 Far up the beach, the yesty sea-foam roll'd ; 
 
 Or from the shore upborne, to see on high 
 
 Its frothing flakes in wild confusion fly : 
 
 While the salt spray that clashing billows form 
 
 Gave to the taste a feeling of the storm. 
 
 Tales of the Hall, Book IV. 
 
CRABBE AND ALDBOROUGH 247 
 
 It may be added that the whole of the scene of 
 which this is a part is almost a photograph of the 
 desolate marshland between Aldborough and Orford. 
 
 In the following picture Crabbe is not perhaps at 
 his best, but it is vivid : 
 
 The breaking billows cast the flying foam 
 
 Upon the billows rising all the deep 
 
 Is restless change ; the waves so swell'd and steep, 
 
 Breaking and sinking, and the sunken swells, 
 
 Nor one, one moment, in its station dwells ; 
 
 But nearer land you may the billows trace, 
 
 As if contending in their watery chase ; 
 
 May watch the mightiest till the shoal they reach, 
 
 Then break and hurry to their utmost stretch ; 
 
 Curl'd as they come, they strike with furious force, 
 
 And then re-flowing, take their grating course, 
 
 Raking the rounded flints. 
 
 The Borough, Letter I. 
 
 The picture of the shipwreck at night in the First 
 Letter of The Borough is sublime : 
 
 From parted clouds the moon her radiance throws 
 On the wild waves, and all the dangers shows, 
 But shows them beaming in her shining vest, 
 Terrific splendour ! gloom in glory dress'd ! 
 This for a moment, and then clouds again 
 Hide every beam, and fear and darkness reign. 
 
 Let us now turn to his pictures of inland scenes. 
 Both at Muston and at his other residences in Suffolk, 
 particularly at Glemham Hall, where he lived for 
 nearly five years, as well as at Trowbridge, he no doubt 
 found the archetypes of his rural pictures. The parson- 
 
248 POETS' COUNTRY 
 
 age garden at Muston be describes in the First Letter 
 of TJie Borough : 
 
 Seek then thy garden's shrubby bound, and look, 
 As it steals by, upon the bordering brook, 
 That winding streamlet, limpid, lingering slow, 
 Where the reeds whisper when the zephyrs blow ; 
 Where in the midst, upon a throne of green, 
 Sits the large Lily as the water's queen, 
 And makes the current, forc'd awhile to stay, 
 Murmur and bubble as it shoots away. 
 
 It would, of course, be impossible to localise his late 
 autumn landscape in The Patron (Tales, V.) : 
 
 Cold grew the foggy morn, the day was brief, 
 
 Loose on the cherry hung the crimson leaf, 
 
 The dew dwelt ever on the herb : the woods 
 
 Roar'd with strong blasts, with mighty showers the floods. 
 
 All green was vanish'd save of pine and yew, 
 
 That still displayed their melancholy hue, 
 
 Save the green holly with its berries red, 
 
 And the green moss that o'er the gravel spread. 
 
 But there are touches in the early autumn landscape 
 one of the gems of the Tales of the Hall which 
 recall the parsonage at Muston : 
 
 It was a fair and mild autumnal sky, 
 
 And earth's ripe treasures met the admiring eye, 
 
 As a rich beauty, when her bloom is lost, 
 
 Appears with more magnificence and cost : 
 
 The wet and heavy grass, where feet had stray 'd, 
 
 Not yet erect, the wanderer's way betray 'd ; 
 
 Showers of the night had swell'd the deep'ning rill, 
 
 The morning breeze had urg'd the quick'ning mill ; 
 
 Assembled rooks had wing'd their seaward flight, 
 
 By the same passage to return at night, 
 
CRABBE AND ALDBOROUGH 249 
 
 While proudly o'er them hung the steady kite, 
 Then turn'd him back, and left the noisy throng, 
 Nor deign'd to know them as he sail'd along. 
 Long yellow leaves from oziers, strew' d around, 
 Choked the small stream, and hush'd the feeble sound, 
 While the dead foliage dropt from loftier trees. 
 
 Book IV. 
 
 In Delay has Danger (Tales of the Hall, Book 
 XIII.) we have another early morning autumn scene, 
 represented as contemplated by a man who has wrecked 
 his life by a foolish marriage : 
 
 Early he rose, and looked with many a sigh 
 On the red light that fill'd the eastern sky. 
 
 He saw the wind upon the water blow, 
 And the cold stream curl'd onward as the gale 
 From the pine-hill blew harshly down the dale ; 
 On the right side the youth a wood survey 'd, 
 With all its dark intensity of shade. 
 
 Far to the left he saw the huts of men 
 Half hid in mist that hung upon the fen ; 
 Before him swallows, gathering for the sea, 
 Took their short flights, and twitter'd on the lea ; 
 And near the bean-sheaf stood, the harvest done, 
 And slowly blacken'd in the sickly sun. 
 
 Once more : 
 
 There was a day, ere yet the Autumn closed, 
 When, ere her wintry wars, the Earth reposed ; 
 When from the yellow weed the feathery crownj 
 Light as the curling smoke, fell slowly down 
 When the wing'd insect settled in our sight 
 And waited wind to recommence her flight ; 
 When the wide river was a silver sheet, 
 And on the Ocean slept th' unanchor'd fleet. 
 
250 POETS' COUNTRY 
 
 Perhaps the most charming of his inland pictures is 
 that of the surroundings of the Ancient Mansion in the 
 Posthumous Tales, and difficult indeed would it be to 
 find its equal in minutely accurate particularity : 
 
 How stately stand yon pines upon the hill, 
 How soft the murmurs of that living rill ! 
 And o'er the park's tall paling, scarcely higher, 
 Peeps the low Church and shows the modest spire. 
 Unnumber'd violets on those banks appear, 
 And all the first-born beauties of the year. 
 The grey-green blossoms of the willows bring 
 The large wild bees upon the labouring wing ; 
 Then comes the Summer with augmented pride, 
 Whose pure small streams along the valleys glide : 
 Her richer Flora their brief charms display, 
 And, as the fruit advances, fall away. 
 Then shall th' autumnal yellow clothe the leaf, 
 What time the reaper binds the burden' d sheaf: 
 Then silent groves denote the dying year, 
 The morning frost, and noontide gossamer ; 
 And all be silent in the scene around, 
 All save the distant sea's uncertain sound, 
 Or here and there the gun whose loud report 
 Proclaims to man that Death is but his sport. 
 And then the wintry winds begin to blow, 
 Then fall the flaky stars of gathering snow, 
 When on the thorn the ripening sloe, yet blue, 
 Takes the bright varnish of the morning dew ; 
 The aged moss grows brittle on the pale, 
 The dry boughs splinter in the windy gale, 
 And every changing season of the year 
 Stamps on the scene its English character. 
 
 Crabbe's range as a Nature-painter is, it will be seen, 
 a restricted one, being, indeed, confined to his surround- 
 ings, practically, indeed, confined to Aldborough and 
 
CRABBE AND ALDBOROUGH 251 
 
 to Suffolkshire. Its characteristic is its minute and 
 faithful realism, unillumined by a ray of imagination 
 or of fancy. The beautiful appears to have had little 
 attraction for him. As in delineating human life and 
 character he dwelt chiefly on the seamy side of both, 
 on squalor, on ugliness, on infirmity, regarding and 
 painting them as Hogarth did, so in the spirit of the 
 same unlovely and ruthless realism, and with the same 
 indifference to mere charm and beauty, he dealt with 
 Nature. The object of The Village was to confront 
 fiction with truth, to 
 
 Paint the cot 
 As truth will paint it, and as bards will not. 
 
 What beauty his descriptions have is the beauty 
 they derive from truth, the beauty which is in the 
 objects themselves, not the beauty with which their 
 painter has invested them. When he chose a theme 
 like the sea and such landscapes as he has given us, he 
 chose objects in themselves supremely beautiful, but he 
 drew them just as he drew what was most sordid and 
 unlovely. It has been questioned whether he can be 
 called a poet, clinging as he did 
 
 Too close to life's realities, 
 In truth to nature missing truth to art. 
 
 It may be answered that in the house of poetry there 
 are many mansions, and that a definition of poetry 
 which shall exclude from it such Nature-painting as 
 
252 POETS' COUNTRY 
 
 has been here illustrated would certainly have to be 
 amended. 
 
 The effect of Crabbe's descriptive poetry is seriously 
 impaired by its form, which was not happily chosen, 
 failing as it does in plasticity, and, to employ a phrase 
 of Longinus, " hanging " what it presents " with bells." 
 
TENNYSON 
 
 WHATEVER may be Tennyson's limitations, and what- 
 ever deduction advancing time may make from his 
 enormous reputation among his contemporaries, of one 
 thing there can be no doubt, that as a Nature-painter 
 he is the most finished artist in English poetry, and, 
 within his range, without a superior in the poetry of the 
 world. But his range is limited. He has not the 
 breadth and sweep of Wordsworth, or the rich com- 
 plexity of Shelley ; he has nothing, for example, that 
 can compare with the landscapes in The Excursion, or 
 the affluent picturesqueness which we find in Alastor, 
 in The Revolt of Islam, or in the Lines written among 
 the Euganean Hills. With one or two rare exceptions, 
 he paints in miniature, his descriptions have the effect 
 of exquisitely finished cameos. It is well known that 
 he made this branch of poetry a speciality, going about 
 with a notebook in his hand, and on the very spot fixing 
 the features of any scene which impressed him, studying 
 Nature indeed not merely with the eye of an artist, but as 
 a botanist, a zoologist, a geologist studies her. As his 
 
 253 
 
254 POETS' COUNTRY 
 
 diction, like that of Milton and Gray, resembles mosaic 
 work dovetailed out of felicities borrowed and assimi- 
 lated from the Classics of all ages, so his imagery and 
 Nature-pictures were simple transcripts of what a sleep- 
 less observation directed systematically to the enrich- 
 ment of his poetry had supplied him with. It is 
 certainly a little disenchanting to find a poet so deliber- 
 ately making capital as it were out of Nature, and at 
 times our consciousness that this is indeed the case 
 seriously interferes with our enjoyment. These descrip- 
 tions are sometimes not duly subordinated to the context 
 in which they appear, and have too much the appearance 
 of mere display ; they are sometimes, we cannot but 
 feel, over -elaborated, which has instantly the effect 
 of falsetto. In general, however, their effect is very 
 different. Of all poets in our language Tennyson has 
 most of that natural magic of which Arnold speaks, 
 that power of catching and rendering the charm 
 and power of Nature with wonderful nearness and 
 vividness. 
 
 But my business here is not to criticise but to 
 illustrate ; it is to point out the originals of his descrip- 
 tions, and this in his case is not difficult. Tennyson, 
 like so many other descriptive poets, drew directly from 
 his surroundings, and his successive residences at 
 Somersby in Lincolnshire, at Farringford in the Isle 
 of Wight, and at Aldworth in Surrey can be distinctly 
 traced in his poetry. If to these be added his tours 
 about England and Wales and his tours on the 
 
TENNYSON 255 
 
 Continent, almost every elaborate Nature -pain ting in 
 his work except his tropical studies can be traced to its 
 source. 
 
 Far more intimately and extensively than any other 
 place with which he was associated was he affected by 
 the country of his birth, by Somersby and its neigh- 
 bourhood, where he first saw the light, by Mablethorpe, 
 where he first looked on the sea. Indeed, these places 
 and Lincolnshire generally are to his poetry, and to his 
 best poetry, the poems of 1842 and In Memoriam, all 
 that Stoke Pogis was to Gray, Olney and Weston to 
 Cowper, and Aldborough to Crabbe. He was born, as 
 every one knows, at the parsonage at Somersby, where 
 his father was rector. The rectory garden is described 
 in the Ode to Memory : 
 
 A garden bower'd close 
 With plaited alleys of the trailing rose, 
 Long alleys falling down to twilight grots, 
 Or opening upon level plots 
 Of crowned lilies, standing near 
 Purple-spiked lavender. 
 
 Again more fully in A Song : 
 
 A spirit haunts the year's last hours ; 
 
 and still more charmingly in the hundred and first 
 section of In Memoriam : 
 
 Unwatch'd, the garden bough shall sway, 
 The tender blossom flutter down, 
 Unloved, that beech will gather brown, 
 
 This maple burn itself away ; 
 
256 POETS' COUNTRY 
 
 Unloved, the sun-flower, shining fair, 
 
 Ray round with flames her disk of seed, 
 And many a rose-carnation feed 
 
 With summer-spice the humming air. 
 
 The lawn was overshadowed on one side by witch- 
 elms, and on the other by larch and sycamore trees, 
 described in the eighty-ninth section of In Memoriam : 
 
 Witch-elms that counterchange the floor 
 
 Of this flat lawn with dusk and bright ; 
 And thou, with all thy breadth and height 
 
 Of foliage, towering sycamore ; 
 
 and again at the end of the ninety-fifth section. 
 
 The scene from the garden and in its neighbourhood 
 is photographed in the Ode to Memory : 
 
 The woods that belt the gray hill-side, 
 The seven elms, the poplars four 1 
 That stand beside my father's door, 
 And chiefly from the brook that loves 
 To purl o'er matted cress and ribbed sand, 
 Or dimple in the dark of rushy coves, 
 Drawing into his narrow earthen urn, 
 
 In every elbow and turn, 
 The filter'd tribute of the rough woodland. 
 
 This brook, the Somersby brook, originating in the 
 springs past Tetford, seems to haunt Tennyson's poetry, 
 appearing and reappearing in it as in The Brook, in 
 A Farewell, which was dedicated to it, in The Miller s 
 Daughter, and in the seventy -ninth, ninety -ninth, 
 
 1 The poplars have disappeared, but the seven elms are still to be seeu in 
 the garden behind the house ; the only other change is that trees now obscure 
 the view from the garden. 
 
ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE 
 
 Of Cambridge Tennyson writes 
 
 I past beside the reverend walls 
 
 In which of old I wore the gown ; 
 I roved at random thro' the town, 
 
 And saw the tumult of the halls. 
 
 Many of the colleges are grouped along the river. This 
 is St. John's. 
 

 
 
 
TENNYSON 257 
 
 hundredth, and hundred and first sections of In 
 Memoriam. It has a sandy bottom, "where," as the 
 late Mr. Rawnsley, Tennyson's friend, said, "shoals of 
 small fish delight to disport themselves." There can be 
 little doubt that what Tennyson saw here suggested 
 the simile in Geraint and Enid : 
 
 Like a shoal 
 
 Of darting fish, that on a summer morn 
 Adown the crystal dykes at Camelot 
 Come slipping o'er their shadows on the sand, 
 But if a man who stands upon the brink 
 But lift a shining hand against the sun, 
 There is not left the twinkle of a fin 
 Betwixt the cressy islets white in flower. 
 
 Near Somersby the brook joins another from Holy- 
 well, as is described in 
 
 By that old bridge which, half in ruins then, 
 Still makes a hoary eyebrow for the gleam 
 Beyond it, where the waters marry. 
 
 Close to the rectory, and divided from it by a row 
 of trees, stands Baumber's Farm, which appears to have 
 suggested at least some touches for Mariana in the 
 Moated Grange. At Mablethorpe we are brought 
 even nearer to his poetry. Here his father took a 
 cottage in the summer-time, close under the sea-bank, 
 " the long low line of tussocked dunes," to which, says 
 the present Lord Tennyson, the family resorted. Here 
 Tennyson made his first acquaintance with the sea. 
 To this cottage there is a reference in the Ode to 
 Memory : 
 
258 POETS' COUNTRY 
 
 A lowly cottage whence we see 
 Stretch'd wide and wild the waste enormous marsh, 
 Where from the frequent bridge, 
 Like emblems of infinity, 
 The trenched waters run from sky to sky. 
 
 He used to stand, we are told, on the sand-built ridge 
 and think that " it was the spine-bone of the world." 
 "From the top of this," says his son, "the weird 
 strangeness of the place greatly moved him." On the 
 other side of the bank there is an immense waste 
 of sand and clay. At night on the shore, when the 
 tide is full, the sound is amazing. As the shore is 
 perfectly flat, the clap of the wave can be heard for 
 miles. This furnished him many years later with one 
 of the most vivid of his similes : 
 
 As the crest of some slow-arching wave 
 Heard in dead night along that table-shore, 
 Drops flat, and after the great waters break 
 Whitening for half a league, and thin themselves 
 Far over sands marbled with moon and cloud, 
 From less and less to nothing. 
 
 So, too, in The Palace of Art : 
 
 A still salt pool, lock'd in with bars of sand, 
 Left on the shore ; that hears all night 
 
 The plunging seas draw backward from the land 
 Their moon-led waters white. 
 
 Here, too, he found 
 
 The sandy tracts, 
 And the hollow ridges roaring into cataracts, 
 
 the original, probably, for the " Lover's bay " described 
 in The Lovers Tale. 
 
TENNYSON 259 
 
 Returning inland, we have the characteristic 
 Lincolnshire landscape in The May Queen, 
 
 The long gray fields at night ; 
 
 When from the dry dark wold the summer airs blow cool 
 On the oat-grass and the sword-grass, and the bulrush in the pool. 
 
 As Fitzgerald says, " the May Queen is all Lincolnshire 
 inland, as Locksley Hall its sea-board." We have only 
 to climb the hill which the poet climbs in the hundredth 
 section of In Memoriam to understand the truth of his 
 local pictures : the 
 
 yonder cloud 
 
 That rises upward always higher, 
 
 And onward drags a labouring breast, 
 And topples round the dreary west, 
 
 A looming bastion fringed with fire ; 
 
 and 
 
 yon great plain 
 
 That sweeps with all its autumn bowers 
 And crowded farms and lessening towers 
 To mingle with the bounding main ; 
 
 and the 
 
 gray old grange, or lonely fold, 
 Or low morass and whispering reed, 
 Or simple stile from mead to mead, 
 Or sheepwalk up the windy wold ; 
 
 the 
 
 hoary knoll of ash and haw 
 That hears the latest linnet trill, 
 Nor quarry trench'd along the hill 
 And haunted by the wrangling daw. 
 
 In The Dying Swan we have a photograph from the 
 marshes, just as in The Last Tournament we have one 
 
260 POETS' COUNTRY 
 
 of his most majestic pictures of a scene which he must 
 often have witnessed : 
 
 O'er the illimitable reed 
 And many a glancing plash and sallowy isle 
 The wide- wing' d sunset of the misty marsh 
 Glared. 
 
 About a furlong beyond Somersby Church is a 
 small plantation, Holy well Glen. This was a favourite 
 haunt of Tennyson's ; it was here on the day that he 
 heard of Byron's death that he carved on a rock the 
 words, "Byron is dead." "As far as the sight can 
 penetrate," I quote Mr. Cuming Walter's graphic 
 picture of it, "are trees larch and spruce and ash 
 and beech and sycamore and the great hollow is 
 strewn with leaves. The interlacing branches above 
 breaking out into verdure, make a roof of twinkling 
 emerald, but down in the hollow there is a shadowy 
 gloom. In the gorge a thin stream glistens. It issues 
 from the throat of a cavern of rocks, its shallow bed 
 is half choked with rotting herbage and is crossed again 
 and again by fallen and inclining trees. . . . Here and 
 there a bare forehead of rock stands out and overlooks 
 the gorge with nothing, perhaps, but a twisted root, 
 like a swollen vein, protruding on its front." l This seems 
 to have suggested many details in the scenery of The 
 Lovers Tale, written when Tennyson was still at 
 Somersby, and if Mr. Cuming Walter goes too far 
 in attributing to it the genesis of Maud, there can be 
 
 1 In Tennyson Land, pp. 78, 79. 
 
TENNYSON 261 
 
 little doubt that there are many reminiscences of it 
 in that poem. Here, at all events, began Tennyson's 
 familiarity with the " silent woody places " which, with 
 their various phenomena, fill so wide a space in his 
 Nature-paintings. 
 
 Though he said himself that if the scenery of The 
 Miller's Daughter was suggested by any particular 
 place it was the mill at Trumpington near Cambridge, 
 it is difficult not to think that it must have owed many 
 touches to the mill near his home, Stockworth Mill. 
 As Mr. Cuming Walter has pointed out, 
 
 The white chalk-quarry from the hill 
 Gleamed to the flying moon by fits, 
 
 seems plainly to refer to the white chalk -quarry at 
 Thetford, which can be seen from Stockworth Mill. 
 But the matter is a trifle. 
 
 It is not necessary to extend these illustrations of 
 the effect of Lincolnshire scenery on Tennyson's poetry 
 further, and we may now pass to Farringford, to which 
 he removed from Twickenham at the end of 1853, and 
 where in the following year he wrote Maud. His 
 description of it, "close to the ridge of a noble 
 down," and of the prospect in his Invitation to 
 Maurice is well known : 
 
 Groves of pine on either hand, 
 To break the blast of winter, stand ; 
 And further on, the hoary Channel 
 Tumbles a billow on chalk and sand ; 
 
262 POETS' COUNTRY 
 
 Where, if below the milky steep 
 Some ship of battle slowly creep. 
 
 And on thro' zones of light and shadow 
 Glimmer away to the lonely deep. 
 
 Tennyson himself in some notes on Maud printed 
 in the Biography by his son, says that "many of the 
 descriptions of nature are taken from observations of 
 natural phenomena at Farringford." No one, indeed, 
 can take a walk along the Downs from Watcombe Bay 
 by the Beacon towards the promontory over the 
 Needles without recalling innumerable passages which 
 were plainly suggested from what meets the view, and, 
 we may add, strikes the ear ; such as : 
 
 Listening now to the tide in its broad-flung shipwrecking roar, 
 Now to the scream of a madden'd beach dragg'd down by the wave, 
 
 which, however, seems to have been more immediately 
 suggested by the breakers on the shore of Shole Bay, 
 
 Is that enchanted moan only the swell 
 Of the long waves that roll in yonder bay ? 
 
 When the far-off sail is blown by the breeze of a softer clime, 
 Half-lost in the liquid azure bloom of a crescent of sea. 
 
 This too, in Sea Dreams, as his son remarks, was a 
 picture sketched from what he here saw : 
 
 A full tide 
 
 Rose with ground-swell, which, on the foremost rocks 
 Touching, upjetted in spirts of wild sea-smoke, 
 And scaled in sheets of wasteful foam, and fell 
 In vast sea-cataracts ever and anon 
 Dead claps of thunder from within the cliffs 
 Heard thro' the living roar. 
 
TENNYSON 263 
 
 In the Prologue to The Charge of the Heavy 
 Brigade there is a description of an autumn scene from 
 Aldworth : 
 
 Our birches yellowing and from each 
 
 The light leaf falling fast, 
 While squirrels from our fiery beech 
 
 Were bearing off the mast. 
 You came, and look'd and loved the view 
 
 Long-known and loved by me, 
 Green Sussex fading into blue 
 With one gray glimpse of sea. 
 
 It may be well now to give a few illustrations of 
 scenes and pictures suggested by other places. 
 
 From one of his own notes we learn that the 
 beautiful picture which concludes Audley Court was 
 drawn from what he saw when coming down the hill 
 over Torquay : 
 
 But ere the night we rose 
 
 And sauntered home beneath a moon, that, just 
 In crescent, dimly rain'd about the leaf 
 Twilights of airy silver, till we reach' d 
 The limit of the hills : and as we sank 
 From rock to rock upon the glooming quay, 
 The town was hush'd beneath us : lower down 
 The bay was oily calm : the harbour-buoy, 
 Sole star of phosphorescence in the calm, 
 With one green sparkle ever and anon 
 Dipt by itself; 
 
 and the same scene suggested to him the line in T/te 
 Princess, 
 
 A full sea glazed with muffled moonlight. 
 
 A fine tree in the Lac de Gaube, standing in midstream 
 
264 POETS' COUNTRY 
 
 between two cataracts, gave him the picture in The 
 Princess : 
 
 And standing like a stately Pine 
 Set in a cataract on an island-crag, 
 When storm is on the heights, and right and left 
 Suck'd from the dark heart of the long hills roll 
 The torrents dash'd to the vale. 
 
 Another fine Nature-sketch in the same poem was, he 
 tells us, drawn from what he saw when ascending 
 Snowdon : 
 
 As one who climbs a peak to gaze 
 O'er land and main, and sees a great black cloud 
 Drag inward from the deeps, a wall of night 
 Blot out the slope of sea from verge to shore, 
 And suck the blending splendour from the sand, 
 And, quenching lake by lake and tarn by tarn, 
 Expunge the world. 
 
 This, it may be remarked, bears so close a resemblance 
 to a passage in the Iliad (iv. 275), that had Tennyson 
 not asserted that it was the result of his own observa- 
 tion, we should have taken it as an embroidered 
 adaptation from Homer. 
 
 We learn, too, from his letter diary that another 
 little sea-piece equally Homeric was the record of what 
 he saw from the cabin door during a tour on the North 
 Sea: 
 
 Bare, as a wild wave in the wide North-sea, 
 Green-glimmering toward the summit, bears, with all 
 Its stormy crests that smoke against the skies, 
 Down on a bark, and overbears the bark 
 And him that helms it. 
 
LINCOLNSHIRE COAST, MABLETHORPE 
 
 The present Lord Tennyson writes : " From boyhood my 
 father had a passion for the sea, and especially the North 
 Sea in wild weather." 
 
 As the crest of some slow arching wave 
 Heard in dead night along that table shore. 
 
 Or, 
 
 Break, break, break, 
 
 On thy cold gray stones, O sea ! 
 

 

 Or 
 
TENNYSON 265 
 
 Another fine Nature-simile in Gercdnt and Enid was 
 suggested by what he saw and heard at Festiniog : 
 
 For as one, 
 
 That listens near a torrent mountain-brook, 
 All thro' the crash of the near cataract hears 
 The drumming thunder of the huger fall 
 At distance. 
 
 This truth to nature vitalises and gives originality 
 to what might have been a commonplace adaptation of 
 part of the machinery of the ancient Greek and Roman 
 epic poets and their modern imitators, the employment, 
 that is to say, of these Nature cameos in the form of 
 similes. It may be doubted whether Tennyson will 
 have any successor to revive them. 
 
 One of his most finished and beautiful cameos is the 
 ruin picture in The Marriage of Geraint : 
 
 He look'd and saw that all was ruinous. 
 
 Here stood a shatter'd archway plumed with fern ; 
 
 And here had fall'n a great part of a tower, 
 
 Whole, like a crag that tumbles from a cliff, 
 
 And like a crag was gay with wilding flowers : 
 
 And high above a piece of turret stair 
 
 Worn by the feet that now were silent, wound 
 
 Bare to the sun, and monstrous ivy-stems 
 
 Claspt the gray walls with hairy-fibred arms, 
 
 And suck'd the joining of the stones, and look'd 
 
 A knot, beneath, of snakes, aloft, a grove. 
 
 This was written, we are told, at Middleham Castle ; 
 whether it be a sketch of what that castle actually 
 presents I cannot say ; it might certainly this I can 
 say have been transcribed from a portion of the ruins 
 of Conway Castle. In this description we may pause to 
 
266 POETS' COUNTRY 
 
 notice we have an illustration of Tennyson's scrupulous 
 exactness in detail, an exactness which extends to his 
 treatment of all natural objects, however insignificant. 
 Thus of flowers : 
 
 The foxglove clusters dappled bells. 
 
 More crumpled than a poppy from the sheath. 
 
 Thus of the sunflower : 
 
 Rays round with flames its disk of seed 
 
 Thus of the dog-rose : 
 
 Tufts of rosy-tinted snow. 
 Again : 
 
 Pure as lines of green that streak the white 
 Of the first snowdrop's inner leaves. 
 
 Wan-sallow as the plant that feeds itself 
 Root-bitten by white lichen. 
 
 In gloss and hue the chestnut when the shell 
 Divides three-fold to show the fruit within. 
 
 So of trees : 
 
 When rosy plumelets tuft the larch. 
 
 Delays, as the tender ash delays, 
 To clothe herself when all the woods are green. 
 
 A million emeralds break from the ruby-budded lime. 
 
 Like a purple beech among the greens 
 Looks out of place. 
 
 That beech will gather brown, 
 This maple burn itself away. 
 
 Or of curious vegetable anomalies : 
 
TENNYSON 267 
 
 A stump of oak half-dead, 
 
 From roots like some black coil of carven snakes, 
 Clutch'd at the crag, and started thro' mid-air 
 Bearing an eagle's nest. 
 
 So of insects : 
 
 And flash'd as those 
 
 Dull-coated things, that making slide apart 
 Their dusk wing-cases, all beneath there burns 
 A jewell'd harness, ere they pass and fly. 
 
 And wheel' d or lit the filmy shapes 
 That haunt the dusk, with ermine capes 
 And woolly breasts and beaded eyes. 
 
 So of fish : 
 
 Like a shoal of darting fish that on a summer morn 
 Come slipping o'er their shadows on the sand. 
 
 The minnows everywhere 
 In crystal eddies glance and poise. 
 
 Of agates : 
 
 As bottom agates seem to wave and float 
 In crystal currents of clear morning seas. 
 
 The same studiously alert observation led him to 
 note the various effects produced by distance, move- 
 ment, or light or shade on natural objects. So of the 
 sea from an immense height : 
 
 The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls. 
 
 Of a waterfall at a distance : 
 
 And like a downward smoke the slender stream 
 Along the cliff to fall and pause and fall did seem. 
 
 Or of water falling high up a mountain : 
 
 Their thousand wreaths of dangling water-smoke. 
 
268 POETS' COUNTRY 
 
 Or of the effect of the sun on bracken as the eye at 
 sunset runs along the level of the fern : 
 
 It seemed to Pelleas that the fern without 
 Burnt as a living fire of emeralds. 
 
 Pelleas and Ettarre. 
 
 Or of a procession passing under leafy shade when the 
 sun is shining : 
 
 And over them the tremulous isles of light 
 Slided, they moving under shade. 
 
 Princess, vi. 
 
 But it is not necessary to multiply these. Tenny- 
 son's range and power as a Nature-painter would perhaps 
 be best illustrated comprehensively by placing together 
 what are perhaps his two most elaborate pictures, 
 each far removed in character from the other. Let 
 us begin with the charming scene in The Gardeners 
 Daughter : 
 
 Not wholly in the busy world, nor quite 
 Beyond it, blooms the garden that I love. 
 News from the humming city comes to it 
 In sound of funeral or of marriage bells ; 
 And, sitting muffled in dark leaves, you hear 
 The windy clanging of the minster clock ; 
 Although between it and the garden lies 
 A league of grass, wash'd by a slow broad stream, 
 That, stirr'd with languid pulses of the oar, 
 Waves all its lazy lilies, and creeps on, 
 Barge-laden, to three arches of a bridge 
 Crown'd with the minster towers. 
 
 The fields between 
 
 Are dewy-fresh, browsed by deep-udder'd kine, 
 And all about the large lime feathers low, 
 The lime a summer home of murmurous wings. 
 
TENNYSON 269 
 
 Compare with this the tropical scene in Enoch 
 
 Arden : 
 
 The mountain wooded to the peak, the lawns 
 And winding glades high up like ways to Heaven, 
 The slender coco's drooping crown of plumes, 
 The lightning flash of insect and of bird, 
 The lustre of the long convolvuluses 
 That coil'd around the stately stems, and ran 
 Ev'n to the limit of the land, the glows 
 And glories of the broad belt of the world, 
 All these he saw ; but what he fain had seen 
 He could not see, the kindly human face, 
 Nor ever hear a kindly voice, but heard 
 The myriad shriek of wheeling ocean-fowl, 
 The league-long roller thundering on the reef, 
 The moving whisper of huge trees that branch' d 
 And blossom'd in the zenith, or the sweep 
 Of some precipitous rivulet to the wave, 
 As down the shore he ranged, or all day long 
 Sat often in the seaward-gazing gorge, 
 A shipwreck'd sailor waiting for a sail : 
 No sail from day to day, but every day 
 The sunrise broken into scarlet shafts 
 Among the palms and ferns and precipices ; 
 The blaze upon the waters to the east ; 
 The blaze upon his island overhead ; 
 The blaze upon the waters to the west ; 
 Then the great stars that globed themselves in Heaven, 
 The hollower-bellowing ocean, and again 
 The scarlet shafts of sunrise but no sail. 
 
 We may fairly doubt whether in descriptive poetry 
 this was ever equalled. It is obviously laboured in 
 each detail, and yet nothing is in singularity, there is 
 not a touch in it which does not exact, and exact 
 importunately, its separate tribute of admiration, and 
 
270 POETS' COUNTRY 
 
 yet each blends harmoniously in contributing to the 
 effect of the whole. 
 
 Some of his most magical effects are produced by 
 the simplest means ; we may instance : 
 
 When summer's hourly-mellowing change 
 May breathe, with many roses sweet, 
 Upon the thousand waves of wheat, 
 
 That ripple round the lonely grange. 
 Q_ In Memoriam, xci. 
 
 Move eastward, happy earth, and leave 
 
 Yon orange sunset waning slow : 
 From fringes of the faded eve, 
 
 O, happy planet, eastward go ; 
 Till over thy dark shoulder glow 
 
 Thy silver sister- world. 
 r\ T Fragment. 
 
 There all in spaces rosy-bright, 
 
 Large Hesper glitter' d on her tears, 
 And deepening thro' the silent spheres 
 
 Heaven over Heaven rose the night. 
 
 Mariana in the South. 
 
 The ninety-fifth section of In Memoriam is not 
 merely among the gems, but among the miracles of 
 description. 
 
 A striking characteristic of his descriptive poetry is 
 that it is never diffuse and never commonplace. He 
 seizes at once what is distinctive and essentially signifi- 
 cant, catches and fixes it ; his very epithets are pictures. 
 The "dewy tassell'd wood," "the crimson-circled star," 
 " lean-headed eagles," "dry-tongu'd laurels," the "tender- 
 pencill'd shadows," " ruby-budded limes," " sallow-rifted 
 
TENNYSON 271 
 
 glooms," " wide-wing'd sunset," " the beard-blown goat," 
 and the like. But nothing contributes so much to the 
 effect of his description as his use of onomatopoeia, or 
 the art of making the sound echo the sense, of which 
 he is the greatest master in our language since Milton. 
 A few examples must suffice : 
 
 The wavy swell of the soughing reeds. 
 
 The sweep of scythe in morning dew. 
 
 The league-long roller thundering on the reef. 
 
 The blasts that blow the poplar white, 
 And lash with storm the streaming pane. 
 
 ghastly through the drizzling rain 
 On the bald street breaks the blank day. 
 
 And followed up by a hundred airy does, 
 Steps with a tender foot, light as on air, 
 The lovely, lordly creature floated on. 
 
 Or let us take a whole passage, as, for example, the 
 " Idyl " in The Princess : 
 
 Nor cares to walk 
 
 With Death and Morning on the silver horns, 
 Nor wilt thou snare him in the white ravine, 
 Nor find him dropt upon the firths of ice, 
 That huddling slant in furrow-cloven falls 
 To roll the torrent out of dusky doors : 
 But follow ; let the torrent dance thee down 
 To find him in the valley ; let the wild 
 Lean-headed Eagles yelp alone, and leave 
 The monstrous ledges there to slope, and spill 
 Their thousand wreaths of dangling water-smoke, 
 That like a broken purpose waste in air. 
 
272 POETS' COUNTRY 
 
 Myriads of rivulets hurrying thro' the lawn, 
 The moan of doves in immemorial elms, 
 And murmuring of innumerable bees. 
 
 Equally wonderful is the passage already quoted 
 from Enoch Arden. 
 
 Nor must we take our leave of him without noticing 
 another characteristic of his descriptive poetry, namely, 
 its elaborate symbolism. In Maud and in In Memoriam 
 particularly he makes these descriptions reflect symbolic- 
 ally the mood or psychological state of the person 
 who is supposed to be speaking. The most striking 
 example of this is in Enoch Arden, where a description 
 of a late autumn day, while exactly and vividly true to 
 nature, as exactly and vividly typifies Enoch's position : 
 
 Bright was that afternoon, 
 Sunny but chill ; till drawn thro' either chasm, 
 Where either haven open'd on the deeps, 
 Roll'd a sea-haze and whelm'd the world in gray ; 
 Cut off the length of highway on before, 
 And left but narrow breadth to left and right 
 Of wither'd holt or tilth or pasturage. 
 On the nigh-naked tree the robin piped 
 Disconsolate, and thro' the dripping haze 
 The dead weight of the dead leaf bore it down : 
 
 Last, as it seemed, a great mist-blotted light 
 Flared on him, and he came upon the place. 
 
 It is so with the opening lines, in which we have 
 symbolically the key to the tragedy : 
 
 Long lines of cliff breaking have left a chasm ; 
 And in the chasm are foam and yellow sands. 
 
 It is with the scene of Arthur's last battle : 
 
BLACKDOWN COMMON 
 
 From Blackdowii Common near Haslemere, Aldworth, 
 Tennyson's Surrey home, can be seen situated in the trees. 
 Beyond is Hindhead, and in almost every direction are 
 stretches of delightful country. 
 
TENNYSON 273 
 
 A land of old upheaven from the abyss 
 By fire, to sink into the abyss again ; 
 Where fragments of forgotten peoples dwelt, 
 And the long mountains ended in a coast 
 Of ever-shifting sand, and far away 
 The phantom circle of a moaning sea. 
 
 In descriptive poetry in its relation to Nature-paint- 
 ing, it may safely be said that from nearly every point 
 of view Tennyson is our greatest artist, and as long as 
 the world he paints, or at least as long as our language 
 lasts, he is never likely to lose his charm or, perhaps, 
 his supremacy. 
 
CHAUCER AT ELTHAM 
 
 THERE is no more difficult historical task than to realise 
 what a place or district looked like at a given period. 
 In London and its neighbourhood change goes on 
 unchangeably. In distant places, the Backwoods of 
 Canada or the Australian Bush, for example, we feel 
 that practically, except for sudden earthquakes or the 
 slow growth of giant conifers, what the forest looked 
 like five centuries ago, that it probably looked like last 
 week, and we have to think of some more remote epoch, 
 before Niagara was turned over the cliff, or while great 
 lakes irrigated the deserts. Is it impossible to re- 
 construct a view of the lower Thames as it was in the 
 fourteenth century, when Chaucer sent his pilgrims 
 each primed with his story to ride through the Garden 
 of England from the Tabard to Harbledown ? Of all 
 the places through which they passed, of all the 
 buildings they can have seen, is there one of which 
 we can say with certainty, "Here is a scene which 
 unquestionably was familiar to Geoffrey Chaucer " ? 
 
 The pilgrims set out from Southwark. London 
 Bridge brought them there. Old London Bridge is 
 
 274 
 
CHAUCER 275 
 
 gone nearly a hundred years. It brought them into 
 High Street, and there must have been some gate or 
 bar marking where Southwark, the fortification protect- 
 ing London Bridge, ended, pointing out the boundary 
 of the City Ward. Mr. Norman, and before him Mr. 
 Rendle, have written about old Southwark and its 
 people, but they tell us about no such landmark. The 
 Tabard was not, strictly speaking, in Southwark but in 
 St. George's. The pilgrims may have seen what is now 
 the Cathedral, but the parish church of the Tabard was 
 St. George's. There is a church of that dedication close 
 by, as there was in Chaucer's time, but the present 
 church, old as it is, has been rebuilt over and over again, 
 the last time in 1733, nearly two hundred years ago. 
 It is the same with the Tabard. Mr. Rendle caUs it 
 also the Circot, Syrcote, or, as we should say, Surcoat, 
 and it was for a century or two the Talbot. The 
 building is changed as well as the name, and we may 
 search in vain for anything Chaucer can have seen. 
 For years, too, all this district was connected in our 
 minds with the old Marshalsea, the King's Bench, and 
 the gaol at the end of Horsemonger Lane, where 
 criminals, or at least the victims of our sanguinary 
 penal code, were put to death every month. 
 
 There is nothing, except the names, to tempt a poet 
 to linger in the suburbs of Southwark. A modern 
 breathing-space for school -children has been called 
 Little Dorrit's Playground, but the nearest thing to a 
 poetical memory will be found in the grave of Nahum 
 
276 POETS' COUNTRY 
 
 Tate, joint-author with Brady of the metrical version of 
 the Psalms. 
 
 It is much the same with the neighbourhood as we 
 see it now ; and it can have been, at best, only suburban 
 in the days of Chaucer. The Old Kent Road is most 
 interesting historically, but this side of its character 
 may best be studied, perhaps, on a large scale map. 
 Whether, as some think, probably with reason, it is an 
 ancient British trackway and part of a system which 
 would connect it perhaps with Stonehenge, or whether 
 it was made, for strategical reasons, by the Romans, 
 may be a question. There can be no question as to its 
 intense dulness until at least we are well out of town. 
 We strike what is still the country at Greenwich, the 
 park of which is artificially rural, but it is not till we 
 cross the hills on which Greenwich Observatory is 
 placed, and find ourselves looking to the south rather 
 than to the north, into Kent rather than across the 
 Thames, that we feel the open fields and woods are at 
 length within reach. Here the Old Dover Road rises, 
 until at Shooters' Hill it is some four hundred feet 
 above the sea, and falls again rapidly towards the south, 
 with woods in abundance, and some signs at least of a 
 state of things which may have extended much more 
 widely in the days of the Canterbury Pilgrims, but 
 marking the difference, to the modern seeker, rather as 
 one of degree than of kind. 
 
 Here, then, we come upon something tangibly of 
 Chaucer's time, namely, the Palace of Eltham. If we 
 
CHAUCER 277 
 
 try to form a clear idea of Eltham in Chaucer's life- 
 time, the materials are abundant. The place was 
 especially favoured by those of our kings whose names 
 are most often mentioned in histories of the so-called 
 Wars of the Roses. We have Froissart's account of 
 his sojourn here, under Richard II. ; and there is no 
 king whose costume and the costume of whose time 
 are so well known to us by contemporary pictures in 
 illuminated manuscripts. The famous Bedford Missal, 
 which, by the way, is not a missal at all but a Book of 
 Hours, was written in this reign, as well as the very 
 curious account of the doings of Richard in Ireland and 
 his abdication in a book, now in the British Museum, 
 which has been copied in our time in a volume (xx.) of 
 Archceologia. In addition there are many illustrated 
 copies of Froissart's Chronicles, from some of which Mr. 
 Newbolt obtained the pictures in his admirable Froissart 
 in Britain, published in 1900. Art was at a high level 
 in those days, just before the Hundred Years' War 
 swept everything away, architecture, poetry, painting, 
 and even history itself, for we know less from con- 
 temporary chroniclers of the reigns of Edward IV. and 
 Richard III. than we do of Edward III. or Richard II. 
 It is useless to speculate as to what, for example, 
 fourteenth-century architecture might have grown into 
 if the builders of the next age had not been forced to 
 turn their attention and use their unrivalled building 
 materials on fortification. Castles, especially in ruin, 
 are very picturesque now ; but if the men who built 
 
278 POETS' COUNTRY 
 
 Salisbury Cathedral or Westminster Hall had not been 
 obliged to crenellate and machicolate, to reckon with 
 gunpowder and cannon-balls, what might they not have 
 done ? 
 
 This palace of Eltham, on the green southern slopes, 
 among the ancient oaks, with its golden spires, each 
 catching the sunshine with a different heraldic device, 
 must have excited the admiration of a poetical mind. 
 To his gorgeous visions, beautiful as this appeared, 
 something far more beautiful seemed possible. That, 
 almost from the day of Chaucer's death, for a whole 
 century, Englishmen should be chiefly engaged in 
 cutting off each other's heads, that all the arts should 
 be at a standstill, that no more songs should be sung, 
 that the only thing which flourished would be 
 superstition, and the only people who prospered would 
 be the monks and friars and mass priests, though even 
 ecclesiastical architecture had become nothing but 
 ornament, that this should be the fate of the land he 
 loved so well can scarcely have entered his mind. It 
 is, however, in the history of the arts of peace that we 
 can best judge of the effect of the Hundred Years' War 
 in England. When it began, an event which we may 
 date with the death of Richard II., the English artists 
 were the best in Europe, only those parts of France and 
 Flanders which were most exposed to our influence 
 being able to build or to write or to paint like English- 
 men. When the fighting ceased, with the success of a 
 usurper in no way entitled to the prize for which all 
 
CHAUCER 279 
 
 this blood and all these tears had been poured out, 
 architecture had to make a fresh beginning, painting 
 had ceased, if there was any music we know not of it, 
 poetry and history had disappeared, and from her 
 supremacy in all such things England had humbly to 
 learn, even from Italy, which had been the most 
 backward when the War of the Roses began. Our 
 painters came from Germany and Switzerland, our 
 sculptors from Tuscany, our architects from Holland, 
 and the fashion of looking to foreigners set in and can 
 hardly be said to have yet ceased. Between Chaucer 
 in the fourteenth century and the Elizabethans in the 
 seventeenth our literary and poetical history is a blank. 
 Cranmer, although he seldom secures the credit which 
 is his due, restored us our prose, and, so far as we know, 
 invented our music, but there is no one else. The 
 supremacy of England was gone, as it appeared, for 
 ever till Shakespeare recalled it. 
 
 There is something poetical in the name of Eltham, 
 "Alteham," as it is called in Domesday Book. All 
 nations have their Altehams, their old homes. To the 
 Arab dweller by the arid shores of the Red Sea there 
 was one place sacred, before Mecca had been heard of, 
 and this was the Old Man's Home ; the star which rose 
 over it, in the most distant regions, in Spain or on 
 the African coast of the Atlantic, "Beyt al Agoos," 
 reminded him whence he came out. The English 
 sailor names it unwittingly as Betelgeuse when he 
 makes his calculations ; but why this pleasant village, 
 
280 POETS' COUNTRY 
 
 this regal residence in southern England should have 
 been so named by some Anglo-Saxon soldier, thinking 
 perhaps that it resembled the village by .the Elbe or the 
 Rhine where dwelt "the old folks at home," we may 
 never know now. Certain it is that when it is first 
 described for us, it was already a pleasant place. Even 
 the latest editors of the history of Kent add a footnote 
 to express this feeling : " We may be sure that the 
 beautiful country beyond, with undulating woodland or 
 forest, abounding in game, and combining the pleasures 
 of the chase with the advantages of proximity to the 
 capital and easy access by river or land, was even more 
 attractive to our Norman forefathers than now, when, 
 shorn of its pristine beauties, it still lures the opulent 
 merchant to a pleasant retreat from the turmoil of the 
 city." 
 
 Since those words were written, Eltham has passed 
 through various vicissitudes. For a time the only 
 remains of the palace of Richard II. were threatened 
 with removal. They were, it was said, to be trans- 
 ported to Windsor, where Wyatville was engaged in 
 making a stately castle out of another ruin. Better 
 counsels prevailed ; yet in our own day the barn within 
 the moat seemed likely to perish, first, for want of a 
 little care, and afterwards when it was proposed to 
 "restore" it. The "restoration," so called, of old 
 churches and cathedrals was in full swing in those 
 days. Few escaped, and Eltham only because nobody 
 wanted it. Now, at last, the County Council is said 
 
CHAUCER 281 
 
 to have taken charge, and it is, at least as regards the 
 roof, weather-tight. It is certainly a pleasant place to 
 visit, a place where we may try to reconstruct the 
 whole palace as it was when Chaucer had charge of it, 
 and when Froissart brought his poems to Richard II. 
 
 In Mr. Newbolt's Froissart in Britain we have 
 both a passage from Lord Berners' translation of the 
 Chronicle and also a view showing three or four knights 
 and gentlemen riding from Leeds to Eltham. It will 
 be remembered that this was Leeds Castle near Maid- 
 stone in Kent, so called from its being situated on a 
 " leed " or expansion of the stream of the little Holing 
 bourne or Hollingbourne, a brook which, like the Hole 
 bourne in London, made its previous way in deeply 
 cut channels and high banks. Leaving Leeds and its 
 islands, the travellers rode among the meadows and 
 orchards till, after a pleasant journey of some five-and- 
 twenty miles, they came in sight of the towers and 
 spires of Eltham crowning a wooded slope. "When 
 they had tarried at Leeds a four days," we are told, 
 " the King returned to Rochester and so to Eltham ; 
 and so I rode forth in the King's company." It was 
 on this occasion that Froissart tells of " walking up and 
 down in a gallery before the King's chamber," and adds 
 that the galleries at Eltham were "right pleasant and 
 shady, for those galleries were covered with vines." 
 He also tells us of the hall. The Duke of Gloucester, 
 we read, " quitted the King's chamber, followed by the 
 Earl of Derby, and entered the hall, where he ordered 
 
282 POETS' COUNTRY 
 
 a table to be spread, and they both sat down to dinner." 
 A scene is described by Froissart at Eltham, which is 
 probably very like what must have occurred to Chaucer 
 both with Richard and, after his deposition, with 
 Henry IV. ; for Chaucer must have been here fre- 
 quently, not only when the Court was in residence, 
 but also at other times when he had charge as surveyor 
 or clerk of the works at Greenwich and Eltham 
 among other places. Froissart informs us of his own 
 doings : 
 
 Then the King desired to see my book that I had brought 
 for him ; so he saw it in his chamber, for I had laid it there 
 ready on his bed. When the King opened it, it pleased him well, 
 for it was fair illumined and written, and covered with crimson 
 velvet, with ten buttons of silver and gilt and roses of gold in the 
 midst, with two great clasps gilt, richly wrought. Then the 
 King demanded of me whereof it treated, and I showed him how 
 it treated of matters of love; whereof the King was glad, and 
 looked in it and read in many places, for he could speak and read 
 French very well. And he caused it to be taken by a knight 
 of his chamber, named Sir Richard Credon, to bear it into his 
 secret chamber. 
 
 Froissart relates other reminiscences of Eltham at 
 this time, namely, the year 1395. He tarried in the 
 King of England's Court as long as it pleased him, not 
 always in one place, for the King oftentimes removed 
 to Eltham, to Leeds, to Kingston, to Sheen, to Chertsey, 
 or to Windsor, all in the neighbourhood of London, 
 and almost all in Chaucer's charge. It was at Eltham, 
 in 1387, that Richard had received the deputation of 
 
CHAUCER 283 
 
 London citizens who complained of the prevalence of a 
 rumour that the King was about to deliver Calais into 
 the hands of the French. " The King tarried at 
 Eltham, right pensive and full of displeasure by reason 
 of the words that he had heard." 
 
 Chaucer, who was a Kentish Justice of the Peace, 
 had been M.P. for Kent from 1386, and had much to 
 do with various works along the shores of the Thames, 
 where are now the great docks and embankments of 
 Woolwich and Tilbury and other places well known. 
 In the fourteenth century they were open country, and 
 the frequent Thames floods rendered constant care 
 needful. At Eltham his care seems to have been 
 chiefly for the gardens, and the terraces and shady 
 walks which so pleased the French chronicler were 
 probably his special work. There are still extant the 
 accounts rendered from time to time, and one can only 
 wonder how the poet was able for all he had to do, or 
 how he contrived to obtain leisure for all he wrote. 
 One has, too, a feeling of grudging that his mind should 
 have been occupied with such accounts as some of those 
 still preserved in the Public Record Office. They have 
 been printed by the Chaucer Society. The particulars 
 in July 1389 are very full, and tell us of his charge of 
 the park as well as of the house, and the works being 
 carried on are described with some minuteness. The 
 storehouses, the orchards and the terraces are mentioned. 
 The mill was a very important item among the out- 
 buildings, but the gardens were apparently the chief 
 
284 POETS' COUNTRY 
 
 object of Chaucer's care. The inventories are full of 
 homely words forced into a kind of Latin, and comprise 
 such articles as a bowl for mortar, a pipe, that is a large 
 open barrel, pro aqua intus carianda for carrying 
 water within, a tap, scaffold legs, and " a crowe ferri " 
 an iron crowbar. 
 
 We are not surprised, then, to find frequent refer- 
 ences in the poems to gardens and garden affairs. A 
 long list can be made of trees such as must have been 
 seen in the parks which were under Chaucer's charge. 
 Hedges were already everywhere common, and fruit- 
 trees were rapidly multiplied so that, to judge from 
 his writings alone, cherries, figs, peaches, pears, and 
 raspberries were flourishing in England as well as apples 
 and grapes. Gardens were formal and were enclosed 
 with walls, divided by ornamental hedges and varied 
 by terraces and grassy walks. The box had come in 
 as well as yews for flower-beds, while roses and many 
 other flowers were cultivated for their beauty or their 
 perfume. In the Romaunt of the Rose he concludes : 
 
 There is no place in Paradise 
 So good in for to dwell or be, 
 As in that garden, thoughte me ; 
 For there was many a bird singing. 
 
 He goes on to speak particularly of the nightingale 
 and of flocks of turtles and of laverocks and "terins 
 and mavies," siskins, that is, and song thrushes. There 
 is much more of the same kind in this poem ; but there 
 are also references to a period probably nearer that in 
 
CHAUCER 285 
 
 which he had the superintendence of the royal enclosures 
 round Eltham. Thus the opening lines of the Canter- 
 bury Tales speak of the sweet breath of the zephyr 
 inspiring every coppice and heath, "the tendre croppes 
 and the yonge sonne," 
 
 The small fowls make melody 
 That sleep all night with open eye. 
 
 Passages are numerous and no modern Chaucerian 
 scholar has failed to notice the frequency of the allusions 
 to the care and improvement of parks and pleasaunces, 
 wildernesses and walled gardens. No doubt, in Windsor 
 Castle and the riverside palace of Greenwich, Chaucer 
 may have found the objects of his greatest admiration 
 as well as at Eltham ; but to our eyes Eltham alone 
 allows us at the present day with least difficulty to see 
 the remains of a country house of the first quality as 
 it was in his day, and to judge a little of the picturesque 
 surroundings, the trees and the fountains, in which he 
 seems to have personally rejoiced : 
 
 Certayn I am ful lyk, indeed, 
 To him that cast in erthe his seed ; 
 And hath joie of the newe spring 
 Whan it greneth in the ginning 
 And is also fair and fresh of flour, 
 Lusty to seen, swete of odour. 
 
 In the Marchante's Tale he speaks of the original 
 author of the Romaunt of the Rose. He was one, 
 among others of his " honest things," who 
 
286 POETS' COUNTRY 
 
 Made a gardin walled al with stoon : 
 So fair a gardin woot I nowhere noon, 
 For out of doute, I verraily suppose 
 That he that wroot the Romance of the Rose 
 Ne could of it the beautee wel devyse ; 
 Ne Priapus ne mighte nat suffyse, 
 Though he be god of gardins, for to telle 
 The beautee of the gardin and the welle, 
 That stood under a laurer, alway grene. 
 
 It is to Eltham, then, rather than to any of the 
 other royal residences that we look to tell us something 
 of Chaucer and his poetry. The alterations have been 
 many and great. Few traces remain of the times of 
 Richard II. or of Henry IV., but enough, with an old 
 ground-plan reproduced in Streatfeild and Larking's 
 Hasted, and with the description made after the death 
 of Charles I., to tell us that in addition to the moat and 
 its three-arched Gothic bridge and the ruined hall, with 
 its oaken beams and its grand bay windows, the 
 buildings of the palace were of considerable extent. 
 We turn out of the street of the suburban town, which 
 in the fourteenth century must have consisted of little 
 except the church and its surroundings. Some old 
 buildings on the right, in a kind of avenue, catch the 
 eye. They obviously date from the early Stuart period. 
 Here was the lower court of the palace, a very ancient 
 red-brick wall bounding the view on the opposite side. 
 In this lower court were the out-buildings, and it seems 
 likely that, as recommended by the Commission of the 
 Commonwealth Government, some of the old building 
 materials were used to make separate " habitations worth 
 
CHAUCER 287 
 
 25 a year." We now approach the moat, where a 
 picturesque bridge, consisting, as already mentioned, 
 of three pointed arches, leads into the upper court of 
 the palace. 
 
 This upper court is thus described : It consisted of 
 one fair chapel, one great hall, 36 rooms and offices 
 below stairs, with two large cellars ; and above stairs, 
 in lodgings called the King's side, 17 ; the Queen's side, 
 12 ; and the Prince's side, 9 ; in all 38 lodging-rooms. 
 There was no furniture, but the hall and chapel were 
 wainscoted. This inner court covered half an acre, 
 including a garden on the southern side called " the 
 Arbour." The lower court, the avenue, namely, through 
 which we now approach the bridge, was bounded on 
 the eastern side by the brick wall mentioned above, 
 behind which lay the orchard, and the offices and out- 
 houses consisted of " 35 bays of buildings " extending 
 round all the three sides, and including a gate on the 
 north side leading into the village of Eltham. 
 
 The adjacent parks, in Chaucer's time, must have 
 been full of deer, and the timber felled in 1649 
 amounted to upwards of two hundred tons, which was 
 sent to Deptford, for use in the dockyard. The Great 
 Park had been estimated in the reign of James I. as 
 containing 612 acres, 1 rood, and 10 poles, and adjoined 
 the Old or Middle Park of 308 acres, and the New or 
 Home Park of 345. The Middle Park attained a 
 certain celebrity of late years when Blenkiron had here 
 a racing stud ; and there is still, in spite of the great 
 
288 POETS' COUNTRY 
 
 increase in the number of villas and of all kinds of 
 houses in the parish, a large extent of open land, while 
 the views, especially to southward into Kent, are full of 
 beautiful scenery, such as may well have inspired the 
 poet. 
 
 Chaucer's connection with Eltham ceased during 
 the troubles which overtook Richard II. For some 
 time he seems to have been without any employment 
 under the Crown, and it has been supposed that his 
 enforced leisure may have been spent in the elaboration 
 and completion of the Canterbury Tales. Better times 
 were apparently in store when Henry IV., the son of 
 his old master and patron, John of Gaunt, succeeded as 
 king, and in 1399 we find him taking out a lease of 
 "The Rose," a house which stood to the east of the 
 Lady Chapel of Westminster Abbey. The site is now 
 covered by Henry the Seventh's Chapel, and the lease 
 is preserved in the Muniment Room of the Dean and 
 Chapter. Here he died, according to a tradition which 
 may be accepted, on the 25th October 1400, when he 
 cannot have been much over sixty years of age. He 
 was buried in the south transept, in the eastern aisle, 
 the first of a long list of men whose graves or whose 
 monuments have conferred on this spot the name of 
 "The Poets' Corner." During the reign of Queen 
 Mary, in 1555, Chaucer's body was removed to a more 
 sumptuous tomb close by, and in 1599 the grave of 
 Edmund Spenser was made near it. 
 
OLIVER GOLDSMITH AT HYDE 
 HOUSE FARM 
 
 No suburb of London has changed more during the 
 past century than that which lies to the north-west. 
 Five miles from Tyburn Turnpike where the Marble 
 Arch stands at the present day the explorer of a 
 hundred years ago found himself as much in the 
 country to all seeming as if he was in Wiltshire. The 
 road, as some people of an antiquarian turn were 
 beginning to find out, was among the oldest in Britain 
 nay, there were those who said it was there before 
 the coming of the Romans. It led through a pleasant 
 undulating country, well wooded for the most part, 
 with higher hills rising on either hand. Here and there 
 stood a farmhouse, here and there a stately manor- 
 house. Edgware lay beyond, on a sunny upward 
 slope, and woods bounded the view toward the north. 
 The name probably denoted a worth, or clere, or opening 
 in a forest, for here were the remains of the Middlesex 
 Forest, and this was the edge of the hill over which the 
 road, called the Watling Street by the Middle Saxons, 
 pursued its journey towards Chester. In the days 
 
 289 U 
 
290 POETS' COUNTRY 
 
 which we would like to realise just now, the days when 
 George III. had been some fourteen years on the 
 throne, the Edgware Road from the north-eastern 
 corner of Hyde Park to the village of Edgware, a 
 stretch of some six or seven miles, was completely 
 rustic. A few houses were at the Paddington cross- 
 roads near Lisson, where the Grove marked the site of 
 an old manor-house, Lilestone, now occupied by the 
 buildings of Queen Charlotte's Hospital. Farther 
 north, on the right, rose Hampstead, with a church near 
 the summit, and when we proceeded a short way 
 farther, two or three waste tracts, the common of 
 Marylebone, the Heath of Hampstead, the Kenwood of 
 Highgate, lay on the right toward the distant city. 
 Immediately on the left was Willesden, with its old 
 church, and another great piece of once forest land, 
 Wormwood Scrubs. It was to this region that Oliver 
 Goldsmith retired to spend what turned out to be the 
 last summer of his life a region within easy reach of 
 the scenes and the people he loved best, yet, for 
 purposes of literary work, secluded and undisturbed. 
 
 It would be interesting if among some old bundle of 
 family correspondence, perhaps, we should come upon a 
 letter describing a visit to Dr. Goldsmith. That some- 
 thing of the kind may well have existed may exist 
 still is evident from a short passage in Boswell's 
 Johnson, where, under Friday, April 10, 1772, he tells 
 us of meeting Goldsmith at dinner at General Ogle- 
 thorpe's, Johnson being also present. Goldsmith told 
 
KINGSBURY GREEN, NEAR LONDON 
 
 Kingsbury Greeii with its old inu, "The Plough/' has all 
 the features of a village of Goldsmith's time : 
 
 Low lies that house where nut-brown draughts inspired, 
 Where gray-beard mirth and smiling toil retired. 
 
GOLDSMITH 291 
 
 the party of his being busy with his Natural History, 
 and, "that he might have full leisure for it, he had 
 taken lodgings at a farmer's house, near to the six mile 
 stone, on the Edgware Road." It seems that he and a 
 pamphleteer, also from Ireland, called Bott, had gone 
 in 1771 to what in one book is called "High House 
 Farm," but probably more correctly " Hyde House 
 Farm," now a villa. Sir Leslie Stephen calls it "a 
 farm near Hyde," but there is no place named simply 
 Hyde in that neighbourhood. "The Hyde" is the 
 name of a hamlet, partly in the parish of Hendon, but 
 chiefly in that of Kingsbury, and in the eighteenth 
 century consisted probably of little more than this 
 farm, which belonged to All Souls' College, Oxford, 
 which also owns the adjacent manor of Kingsbury. 
 Walford, though his data are questionable, gives the 
 most circumstantial account of the place, and a wood- 
 cut, in his Greater London (i. 276). The farm lies on 
 the left, presumably the north, side of Kingsbury Lane, 
 between Kingsbury Green and the sixth milestone on 
 the high road from London to Edgware. " The house," 
 he continues, " is said to be between 200 and 300 years 
 old, and is of brick, and of two floors. The front 
 portion of the building, with the exception of some 
 of the windows having been renewed and that the 
 heavy beams of the ceiling have given place to flat 
 stucco work, remains in much the same condition as 
 when it was occupied by Goldsmith more than a 
 century ago." This was written, or at least published, 
 
292 POETS' COUNTRY 
 
 about 1890. Walford adds: "The rooms at the back, 
 however, were rebuilt only a few years ago, at which 
 time a small chamber, which had been used by Gold- 
 smith as his study, was unfortunately demolished. 
 This room, we understand, contained a small cupboard, 
 which might have been used as a bookcase, and bore 
 unmistakable signs of having been occupied by the 
 author of Animated Nature" 
 
 All this, with its " between 200 and 300 years " and 
 its "a few years ago" and the "cupboard" with its 
 " unmistakable signs " is sufficiently tantalising. We 
 return to Boswell with pleasure. He continues, still 
 under the same entry in April 1772, to tell us about 
 Goldsmith at "the six mile stone." He carried down 
 his books " in two returned post-chaises. He said he 
 believed the farmer's family thought him an odd 
 character, similar to that in which the Spectator 
 appeared to his landlady and her children : he was ' The 
 Gentleman.' ' 
 
 In the same paragraph, before concluding his 
 account of the conversation at General Oglethorpe's 
 table on that Friday in April, Boswell adds : " Mr. 
 Mickle, the translator of The Lusiad, and I went to 
 visit him at this place a few days afterwards. He was 
 not at home ; but, having a curiosity to see his apart- 
 ment, we went in, and found curious scraps of descrip- 
 tions of animals scrawled upon the wall with a black 
 lead pencil." Here, unfortunately, Boswell leaves off. 
 It may not, perhaps, be going too far to gather the 
 
GOLDSMITH 293 
 
 drift of his observations as to Goldsmith's zoological 
 notes from a passage in the Johnson, under the year 
 1776. Here, speaking of the epitaph in Westminster 
 Abbey, he mentions Johnson's opinion that Goldsmith 
 hardly knew a horse from a cow. Boswell adds his 
 own views on the subject : " Bouffon tells us that the 
 cow sheds her horns every two years a most palpable 
 error, which Goldsmith faithfully transferred into his 
 book." It is wonderful that Bouffon, who lived so 
 much in the country, at his noble seat, should have 
 fallen into such a blunder. That Goldsmith, who, 
 whatever his knowledge, was not without observation, 
 could have followed the Frenchman in this particular 
 instance, where a moment's thought would have cor- 
 rected the error, only shows how needful quiet was to 
 the peculiar bent of his genius. At The Hyde he is 
 believed to have composed many better pieces of work 
 than his Animated Nature. Moreover, he was born 
 and passed his early years in an agricultural country, 
 where cattle and green crops abounded. Born at 
 Forgney, or Pallas, near Ballymahon, in the county 
 of Longford, in 1728, he did not proceed to Dublin 
 before 1744. Afterwards, until 1752, he led, according 
 to his biographers, " an unsettled life " in Ireland. The 
 country and The Hyde, though but six miles from 
 London, was completely in the country even ten years 
 ago must have been full of the sights and sounds of 
 his youth. The Deserted Village appeared in 1770, 
 and must have been written while he was searching 
 
294 POETS' COUNTRY 
 
 for such a retreat as this at The Hyde. We do not 
 know, in fact, for certain when it was that he settled 
 permanently at that particular farm. Similar farms 
 existed in plenty, at Enfield, for instance, or at 
 Edmonton, where Charles Lamb much later found a 
 retreat, or till our own day, not seven miles off, at 
 Hayes or Bedfont. 
 
 By 1764 he had gone much farther afield. Mr. 
 Austin Dobson has fully described his visit to Bath, 
 about 1760. The Vicar of Wakejield is always said to 
 have been suggested by a visit to Yorkshire in that 
 year. In truth, though Goldsmith can hardly be 
 described as a well-educated man, he had a power of 
 assimilation which Johnson exactly denoted by the 
 line in his epitaph a line often assigned erroneously 
 to some classical original in which he asserted that 
 Goldsmith touched nothing that he did not adorn : 
 
 Qui nullum fere scribendi genus non tetigit, nullura quod 
 tetigit non ornavit. 
 
 In the letters entitled The Citizen of the World he 
 constantly describes excursions into the country im- 
 mediately round London. His account, for example, 
 of Kentish Town and "Pangrace" is in the highest 
 style of burlesque : " Islington is a pretty neat town 
 mostly built of brick, with a church and bells ; it has 
 a small lake, or rather pond, in the midst. . . . After 
 having surveyed the curiosities of this fair and beautiful 
 town, I proceeded forward, leaving a fair stone building, 
 
GOLDSMITH 295 
 
 called the White Conduit House, on my right," and so 
 on. His derivation of the name of Kentish Town is an 
 admirable parody of the guesswork indulged in by most 
 of the London topographers of his day : " This pretty 
 town probably borrowed its name from its vicinity to 
 the county of Kent ; and indeed it is not unnatural 
 that it should, as there are only London and the 
 adjacent villages that lie between them." So, too, he 
 mocks at some of the travellers of his day : " I could 
 have wished, indeed, to satisfy my curiosity without 
 going thither, but that was impracticable, and there- 
 fore I resolved to go." 
 
 As to the methods of locomotion in the neighbour- 
 
 o 
 
 hood of London, he tells us of two. Travellers either 
 take coach, which costs ninepence, or they may go 
 afoot, which costs nothing : " In my opinion, a coach 
 is by far the most eligible convenience, but I was 
 resolved to go on foot, having considered with myself 
 that going in that manner would be the cheapest way." 
 There are many allusions in these delightful Chinese 
 letters to the excursions he habitually made into villages 
 near London. In one he goes to see an election, and, 
 there is no doubt, on that occasion he clearly distin- 
 guished, at any rate, between a cow and a dog. He 
 is asked awkward questions, and " I know not," he 
 reports, "what might have been the consequences of 
 my reserve, had not the attention of the mob been 
 called off to a skirmish between a brandy-drinker's 
 cow and a gin -drinker's mastiff, which turned out, 
 
296 POETS' COUNTRY 
 
 greatly to the satisfaction of the mob, in favour of 
 the mastiff." 
 
 Perhaps there is an echo of the days at The Hyde, 
 or some other village retreat, in one of these letters, 
 which begins : " It is no unpleasing contemplation to 
 consider the influence which soil and climate have 
 upon the disposition of the inhabitants, the animals, 
 and vegetables of different countries." This influence 
 he remarks especially in England. " The same hidden 
 cause which gives courage to their dogs and cocks 
 gives also fierceness to their men." It is, of course, 
 the inhabitants of towns who notice most the aspect of 
 the country, the principal reason probably being that 
 the country is visited in fine weather, or at least in 
 summer, for rest and amusement, and there can be 
 little doubt that those who have passed their youth in 
 the country enjoy the country sights and sounds the 
 most. 
 
 Goldsmith, notwithstanding his vaccine ignorance, 
 was thoroughly imbued with the not altogether im- 
 aginary happiness of country life. His farmhouse 
 retreat is minutely described in lines, the very first 
 word of which indicates his pleasure in the rural land- 
 scape he depicts. " Sweet," he says 
 
 Sweet was the sound, when oft at evening's close 
 Up yonder hill the village murmur rose ; 
 There, as I passed with careless steps and slow, 
 The mingling notes came softened from below ; 
 The swain responsive as the milkmaid sung, 
 The sober herd that lowed to meet their young ; 
 
FARMHOUSE IN HYDE LANE 
 
 In Hyde Lane, off the Edgeware Road, is a farmhouse, 
 now much modernised, to which Goldsmith occasionally 
 retired to write ; but with its surroundings of fine elm- 
 trees and rich pasture, although only a few miles from the 
 Marble Arch, it is still an English country scene such as he 
 describes. 
 

GOLDSMITH 297 
 
 The noisy geese that gabbled o'er the pool, 
 
 The playful children just let loose from school ; 
 
 The watch-dog's voice that bayed the whispering wind, 
 
 And the loud laugh that spoke the vacant mind ; 
 
 These all in sweet confusion sought the shade, 
 
 And filled each pause the nightingale had made. 
 
 This is often quoted as the description of an Irish 
 village. There is not an Irish touch or allusion in it. 
 The last line one of the best is fatal to any such 
 idea. "In Ireland," says Mr. Alfred Newton, in his 
 Dictionary of Birds, speaking of the geographical 
 distribution of the nightingale, "there is no pretence, 
 even, of its appearance." The whole passage fits a 
 Middlesex village, or rather hamlet, exactly. The 
 ale-house is not Irish, and all through a thousand 
 allusions, more or less precise, show whence came the 
 immediate inspiration of the poem. 
 
 It is the same in The Traveller : 
 
 Ye glittering towns, with wealth and splendour crowned ; 
 
 Ye fields, where summer spreads profusion round ; 
 
 Ye lakes, whose vessels catch the busy gale ; 
 
 Ye bending swains, that dress the flowery vale ; 
 
 For me your tributary stores combine : 
 
 Creation's heir, the world, the world is mine ! 
 
 This breathes of London and its suburbs, and of 
 nowhere else. Just as much do we-seefti to see " Hyde 
 Farm at the six mile stone," in the famous passage of 
 the same poem where his genius spreads her wing : 
 
 And flies where Britain courts the western spring ; 
 Where lawns extend that scorn Arcadian pride, 
 And brighter streams than famed Hydaspes glide ; 
 
298 POETS' COUNTRY 
 
 There all around the gentlest breezes stray, 
 There gentle music melts on every spray ; 
 Creation's mildest charms are there combined. 
 
 A visit to Goldsmith in his Edgware Road retreat 
 might well have been described by his contemporary, 
 the other literary physician, Smollett. There are many 
 passages in Humphrey Clinker, for instance, which 
 answer well to The Hyde. We cannot, in all the 
 changes of modern civilised suburban existence, realise 
 what it meant a hundred and forty years ago to live 
 at a farm, even so near London. Here is a specimen 
 from Smollett : 
 
 The house is old-fashioned and irregular, but lodgeable and 
 commodious. To the south it has the river in front . . . and on 
 the north there is a rising ground, covered with an agreeable 
 plantation ; the greens and walks are kept in the nicest order, and 
 all is rural and romantic. 
 
 Delightful as Goldsmith seems to have found his 
 country workshop, he left it and went into London 
 when what proved to be his last illness attacked him. 
 A man who had travelled so much, and among so many 
 unwholesome places, can hardly at forty-six have con- 
 tracted what we now describe as typhoid fever. But 
 he undoubtedly had feverish symptoms, and, as is 
 proverbially the case with men of some medical know- 
 ledge, he mistook his own complaint, and insisted, 
 contrary to advice, on using medicines which only 
 aggravated his disorder. We read of mental distress, of 
 debts accumulating, of many troubles and trials which 
 
GOLDSMITH 299 
 
 would have weighed but lightly on a man in perfect 
 health. We read also of the clients who besieged his 
 lodgings at No. 2 Brick Court, in the Temple, and of 
 the grief of the principal literary men of the time. 
 The house, originally erected in 1704, and the little 
 court near the fountain, the hall and the garden are 
 much as they were on April 4, 1774, when he breathed 
 his last There was some talk of a tomb in Westminster 
 Abbey, but nothing was done, and a grave was found 
 for him in the narrow corner of the Temple churchyard, 
 north of the transept and the Round Church, which 
 must have been so familiar to him. It is said that his 
 grave is not to be identified, but if we observe that 
 there is only room for three graves side by side, this 
 does not greatly signify. Here he was buried on the 
 9th, " when," as Laurence Hutton records, his staircase 
 was crowded "with mourners of all ranks and con- 
 ditions of life, conspicuous among them being the 
 outcasts of both sexes, who loved and wept for him 
 because of the goodness he had done." A plain stone 
 marks the little burial-ground since 1860 ; and thither 
 constantly come wreaths and memorials, many from 
 America, lest the visitor should fail to find the place. 
 
KEATS AT ENFIELD 
 
 IT is now a hundred years since John Keats was sent 
 to school at Enfield. His father, a well-to-do livery- 
 stable keeper in Finsbury, came to a tragical end within 
 a few months, being thrown from his horse and killed 
 while riding home from Southgate, another little town 
 in the same district. This sad event seems to have 
 affected the future poet in several ways. It led to his 
 falling entirely under the influence, one cannot correctly 
 say the control, of his mother and of her mother, Mrs. 
 Jennings, who lived near, if not in Enfield. His mother 
 appears, like himself, to have been the creature of 
 impulse, and her imprudent second marriage, soon after 
 his father's death, no doubt had its place in forming 
 his mind. If we remember the condition of Southgate 
 and Enfield at the beginning of the nineteenth century, 
 we can understand better something of the boy's turn 
 of mind. The dark woods which covered the northern 
 parts of Middlesex, many fragments of which still 
 remain, were calculated, even without the fatal accident 
 in their midst which deprived John Keats of his father, 
 to lead him to dwell on their mysterious depths and to 
 
 300 
 
KEATS 301 
 
 be attracted or repelled by their gloom. As he grew 
 older, he peopled them in imagination with visions, often 
 dismal. There were fairies and elfin grots in the woods 
 with pale kings and princes, but again they took a more 
 cheerful aspect, and we have "woodland alleys never 
 ending," and "bowery clefts and leafy shades." All 
 these things, whether grave or gay, whether sad or 
 joyful, he found in abundance close to where he lived, 
 and there is scarcely a natural allusion or an elaborate 
 simile in all his work which may riot be traced to the 
 unfading impressions made upon his mind in his early 
 life at Enfield. 
 
 Within a very few years the whole aspect of this 
 suburban village has been altered. It used to consist 
 of a quiet street or two, interspersed with many trees, 
 and much ivy, set off by old red brick. Then came the 
 railway, and the scenery was speedily changed. The 
 handsome house, with its Georgian facade, of "fine 
 proportions and rich ornaments in moulded brick," in 
 which Mr. John Clarke kept his school, was pulled 
 down to make way for the station ; the streets were 
 filled with gaudy shops ; and the ancient roads, with 
 their gardens and clipped hedges, their ironwork and 
 gate pillars, their velvet lawns on which small-paned 
 bow windows looked out, were turned into rows of 
 neatly stuccoed villas ; trees were cut down, and a view 
 of factory chimneys terminates what had been a sylvan 
 vista with a faint line of blue hills. 
 
 There still long remained but little injured such 
 
302 POETS' COUNTRY 
 
 picturesque roads as the once famous Baker Street. It 
 led north-east from Enfield towards Clay Hill and 
 Forty Hill on the way to Cheshunt. For a mile or 
 more it consisted of red -brick houses separated by 
 gardens and well-wooded pleasaunces. The houses 
 were of the most orthodox " Queen Anne " pattern, or 
 what in America is described as "Colonial." The 
 gardens were enclosed by low walls, finished off with 
 brick posts topped by large balls. Toward the roadway 
 each of these " compounds " had a wrought-iron railing 
 of elaborate pattern, suggesting that an artist had been 
 at work when the houses were built, perhaps the great 
 Tijou himself who designed the grilles at St. Paul's and 
 at Hampton Court. All these mansions, though old- 
 fashioned, were in perfect preservation, and each had its 
 name and history when Keats was at school. It is not 
 yet twenty years since the first of them was pulled 
 down to make way for a row of small and hideous 
 houses. For the railway had brought London to 
 Enfield, and, as if to proclaim its destructive mission, 
 began operations by the removal of one of the most 
 beautiful and most interesting of the older buildings. 
 This, as I have said, was the school kept by John 
 Clarke, a clergyman, the father of Charles Cowden 
 Clarke, one of Keats's earliest friends. The house 
 had other claims on our regard. Mr. Colvin says 
 of it : 
 
 The schoolhouse occupied by Mr. Clarke had originally been 
 built for a rich West Indian merchant, in the finest style of early 
 
KEATS 303 
 
 Georgian classic architecture, and stood in a pleasant and spacious 
 garden at the lower end of the town. When, years afterwards, 
 the site was used for a railway station, the old house was for some 
 time allowed to stand ; but later it was taken down, and the 
 facade, with its fine proportions and rich ornaments in moulded 
 brick, was transported to South Kensington Museum as a choice 
 example of the style. 
 
 Thorne, in his Environs of London, though he says 
 nothing of Keats at Enfield, adds considerably both to 
 our knowledge of the house and also to the associations 
 which clustered round it. According to this account, 
 just before Clarke set up his school here, it was in the 
 occupation of Isaac Disraeli, whose father, Benjamin, 
 had settled here soon after his coming to England in 
 1748. His distinguished grandson and namesake says 
 of him, " He made his fortune in the midway of life, and 
 settled near Enfield, where he formed an Italian garden, 
 entertained his friends, played whist with Sir Horace 
 Mann, who was his great acquaintance, and who had 
 known his brother at Venice as a banker." Thorne, 
 when he has made this quotation from Lord Beacons- 
 field, goes on, unconsciously, to correct, in one not 
 unimportant particular, the account given by Mr. 
 Colvin of the house. " Its beautiful facade and tracery- 
 work of carved brick, probably unrivalled in England, 
 is doomed to destruction by the march of mechanics." 
 Mr. Colvin speaks of "moulded brick," which would 
 surely not have been worth preserving " as a screen in 
 the architectural section " at South Kensington. 
 
 Before we leave the old-fashioned streets and market- 
 
304 POETS' COUNTRY 
 
 place of Enfield to seek in the neighbouring woods and 
 the royal chase for Keats's sources of poetic inspiration, 
 we must pay a short visit to the church and glance 
 at those monuments which were here when the boy 
 attended service within the old walls. We must en- 
 deavour to realise what, in the mind of a well-read 
 and intelligent visitor, probably stood out most pro- 
 minently. 
 
 A hundred years ago the operation known as 
 " church restoration " had not been invented. It had 
 not been discovered that parishioners who had an old 
 church should be ashamed to let it appear old. Associa- 
 tion still went for something, and men were proud to 
 sit in the pews where their fathers and mothers had 
 sat, and to see the old funeral hatchments bearing 
 their family arms still hanging on the walls. Enfield 
 Church had not been "restored" in Keats's time. It 
 retained marks of the style in which it had been built 
 while the hundred years of strife which we call the 
 Wars of the Roses raged among the Middlesex hills and 
 through the adjoining Chase. The most ancient and 
 conspicuous of the monuments is that of a lady, a 
 majority of whose relations and friends perished then 
 or at the hands of the headsman. At the battle of 
 Barnet the King-maker and his brother were slain with 
 so many others of the old nobility. Barnet is the next 
 parish. Much of the fighting was in Enfield Chase. 
 Jocosa, in Latin, or Joyce, in English, was her name, 
 and she was Lady Tiptoft, the daughter of Lord 
 
THE VALE OF HEALTH, HAMPSTEAD 
 
 A favourite resort of Keats when he lived in the 
 neighbourhood. The source of the Fleet or Hole-bourne 
 is here, the river which gives its names to Fleet Street and 
 Holborn Hill. Although within four miles of Charing 
 Cross, it looks in summer-time as if it might be a hundred 
 miles from London. (See p. 281.) 
 

KEATS 305 
 
 Cherlton, and mother of the Earl of Worcester, whose 
 name figures largely both in the literary and the 
 political annals of the time, and who was beheaded 
 on Tower Hill in 1470, when, as old Fuller says, 
 " the axe did at one blow cut off more learning than 
 was left in the heads of all the surviving nobility." 
 Lady Tiptoft lived at Worcester Manor - House, 
 an old house lately represented by Forty Hall, in 
 this parish. 
 
 There are many other interesting monuments be- 
 sides this one of Worcester's mother, with its heraldic 
 trappings. Some of them must often have been seen 
 by John Keats. Among them perhaps the most re- 
 markable is a brass of a late date on Ann Gery, who, 
 like Keats long after, seems to have been at school 
 at Enfield in the seventeenth century. She died in 
 1643 : 
 
 Here lies one interred, 
 
 One that scarce erred ; 
 
 A virgin modest, free from folly ; 
 
 A virgin knowing, patient, holy ; 
 
 A virgin blest with beauty here ; 
 
 A virgin crowned with glory there. 
 
 Holy virgins read and say 
 
 We shall hither all one day. 
 
 Live well, ye must 
 
 Be turned to dust. 
 
 Very often, in looking through the one little volume 
 which is large enough to contain all Keats ever pub- 
 lished, we come on echoes of these quaint lines : 
 
 x 
 
306 POETS' COUNTRY 
 
 Thus ye live on high, and then 
 On the earth ye live again ; 
 And the souls ye left behind you 
 Teach us, here, the way to find you, 
 Where your other souls are joying, 
 Never slumber'd, never cloying. 
 Here, your earth-born souls still speak 
 To mortals, of their little week ; 
 Of their sorrows and delights ; 
 Of their passions and their spites ; 
 Of their glory and their shame ; 
 What doth strengthen and what maim. 
 
 The gorgeous figure of Lady Tiptoft, too, must have 
 been noticed in its singular armorial mantle and 
 emblems of greatness, that seem out of place on the 
 tomb of one who lived amid such tragedies as the fall 
 of the House of Lancaster and the cruel end of her 
 nearest relatives and friends. Are they not alluded to 
 in those early verses beginning, 
 
 Hadst thou liv'd in days of old ? 
 
 He can hardly have escaped knowledge of the proud 
 lady's history, if only as a reader of Shakespeare : 
 
 Hadst thou liv'd when chivalry 
 
 Lifted up her lance on high, 
 
 Tell me what thou wouldst have been ? 
 
 Ah ! I see the silver sheen 
 
 Of thy broidered, floating vest 
 
 Co v' ring half thine ivory breast ; 
 
 Which, O heavens ! I should see, 
 
 But that cruel destiny 
 
 Has placed a golden cuirass there ; 
 
 Keeping secret what is fair. 
 
KEATS 307 
 
 The allusion is plainly here to the elaborately clothed 
 effigy in brass of Lady Tiptoft. Her mantle gives her 
 own and her late husband's arms, only half of each 
 shield being visible. The rest of the arms, including 
 the three lions of England, for the lady was of royal 
 descent, are visible among the decorations of the monu- 
 ment ; but it is obviously to the half mantle that the 
 poet alludes. 
 
 In the town, too, he must have seen and observed 
 the remains of the place in which had lived the heroes 
 and heroines of whom, as we are told, he was never 
 tired of reading. At a time when Gothic art and 
 English mediaeval history were only beginning to be 
 studied, he became familiar with Spenser and with Chap- 
 man's Homer. A little later he was much affected by 
 the mock medisevalism, but real poetry, of Chatterton. 
 Moreover, as Mr. Colvin records, the books he read 
 with the greatest eagerness were those relating to 
 ancient mythology, such as Tooke's Pantheon, Lem- 
 priere, and the abridgment of Spence's Polymetis. After 
 he left school he constantly walked over from Edmonton 
 to visit his old school-fellows, particularly his master's 
 son, Cowden Clarke, and it was then he first became 
 acquainted with the Faerie Queene. We can still see 
 a few hundred yards of the road, so far unbuilt upon, 
 between the two villages, and can picture to ourselves 
 how the shady trees, the relics of the ancient Middlesex 
 forest, " the glades and wildernesses," not yet altogether 
 overwhelmed by bricks and mortar, and much more 
 
308 POETS' COUNTRY 
 
 continuous a hundred years ago, must have ministered 
 to his poetic feeling as he walked. 
 
 To judge fully of the influence of Enfield and its 
 surroundings upon the romantic instincts of the boy 
 poet, a wider survey is necessary. We must seek it in 
 the forest and the chase, which lay, and lie, on the 
 northern side of the town. The chase, part of the 
 primeval forest of which we read in the days of 
 Henry II., when it was described for us by Fitzstephen 
 in his Life of Thomas Becket, joins on the west the 
 woods about Hadley and Barnet, and here the scene 
 acquires additional interest as the field of that battle in 
 which was decided the fate of the House of Lancaster. 
 It must have been somewhere along this well- wooded 
 ridge that, as we read in Shakespeare's Henry VI. 
 Part iii. (Act v. sc. 2), Warwick, the King-maker, bids 
 farewell to life in those affecting lines : 
 
 Thus yields the cedar to the axe's edge, 
 Whose arms gave shelter to the princely eagle, 
 Under whose shade the ramping lion slept, 
 Whose top branch over-peered Jove's spreading tree, 
 And kept low shrubs from winter's powerful wind. 
 
 One is always inclined to attribute special local 
 knowledge to Shakespeare, whether it be of Lampedusa 
 in the Gulf of Tunis, or of the remains of the Middlesex 
 forest ; but if such lines ever came into Keats's mind as 
 he wandered among these woods, the frequency of cedar 
 and of yew trees among the oaks in all the copses here 
 must have struck him ; while the names, not perhaps so 
 
KEATS 309 
 
 well understood then as they are now, may have recalled 
 the next lines : 
 
 My parks, my walks, my manors that I had, 
 Even now forsake me ; and, of all my lands, 
 Is nothing left me, but my body's length. 
 
 It is still, in spite of the Enclosure Act of 1777, 
 which had only begun to take effect when Keats walked 
 here, full of sylvan scenery. Beech Hill Park, of some 
 twenty acres, is now being divided into building lots ; 
 but much more remains, and Trent Park is almost 
 untouched and full of wild tracts. " Along the Ridge 
 Road," says Thorne, " and from the higher parts gener- 
 ally, alike from the open ways and from Trent Park, 
 there are very wide prospects over Epping Forest to 
 the Kent hills, and across Hertfordshire and Middlesex 
 to Bucks and Berks." It is hardly possible to believe 
 we are so near London ; yet this glorious region, so full 
 both of historical and poetical associations, as well as of 
 the best of that " park scenery " which forms the great 
 and peculiar boast of English landscape, is almost 
 unknown to the modern tourist. 
 
 Trent Park is still untouched, and contains what is 
 called the " Rough Lot," a piece of the primeval forest. 
 The lake is of some three or four acres. Camlet Moat, 
 which Sir Walter Scott mentions in The Fortunes of 
 Nigel, seems to have been the site of an ancient " moated 
 grange." Of this Scott sums up the scenery : " A wild 
 woodland prospect led the eye at various points through 
 
310 POETS' COUNTRY 
 
 broad and apparently interminable alleys meeting at 
 this point as from a common centre." The lake must 
 have been in Keats's mind when he wrote La Belle 
 Dame Sans Merci : 
 
 O what can ail thee, wretched wight, 
 
 Alone and palely loitering ? 
 The sedge is withered from the lake, 
 
 And no birds sing. 
 
 The ballad was suggested to Keats by an old poem 
 bearing the same title, which is to be found in Chaucer, 
 being, in fact, a translation from the French of Alain 
 Chartier. 
 
 Of the many passages which recall Keats's know- 
 ledge of the more remote shades of the old Chase, 
 perhaps some of the lines near the beginning of 
 Hyperion are the most vivid : 
 
 As when, upon a tranced summer night, 
 Those green-rob'd senators of mighty woods, 
 Tall oaks, branch-charmed by the earnest stars, 
 Dream, and so dream all night without a stir, 
 Save from one gradual solitary gust 
 Which comes upon the silence, and dies off, 
 As if the ebbing air had but one wave. 
 
 Lovers of Keats's poetry will recall many other 
 passages in which the scenery of Enfield Chase is 
 mentioned, alluded to, or directly described. The only 
 lake within many miles of London which will answer 
 to the brief lines quoted above is that which still 
 exists in Trent Park, and which probably existed long 
 before Trent Park itself. At the final division of the 
 
KEATS 311 
 
 Chase among the commoners it was found that there 
 were more than eight thousand acres to be appropriated. 
 In the reign of George III. the advantages of open 
 spaces so near London had not become apparent, and, 
 as the King himself is said to have observed, sheep are 
 more profitable than deer. The royal share of Enfield 
 Chase consisted of 3200 acres, while a thousand were 
 assigned to South Mimms, two hundred and forty to 
 Hadley, and twelve hundred to Edmonton. There 
 remained seventeen hundred for Enfield, but many 
 years elapsed before anything very definite was done to 
 settle these divisions and to build farmhouses or such 
 mansions as Trent. The first of the so-called " improve- 
 ments," according to Lysons, who wrote in 1811, after 
 Keats had left Clarke's school and been apprenticed at 
 Edmonton, were unsuccessful. " It was some years 
 before any great progress was made." The principal 
 obstacle was the difficulty of clearing away the wood. 
 It is melancholy, to say the least, to read of this lovely 
 forest tract being treated as a settler on the Saskatchewan 
 would treat his backwoods. The modern parishes all 
 round Finsbury, Wood Green, Edmonton, and Enfield 
 among others have carefully preserved and laid out 
 to the best advantage the portions of " common land " 
 which remained to them from Hornsey Wood and the 
 other relics of the mediaeval forest ; but no effort of 
 landscape-gardening can make up to us what we lost in 
 1777. 
 
 Lysons tells us that "the common rights, as defined 
 
312 POETS' COUNTRY 
 
 in the survey of 1650, were herbage, mastage for swine, 
 green boughs to garnish houses, thorns for fences, and 
 crabs and acorns gathered under the trees" a defini- 
 tion which draws a picture for us in itself. The trim 
 parks with their neat band-stands, which we are now 
 endeavouring everywhere to secure, with our modern 
 desire for open spaces and hygiene, can never take the 
 place of 
 
 The grass, the thicket, and the fruit-tree wild ; 
 White hawthorn, and the pastoral eglantine ; 
 Fast-fading violets covered up in leaves ; 
 
 And mid-May's eldest child, 
 The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine, 
 
 The murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves. 
 
 With these lines from the Ode to a Nightingale we 
 may fitly conclude, for it must have been in these woods 
 that John Keats, still young, still full of hope, still 
 healthy and untouched by disease, first heard the song 
 which inspired his finest lyric. 
 
 Thou wast not born for death, immortal bird ! 
 
 may be applied to the poet. His " plaintive anthem 
 fades," 
 
 Past the near meadows, over the still stream, 
 Up the hill-side ; and now 'tis buried deep 
 In the next valley-glades. 
 
MILLFIELD LANE, HIGHGATE 
 
 Auotlier resort of Keats, and sometimes called " Poet's 
 Lane." It was also a favourite walk of Coleridge's. Here 
 lie is said to have met Keats. A part of it is still as it was 
 in their time. (See p. 307.) 
 
EDMUND SPENSER AT PENSHURST 
 
 THE Wars of the Roses were past ; peace and peaceful 
 employments prevailed all over England. The sad 
 days, first of strife and cruelty, then of fear and fiery 
 persecution, were gone by, and men who had been born 
 in the midst of the battles' din and had grown up in 
 daily contentions, whether of warriors or of polemical 
 discussions, and " hating each other for the love of God," 
 found themselves able to settle down in security in 
 houses without moats or battlements. In these com- 
 paratively happy days it was that a new style of archi- 
 tecture sprang up. The greatest in the land vied with 
 each other in designing comely palaces, and if Cecil had 
 not made himself famous for his conduct of the affairs 
 of State, he would be known as the first to build and 
 the author of such piles as Burghley, Theobalds, and 
 Cobham. The palaces of Richard II. and the days 
 before him had been fortified castles. Even the poetry 
 of that time and the book-lore which has bequeathed to 
 us such rich illuminations, besides the perfection to 
 which the art of portrait-painting and sculpture had 
 attained, were drowned in the blood of the noblest 
 
 313 
 
314 POETS' COUNTRY 
 
 families. Among the arts which perished then was 
 poetry. When Chaucer died in 1400 he left no heir, no 
 successor, no school that could continue his song in the 
 noise and confusion of the Wars of the Roses. With 
 The spacious times of Great Elizabeth 
 
 all was changed, and men might have asked, and perhaps 
 did ask, each other, " Is no one coming to awaken for us 
 once more the sound of Chaucer's lyre ? " But the only 
 answer could have been that of the Latin proverb, 
 " Poeta nascitur non fit," and they had to wait, but not 
 for long. The palace was being prepared, and so was 
 the poet. Queen Elizabeth ascended the throne on the 
 17th November 1558, and already Edmund Spenser 
 was five or six years old. Born in what would seem 
 now the unpoetic region of East Smithfield, he was 
 surrounded in those days by what must have been one 
 of the more pleasing and rural of the suburbs of London. 
 John Stow, who was some five-and-twenty years the 
 senior of the future poet, was himself about this time 
 engaged on his edition of Chaucer. He has left a 
 pleasant account of the region beyond East Smithfield in 
 the early days of Elizabeth. He remembered the house 
 of the nuns, near the small parish church of " St. 
 Trinities " Minories, and speaks of the garden plots and 
 other alterations in progress. He adds : 
 
 Near adjoining to this abbey, on the south side thereof, was 
 sometime a farm belonging to the said nunnery ; at the which farm 
 I myself in my youth have fetched many a halfpennyworth of milk, 
 and never had less than three ale pints for a halfpenny in the 
 
SPENSER 315 
 
 summer, nor less than one ale quart for a halfpenny in the winter, 
 always hot from the kine, as the same was milked and strained. 
 One Trolop, and afterwards Goodman, were the farmers there, and 
 had thirty or forty kine to the pail. 
 
 Looking in the opposite direction, he saw the old city 
 walls and their moat, with Aldgate a little farther north, 
 and the red-tiled roofs above the battlements, with the 
 mighty steeple of old St. Paul's, the tallest building at 
 that time extant, being 524 feet high, but destined to be 
 destroyed by fire while Spenser was a boy, namely, in 
 1561. It must have been round East Smithfield that 
 Spenser acquired the love of gardens in which he vies 
 with Chaucer. Just within Aldgate were the gardens 
 which Lord Walden had planted in the time of the 
 Queen's father, and at Stepney, Colet, Wentworth, and 
 their neighbours all were learning and practising horti- 
 culture with one consent. It was to his connection with 
 Nowell, who was one of Colet's successors as Dean of 
 St. Paul's, that the youthful Edmund went to the then 
 recently established Merchant Taylors' school, and his 
 attainment of the place of principal scholar led to his 
 being sent up to Pembroke Hall at Cambridge. There 
 it would seem that his cultivation of the art of verse- 
 writing interfered with his University progress, while it 
 introduced him to the man who chiefly influenced his 
 subsequent career. This was Philip Sidney. 
 
 About Sidney, from some charm of manner and of 
 personal merit which, even more than his high position 
 at the Court of the great queen, gave him influence, 
 
316 POETS' COUNTRY 
 
 there gathered many young men who, like himself, 
 sought more in learning than mere pedantry. Sidney was 
 especially anxious to improve the language, and thought 
 to do so by introducing some system of prosody akin to 
 that of quantitative Latin and Greek. Spenser, on the 
 other hand, had by practice attained to great facility in 
 the use of rhyme, and was unwilling to throw aside an 
 accomplishment which had been acquired not without 
 labour. They differed amicably, and in the contro- 
 versies that ensued, while Hooker was working at prose 
 and Harvey at blank verse, and others of the friends 
 who gathered about Sidney and his family at various 
 literary questions, there was no acrimony, but all were 
 anxious for improvement. It was the glory of Spenser to 
 take up the language where Chaucer had laid it down. 
 Some feeling he had that, though more than a century and 
 a half had elapsed, and though the English of the culti- 
 vated classes had altered, the language of poetry must not 
 be too modern, the transition between the Canterbury 
 Tales and the Faerie Queene must not be too sudden. 
 He seems even in his earliest verses to have affected anti- 
 quated words and expressions, and even old-fashioned 
 spelling. It may be that they accorded best with the 
 houses he loved best, with the ancient scenes which are 
 reflected so fondly in his poetry. The country which 
 he made most intimately his own was that part of Kent 
 which lies on the Medway and on its upper waters, the 
 Eden. Here, within a few miles of each other, were 
 some of the beautiful views which are called up when 
 
SPENSER 317 
 
 we name Hever and Rochester, Chiddingstone and 
 Leeds, but above all Penshurst. Sidney must have 
 taken his friend to Penshurst before he wrote the 
 Shepherds Calendar. The scenery is reflected in all 
 the twelve poems, closely in some, more vaguely in 
 others, but all breathe of those fair valleys, and are 
 peopled, not by the peasants only, but also by memories 
 and allusions and such visions as an imaginative youth 
 could not but summon up at the sight of ancient 
 cromlechs, long, mysterious avenues of cyclopean 
 stones, each with its legend, and venerable oaks, full of 
 deep shadows and echoing with forest sounds, the songs 
 of birds, or nightly meanings. He must have visited 
 these regions also in winter. The first Eclogue speaks 
 of the sad season of the year, the frosty ground, and the 
 frozen trees : 
 
 Such rage as winter's ringeth in my heart, 
 
 My life-blood freezing with unkindly cold 
 
 Such stormy stores do breed my baleful smart : 
 
 As if my years were waste and waxen old, 
 
 And yet, alas ! but now my spring be gone (begun) 
 
 And yet, alas ! it is already done. 
 
 You naked trees, whose shady leaves are lost, 
 Wherein the birds were wont to build their bower, 
 And now are clothed with moss and hoary frost 
 Instead of blossoms, wherewith your buds did flower ; 
 I see your teares that from your boughs do rain, 
 Whose drops in dreary icicles remain. 
 
 But, beautiful as the country is in winter and 
 comparative sadness, summer is the poet's season ; and 
 most of the Shepherd's Calendar recites the pleasure and 
 
318 POETS' COUNTRY 
 
 constantly varying experiences of the men who loved 
 the woods and the fields, the hills and the growing corn, 
 and the simple folk who peopled them. The happy 
 time begins early. The Eclogue for April is full of the 
 greatness of the queen who 
 
 Sits upon the grassy green, 
 
 and is obviously meant for Queen Elizabeth : 
 
 Upon her head a crimson coronet 
 With damask roses and daffodillies set : 
 
 Bay leaves between 
 
 And primroses green 
 Embellish the white violet. 
 
 In May we have the fable of the Fox and the Kid, 
 and June tells the story of the poet's ill success in his 
 love-making : 
 
 Though could I sing of love and tune my pipe 
 Unto my plaintive pleas in verses made : 
 Though would I seek for queen apples unripe 
 To give my Rosalind ; and hi Summer's shade 
 Dight gaudy garlands was my common trade, 
 To crown her golden locks : but years more ripe, 
 And loss of her whose love as life I weighed, 
 These weary wanton toys away did wipe. 
 
 In the Fourth Book of the Faerie Queene there is 
 a list of English rivers in which the Thames and the 
 Medway are married : 
 
 Old Cybele, arrayed with pompous pride, 
 Wearing a diadem, embattled wide 
 
SPENSER 319 
 
 With hundred turrets, like a Turribant : 
 With such an one was Thames beautifide ; 
 That was to weet the famous Troynavant, 
 In which her kingdomes throne is chiefly resiant. 
 
 The Thames is a favourite with Spenser both here 
 and in the list of English rivers ; and the wedding is 
 just what we might expect from the voyagers. We 
 might expect to meet the name of the Medway just as 
 we expect to meet the name of Penshurst, but the 
 house of his friend is omitted, though many passages 
 seem to allude to it. Among these, at the Ninth Canto 
 of the Faerie Queene, we have the castle of Alma, who 
 shows her visitor the wall, the gates, the porch, and the 
 stately hall, with its furniture, the Steward with his 
 red robe and white rod, 
 
 And in demeanure sober, and in counsell sage. 
 
 There is much more descriptive of such a house as 
 Penshurst, but no mention by name. 
 
 The best way from London, and especially from 
 that part of London which we may suppose Spenser 
 still inhabited when he was not at Cambridge, to 
 Penshurst must have been by the Thames first to 
 Rochester, and then by the Medway. The name of 
 the Medway is itself poetical, the Mead Wye, a 
 mixture of English and Welsh. It is navigable to 
 boats far beyond the Meads town, corrupted into 
 Maidstone, a name sufficiently descriptive, and when it 
 ceases to be tidal and brackish it becomes the Eden, 
 but this is above Penshurst, where 
 
320 POETS' COUNTRY 
 
 Has the salt Medway his source 
 
 Wherein the Nymph es doe bathe : 
 
 The salt Medway that trickling streames 
 Adown the dales of Kent. 
 
 We can easily imagine that after a discussion at 
 Leicester House, Sidney and Spenser would take a 
 boat at Essex Stairs, in the Outer Temple, and, float- 
 ing down on the tide, reach the Medway in time to 
 float up to Penshurst, among the "dales of Kent." 
 The scenery along nearly all the usual route by boat is 
 beautiful still. In the days of Elizabeth it must have 
 been far finer. At Tilbury, on the left, where now 
 there are villages of small houses, stacks of factory 
 chimneys, and great docks full of ocean steamers, there 
 were then only the red-brick buildings of the fort to 
 which in a later century Wren was to add the 
 picturesque stone gateway. Then rounding the wide 
 low green fields bordering the Thames on the right, 
 they would enter the Medway at the Nore, or "New 
 Weir," old already by the time of the Norman Conquest. 
 Next they would see Cobham, on the right beyond 
 Strood, and the frowning mass of Rochester Castle on 
 the left. The river was still navigable and tidal, and 
 would probably be the easiest way to Penshurst from 
 Rochester, certainly as far as Maidstone. On the height 
 above Aylesford they might descry the curious outline 
 of Kit's Coty House, and on the other side Southland 
 Church, now called Snodland, where the epitaph on 
 William Palmer 
 
 Palmers all my fathers were 
 
SPENSER 321 
 
 was still new, and where another cromlech, Holborough, 
 looked across the valley towards Kit's Coty House, 
 both forming parts of the long series of stone monu- 
 ments reaching away to the westward nearly as far as 
 Wrotham. All such things, with their mysterious 
 significance, would be noted by the young poet as he 
 floated along and perhaps began to frame his episode of 
 the marriage of the Thames and the Medway. The 
 voyage ended is well described in the last verse of the 
 First Book of the Faerie Queene. We seem to see the 
 safe arrival of the travellers or voyagers from London : 
 
 Now, strike your sailes, yee jolly Mariners, 
 For we be come unto a quiet rode, 
 Where we must land some of our passengers. 
 And light this weary vessell of her lode : 
 Here she awhile may make her safe abode, 
 Till she repaired have her tackles spent, 
 And wants supplide ; and then againe abroad 
 On the long voiage whereto she is bent : 
 Well may she speede, and fairely finish her intent ! 
 
 It would be but too easy to find descriptions of 
 Sidney's birthplace in the works of contemporary 
 writers. Spenser, as we have observed, does not 
 mention it by name, but Ben Jonson says, in The 
 Forest, 
 
 Thou are not, Penshurst, built to envious shew, 
 
 and goes on 
 
 But stan'st an ancient pile ; 
 
 and Spenser must have had it in his mind in many 
 
 Y 
 
322 POETS' COUNTRY 
 
 passages which answer best to it and to no other. For 
 example, we take the description in the Third Book of 
 the Faerie Queene : 
 
 At last, as nigh out of the wood she came, 
 A stately Castle farre away she spyde, 
 To which her steps directly she did frame. 
 That Castle was most goodlie edifyde, 
 And plac'd for pleasure nigh that forrest syde : 
 But faire before the gate a spatious Plaine, 
 Mantled with greene, itself did spredden wide. 
 
 Sidney's death and that of Sidney's father, Sir 
 Henry, President of Wales and Viceroy of Ireland, 
 occurred in the same year, 1586. A portion of 
 Penshurst is still named the President's Court. The 
 death of the friend of his youth, after lingering long 
 from a wound received at Zutphen, must have been a 
 sad blow to Spenser. Sidney never saw the printed 
 Faerie Queene., although, like Raleigh, he may have 
 seen such parts as were written out four years before, 
 that is before Raleigh's journey to Ireland, when he 
 visited Spenser at Kilcolman. Much of the poet's 
 life there must have been pure exile, though the 
 Blackwater, which he calls " swift Awin Duff," is, 
 at Lismore especially, reckoned one of the most 
 beautiful rivers in Ireland. Munster was about as far 
 from Kent in those days as New Zealand is now, 
 reckoning by days' journeys. When the end of all his 
 hopes came, when his castle had been burnt and his 
 child murdered, he and his wife escaped to London, 
 
SPENSER 323 
 
 and we, strictly speaking, hear no more of him. 
 According to the strange legend ascribed to Ben 
 Jonson, he died " for lake of bread " at King Street, 
 AVestminster, in January 1599, a story absolutely 
 refused by Dean Church in his admirable biography. 
 The Dean, however, sums up the facts thus : " The 
 first of English poets perished miserably and pre- 
 maturely." Jonson added to the first part of his tale 
 one which we may accept. The Earl of Essex sent 
 him "twenty pieces," which the dying poet rejected, 
 saying bitterly he had no time to spend them. He was 
 buried near the tomb of Chaucer in what is now known 
 as the Poets' Corner of Westminster Abbey, and the 
 assembly of literary men and poets gathered at the 
 funeral wrote elegies and epitaphs which they threw 
 with their pens into his grave. 
 
 Spenser's family was undoubtedly connected with 
 the Northamptonshire family of Spencer. The differ- 
 ence of a single letter in the uncertain spelling of the 
 sixteenth century did not signify much. They were 
 wealthy graziers in the midland counties ; two of them, 
 who would seem to have been in the great staple wool 
 trade, were Lord Mayors in 1527 and 1594. The poet's 
 branch was long before of some local consideration in 
 East Lancashire ; but, though Edmund was acquainted 
 with heraldry, we are not informed as to his coat of 
 arms. This has lately been a matter of some con- 
 troversy, the two Lord Mayors using coats not in the 
 least resembling those now borne by the Spencers of 
 
324 POETS' COUNTRY 
 
 Althorpe. The sixteenth century heralds assigned to 
 this family the arms of the long extinct Despencers. 
 Mr. Round in his Peerage Studies shows plainly that 
 in 1504 a coat more or less varied from that of the 
 London aldermen was granted to John Spencer of 
 Althorpe ; and as Mr. Round remarks, " the fess 
 between six seamews' heads " is hostile to the claim 
 that the family was already entitled to the arms of the 
 baronial Despencers. "The first effigy on which is 
 found the differenced coat of the baronial Despencers 
 is that of Sir John Spencer, who died in 1586." It is 
 therefore unlikely that Edmund, though he claimed 
 close affinity with the subsequently ennobled Spencers 
 of Althorpe, had any more right than they to the 
 curious and complicated shield of the Earls of 
 Winchester and of Gloucester in the fourteenth 
 century. Descendants of the poet still exist, and the 
 Dictionary of National Biography mentions Mr. 
 Edmund Spenser Tiddeman, rector of West Hanning- 
 field, as the present representative of the family. 
 
THOMAS MOORE IN WICKLOW 
 
 THOMAS MOORE was born to a grocer and his wife in 
 Aungier Street, Dublin, in 1779. In 1794 he entered 
 Trinity College, the penal laws against the Roman 
 Catholics having at this time been somewhat relaxed, 
 though he was not allowed to hold the scholarship he 
 had won. Five years later he was entered at the 
 Middle Temple, but cannot be said to have ever 
 seriously studied law. He had begun to make himself 
 known as a lyric poet while he was still little more than 
 a boy. His friendship with Robert Emmet is celebrated 
 in such verses as O breathe not his Name and Let Erin 
 remember the Days of Old. But his poetical powers 
 showed themselves more clearly when he came to 
 speak of Emmet's love for Sarah Curran, and probably 
 never rose higher than in the touching lines : 
 
 She sings the wild songs of her dear native plains, 
 Every note which he loved awaking ; 
 
 Ah ! little they think who delight in her strains 
 How the heart of the Minstrel is breaking. 
 
 Moore's fame was sudden and early, but never 
 flagged while he lived. His verses are easily criticised, 
 and their fall into oblivion has been prophesied from 
 
 325 
 
326 POETS' COUNTRY 
 
 the first ; but many of them still live, and others, like 
 Oft in the Stilly Night and Flow on, thou Shining 
 River, seem to wake up at irregular intervals, when 
 perhaps some famous musician revives their popularity, 
 or they are found, like The Last Rose of Summer, 
 forming the motive of a fashionable opera. He was 
 fortunate in his prolonged friendship with Lord Moira, 
 afterwards Marquis of Hastings, who favoured him for 
 many years and practically caused him to settle in 
 England ; but by obtaining for the poet the uncongenial 
 office of Admiralty Registrar of Bermuda he gave 
 Moore an opportunity of seeing the world. The profits 
 of this office were considerable, especially in time of 
 war ; but when Moore obtained leave to appoint a 
 deputy and to return home himself, he took a step 
 which involved him in endless complications, and the 
 money troubles which ensued were most galling to his 
 punctilious sense of honour. They served one purpose, 
 however, which is not to be wholly regretted, namely, by 
 showing how independent and exact even a poet could 
 be ; while, though himself at the height of his fame, 
 earning sums which vie with those offered to Scott or 
 Byron, he was living almost in penury to pay off his 
 debts to the Treasury. 
 
 It would scarcely be correct to describe Thomas 
 Moore as a great poet. It would be at least equally 
 incorrect to call him a great musician. Yet his poetry 
 and his music have reached and influenced, and, above 
 all, given pleasure to thousands whose lives might other- 
 
MOORE 327 
 
 wise be considered to lie wholly beyond the reach of 
 either the one or the other. The secret of this wide- 
 spread influence is perhaps to be found in his versatility. 
 He undoubtedly contrived, combining poetry and 
 music, more nearly than any of his countrymen to 
 awaken for Ireland a modest proportion of the same 
 kind of interest that Sir Walter Scott had so 
 abundantly shed over Scotland. It is a commonplace 
 to say he was influenced by the scenery which he 
 constantly visited while he remained at home, but he 
 was also influenced, perhaps even more strongly, by 
 the discovery, as it may be called, of popular music, 
 then something quite novel and unstudied. Musicians 
 write learnedly about the so-called pentatonic scale 
 and about such mysteries to the unmusical as major 
 sevenths and superfluous seconds ; but in the days of 
 Moore's youth it showed something little short of 
 genius that he was able to catch these wild airs and in 
 a sense to tame them without allowing civilisation to 
 destroy their natural charm. In this art, a difficult one, 
 as they know best who have tried to secure the best 
 and most characteristic form of a popular tune where 
 each performer has his own version, Moore excelled 
 In Sir John Stevenson's settings of the Irish Melodies 
 he constantly shows a desire to correct irregularities, 
 not perceiving how much of the charm is thereby lost. 
 Moore never did this, and though he was no performer, 
 though he had hardly any voice, he yet contrived to 
 please the most fastidious audiences, and when he sang 
 
328 POETS' COUNTRY 
 
 a pathetic air he is described by many who heard him 
 as able to affect even to tears people who might have 
 been thought impervious to sentiment. 
 
 Visitors to Ireland for the first time, if bent solely 
 on pleasure or on seeking beautiful landscape, do well 
 to approach the east coast by one of the longer sea- 
 routes. There is much difference between the scenery 
 of the north and that which Moore made more peculiarly 
 his own. Coming from the Clyde, among the western 
 isles, the voyager finds himself in a turbulent sea, the 
 Sound of Mull, which the poet calls Moyle, adopting 
 the Irish spelling in the Song of Fionnuala : 
 
 Silent, O Moyle, be the roar of thy water, 
 Break not, ye breezes, your chain of repose, 
 
 While, murmuring mournfully, Lir's lonely daughter, 
 Tells to the night-star her tale of woes. 
 
 The Sound of Mull is seldom, indeed, still, but it 
 is a frequent experience of the voyager to encounter 
 a solitary swan like Fionnuala, who was condemned 
 by some supernatural power to wander here in the 
 shape of a wild swan throughout the ages until the 
 coming of Christianity. This north-eastern coast, 
 which is annually at least visited by flocks of swans, 
 seeking the inlets and freshwater lakes, with the noble, 
 prosaic, and busy city of Belfast in the background, 
 forms an admirable entrance and one well associated 
 with Moore. The very simplicity of the words suits 
 well the weird legend, and the plaintive minor air rings 
 in our ears sometimes for days : 
 
THE VALE OF AVOCA 
 
 Moore's Oak in the Vale of Avoca, under which it is said 
 he composed The Meeting of the Waters (the junction of the 
 Avonmore and the Avoubeg), has perished through visitors 
 cutting away portions of its bark as mementoes of their 
 visit. 
 
MOORE 329 
 
 When will the day-star, mildly springing, 
 
 Warm our isle with peace and love ? 
 When will Heaven, its sweet bells ringing, 
 
 Call my spirit to the fields above ? 
 
 Moore owed the legend to Lady Moira, whose residence 
 was near Belfast. 
 
 Still more closely associated with the poet of the 
 Irish Melodies is the memory of another approach to 
 the coast. This is from a Welsh or a southern English 
 port. In fine weather a steamer or yacht encounters 
 at once the scenery which has entitled Ireland to be 
 called the Emerald Isle. The greenness of the land- 
 scape, of the mountains as well as of the meadows, 
 strikes a foreigner most forcibly. Nothing is to be seen 
 like it on the shores of other European countries, 
 except, perhaps, in spring at or near Palma, in the 
 Island of Majorca. Here in Wexford and Wicklow 
 the verdure is perennial, caused, no doubt, partly by 
 the humidity of the climate, so that "given fine 
 weather" is a permanent feature in every sentence of 
 description, like " the ordnance datum " in measurements 
 of hills. The datum of a clear sky is very needful 
 where we want to find blue mountain peaks and deep 
 woods ; but, given that, a great many visitors, by sea 
 or land, have agreed with Moore that 
 
 There is not in the wide world a valley so sweet 
 As that vale in whose bosom the bright waters meet, 
 
 the Meeting of the Waters, a meeting repeated or 
 imitated a little farther in the same valley, being one 
 
330 POETS' COUNTRY 
 
 of the chief features of a beautiful district. Moore has 
 recorded the fact of his visit here in the summer of 
 1807, and calls the rivers the Avon and the Avoca. 
 Barrow and others have pointed out the existence of two 
 meetings, and most lovers of this kind of scenery prefer 
 the place of the lower confluence to that which is 
 usually pointed out as the subject of Moore's little 
 poem. 
 
 This district is essentially Moore's country ; and it 
 seems as if the Irish Melodies are the echoes of these 
 beautiful but in no sense magnificent hills. They 
 begin very near Dublin, and extend for many miles 
 through Wicklow, everywhere green and soft, but no- 
 where rugged or imposing, like the Mourne Mountains 
 or those of Kerry. While he remained in Ireland he 
 spent much time among them, and they must have 
 always dwelt in his memory. In such scenes as were 
 uppermost in his mind when he wrote some of his most 
 popular songs, many "bits," as artists call them, occur 
 which seem to belong to this part of Wicklow, and to 
 no other region in our islands. There is finer scenery, 
 by far, in Killarney or the Mourne Mountains in Down, 
 or among the dales of Antrim. But it is by its sweetness 
 that the valley on the southern slopes of Douce and 
 Slieve na Poila, the Black Mountains and the Forked 
 Hills, or Great and Little Sugar-Loaf, excels them all. 
 The views from these heights include the Channel and 
 the little blue triangles, peeping over the eastern 
 horizon, which mark the situation of Snowdon. All the 
 
MOORE 331 
 
 favourite resorts of the modern visitor in this region 
 may be found without any great exertion within the few 
 miles which stretch from Powerscourt and its waterfall 
 to Shelton Abbey, beyond the farthest of the Meetings. 
 The "Meeting" is that of the Great Avon, or 
 Avonmore, with the Little Avon, or Avonbeg. The 
 rival meeting, very near Shelton, is preferred for its 
 beauty by people who admire this kind of scenery. 
 The first junction turns the two Avons into the Avoca ; 
 when the Avoca is about to pass the Wooden Bridge, 
 a very favourite resort, it receives two small rivers, the 
 Gold Mines and the Aughrim. A little gold has been 
 found in the copper ore extracted from the rocks here, 
 but hardly enough to pay for the deterioration of the 
 landscape by blasting and tall, ungraceful chimneys. 
 The return cannot have been such as Moore tells of 
 
 When Malachi wore the collar of gold 
 Which he won from the proud invader. 
 
 A railway now runs through the valley, where Moore 
 must have walked. 
 
 At every turn we hear his name, and Moore's Tree 
 is but one of many local reminiscences more or less 
 authentic. It has perished through visitors cutting the 
 bark, and is or was lately a leafless skeleton. Arklow, 
 a flourishing little seaport with a cordite factory, is on 
 the coast, close by. 
 
 Crossing from the Dublin mountains to those of 
 Wicklow, we come to places actually mentioned by 
 
332 POETS' COUNTRY 
 
 name, to others mentioned by allusion, and to an 
 immense number which owe their celebrity as much 
 to guides and guide-books as to any real connection 
 with the poet. The retrospective views as we ascend 
 over Dublin Bay and then over Bray Head, Dalkey 
 Island, or, in the opposite direction, to Blessington and 
 the tallest of the Wicklow range, a few miles inland, 
 are sufficiently attractive, but the distant views, like 
 this, soon give place to the green vales and wooded 
 glens which are most characteristic of the region. The 
 distance retires for a time, and what there is to see is 
 seen close at hand. Douce (Dubh-ais), the Black 
 Mountain, and the Dargle (Dear gail), the little red 
 spot, are famous, and nearly as much so is the Glen of 
 the Downs, near Dalgany, with the Great Sugar-Loaf 
 and some fine private parks. At Luggala, Moore 
 picked up the wild air, already named Luggala., to 
 which he wrote the lines : 
 
 No, not more welcome the fairy numbers 
 
 Of music fall on the sleeper's ear, 
 When, half awakening from fearful slumbers, 
 
 He thinks the full quire of Heaven is near. 
 
 Here, it is said in one local legend, St. Kevin, who is 
 now chiefly to be heard of at Glendalough, first settled 
 in a cave : 
 
 " Here, at least," he calmly said, 
 " Woman ne'er shall find my bed." 
 
 Nevertheless, he was driven far away by the importunate 
 Kathleen. 
 
 Moore was particularly quick in picking up these 
 
MOORE 333 
 
 local airs. One of the most beautiful of them all, 
 however, had been set to Robin Adair before his time. 
 This was anciently known as Aileen Aroon, and Holly- 
 brook, the seat of the present Sir Robert Adair-Hodson, 
 often pointed out as the scene of the ballad, is on the 
 threshold of the county. Moore profited by a good 
 example, but the idea of uniting modern English 
 words systematically with old Irish airs seems to have 
 originated with Power, a musical publisher, about 1807. 
 It was warmly accepted by Moore, to whom several 
 collections of popular melodies were familiar. They 
 had been taken down from travelling harpers and other 
 itinerant musicians by Bunting, whose collection is the 
 best, Lady Morgan, and a few more, but differ consider- 
 ably among themselves. These airs, if we endeavour 
 to describe them in unscientific language, had one 
 quality in common. They were ah 1 , with a few trifling 
 exceptions, of a kind which could be played on an 
 instrument the notes of which sounded the five black 
 notes of a piano. These five notes give to this scale 
 the formidable name of pentatonic, and will be recog- 
 nised even by an ear unused to music in such a familiar 
 tune as The Last Rose of Summer or The Minstrel JBoy. 
 For the most part they occur in the Irish collections, 
 but many of them are common also in Scotland, and at 
 least one was well known for many generations in 
 England. This begins 
 
 My lodging is on the cold ground, 
 And very poor is my fare, 
 
334 POETS' COUNTRY 
 
 in the English version. The Irish name is translated 
 / see them on their Winding Way in the collections. 
 Moore has used it for 
 
 Believe me, if all those endearing young charms. 
 
 Some of the Irish music is of a melancholy and 
 plaintive character, and in some a minor key, often 
 with a curious change at the end, is used. The late 
 Karl Engel describes this change in his Study of 
 National Music, and shows that the pentatonic scale 
 is that of G flat major or F sharp major. In the 
 beautiful air known as The Flowers of the Forest, 
 which is given in Engel's Music of the Most Ancient 
 Nations as typical of Scottish melody, he remarks on 
 the change of key in the last line, and something of 
 the same kind occurs in Silent, O Moyle, noticed above. 
 It may be doubted if Moore cared at all for these and 
 similar niceties, while it is pretty certain that his chief 
 guide in the selection of tunes was that they should 
 adhere to the pentatonic scale. He mentions in the 
 original preface to the Irish Melodies that it was 
 through Bunting's book that he first became "acquainted 
 with the beauties of our native music." He tells us 
 that this was in 1797, and that no very long time 
 elapsed before he was " the happy proprietor of a copy 
 of the work, and though never regularly instructed in 
 music, could play over the airs with tolerable facility on 
 the piano." The names in Bunting's book are very 
 quaint. One is The Pretty Girl milking her Cow, and 
 
MOORE 335 
 
 another, which Moore mentions as having been set to 
 Let Erin remember the Days of Old, was The Red Fox. 
 A third is The Twisting of the Rope, and, no doubt, 
 each refers to a song the words of which were in the 
 Irish language. 
 
 It has been remarked that in some of the Irish 
 Melodies he has written from what is geographically 
 an English standpoint. Thus in the lines, otherwise 
 descriptive of the coast here, 
 
 How dear to me the hour when daylight dies. 
 And sunbeams melt along the silent sea, 
 
 there is a reference not to an eastern but a western 
 view : 
 
 And, as I watch the line of light, that plays 
 
 Along the smooth wave t'ward the burning west, 
 
 I long to tread that golden path of rays, 
 
 And think 'twould lead to some bright isle of rest. 
 
 Some of the poems were certainly written in 
 England, and Moore himself teUs us that When first I 
 met Thee was sung "among a large party staying at 
 Chatsworth," where it was specially noticed by Byron. 
 On the other hand, one of the sweetest of the Melodies 
 is set to words which answer best to a western coast, a 
 coast that is facing east : 
 
 I saw from the beach, when the morning was shining, 
 A bark o'er the waters move gloriously on ; 
 
 I came when the sun o'er that beach was declining, 
 The bark was still there, but the waters were gone. 
 
 The distinct allusions to this coast are, however, 
 
336 POETS' COUNTRY 
 
 sufficiently numerous. The legend of the lake whose 
 gloomy shore 
 
 Skylark never warbled o'er ; 
 
 the allusion to the Wicklow gold-mines in 
 
 Has sorrow thy young days shaded ; 
 
 the comparison of thoughts 
 
 whose source is hidden and high, 
 Like streams that come from heavenward hills, 
 
 and many other lines especially among the early 
 Melodies, point Wicklow out clearly as the scenery 
 which most powerfully affected the mind of the young- 
 poet. He was not of age during his troubled career in 
 Trinity College, and we can well understand that the 
 comparative quiet of these mountains was a delicious 
 rest after days of strife and disappointment. On the 
 one hand his sympathies were stirred by the suffer- 
 ings of many of his friends ; and on the other the 
 sequestered valleys and woods invited him to throw 
 politics aside and devote himself to poetry and music. 
 As soon as he could decently do so and Moore was 
 always most careful of the proprieties, indeed scrupu- 
 lously so during life he left Ireland, and betook himself 
 to the careful cultivation of his powers simply as a 
 matter of business. In the gay world, where he was 
 highly appreciated almost from the first, he continued 
 to live with an honesty remarkable at the time. 
 Another interesting characteristic was his intense 
 
THE BLACKWATER AT LISMORE CASTLE 
 
 The Blackwater at Lismore Castle, Co. Waterford, 
 referred to in the Faerie Queen as 
 
 Swift Awniduff, which of the Englishman 
 Is called Blackwater, 
 
 is perhaps the most beautiful river in Ireland. It has heen 
 described as the Irish Rhine. 
 
MOORE 337 
 
 affection for his mother, who, indeed, seems to have 
 deserved his regard. - 
 
 It is not easy to criticise Moore's poetry. So much 
 of the effect of his verses depends on the music to 
 which they are almost inseparably united that it is 
 difficult to judge them alone. They are not of a high 
 order of poetry, in fact few of them rise above the level 
 of ballads and society verses, and the attempts at epics, 
 such as Latta Rookh, are among the least to be 
 admired ; but they hit the mark at which they were 
 aimed, and there are few, if any, modern poets who can 
 claim a larger number of lines which have become 
 proverbial. Sweetness, like that of the region which he 
 made so especially his own, was what he sought, and it 
 cannot be said that he did not attain it, though often 
 by the sacrifice of strength, or of any higher object than 
 that of giving pleasure. 
 
 In 1811 Moore married "a penniless and beautiful 
 girl of sixteen," Miss Elizabeth Dyke. Of this 
 improvident match Dr. Garnet, Mr. Gwynn, and indeed 
 all Moore's biographers, say that it brought him the 
 utmost connubial happiness, and that to the day of his 
 death the spoilt pet of society loved his Bessie with an 
 unswerving affection, sacrificing everything ambition or 
 vanity may have offered him, and living the most 
 domestic of lives in his little cottage at Sloperton, in 
 Wiltshire. What this meant in days before railways 
 we can have little idea. Even the neighbourhood of 
 the Lansdowne family at Bowood, which gave him 
 
338 POETS' COUNTRY 
 
 frequent glimpses of the great world in which he had 
 been so admired, cannot have made up for his periods of 
 seclusion. But he was constantly busy. His sons, who 
 were not worthy of their father, provided him with 
 cause of anxiety and monetary loss. " High-minded 
 and independent to an unusual degree," debt meant 
 unceasing hard work. The two boys were the last 
 survivors of the family, but both died young. Grief at 
 their loss and disappointment weighed heavily on 
 Moore's formerly buoyant spirits. His last few years 
 were but too tranquil, and he gradually sank into 
 lethargy, only rousing himself once or twice to receive 
 his lifelong friend, Lord John Russell. He died in 
 1852, and was buried in the churchyard of Bromham, 
 where a costly stained-glass window was erected by his 
 numerous admirers. Lord John, though just then 
 weighed down by cares of state, undertook to edit his 
 life and letters, and secured a provision for the widow. 
 She survived him till 1865, and lies beside him. 
 
 Here sleeps the bard who knew so well 
 All the sweet windings of Apollo's shell ; 
 Whether its music rolled like torrents near, 
 Or died like distant streamlets on the ear. 
 Sleep, sleep, mute bard ; alike unheeded now 
 The storm and zephyr sweep thy lifeless brow ; 
 That storm whose rush is like thy martial lay ; 
 That breeze which, like thy love-song, dies away. 
 
BURNS 
 
 ONLY a small number of Burns's poems were inspired 
 by the flying visit he paid to Edinburgh, the Borders, 
 and the Highlands. Nearly all his poetry was com- 
 posed in the two regions of Scotland in which he formed 
 more or less permanent homes at successive periods ol 
 his life, namely, the country round Ayr and Mauchline 
 and the valley of the Nith from the farm of Ellisland 
 to Dumfries. It is in those two regions that we must 
 look for the scenery and other external influences that 
 affected his character, and for the originals of the 
 descriptions of Nature that supply the background of 
 his poetry. 
 
 So far as his character was moulded by the influence 
 of external Nature on his mind, we shall find the 
 explanation of it in Ayrshire rather than in Nithsdale. 
 It is in childhood and youth that we are most power- 
 fully impressed by the natural scenery that reveals itself 
 to our eyes. When Burns went to Nithsdale in 1791 
 he was thirty-two years old, and his character was 
 definitely formed, so that it was no longer susceptible 
 
 339 
 
340 POETS' COUNTRY 
 
 to much alteration from change of environment. He 
 learnt almost all that Nature had to teach him in 
 Ayrshire, especially in the neighbourhood of Alloway 
 Kirk, where he spent the first seven years of his life 
 in the cottage built by his father, and at Mount 
 Oliphant, two or three miles distant, where he lived 
 on his father's farm from his seventh to his eighteenth 
 year. 
 
 The scenery on the way from Ayr to Alloway and 
 Mount Oliphant is not in any way remarkable. It has 
 the ordinary characteristics of the landscapes of Lowland 
 Scotland, including a beautiful river with green banks 
 overshadowed by the foliage of many trees. The river 
 that flows past Alloway is the Doon, glorified in one of 
 the sweetest of the poet's love-songs. As he roamed 
 in the impressionable age of boyhood by its banks, he 
 conceived the passionate love of rivers which is such a 
 marked characteristic of his poetry. The future poet, 
 however, could only devote a very limited portion of 
 his time to rambling by the banks of the Doon, and 
 feasting his soul on the beauty that is never absent from 
 streams of running water in the country. The winters in 
 Ayrshire are long and bleak as compared with English 
 winters, and, after the family had removed to Mount 
 Oliphant, Robert Burns and his brother Gilbert, boys 
 as they were, had to do the work of farm -labourers, 
 enduring what the poet afterwards described as "the 
 cheerless gloom of a hermit with the unceasing moil of 
 a galley-slave." The life of the Scottish peasantry at 
 
ELLISLAND 
 
 Ellisland Farmhouse near Dumfries is situated on the 
 banks of the Nith. From its garden a secluded path 
 descends by the river, a favourite walk of Burns. A more 
 reposeful spot could not be selected, and the ripple of the 
 water and rustle of the leaves add to its quiet charm. 
 It was here that he composed the lines : 
 
 Thou ling'ring star, with less'ning ray, 
 That lov'st to greet the early morn, 
 
 Again thou usher'st in the day 
 My Mary from my soul was torn. 
 
BURNS 341 
 
 this time was indeed for the most part a long, continual 
 struggle with the earth, and their toil was relieved by 
 few intervals of relaxation. Outdoor sports had not 
 much attraction for men exhausted by the hard labour 
 by which they earned their bare subsistence. Burns 
 and his brother, being studiously inclined, devoted their 
 evenings in winter to reading by the light of the 
 guttering candle-dip, but most of their neighbours had 
 less refined tastes, and found recreation in drinking ale 
 and whisky, as Burns himself too soon learned to do. 
 In spring and summer the one great enthralling amuse- 
 ment that varied the monotony of existence consisted 
 in love-making. In the long summer evenings lads and 
 lasses would, after their day's work, meet by the banks 
 of the Doon and the Ayr, where, with their souls 
 awakened by passion, they saw earth, water, sky, and 
 every common sight "apparelled in celestial light, the 
 glory and the freshness of a dream." 
 
 Speaking generally, we may say that the long cold 
 winter of Scotland, together with the absence of amuse- 
 ments and the rigidly solemn observance of the day of 
 rest, would naturally tend to produce melancholy, 
 especially in the case of a man like Burns, naturally 
 disposed to hypochondria and feeling within him the 
 consciousness of great powers for the development of 
 which his lowly birth could not afford due scope. At 
 any rate, there is sufficient evidence both in his poems 
 and in his letters to show that Burns from his earliest 
 youth was subject to terrible fits of depression, during 
 
342 POETS' COUNTRY 
 
 which the burden of life was almost intolerable. With 
 reference to his Prayer under the Pressure of Violent 
 Anguish, one of his earliest poems, he says that it was 
 written at a time when his spirit was broken by repeated 
 losses and disasters. "My body," he adds, "was 
 attacked by that dreadful distemper, a hypochondria, 
 the recollection of which makes me yet shudder." In 
 a letter written in the end of 1787, he complains that 
 the weakness of his nerves has so debilitated his 
 mind that he dare neither review his past nor look 
 forward into futurity. " I am quite transported," he 
 goes on, "at the thought that ere long, perhaps very 
 soon, I shall bid an eternal adieu to all the pains and 
 uneasiness and disquietudes of this weary life ; for I 
 assure you I am heartily tired of it ; and if I do not very 
 much deceive myself, I could contentedly and gladly 
 resign it." In this state of mind the poet was disposed 
 to take the view of human life expressed in Man was 
 made to Mourn. His deeply sympathetic nature also 
 moved him to sorrow over the sufferings of the animal 
 world. His mind was saddened by the consciousness 
 that man's dominion has broken the social union that 
 ought to exist between the higher and lower grades of 
 animal life. It distressed him to think of the mouse's 
 cosy home broken up by the ploughshare, of the ourie 
 cattle and silly sheep exposed to the blasts of the bitter- 
 biting north wind, and the miserable plight in winter 
 of the singing-birds that had not fled to a sunnier 
 clime : 
 
BURNS 343 
 
 Ilk happing bird, wee, helpless thing, 
 That, in the merry months o' spring, 
 Delighted me to hear thee sing, 
 
 What comes o' thee ? 
 Where wilt thou cow'r thy cluttering wing, 
 
 An' close thy e'e ? 
 
 On the other hand, the principle of compensation, 
 by which those who are liable to be plunged in the 
 deepest abyss of melancholy are often exalted by exuber- 
 ance of joy, is exemplified in Burns. Many of his poems 
 express such gladness and uproarious merriment as are 
 beyond the reach of ordinary mortals. When the dark 
 fit was not on him, he derived continual pleasure from 
 
 Nature's charms, the hills and woods, 
 The sweeping vales, the foaming floods. 
 
 At even, when the dewy fields were green and all 
 Nature listened to the song of the mavis, his "heart 
 rejoic'd in Nature's joy." In a letter to Mrs. Dunlop 
 he expresses the effect produced on him by external 
 nature, and gives her an interesting list of the flowers 
 he loved best. "I have," he writes, "some favourite 
 flowers in spring, among which are the mountain daisy, 
 the harebell, the foxglove, the wild brier -rose, the 
 budding birk, and the hoary hawthorn, that I view and 
 hang over with particular delight. I never hear the 
 loud solitary whistle of the curlew in a summer noon, 
 or the wild mixing cadence of a troop of grey plover 
 in an autumnal morning, without feeling an elevation 
 of soul like the enthusiasm of Devotion or Poetry." 
 
344 POETS' COUNTRY 
 
 His soul was also keenly alive to the sweet fragrance of 
 trees and flowers. The " sweet-scented birk " and the 
 " milk-white thorn that scents the evening gale " seem 
 to have been the trees that he loved most. More 
 than one passage in his poems celebrates the perfume 
 of the bean, as for instance in the Ekgy on Captain 
 Henderson : 
 
 At dawn, when ev'ry grassy blade 
 Droops with a diamond at its head, 
 At ev'n, when beans their fragrance shed 
 I' th' rustling gale. 
 
 The way in which dew brings out the fragrance of 
 flowers finds beautiful expression in the line that tells 
 us how " the wa'flower scents the dewy air." 
 
 Of all objects of Nature, it is clear from his letters 
 and his poems that brooks and rivers gave most delight 
 and solace to his soul. No one, he thought, could be 
 a poet 
 
 Till by himself he learned to wander 
 Adown some trottin' burn's meander, 
 And no think lang. 
 
 Nor is this to be wondered at by any one who has seen 
 the beautiful glens through which the streams of his 
 native country flow. Such a typical English river as 
 the "smug and silver Trent," the Avon or the Ouse, 
 has a quiet beauty of its own as it runs in its channel 
 fair and evenly through deep-meadowed valleys with its 
 course marked by the pollards on its banks. But it is 
 usually sluggish, and its muddy bed is often choked 
 with weeds. Far different are the streams of Scotland, 
 
BURNS 345 
 
 whose waters, stained to the rich brown of a dark cairn- 
 gorm by the peat mosses near their source, ripple over 
 their pebbly channels, dash, white with foam, over high 
 waterfalls, or cut their way through deep gorges of 
 sandstone or granite. The fascinating variety of a 
 Scotch burn is described, as far as words can describe 
 it, in a stanza of the poem on Hallowe'en : 
 
 Whiles ower a linn the burnie plays, 
 
 As thro' the glen it wimpl't ; 
 Whiles round a rocky scaur it strays, 
 
 Whiles in a wiel it dimpl't ; 
 Whiles glitter'd to the nightly rays, 
 
 Wi' bickerin', dancing dazzle ; 
 Whiles cookit underneath the braes, 
 
 Below the spreading hazel, 
 
 Unseen that night. 
 
 Dearest of all rivers to the poet were the Doon and 
 the Ayr. The Doon was dear to him as the haunt of 
 his boyhood, from which he derived his first poetic 
 inspiration : 
 
 Bonnie Doon, where early roaming, 
 First I weaved the rustic song. 
 
 The Ayr is for ever sacred to the memory of Highland 
 Mary, who on its banks plighted her troth to Burns 
 and bade him what proved to be her last farewell, for 
 she died shortly afterwards of a malignant fever at 
 Greenock. The details of the parting scene are given 
 in Cromek's Reliques of Burns, where we read that 
 " the lovers stood on each side of a small purling brook ; 
 they laved their hands in its limpid stream, and, holding 
 
346 POETS' COUNTRY 
 
 a Bible between them, pronounced their vows to be 
 faithful to each other." This account is confirmed 
 by the Bible given by Burns to Highland Mary, which 
 is now to be seen in the monument at Alloway. There 
 are two places that compete for the honour of being 
 the scene of this famous parting. The first is the 
 junction of the Fail and the Ayr at Failford ; but the 
 Fail, where it flows into the Ayr, is too broad a stream 
 for lovers to clasp hands over. All the necessary con- 
 ditions seem to be better satisfied higher up the Ayr, 
 where it is joined by Mauchline Burn. Here in a 
 sequestered, thickly -wooded valley flows a purling 
 stream, across the running water of which the parting 
 lovers could easily have joined hands. That this little 
 stream was a favourite resort is further shown by the 
 fact that on its banks is a rock with initials and dates 
 engraved upon it going back to the beginning of the 
 eighteenth century. We may, therefore, reasonably 
 suppose that the lovers all through their day of parting 
 love wandered about Ayr's "pebbled shore o'erhung 
 with wild woods, thickening green," and when the 
 " glowing west " proclaimed the coming of evening, they 
 ascended the burn to the place where they could take 
 their last farewell with the ceremonies prescribed by 
 local custom. No doubt the poor Highland girl knew 
 the excessive susceptibility of her lover's heart, and 
 hoped by solemn oaths to keep it hers for ever. 
 
 In the two poems relating to the parting with his 
 Highland Mary, Burns describes the Ayr flowing gently 
 
THE RIVER BOON 
 
 Bonnie Doon by Doonside Mill might well inspire the 
 lines 
 
 Ye banks and 'braes o' bonnie Doon, 
 How can ye bloom sae fresh and fair, 
 
 while the running stream and the arch of Tarn o' Shanter's 
 Brig in the distance recall 
 
 Now, do thy speedy utmost, Meg, 
 And win the keystane o' the brig ; 
 There at them thou thy tail may toss, 
 A running stream they darena' cross. 
 
BUKNS 347 
 
 under the green birks and hawthorns. Elsewhere he 
 gives a fine picture of the different aspect of the same 
 river dashing with indignation against the bridges that 
 span it : 
 
 When heavy, dark, continued, a'-day rains 
 Wi' deepening deluges o'erflow the plains ; 
 When from the hills where springs the brawling Coil, 
 Or stately Lugar's mossy fountains boil, 
 Or where the Greenock winds his moorland course, 
 Or haunted Garpal draws his feeble source, 
 Arous'd by blust'ring winds and spotted thowes, 
 In mony a torrent down his snaw-broo rowes ; 
 While crashing ice, borne on the roaring spate, 
 Sweeps dams, an' mills, an' brigs, a' to the gate ; 
 And from Glenbuck, down to the Ratton-key, 
 Auld Ayr is just one lengthen'd tumbling sea 
 Then down ye'll hurl (deil nor ye never rise !), 
 And dash the gumlie jaups up to the pouring skies. 
 
 There are few grander sights in Nature than a river 
 in Scotland in full flood, and it is much to say that the 
 genius of Burns does not fail to do justice to the sub- 
 limity of the spectacle. 
 
 In his treatment of winter also, Burns shows that, 
 like Byron, he delighted in the sterner and sublimer 
 aspects of Nature. "There is scarcely any earthly 
 object," we read in his commonplace book, " gives me 
 more I don't know if I should call it pleasure, but 
 something which exalts me, something which enraptures 
 me than to walk in the sheltered side of a wood or 
 high plantation, in a cloudy winter day, and hear a 
 stormy wind howling among the trees and raving o'er 
 
348 POETS' COUNTRY 
 
 the plain." The same recognition of the beauty of 
 winter is expressed in verse, in his Epistle to William 
 Simpson : 
 
 Ev'n winter bleak has charms to me, 
 When winds rave thro' the naked tree ; 
 Or frosts on hills of Ochiltree 
 
 Are hoary-grey ; 
 Or blinding drifts wild-furious flee, 
 
 Dark'ning the day. 
 
 Some of the finest passages in his works are descriptive 
 of winter, especially the stanzas on a Winter Night, 
 beginning : 
 
 When biting Boreas, fell and dour, 
 Sharp shivers through the leafless bow'r ; 
 When Phoabus gies a short-lived glow'r 
 
 Far south the lift, 
 Dim-dark'ning thro' the flaky show'r 
 
 Or whirling drift : 
 
 Ae night the storm the steeples rock'd, 
 Poor labour sweet in sleep was lock'd, 
 While burns, wi' snawy wreaths up-chok'd, 
 
 Wild-eddying swirl ; 
 Or, thro' the mining outlet bock'd, 
 
 Down headlong hurl. 
 
 In 1788 Burns left Ayrshire and settled in Dumfries- 
 shire, but he never loved the banks of the Nith as he 
 had loved the Ayr and the Doon. He was thinking of 
 the land as well as of the wife he left behind him, when 
 he sang : 
 
 O' a' the airts the wind can blaw, 
 I dearly like the west. 
 
 In other verses written about the same time he 
 
BURNS 349 
 
 attributed a similar westward yearning to his favourite 
 mare, Jenny Geddes, whom he had brought with him 
 from Ayrshire : 
 
 Dowie she saunters down Nithside, 
 And aye a westlin' leuk she throws, 
 While tears hap o'er her auld brown nose. 
 
 He indeed appreciated the beauty of his new sur- 
 roundings ; above all he viewed with admiration the 
 noble river which flowed past Ellisland to his last home 
 in Dumfries, the Queen of the South. "The banks of 
 the Nith," he acknowledges, " are as sweet poetic ground 
 as any I ever saw." He was often seen walking along 
 the river opposite Lincluden Abbey. It was there he 
 saw a ghostly minstrel, when 
 
 The winds were laid, the air was still, 
 The stars they shot along the sky ; 
 
 The tod was howling on the hill, 
 
 And the distant-echoing glens reply. 
 
 The burn adown its hazelly path 
 
 Was rushing by the ruined wa', 
 Hasting to join the sweeping Nith, 
 
 Whose roarings seem'd to rise and fa'. 
 
 The cauld blae North was streaming forth 
 
 Her lights wi' hissing, eerie din, 
 Athort the lift they start and shift, 
 
 Like Fortune's favours, tint as win. 
 
 But with the exception of this fine commencement to 
 a poem with a somewhat lame and impotent conclusion, 
 he does not do justice to the broad river "worthy of 
 heroic song" that flowed past the home of his later 
 
350 POETS' COUNTRY 
 
 years. He leaves unsung the great castle of Caerlave- 
 rock and Sweetheart Abbey with its touching story of 
 wifely devotion. The most famous poems that he com- 
 posed in Dumfriesshire have their scenes laid far away in 
 the land of Kyle. It was in the farmyard of Ellisland 
 that he consecrated a night of memories and sighs to his 
 parting from Highland Mary by the banks of the Ayr, 
 lying sheltered by a cornstack from the cold wind, 
 until the lessening ray of the morning star greeted the 
 dawn. Two other beautiful love-songs composed in 
 Nithsdale, Flow gently, sweet A/ton, and Ye Banks and 
 Braes o Bonnie Doon, prove that the poet in imagina- 
 tion was still haunting the rivers of Ayrshire. How 
 clear was the memory of the scenes of his boyhood is 
 shown in the vivid realism of the description of Tarn 
 o' Shanter's ride with its minute local allusions. This 
 masterpiece, composed at Ellisland in the end of 1790, 
 also reveals the deep impression produced many years 
 before in his childish mind by the stories of an old 
 woman called Betty Davidson, who had, he says, " the 
 largest collection in the country of tales and songs 
 concerning devils, ghosts, fairies, brownies, witches, 
 warlocks, spunkies, kelpies, elf -candles, dead -lights, 
 wraiths, apparitions, cantraips, enchanted towers, 
 giants, dragons, and other trumpery. This cultivated 
 the latent seeds of poetry." No doubt Burns was 
 indebted to her for the rich vein of superstition that 
 colours some of his most famous poems. But for 
 Betty Davidson, there would have been no Tarn o' 
 
BURNS 351 
 
 Shanter, and he would have been less able to portray 
 to the life Auld Nickie Ben and the observance of 
 Hallowe'en. 
 
 Burns's appreciation of the beauty of external nature 
 was subject to other than geographical limitations. It 
 is evident that he found little to admire in the sea, the 
 mountain, and the moorland. The beautiful district of 
 Galloway uplands on the borders of Ayrshire, with its 
 rich colours of purple and green, sometimes bright in 
 the sunlight and sometimes softened under the glamour 
 of cloud and mist, he describes as a "track of 
 melancholy, joyless muirs." He never appears to have 
 climbed Cairnsmuir or the Merrick and looked down 
 on the sublime view of lake, mountain, and sea com- 
 manded from their summits. He can dramatically 
 put into the mouth of a Highland girl a regretful 
 farewell to the "mountains high-cover'd with snow," 
 but he himself looked upon the world with the eyes 
 of a tiller of the soil, and, as such, had a natural 
 preference for fertile plains and rivers, which were 
 convenient not only for romantic lovers but also for 
 practical farmers. Tradition had many tales to tell 
 of the ravages of Highland caterans, and the mountains 
 were, even in the end of the eighteenth century, looked 
 upon with hereditary antipathy by the peasants of the 
 Lowlands as the home of " hunger'd Highland boors " 
 naturally inclined to plunder and murder. Burns's 
 insensibility to the beauty of the sea is still more 
 remarkable. At his birthplace he was within easy 
 
352 POETS' COUNTRY 
 
 reach of the shore ; and later, at Mount Oliphant, Loch- 
 lea, and Mossgiel, he could not lift his eyes westward 
 on a clear day without seeing a splendid prospect of 
 the entrance to the Firth of Clyde with the romantic 
 peaks of Arran in the background. But of all this we 
 find nothing in his poetry. Perhaps the only passage 
 indicating that he ever looked on the ocean with plea- 
 sure is in the Vision* where Coila says to him : 
 
 I saw thee seek the sounding shore, 
 Delighted with the dashing roar. 
 
 The poet generally is more inclined to regard the waves 
 of the sea with abhorrence as conspiring with mountain 
 and moorland to separate hearts which are, or ought 
 to be, true to each other, 
 
 Tho' mountains rise and deserts howl, 
 And oceans roar between. 
 
 It has been asserted that Burns had little of that 
 sympathy with the traditional and historical which 
 invests Scott's descriptions of mountain and valley with 
 the romance of the past. It would be more true to 
 say that lack of accurate historical knowledge pre- 
 vented Burns from representing the past in his imagina- 
 tion as vividly and completely as his great successor 
 does. Therefore his historical reminiscences are almost 
 entirely confined to the best known characters of 
 Scottish history, namely, Bruce, Wallace, Queen Mary, 
 and the Young Chevalier. Even in the case of the 
 Battle of Bannockburn he evidently makes the strange 
 
THE RIVER AYR AT FAILFORD 
 
 The Ayr at Failford at its junction with the Fail is 
 popularly supposed to have been the last parting-place of 
 Burns and Highland Mary : 
 
 Ayr, gurgling, kiss'd his pebbled shore, 
 O'erhung with wild woods, thick 'ning green ; 
 
 The fragrant birch, and hawthorn hoar, 
 Twin'd am'rous round the raptur'd scene. 
 
 Seeing all these features there, I painted them faithfully, 
 believing they are still as Burns saw them. p g ^y. 
 
BURNS 353 
 
 mistake of supposing that the defeated English king 
 was Edward I., for otherwise he would hardly have 
 given him in his verse the not very appropriate epithet 
 of "proud," and would certainly not have called him, as 
 he does in a letter, a " cruel but able usurper." Never- 
 theless, as far as his knowledge allowed him, Burns took 
 the keenest interest and pride in the " ancient glory " of 
 his native land. " Scottish scenes," he wrote to Mrs. 
 Dunlop, "and Scottish story are the themes I could 
 wish to sing." He longed to be able " to make leisurely 
 pilgrimages through Caledonia ; to sit on the fields 
 of her battles ; to wander on the romantic banks of her 
 rivers ; and to muse by the stately towers or venerable 
 ruins, once the honored abodes of her heroes." In his 
 boyhood he pored over the story of Wallace. One fine 
 summer day, after reading of the hero's retreat to 
 Leglen wood, he walked there " with as much enthusiasm 
 as ever pilgrim did to Loretto," and explored every 
 den and dell, while his heart " glowed with a wish to 
 be able to make a song on him in some measure equal 
 to his merit." This aspiration he cherished to the end 
 of his life, but never realised. Later in life, while riding 
 across a Galloway moor between Castle Douglas and 
 Gatehouse in a violent storm, the tune that, according 
 to tradition, inspired the martial ardour of the Scots 
 at Bannockburn rang through his brain. The tumult 
 of the tempest passing through the alembic of the 
 poet's mind, blended with the old battle strain, was 
 transformed into heroic harmony, and the result was 
 
 2A 
 
354 POETS' COUNTRY 
 
 the grand war lyric that thrills the heart of Greater 
 Scotland in every quarter of the world. In two of 
 Burns's dramatic lyrics the return of spring is pathetically 
 described from the point of view of the exiled Prince 
 Charlie and the imprisoned Queen of Scots. But the 
 sentimental Jacobitism which inspired these songs 
 prevented Burns from casting a religious halo round 
 the moorlands stained with the blood of those who 
 " rolled the psalm to wintry skies." Indeed, he glorifies 
 with the name of martyr, not the Covenanters who were 
 shot for worshipping on mountain and clough, but the 
 instrument of the Government that oppressed them, 
 
 Great Dundee, who smiling victory led, 
 And fell a martyr in her arms. 
 
 Burns, in spite of his moral failings, was full of deep 
 religious feeling, but he was too broad-minded to feel 
 much sympathy for any form of sectarian bigotry, how- 
 ever much it might be glorified by courage and devotion. 
 Therefore he found the sanctity of religion brooding 
 over the ruins of Lincluden Abbey rather than where 
 the whaups cry above the tombs of the Covenanters, 
 who had suffered martyrdom on the moorland moss 
 at the hands of Claverhouse and Grierson of Lag. 
 
 One sentiment that pervades Burns's view of Nature 
 is that which is called by Ruskin the pathetic fallacy. 
 He continually looks to the external world for sympathy 
 with human joy and sorrow, and, when he fails to find such 
 sympathy, reproaches Nature for her callous insensibility. 
 
BURNS 355 
 
 Thus in his Elegy on Captain Matthew Henderson he 
 calls upon universal Nature to lament over the death of 
 his friend. Milton contents himself with inviting all 
 the flowers that sad embroidery wear to mourn for 
 Lycidas. Burns appeals not only to his favourite 
 flowers, but also to the groves, the burns, beasts and 
 birds, rivers, forest, hills, plains, sun, moon, stars, and 
 the four seasons to join in his mourning, and many of 
 the stanzas contain exquisite miniatures of the various 
 objects enumerated. During the golden hours of the 
 day spent with Highland Mary on the banks of the 
 Ayr, Nature, animate and inanimate, was infected with 
 the spirit of love, so that 
 
 Ayr, gurgling, kiss'd his pebbled shore, 
 
 O'erhung with wild woods, thick'ning green ; 
 
 The fragrant birch, and hawthorn hoar, 
 Twin'd am'rous round the raptur'd scene ; 
 
 The flow'rs sprang wanton to be prest, 
 The birds sang love on every spray. 
 
 On the other hand, the love-lorn lady on the Banks 
 and Braes of Bonnie Doon is tortured by the joyous 
 songs of the birds. The same painful contrast is ex- 
 pressed in Strathallaris Lament and in another song 
 which ends with an appeal to Winter to come and put 
 an end to the jarring discord between the joy of Nature 
 and the sadness of a human heart : 
 
 Come, Winter, with thine angry howl, 
 
 And raging bend the naked tree ; 
 Thy gloom will soothe my cheerless soul, 
 
 When Nature all is sad like me ! 
 
 2A2 
 
356 POETS' COUNTRY 
 
 In like manner in his dirge on Winter the poet, writ- 
 ing in his own person, exclaims : 
 
 The tempest's howl, it soothes my soul, 
 
 My griefs it seems to join ; 
 The leafless trees my fancy please, 
 
 Their fate resembles mine ! 
 
 And in the lines on the death of Robert Dun das, the 
 dark waste hills, the brown unsightly plains, are con- 
 genial scenes that soothe his mournful state of mind. 
 In Man was made to Mourn an appropriate back- 
 ground for the melancholy reflections is provided by the 
 bare fields and forests through which sweeps the surly 
 blast of chill November. In the Jolly Beggars, on the 
 contrary, the frost, hail, and cold north wind intensify by 
 contrast the reckless merriment of the randie, gangrel 
 bodies assembled in Poosie-Nansie's inn. So also the 
 shepherd who has spent the wet, wintry day 
 
 Behind yon hills where Stinchar flows 
 'Mang moors and mosses many, O, 
 
 looks forward with keener zest to his evening visit to 
 his Nannie. The angry sough of the chill, wild wintry 
 wind enhances the pleasure that the cottar, returning 
 on Saturday night, takes in his " wee bit ingle, blinkin' 
 bonnilie." 
 
 In forming an estimate of Burns's treatment of 
 natural scenery we must always remember that he is 
 not primarily a descriptive poet. Although his soul 
 was deeply affected by the beauty of external Nature, 
 
BURNS 357 
 
 he seldom or never describes it for its own sake, but, 
 like Homer and the Greek tragedians, subordinates 
 Nature to the fortunes and passions of men and women. 
 Therefore we do not find in his works the long, 
 elaborate pictures of natural scenery by which Words- 
 worth, Byron, and Scott reveal their attitude towards 
 Nature. To fully appreciate Burns's wonderful power 
 of graphic description we have to gather together the 
 many references to external Nature scattered through 
 his songs and other poems. This power is perhaps 
 most brilliantly manifested in single lines and even 
 single words that illuminate the background of his 
 poems with the vividness and startling suddenness of 
 lightning flashes. There is a magic touch that defies 
 critical analysis in his word-pictures of the "glen of 
 green breckan wi' the burn stealing through the lang 
 yellow broom," "that hour o' night's black arch the 
 key-stane," the "moors red-brown wi' heather bells," 
 "the histie stibble field," "the winter's sleety dribble 
 and cranreuch cauld," the daisy "glinting forth amid 
 the storm," the "glowrin' trout," the frost that "crept, 
 gently - crusting, o'er the glittering stream," and 
 "yellow Autumn wreathed with nodding corn." 
 Burns prided himself most on his "manners-painting 
 strain." We may say with truth, borrowing the strong 
 metaphor of Bacon, that no lyrics ever written were 
 more thoroughly drenched in the flesh and blood of 
 human passion than those of Burns. Nevertheless in 
 his poetry we find not only the life and character of his 
 
358 POETS' COUNTRY 
 
 countrymen and countrywomen, but in the background 
 a perfect picture of the rural scenery of lowland 
 Scotland executed with the loving fidelity of a native 
 of the soil. Above all his other characteristics Burns 
 was a patriotic Scotsman. He loved his country with 
 all his heart and with all his soul and with all his 
 strength. It is this that has made him so dear to his 
 countrymen and a bond of union to them in every 
 quarter of the globe. Although Scotsmen in pursuit 
 of fame and fortune and higher objects travel far from 
 the land where their forefathers sleep, 
 
 tamen istuc mens animusque 
 Fert et amat spatiis obstantia rumpere claustra. 
 
 In the poetry of Burns they find as true and vivid 
 a picture of their native land as genius can produce 
 through the witchery of verse. Its magic charm upon 
 their minds is heightened by the fact that most of it 
 is written not, as Scott's masterpieces of description are, 
 in the " fine English " of England, but in " guid braid 
 Scotch," that recalls to memory the voices of their 
 mothers, nurses, and school -companions. Thus it is 
 that the Scottish exile on the torrid plains of India or 
 the icy gold-fields of Alaska cannot open his Burns 
 without being immediately transported in imagination 
 to the home of his childhood, and to the glen where 
 perchance long ago as a barefooted child he "paidl'd 
 i' the burn, and pu'd the go wans fine." 
 
INDEX 
 
 Abbotsford, 93 
 
 Adieu, The, 54 
 
 Akenside, M., 142, 172 
 
 Alastor, 105, 253 
 
 Aldborough, 239, 242 
 
 Aldworth, 263 
 
 Alfoxden, 33, 72 
 
 Alice du Clos, 81 
 
 Allan Bank, 41 
 
 Amaebcean Eclogues, 209 
 
 Amwell, 128, 144, 208 
 
 Ancient Mariner, 75 
 
 Anima Poetae, 80 
 
 Animated Nature, 181, 291, 293 
 
 Ankerwyke Priory, 129, 131 
 
 Antony and Cleopatra, 8, 17 
 
 Arcades, 120 
 
 Arden, forest of, 8, 9 
 
 Armstrong, J., 142, 172 
 
 Art of Preserving Health, The, 172, 
 
 Ashiestiel, 92 
 
 Audley Court, 263 
 
 Austin, Lady, 223 
 
 Autumn, 248 
 
 Avernus, Lake, 98 
 
 Avon, river, 8 
 
 Ayr, river, 345 
 
 Beachy Head, 128 
 
 Beattie, J., 143, 201 
 
 Biographia Literaria, 75 
 
 " Boatswain," Byron's dog, 59 
 
 Borderers, The, 31, 32 
 
 Border hills, 92 
 
 Borough, The, 241, 244, 245, 247 
 
 Boswell, J., 290, 293 
 
 Bowles, W. L., 145, 211 
 
 Brent, river, 52 
 
 Brockley Coomb, 69 
 
 Brook, The (Coleridge), 75 
 
 Brook, The (Tennyson), 256 
 
 Brougham Castle, 29 
 
 173 
 
 Browning, Robert, 51 
 
 Burgage Manor, 53 
 
 Burns, R. , 340 ; his love-songs, 350 ; 
 external nature, 351 ; patriotism, 352- 
 358 ; descriptive power, 357 
 
 Burns country, 340 
 
 Byron, Lord, 46 ; and the Highlands, 
 47 ; first sight of Newstead Abbey, 
 49 ; at Dulwich Academy, at Harrow, 
 at Cambridge, 52 ; Fugitive Pieces 
 and Poems on Various Occasions, 53 ; 
 Hours of Idleness, 54 ; Newstead 
 Abbey, 56 ; last visit to, 61 ; Byron 
 and Wordsworth, 62 ; and Nature, 
 63 ; 145, 149, 260 
 
 Byron's Pool, 53 
 
 Campbell, T., 178 
 
 Canterbury Tales, 285, 288 
 
 Cauldshields Loch, 93 
 
 Chambers, SirW., 195 
 
 Chambers, Sir W., Epistle to, 196 
 
 Charles, Prince, 88, 95 
 
 Chase, The, 153 
 
 Chaucer, G., 274; at Eltham, 283; 
 England in his time, 284 ; 288 
 
 Chichester, 182 
 
 Childe Harold, 52, 62 
 
 Christabel, 75, 76, 77 
 
 Citizen of the World, The, 294 
 
 Claremont, 128, 153 
 
 Clifford Chambers, 13 
 
 Cockermouth Castle, 26 
 
 Coleridge, S. T., 31, 33, 37 ; and The 
 Friend, 42 ; and the country, 66 ; and 
 The Watchman, 70 ; and Nature, 69- 
 71, 73, 82; at Nether Stowey, 71 ; in 
 Germany, 77 ; in the Lakes, 78 ; 145, 
 149 
 
 Collins, W., 142, 145, 148, 177, 181 ; 
 Gray on, 185 
 
 Colnbrook, 123 
 
 859 
 
360 
 
 POETS 1 COUNTRY 
 
 Comus, 119, 120 
 
 Conway Castle, 265 
 
 Cooper, J. G., 142 
 
 Cooper's Hill, 119, 127, 128; view from, 
 129 
 
 Cooper's Hill, 130 ; its position in 
 regard to Nature, 132 ; 140, 151 
 
 Country Walk, The, 167, 169 
 
 Cowley, A., 133; his sensibility to 
 Nature, 134, 136; his Essays, 131. ; 
 Pope on, 137 
 
 Cowper, W., 143, 144, 215 
 
 Crabbe, G., 145, 146; his character- 
 istics, 251 
 
 Crookham or Crowcombe, 36 
 
 Crowe, W., 145, 213 
 
 Cuckoo, The, 41 
 
 Cyder, 140, 153 
 
 Dawn, 15, 16 
 
 Denham, Sir J., 127 
 
 De Quincey, T., 39 
 
 Derwent, river, 30 
 
 Descriptive Poetry of the eighteenth 
 
 century, 140, 145, 147 
 Descriptive Poetry of the nineteenth 
 
 century, 147 
 Deserted Village, 143, 178 ; Macaulay 
 
 on, 178 ; 293, 296 
 Dickens, C., 95 
 Disraeli, B., 303 
 Disraeli, I., 303 
 
 Distant Prospect of Eton, 142, 185, 188 
 Dodsley, 142 
 Don Juan, 56 
 " Dora's field," 44 
 Dove Cottage, 38 
 Dover Cliff, 1, 4, 20, 24 
 Dryburgh Abbey, 99 
 Dryden, J., 133; his insensibility to 
 
 Nature, 138 ; his character as a poet, 
 
 139 
 
 Dulwich Grove, 50 
 Dunwick, 244 
 Dyer, J., 141, 145, 166; Wordsworth 
 
 on, 166 
 
 Eamont, river, 29, 30 
 Eastbury, 162 
 Edge Hill, 128, 200 
 Edgware, 289 
 Edgware Road, 289, 290 
 Elbingerode, 77 
 Elegiac Sonnets, 210 
 Elegy in a Country Churchyard, 142, 
 155, 185, 188 
 
 Elegy on W. Hervey, 134 
 
 Eloisa to Abelard, 152 
 
 Elthara Palace, 276, 285-288 
 
 Enfield, 301; the church, 304; the 
 
 woods, 308 
 
 English Garden, 143, 194 
 English Poetry, History o/(T. Warton), 
 
 lyy 
 
 Enoch Arden, 269, 272 
 Enthusiast (Warton), 143, 197 
 Enthusiast (Whitehead), 144 
 Epistle from Copenhagen, 153 
 Epistle from Italy, 1 78 
 Evening, Ode to, 142, 182 
 Evening Star, The, 67 
 Evening Walk, The, 29 
 Excursion, The (Mallet), 141, 175 
 Excursion, The (Wordsworth), 31, 32, 
 
 34, 42, 253 
 
 Faerie Queene, 318 
 Falconer, W., 142, 191 
 Fancy, Ode to, 197 
 Farringford, 254, 261 
 Fleece, The, 141, 166, 170 
 Flowers, 10 
 
 Forest Hill, 119, 121, 126 
 Fourteen Sonnets, 211 
 Friend, The, 42 
 Froissart, 277, 281 
 Froissart in Britain, 281 
 
 Garden of Boccaccio, 81 
 
 Gardener's Daughter, The, 268 
 
 Garth, Sir S., 128, 153 
 
 Gay, J., 140, 153 
 
 Geraint and Enid, 257, 265 
 
 Glencoe, 95 
 
 Glennie, Dr., 50 
 
 Goldsmith, O., 143, 177; and Nature, 
 
 181 ; 289, 290 ; at Hyde House Farm, 
 
 292 ; 293, 298 
 Goody Blake, 32 
 Grainger, J., 142, 175 
 Granta, A Medley, 53 
 Grasmere Rectory, 42 
 Gray, T., 142, 148 ; on Green's poetry, 
 
 157 ; on Thomson's, 165 ; 177 ; on 
 
 Collins and Warton, 185 ; 185, 196 
 Greater London, 291 
 Green, M., 142, 155 ; Gray's opinion 
 
 of, 157 
 Grongar Hill, 128, 141, 167 
 
 Hagley, 161 
 Hamlet, The, 199 
 
INDEX 
 
 361 
 
 Hampton, Lucy, 13 
 
 Harrow, 51 
 
 Hawkshead, 26 
 
 Heathlands, 243, 244 
 
 Henry VIII., 129 ; and Anne Boleyn, 
 
 130 
 
 Highland Clans, 94 
 Highland Mary, 346 
 Highlands, 47, 48, 94, 97 
 Hints from Horace, 53 
 Holford Wood, 75 
 Holywell Glen, 260 
 Hop-Garden, The, 142 
 Horton, 119, 121, 126 
 Humphrey Clinker, 298 
 Hundred Years' War, effects, of, 278 
 Hurdis, J., 214 
 Hyde House Farm, 291, 297 
 Hymn before Sunrise, 78 
 Hyperion, 310 
 
 UPenseroso, 119, 120, 124, 125 
 In Memoriam, 255, 259, 270, 272 
 Irish music, 333 
 Islington, 294 
 
 Jago, R., 144, 206 
 
 James I., 95 
 
 James VI., 95 
 
 James VIII. (Pretender), 95 
 
 Johnson, S., on Cooper's Hill, 127, 133 ; 
 
 146 ; on T. Warton, 201, 293 
 Jones, Sir W., 119 
 
 Katrine, Loch, 96 
 
 Keats, J., Shelley's lament for, 115; 
 
 145, 146, 149, 300 ; his early reading, 
 
 307 
 
 Keepsake, The, 78 
 Kensington Garden, 128 
 Kentish Town, 295 
 Kilve, river, 76 
 Kubla Khan, 75 
 
 La Belle Dame Sans Merci, 310 
 Lac de Gaube, 263 
 Lady of the Lake, 96 
 L'Allegro, 119, 120, 123, 125 
 Lamb, Charles, 294 
 Langhorne, 128, 143, 204 
 Lay of the Last Minstrel, 93 
 Leasowes, The, 174 
 Leeds (Kent), 281 
 Legend of Montrose, 94 
 Le'ny, Pass of, 93, 94 
 Leven Water, 176 
 
 Lewesdon Hill, 128, 145, 213 
 
 Lightning, 20 
 
 Lime-Tree Bower, 74 
 
 Lines to my Sister, 36 
 
 Lissoy, 178 
 
 Locksley Hall, 259 
 
 London, view of, from Cooper's Hill, 
 
 130; 297 
 
 London Bridge, 20, 68, 274 
 Long Story, The, 185, 190 
 Lord of the Isles, 97 
 Lover's Journey, The, 242 
 Lover's Resolution, The, 78 
 Lover's Tale, The, 258, 260 
 Lowes, Loch of the, 91 
 Lycidas, 125 
 Lyrical Ballads, 35, 140 
 Lyttelton, Lord, 143 
 
 Mablethorpe, 257 
 
 Magna Charta Island, 129 
 
 Magni, Villa, 112 
 
 Mallet, D., 175 
 
 Manfred, 62 
 
 Mariana, 257 
 
 Marmion, 86, 89, 93 
 
 Marriage of Geralnt, The, 265 
 
 Mary, Queen of Scots, 95 
 
 Mason, W., 143, 194 
 
 Maud, 260, 261, 262, 272 
 
 May Queen, The, 259 
 
 Melrose, 93 
 
 Memory, Ode to, 255, 257 
 
 Middleham Castle, 265 
 
 Miller's Daughter, The, 261 
 
 Milton, J., and Nature, 116; his 
 
 memory, 117 ; at Horton, 121 
 Minchmuir, 93 
 Minstrel, The, 201 
 Mitford, M. R., 210 
 Moonlight, 67, 247 
 Moore, T., 325 ; his poetry, 337 
 Mountains and mountain scenery, 21, 
 
 33 
 Muston Parsonage, 248 
 
 Napier, Lord, 92 
 Needless Alarm, 233 
 Nether Stowey, 33, 71 
 Newstead Abbey, 49, 56 
 Newton, Rev. J., 216 
 Night, 17 
 Nocturnal Reverie, The, 141 
 
 Old Dover Road, 276 
 Old Kent Road, 276 
 
362 
 
 POETS' COUNTRY 
 
 Olney, 215 
 Onomatopoeia, 271 
 Otter, river, 69 
 Ottery St. Mary, 68 
 Oxford, 128 
 
 Pains of Sleep, 77 
 
 Paradise Lost, 117, 119 
 
 Paradise Regained, 117 
 
 Parker, Margaret, 50 
 
 Parnell, T., 141, 154 
 
 Passions, Ode on the, 181 
 
 Penrith, 28 
 
 Penrith Beacon, 29 
 
 Penshurst, 133, 134, 317, 321 
 
 Penshurst, 133 
 
 Persian Eclogues, 181 
 
 Perth, 94 
 
 Perth, Fair Maid of, 94 
 
 Philips, A., 140, 153 
 
 Philips, J., 140, 153 
 
 Pine-tree, 5 
 
 Pixies, Songs of the, 69 
 
 Pleasures of Imagination, Tlw, 172 
 
 " Poets' Corner," 288 
 
 Pope, A., on Cooper's Hill, 127; on 
 Cowley, 137 ; 140, 150 ; at Binfield, 
 150 ; his study of Nature, 151 ; 194, 
 197 
 
 Pope, Essay on (J. Warton's), 197 
 
 Posthumous Tales, 250 
 
 Powell, Mary, 120 
 
 Power of Harmony, The, 142 
 
 Prelude, The, 25, 27-28 
 
 Princess, The, 263, 264, 271 
 
 Prisoner of Chillon, The, 62 
 
 Prolusiones Oratorios, 123 
 
 Quantock Hills, 37, 76 
 Queen Mob, 103 
 
 Racedown Lodge, 30 
 
 Rainbow, 18 
 
 Rasselas, 146 
 
 Recollections of Love, 81 
 
 Reflections on Place of Retirement, 70 
 
 Remorse, 73 
 
 Retirement, 232 
 
 Revolt of Islam, 107, 253 
 
 Richard II., 277 
 
 Rob Roy, 96 
 
 Robertson, Mary, 47 
 
 Romaunt of the Rose, 284, 285 
 
 " Rose, The" (Chaucer's house), 288 
 
 Rotha, river, 30 
 
 Ruins of Rome, 167, 170 
 
 Runnymede, 129 
 
 Rural Elegance, 175 
 
 Rural Sports, 153 
 
 Ruskin, J., on Shakespeare, 5 ; 51 
 
 Rydal Mount, 28, 43 
 
 Saddleback, 78 
 
 St. James's Park, 133 
 
 St. Mary's Loch, 89 
 
 Sandyknowe, 84 
 
 Savage, R., 140,158 
 
 Sea FeU, 79 
 
 Scott, J., 144, 146, 208 
 
 Scott, W., 40; and Nature, 83; and 
 Scotch rivers, 84 ; and Edinburgh, 
 84 ; his interest in the past, 84-88, 95 ; 
 and Border scenery, 88 ; and High- 
 lands, 89, 94 ; his burial in Dryburgh 
 Abbey, 99 ; contrasted with Shelley, 
 100 ; 145, 149 
 
 Scottish rivers, 83, 345 
 
 Sea, the, 21, 246, 258 
 
 Sea Dreams, 262 
 
 Sea-gulls, 246 
 
 Seasons, The, 141, 164 
 
 Shakespeare, W. , 1 ; his eye for Nature, 
 2, 24 ; and Stratford, 3 ; sports, 6 ; 
 flowers, 10 ; birds, 14 ; dawn, 14 ; 
 sunset, 16; night, 17; rainbow, 18; 
 storm, 19 ; lightning, 20 ; mountain 
 scenery, 21 ; the sea, 21 
 
 Sharp, Archbishop, 85 
 
 Shelley, P. B., and Nature, 100; 
 his youthful reading, 101 ; English 
 landscape by, 103 ; his descriptive 
 power, 110 ; at Villa Magni, 112 ; his 
 lament for Keats, 115 ; 145, 148, 149 
 
 Shenstone, W., 143; Johnson on, 174, 
 175 
 
 Shepherd's Calendar, 317 
 
 Shipwreck, The, 143, 191 
 
 Shole Bay, 262 
 
 Shottery, 9, 13 
 
 Sidney, Sir P., 315 
 
 Simon Lee, 34 
 
 Skene, Loch, 91 
 
 Skiddaw, 26 
 
 Slaughden Quay, 240 
 
 Sleep and Poetry, 146 
 
 Smailholm Tower, 84, 85 
 
 Smart, C., 142 
 
 Smith, Charlotte, 210 
 
 Smollett, T., 176 
 
 Solitude, 175 
 
 Somersby, 254, 255 
 
 Somerville, W., 153 
 
INDEX 
 
 363 
 
 Sonnets (Bowles), 145 
 
 Sonnets (Shakespeare), 13 
 
 Southwark, 275 
 
 Spenser, E., 288, 313 
 
 Spleen, The, 155 
 
 Sports, 6 
 
 Spring, Ode on, 185, 188 
 
 Stewart of Invernahyle, 96 
 
 Stockworth Mill, 261 
 
 Stoke Manor, 190 
 
 Stoke Poges, 185, 186 
 
 Storm, 19 
 
 Stow, J., 314 
 
 Stowe, 162 
 
 Stratford, 4, 6, 13 
 
 Strean, Dr., on Deserted Village, 179 
 
 Studley Park, 128, 143, 204 
 
 Sugar-Cane, The, 142, 175 
 
 Sunset, 16 
 
 Superstitions in the Highlands, Ode on, 
 
 184 
 Swift, J., on Cooper's Hill, 127 
 
 " Tabard, The," 275 
 
 Tales in Verse, 243, 248 
 
 Tales of the Hall, 248, 249 
 
 Task, The, 143, 217, 220, 225, 236 
 
 Tennyson, A., 145, 146, 148, 149; his 
 range and method, 253 ; and Lincoln- 
 shire, 255 ; his exactness of detail, 
 266 ; his onomatopoeia, 271 ; his 
 symbolism, 272 
 
 Thames, river, 20, 68 ; from Cooper's 
 Hill, 131 ; Pope on, 151, 319 
 
 Thomas the Rhymer, 87 
 
 Thomson, J., 141, 142, 145, 148, 159 ; 
 his house at Richmond, 162 ; Gray 
 on, 165 
 
 Thomson, Ode on the Death of, 182, 183 
 
 Tickell, T., 140, 153 
 
 Tilbury, 320 
 
 Tintern Abbey, 38 
 
 Tiptoft, Lady, 306 
 
 Town End, 38 
 
 Traveller, The, 143, 177 
 Trossachs, 96 
 Trumpington, 261 
 Tweed, river, 83, 93 
 
 Unwin, Mr. and Mrs., 216 
 Upton, 189 
 
 Vicar of Wakefield, The, 294 
 Village, The, 145, 243, 251 
 Virgil, 140 
 
 Waller, E., his indifference to Nature, 
 133 
 
 Walter, Cuming, 260 
 
 Wanderer, The (Savage), 158 
 
 Wandering Jew, The, 102 
 
 Warton, J., 143 ; Gray on, 185 ; 197 
 
 Warton, T., 144, 198 ; his works, 199 
 
 Warwick House, 154 
 
 Watchman, The, 70 
 
 Watling Street, 289 
 
 Weston, 144, 215, 218 
 
 Whirl-Blast, The, 35 
 
 Whitehead, W., 143 
 
 William and Margaret, 175 
 
 Winchester, Lady Anne, 141 
 
 Windsor Castle, 128 
 
 Windsor Forest, 128, 140, 151, 153, 178 
 
 Witch of Atlas, The, 109 
 
 Woods, 74 
 
 Wordsworth, Bishop, 43 
 
 Wordsworth, Dorothy, 29, 30, 32, 35, 
 44, 72, 76 
 
 Wordsworth, W., 1; his homes, 25; 
 Penrith, 28 ; Racedown, 30 ; Alfox- 
 den, 33-37, 72; Dove Cottage or 
 Town End, 38 ; Allan Bank, 41 ; 
 Grasmere Rectory, 42; Rydal Mount, 
 43 ; marriage, 41 ; death of children, 
 43 ; and Coleridge, 75 ; 143, 145, 148, 
 149 ; on Dyer's Fleece, 166 
 
 Yarrow, Dowie Dens of, 85 
 Young Friend, To a, 71 
 
 THE END 
 
 Printed by R. & R. CLARK, LIMITED, Edinburgh. 
 
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