When Fate extends its gathering gripe,
Fall off like fruit grown fully ripe,
Quit a worn being without pain,
Perhaps to blossom soon again.

Thus, thus I steer my bark, and sail
On even keel with gentle gale;
At helm I make my reason sit,

My crew of passions all submit.

If dark and blustering prove some nights,
Philosophy puts forth her lights;
Experience holds the cautious glass,
To shun the breakers, as I pass,
And frequent throws the wary lead,
To see what dangers may be hid:
And once in seven years I'm seen
At Bath or Tunbridge, to careen.
Though pleased to see the dolphins play,
I mind my compass and my way.
With store sufficient for relief,
And wisely still prepared to reef,
Nor wanting the dispersive bowl
Of cloudy weather in the soul,
I make (may heav'n propitious send
Such wind and weather to the end)
Neither becalmed, nor over-blown,
Life's voyage to the world unknown.

ON BARCLAY'S APOLOGY FOR THE QUAKERS.

These sheets primæval doctrines yield, Where revelation is reveal'd;

Soul-phlegm from literal feeding bred,

Systems lethargic to the head

They purge, and yield a diet thin,

That turns to gospel-chyle within.

Truth sublimate may here be seen
Extracted from the parts terrene.
In these is shewn, how men obtain
What of Prometheus poets feign:
To scripture-plainness dress is brought,
And speech, apparel to the thought.
They hiss from instinct at red coats,
And war, whose work is cutting throats,
Forbid, and press the law of love :
Breathing the spirit of the dove.
Lucrative doctrines they detest,
As manufactured by the priest ;
And throw down turnpikes, where we pay
For stuff, which never mends the way;
And tithes, a Jewish tax, reduce,
And frank the gospel for our use.
They sable standing armies break,
But the militia useful make:

Since all unhired may preach and pray,
Taught by these rules as well as they;
Rules, which, when truths themselves reveal,
Bid us to follow what we feel.

Well-natured, happy shade, forgive! Like you I think, but cannot live. Thy scheme requires the world's contempt, That, from dependence life exempt ;

And constitution fram'd so strong,

This world's worst climate cannot wrong.
Not such my lot, not Fortune's brat,
I live by pulling off the hat;
Compelled by station every hour
To bow to images of power;
And in life's busy scenes immersed,
See better things, and do the worst.

Eloquent Want, whose reasons sway,
And make ten thousand truths give way,

While I your scheme with pleasure trace,
Draws near, and stares me in the face.
Consider well your state, she cries,
Like others kneel, that you may rise;
Hold doctrines, by no scruples vexed,
To which preferment is annexed,
Nor madly prove, where all depends,
Idolatry upon your friends.

See, how you like my rueful face,
Such you must wear, if out of place.
Cracked is your brain to turn recluse
Without one farthing out at use.

They, who have lands, and safe bank-stock,
With faith so founded on a rock,
May give a rich invention ease,
And construe scripture how they please.
The honoured prophet, that of old
Used heav'n's high counsels to unfold,
Did, more than courier angels, greet

The crows, that brought him bread and meat.

JOHN DYER.

[BORN at Aberglasney, Caermarthenshire, 1698 or 1699; died 1758. Grongar Hill was published 1726; The Ruins of Rome, 1740; The Fleece, 1757-]

'The subject of the Fleece, sir, cannot be made poetical. How can a man write poetically of serges and druggets?' So, in his way of prompt finality, pronounced Johnson the dictator. Yet Akenside, whose poetical aims were sufficiently remote from the common, had declared that he would regulate his opinion of the reigning taste by the fate of Dyer's Fleece; 'if that were ill received he should not think it any longer reasonable to expect fame from excellence.' Gray ventured to brave the elegant disdain of Horace Walpole by affirming that Mr. Dyer has more of poetry in his imagination than almost any of our number.' And one in our own century, of loftier genius than Gray, looking back from his Westmoreland solitudes to his humbler brother poet among the Cambrian hills, has left his protest against the injustice of 'hasty Fame' in her neglect of Dyer:

'Yet pure and powerful minds, hearts meek and still,

A grateful few shall love thy modest Lay,

Long as the shepherd's bleating flock shall stray

O'er naked Snowdon's wide aerial waste,

Long as the thrush shall pipe on Grongar Hill.'

The power of hills was not on Johnson; Fleet Street, with its roar, had more music for his ear than the piping of a thrush or the tender clamour of the mother-ewes.

Grongar Hill, and The Country Walk, appeared in Poetical Miscellanies of the year 1726, the same year that saw the publica

tion of Thomson's Winter. It was the year in which Pope was imagining his goddess of Dulness, as she surveyed through fog her long succession of Grub Street children. From remote Scotland and from Southern Wales came a gift to English poetry which neither Grub Street nor Twickenham could bestow. While Pope, a paladin in ruffles and periwig, was doing to death by exquisite rapier-thrusts the swarming hosts of Dulness, his own position was threatened unawares. That poetry of external nature which was to alienate for a season the general heart from such poetry as his, was already inaugurated by the youthful singers of Winter and of Grongar Hill.

Dyer had been for a time pupil to the painter Richardson, and master and pupil may have laid down their brushes now and again to con over some passage of Milton, whom they both knew well and honoured. In Dyer's love of landscape there is something of the painter's feeling; he loves a wide prospect, diversified by stream and wood, backed by blue aërial steeps solemnly vast'; the effect is heightened if the landscape include the ragged walls of some crumbling castle, or some peasant's smoky nest leaning against its gnarled tree. There remains but to add a human figure or two-an old man white-bearded, in weed ragged and brown, leaning on his spade in the little garden, or a fisher in the willow shade,

'Who with the angle in his hand
Swings the nibbling fry to land.'

The poetry of ruins was not reserved for the romantic second half of the century. It is Dyer who describes

The spacious plain

Of Sarum, spread like ocean's boundless round,
Where solitary Stonehenge grey with moss,
Ruin of ages, nods.'

And Johnson could not withhold his admiration from some lines conceived among Rome's 'dilapidating edifices.'

"The Pilgrim oft

At dead of night, mid his oraison hears
Aghast the voice of time, disparting towers,
Tumbling all precipitate down dash'd,

Rattling around loud thundering to the moon.'