er lover, whose "sugared sonnets among his private
friends" begin about 1750 and reach the number of fifty.

[28] "Life of West."

[29] Lloyd, in "The Progress of Envy," defines _wimpled_ as "hung down";
and Akenside, in "The Virtuoso," employs the ending _en_ for the singular
verb!

[30] Cf. "And as they looked, they found their horror grew."
--Shenstone.

"And still they gazed, and still the wonder grew."
--Goldsmith.

"The noises intermixed, which thence resound,
Do learning's little tenement betray."
--Shenstone.

"There in his noisy mansion, skilled to rule." etc.
--Goldsmith.

[31] The poem was projected, and perhaps partly written, fourteen or
fifteen years earlier.

[32] _Cf_. Tennyson's "land in which it seemed always afternoon."--_The
Lotus Eaters_.

[33] Mickle's authorship of this song has been disputed in favor of one
Jean Adams, a poor Scotch school-mistress, whose poems were printed at
Glasgow in 1734.

[34] Rev. John Sim's "Life of Mickle" in "Mickle's Poetical Works," 1806,
p. xi.

[35] _Cf._ Joseph Warton's "Essay on Pope," Vol. II. p. 35. "It has been
fashionable of late to imitate Spenser; but the likeness of most of these
copies hath consisted rather in using a few of his ancient expressions
than in catching his real manner. Some, however, have been executed with
happiness, and with attention to that simplicity, that tenderness of
sentiment and those little touches of nature that constitute Spenser's
character. I have a peculiar pleasure in mentioning two of them, 'The
Schoolmistress' by Mr. Shenstone, and 'The Education of Achilles' by Mr.
Bedingfield. And also, Dr. Beattie's charming 'Minstrel.' To these must
be added that exquisite piece of wild and romantic imagery, Thomson's
'Castle of Indolence.'"

[36] Byron, to be sure, began his first canto with conscious Spenserian.
He called his poem a "romaunt," and his valet, poor Fletcher, a "stanch
yeoman," and peppered his stanzas thinly with _sooths_ and _wights_ and_
whiloms_, but he gave over this affectation in the later cantos and made
no further excursions into the Middle Ages.

[37] Pope's, "Snatch a grace beyond the reach of art."
--_Essay on Criticism_.

[38] "History of England," Vol. II. p. 739.

CHAPTER IV.

The Landscape Poets

There is nothing necessarily romantic in literature that concerns itself
with r