t lesson on the absurdity of didactic poetry. Especially
harrowing are the author's struggles to be poetic while describing the
various kinds of fences designed to keep sheep out of his inclosures.

"Ingrateful sure,
When such the theme, becomes the poet's task:
Yet must he try by modulation meet
Of varied cadence and selected phrase
Exact yet free, without inflation bold,
To dignify that theme."

Accordingly he dignified his theme by speaking of a net as the
"sportsman's hempen toils," and of a gun as the

"--fell tube
Whose iron entrails hide the sulphurous blast
Satanic engine!"

When he names an ice-house, it is under a form of conundrum:

"--the structure rude where Winter pounds,
In conic pit his congelations hoar,
That Summer may his tepid beverage cool
With the chill luxury."

This species of verbiage is the earmark of all eighteenth-century poetry
and poets; not only of those who used the classic couplet, but equally of
the romanticizing group who adopted blank verse. The best of them are
not free from it, not even Gray, not even Collins; and it pervades
Wordsworth's earliest verses, his "Descriptive Sketches" and "Evening
Walk" published in 1793. But perhaps the very worst instance of it is in
Dr. Armstrong's "Economy of Love," where the ludicrous contrast between
the impropriety of the subject and the solemn pomp of the diction amounts
almost to _bouffe_.

In emulation of "The Seasons" Mason introduced a sentimental love
story--Alcander and Nerina--into his third book. He informs his readers
(book II. 34-78) that, in the reaction against straight alleys, many
gardeners had gone to an extreme in the use of zigzag meanders; and he
recommends them to follow the natural curves of the footpaths which the
milkmaid wears across the pastures "from stile to stile," or which

--"the scudding hare
Draws to her dew-sprent seat o'er thymy heaths."

The prose commentary on Mason's poem, by W. Burgh,[34] asserts that the
formal style of garden had begun to give way about the commencement of
the eighteenth century, though the new fashion had but very lately
attained to its perfection. Mason mentions Pope as a champion of the
true taste,[35] but the descriptions of his famous villa at Twickenham,
with its grotto, thickets, and artificial mounds, hardly suggest to the
modern reader a very successful