e ill received, he should
not think it any longer reasonable to expect fame from excellence." The
romantic element in Dyer's imagination appears principally in his love of
the mountains and of ancient ruins. Johnson cites with approval a
sentence in "The Ruins of Rome":

"At dead of night,
The hermit oft, midst his orisons, hears
Aghast the voice of Time disparting towers."[49]

These were classic ruins. Perhaps the doctor's sympathy would not have
been so quickly extended to the picture of the moldering Gothic tower in
"Grongar Hill," or of "solitary Stonehenge gray with moss," in "The
Fleece."

[1] W. D. McClintock, "The Romantic and Classical in English Literature,"
_Chautauquan_, Vol. XIV, p. 187.

[2] "Eighteenth Century Literature," p. 207.

[3] "Autumn," lines 645-47.

[4] "Life of Philips."

[5] "Eighteenth Century Literature," p. 221

[6] _Cf_. Chaucer: "And as a bitoure bumbleth in the mire."
--_Wyf of Bathes Tale_.

[7] Phillimore's "Life of Lyttelton," Vol. I, p. 286.

[8] "First Impression of England," p. 135.

[9] Appendix to Preface to the Second Edition of "Lyrical Ballads,"

[10] There are, of course, Miltonic reminiscences in "The Seasons." The
moon's "spotted disk" ("Autumn," 1091) is Milton's "spotty globe." The
apostrophe to light ("Spring" 90-96) borrows its "efflux divine" from
Milton's "bright effluence of bright essence increate" ("Paradise Lost,"
III. 1-12) And _cf._ "Autumn," 783-84:

"--from Imaus stretcht
Athwart the roving Tartar's sullen bounds,"

with P.L., III, 431-32; and "Winter," 1005-08.

"--moors
Beneath the shelter of an icy isle,
While night o'erwhelms the sea."

with P.L., I. 207-208.

[11] "Ward's English Poets," Vol. III. p. 171.

[12] There were originally _three_ damsels in the bathing scene!

[13] It was to this episode that Pope supplied the lines (207-14)

"Thoughtless of beauty, she was beauty's self," etc.,

which form his solitary essay in blank verse. Thomson told Collins that
he took the first hint of "The Seasons" from the names of the
divisions--Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter--in Pope's "Pastorals."

[14] Appendix to Preface to Second Edition of "Lyrical Ballads."

[15] "The Hermit."

[16] "Essay on Man," Epistle I.

[17] "Falsely luxurious, will not man awake?" etc.
--_Summer_, 67.

[18] "Nor, when cold winter keens the bri