ABSTRACT
Of Sir John Denham, Johnson says, in commenting on his Cooper’s Hill, ‘he seems to have 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.’ By author, we presume Dr. Johnson to have intended the introducer or inventor, and in this character we cannot but consider the mind of his country as under great obligations to his genius. The mere natural imagery of landscape, the display of colour and magnificence, ‘the pomp of groves and garniture of fields,’ have been consecrated in poetry from its earliest essays, and its earliest essays are almost coeval with nature itself; but those local interests and affections by which history, or memory, or moral similitudes, endear and animate particular scenes, imparting to them a sort of mute intelligence and tacit discourse, have given a decided superiority to the descriptive poetry of very recent days. Many unnoticed, many accidental, and many untraceable circumstances, have concurred to generate this intermixture of living pathos with the description of inanimate
existences; but it seems obvious to ascribe it in part to the multiplied associations, attenuated feelings, and cherished illusions, into which life has spread itself with a sort of luxuriance in the progress of refinement, and partly to the higher principles and more mental enjoyment with which of late years the theory of landscape and ornamental scenery has been cultivated and ennobled. In the place of the fairies and divinities, and the cold mythology of the Naiads and the Dryads, our fountains and our groves are rendered interesting or sacred by affinities, recollections, and resemblances, which make them a part of the moral of life, and connect them with the finest properties and feelings of the mind.
