ABSTRACT
The title of Richard Lewis’s 1730 poem “Food for Criticks” speaks volumes about the new aesthetic that appears in the poetry of the eighteenth century. Lewis’s poem describes the birds of America as offering a lesson in the forms of poetry. If you want to know how a pastoral sounds, Lewis writes, listen to a quail. If you want love poetry, try the dove. For pindaric odes, the lark; lyric, the robin; etc. Nature sings, but it sings an encyclopedia of poetic genres. For every verse a pattern here you have, From strains heroic down to humble stave.
