Page:Essays and studies; by members of the English Association, volume 1.djvu/157

 ; often for an illustration or a metaphor, but simply and vividly, as if, like Shelley, he had that day seen the sight that evoked the image. Compare :

or the sun,

with Donne's description of a storm :

.

Or with Crashaw's :

Or his :

And the insincerity of the conceits will strike us freshly. The same in the eighteenth century may be said of a few choice spirits, in spite of misleading conventions : of Gray, with his classic austerity ; of Collins (at his best) and Thomson, with their real love of Nature ; and, later, of Cowper and of Crabbe. In the midst of the ridiculous world of nymphs and river-gods, and the pompous world of Night- thoughts and rhymed homilies in which mountains and chasms and oceans were constantly preaching gloomy moral lessons, there arose the simplicity of Cowper and the intense bareness of Crabbe. Space fails here for adequate