Page:The Poems of John Dyer (1903).djvu/14

 and gracefully completed in the last, we must grant to the poem a very special claim. If we exclude consideration of the age in which it appeared, it has still a charm, if only for the small number of readers who care for all the poetry of Nature. As a product of 1727, it must be allowed that it adds to the strength of a necessary link in the chain of English literature that deals poetically with Nature. It has been praised in English and Welsh, and in the last century was paraphrased in Welsh. The manner of Dyer's work, and the combination of personal fancy with accurate observation, make him a closer relative to Wordsworth than his bulky rival Thomson, who was in many ways far more richly gifted. It is necessary to add, since it has been wrongly located, that Grongar is in Caermarthenshire, and in sight of Aberglasney.

It is obvious that Dyer must have been much out of doors. He probably knew South Wales intimately. He had a short, practical experience of agriculture, and a love of animals. At the same time he was not a hearty out-door philosopher. His health was always indifferent, and the Campagna had injured it. He seems to have had an amiable, constitutional melancholy, and must have known the angrier moods of that "sweet enemy"; for, in 1729, he is said to have written his epitaph. He called himself "old and sickly" in middle age; for many years in later