Page:The Poems of John Dyer (1903).djvu/16

 Hardwicke, Chancellor of the Exchequer, on the recommendation of Daniel Wray, Deputy Teller; and in the same year, Sir John Heathcote presented him to the living of Coningsby in Lincolnshire, and in 1755 to Kirky-on-Bane in the same county, in place of Belchford. He became LL.B., Cantab., by royal mandate, in 1752.

Coningsby Rectory was then his home, which he left seldom and unwillingly. He was probably careful in the performance of his duties, preached fair sermons, and built part of the present rectory. He kept his registers with singular neatness. His poems are more or less clearly impressed by reminiscences of such writers as Spenser, Drayton, Milton, Gray, Appollonius Rhodius, Theocritus, Lucretius and Virgil; he quoted from Columella and Janus Vitalis, and in his leisure must have been mainly occupied with books. There seems to be no reason for believing that he understood Welsh. His letters do not lead us to suppose that he was often afield in his later years: he was unable to tell Duncombe when the swallows had appeared, but was "told they had been skimming about his garden this fortnight." Perhaps Lincolnshire was not altogether consoling to one who had known the Towy valley. His last work was full of reminiscences of Wales. At Coningsby, he was busy with his longest poem, "The Fleece." He composed laboriously; and Akenside, who was giving him medical advice,