Page:Types of Scenery and Their Influence on Literature.djvu/21

 save as a mere background for the human incidents which they had to describe. It is impossible, within the prescribed limits of a single lecture, to follow the gradual development of an appreciation of landscape among the writers who have lived on these English lowlands. The simple child-like delight in Nature, so characteristic of Chaucer, and the influence of cultivated scenery, so conspicuous in him, are readily traceable among his successors. Shakespeare throughout his plays presents us with not a few reminiscences of his youth among the Warwickshire woodlands. In Milton we see how the placid rural quiet of the Colne valley inspired the two finest lyrics in the English tongue. For a century after Milton's time, poetry in this country ceased to have any living hold on outer nature, but became with each generation more polished and artificial. When at last a reaction set in, the impulse that led to the most momentous revolution that has marked the history of English poetry came in large measure from the writings of three poets, each of whom drew his inspiration from lowland scenery. As illustrations therefore of the part played by this scenery in our literature, I will cite Cowper, Thomson, and Burns.

The retreat in the valley of the Ouse, to which Cowper escaped from the noise and distractions of city-life, was eminently fitted by its quiet seclusion to soothe his spirit, and to fill his eye and his imagination with images of rural peacefulness and gentle beauty. If the choice of such a home was of infinite service to the poet, it was hardly less momentous in the progress of English literature.