The Writing of Rural England, 1500-1800

The Writing of Rural England 1500–1800 Edited by Stephen Bending and Andrew McRae

The Writing of Rural England, 1500–1800

By the same authors Dana Arnold and Stephen Bending, eds TRACING ARCHITECTURE, c. 1700–1840 Andrew McRae, GOD SPEED THE PLOUGH: THE REPRESENTATION OF AGRARIAN ENGLAND, 1500–1660

The Writing of Rural England 1500–1800 Edited by

Stephen Bending Senior Lecturer, University of Southampton

Andrew McRae Senior Lecturer, University of Exeter

© Stephen Bending & Andrew McRae 2003 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London W1T 4LP. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The authors have asserted their rights to be identified as the authors of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2003 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS and 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010 Companies and representatives throughout the world PALGRAVE MACMILLAN is the global academic imprint of the Palgrave Macmillan division of St. Martin’s Press, LLC and of Palgrave Macmillan Ltd. Macmillan® is a registered trademark in the United States, United Kingdom and other countries. Palgrave is a registered trademark in the European Union and other countries. ISBN 1–4039–1276–9 This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data The writing of rural England, 1500–1800 / edited by Stephen Bending & Andrew McRae. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 1–4039–1276–9 1. English literature—Early modern, 1500–1700. 2. Country life—Literary collections. 3. Rural conditions—Literary collections. 4. England—Rural conditions—Sources. 5. Country homes—Literary collections. 6. Country life—England—Sources. 7. English literature—18th century. 8. Landscape— Literary collections. 9. Gardens—Literary collections. 10. England—Literary collections. I. Bending, Stephen. II. McRae, Andrew. PR1111.C6W75 2003 820.8⬘0321734—dc21 2003040510 10 12

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Printed and bound in Great Britain by Antony Rowe Ltd, Chippenham and Eastbourne

Contents Acknowledgements Introduction

ix xi

1 Feudalism and Beyond: the Anxiety of Change Thomas More, from Utopia (1516) Robert Crowley, ‘Of Rent Raisers’ (1550) Anon., A Lantern for Landlords (c.1630) Philip Massinger, from A New Way to Pay Old Debts (1633) Richard Gough, from The History of Myddle (1700) Oliver Goldsmith, The Deserted Village (1770) George Crabbe, The Village, Book I (1783)

1 2 4 5 9 12 13 24

2 The Discovery of Landscape Edmund Spenser, from ‘April’ eclogue, The Shepheardes Calender (1579) Sir Philip Sidney, from The Countess of Pembroke’s Arcadia (The New Arcadia) (1590) Richard Carew, from The Survey of Cornwall (1602) Michael Drayton, ‘A Description of Romney Marsh’, from Poly-Olbion (1612) William Strode, ‘On Westwell Downs’ (1630s?) Anne Kemp, A Contemplation on Basset’s Down Hill (1658?) Sir John Denham, Cooper’s Hill (1668) Celia Fiennes, from The ‘Great Journey’ (1698) Miss J—M—, Letter to William Shenstone (1760; published 1778) William Gilpin, from Observations on the River Wye . . . relative chiefly to Picturesque Beauty (1782)

32

3 The Country House Aemilia Lanyer, ‘The Description of Cookham’ (1611) Ben Jonson, ‘To Penshurst’ (1616) Thomas Carew, ‘To Saxham’ (1631–2) Timothy Nourse, from ‘Of a Country House’ (1700) Alexander Pope, ‘To Richard Boyle, Earl of Burlington, Of the Uses of Riches’ (1731–44) Mary Leapor, ‘Crumble-Hall’ (1751) Sarah Scott, from A Description of Millenium Hall (1762)

63 64 70 73 75

v

34 38 39 41 42 43 44 53 55 58

79 84 89

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4 Merry England: Property, Pastoral and Rural Pleasures Philip Stubbes, from The Anatomie of Abuses (1583) Michael Drayton, from Pastorals (1606) King James VI and I, The Kings Majesties Declaration to his Subjects, Concerning lawful Sports to be used (1618) John Milton, ‘L’Allegro’ (1645) Robert Herrick, ‘Corinna’s going a Maying’ (1648) Robert Herrick, ‘The Hock-Cart, or Harvest Home. To the Right Honourable, Mildmay Fane, Earl of Westmorland’ (1648) Anon., Rural Recreations: or, The Young Men and Maids’ Merriment at their Dancing round a Country Maypole (1688–9) John Gay, from The Shepherd’s Week (1714) 5 The Georgic Imperative: Labour, Thrift, Improvement Thomas Palmer, ‘Love God with all thy Heart’ (c.1565) Thomas Tusser, ‘September’s Husbandry’, from Five Hundred Points of Good Husbandry (1580) John Kay of Woodsome, from ‘A Brief Note or Account of Mine Own Estate 1591’ John Taylor, from Taylor on Thame-Isis (1632) George Wither, ‘The husbandman doth sow the seeds / And, then, on hope, ’til harvest feeds’ (1635) Joseph Addison, from ‘An Essay on Virgil’s Georgics’ (1697) James Thomson, from The Seasons (1746) Robert Dodsley, from Agriculture (1754) John Dyer, from The Fleece, Book 2 (1757) John Wesley, Journal (5 November 1766) Arthur Young, from A Six Months Tour through the North of England (1770)

94 95 97 104 107 111 113 115 118 122 123 124 125 126 128 129 133 135 136 141 143

6 Property and Oppression: Voices from the Margins ‘The Diggers of Warwickshire to all other Diggers’ (1607) ‘Andrew Abington’s Commandments’ (c.1618) Gerrard Winstanley, from The True Levellers Standard Advanced (1649) Stephen Duck, The Thresher’s Labour (1730) Mary Collier, from The Woman’s Labour (1739) Ann Yearsley, ‘Clifton Hill’ (1785) Letter from the Combined of Cheshunt to Oliver Cromwell Esq., of Cheshunt Park

145

7 Gardens: Public and Private Pleasures Walpole, from ‘Essay on Modern Gardening’ (1780) James Thomson, from Spring (1746)

179 180 185

146 148 148 158 165 169 176

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George Lyttelton, from ‘To the Memory of a Lady lately deceased: a monody’ (1747) William Shenstone’s correspondence Joseph Spence and Robert Dodsley, ‘Plan and description of the estate of William Shenstone, called the Leasowes near Halesowen, Worcestershire’ James Woodhouse, ‘An Elegy to William Shenstone, Esq; Of the Lessowes’ (1764) Richard Graves, from The Spiritual Quixote; or, The Summer’s Ramble of Mr Geoffry Wildgoose. A Comic Romance (1773) Notes Index to Editorial Matter

188 191

195 198 202 206 273

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Acknowledgements We wish to thank the following institutions and individuals for their help with this book. For financial support: the University of Sydney; the Australian Research Council; the University of Exeter; the Huntington Library; the University of Southampton. For intellectual support in the development of the project: Henry Woudhuysen and Kevin Sharpe. For advice on the annotation of individual texts and on the introduction: Stephen Bygrave, David Fairer, Paul Hammond, Sybil Jack, Bridget Keegan, Annie Richardson, John Rule, Tim Stretton, Jane Whittle, Henry Woudhuysen once again, and the anonymous Palgrave reader. For permission to publish their manuscript material: the Huntington Library and the Folger Shakespeare Library.

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Introduction The title of this anthology, ‘The Writing of Rural England’, is intentionally ambiguous. On the one hand, it indicates a collection of writing about rural England in the early modern period. Included in this volume, then, is a collection of material which reflects in various ways upon conditions of life in the English countryside. Yet on the other hand, the title suggests a cultural process through which texts ascribe meaning and order to rural practices and values. According to this perception, if structures of property relations changed in the course of the early modern period, texts not only recorded these changes but also worked to encode new appreciations of the land as property. Thomas More’s complaint about the enclosure movement early in the sixteenth century, Gerrard Winstanley’s radical vision of the abolition of property in the seventeenth century and Horace Walpole’s aesthetic celebration of a landscape founded on principles of absolute property in the eighteenth century equally participated in these processes. Such shifts were by no means clear; rather, as this volume aims to demonstrate, meanings were forged through ongoing contestation. If the advocates of property predominated by the late eighteenth century, they were nonetheless shadowed throughout the centuries by dissident voices, often bringing the perspective of the oppressed and displaced to the debate. The Writing of Rural England is designed to document and contextualize these struggles for students of this vital era in the nation’s social, economic and cultural development. In his ground-breaking materialist study, The Country and the City, Raymond Williams drew to our attention the significance of certain predominant ‘images and associations’ of rural and urban life, and set these ‘in relation to the historically varied experience’.1 His analysis of the pastoral tradition, for example, memorably set this literary genre’s idealization of the lives of rural labourers against a backdrop of exploitation and dispossession. Yet subsequent work in this field, informed by the critical movements of new historicism and cultural materialism, has developed freshly dynamic models for appreciating the relation between texts and contexts. Texts may be perceived not merely as reflections of external reality, nor as agents of false consciousness in the way that Williams sometimes assumes; instead, they may be seen as active agents involved in constructing a culture’s sense of reality. Consequently, textual analysis becomes concerned with how and why cultures produce and naturalize particular constructions of reality, how those constructions interact or conflict with rival representations of reality, and what the political implications of those constructions of reality are. Hence, to give just one example from the plethora of work in this field, xi

xii Introduction

Don E. Wayne has devoted an entire book to Ben Jonson’s classic country house poem, ‘To Penshurst’. While Williams had argued that this poem works to naturalize oppressive structures of social differentiation, Wayne valuably explores tensions in the text between conflicting ideologies of rural life. ‘To Penshurst’, he argues, remoulds ideals of stewardship and moral economy in accordance with the imperatives of a new age.2 Another significant consequence of these movements has been an interrogation of the literary canon. Scholars have increasingly challenged the grounds upon which notions of literary value were erected in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as the discipline of English studies took shape. Significantly, many have also drawn attention to writers excluded from the canon, often partly on the basis of gender or class. Texts written by such authors may present strikingly divergent representations of contemporary life: stressing forces of exclusion and oppression, for example, which may be occluded in the work of writers aligned with a social elite. Consequently, this volume aims to accommodate many non-canonical voices and challenges distinctions between ‘literary texts’ and ‘historical documents’. For example, we include ballads written for popular consumption and extracts from prose tracts about agriculture and the lives of the rural poor. Further, the volume embraces a number of texts by women writers: from the early seventeenth-century country house poem by Aemilia Lanyer, ‘A Description of Cookham’, with its underlying sense of displacement due to the patriarchal prejudices of the aristocracy, to the work of eighteenth-century labouring poets such as Mary Collier and Ann Yearsley. Such texts reveal the extent to which writers, from their various positions within society, actively contested the meaning of the land. There was simply never one clear reality of rural England. This introduction aims to contextualize the material that follows, by considering some of the more important factors that informed rural writing throughout the early modern period. We will first provide a general overview of rural history before examining issues of aesthetics and genre and finally considering the circulation and readership of texts. More specific points of introduction will be contained with each section of texts in the volume.

The uses of the land Throughout the early modern period, the land supported a rapidly expanding population, underpinned a growing national economy and provided a home for the vast majority of English men and women. While many texts from these centuries present idealized representations of stability and community, however, the English countryside was in fact diverse and dynamic. As a result of insistent pressures placed upon the rural economy, uses of the land changed significantly from 1500 to 1800, and this affected the fundamental structures of society. At the outset of this volume, therefore, it

Introduction xiii

will be useful to survey some of these developments; as the texts below will demonstrate, changes in representations and values are intertwined with changes in material conditions and practices. In 1520, almost 95 per cent of the English population, which numbered roughly 2.4 million, lived in villages and smaller settlements across the nation, and some 76 per cent relied primarily on agriculture for a living. By 1801, while the population had expanded almost 400 per cent and London had become one of the most prosperous and populous cities in Europe, 72.5 per cent of the nation’s people still resided in the countryside (though now, significantly, only 36.25 per cent were directly involved in agriculture).3 Moreover, as the population swelled agricultural output increased accordingly. Though at certain times it needed to import grain or cloth and at other times its people suffered from the effects of shortages or dearth, England was generally self-sufficient throughout the early modern period. Further, agriculture provided the raw materials for rural industries, most notably the valuable cloth industry, and also smaller enterprises such as leather-working and woodland crafts.4 Despite residual forces of conservatism, farmers consistently proved themselves capable of making rational decisions, which might lead them to switch from one type of farming to another, or to adopt new crops in response to market forces. There were also marked patterns of regional diversity, which present problems for any attempt to make general statements about the nation. The major distinction in the period was between regions in the north and west, where relatively poor conditions restricted farmers to rearing livestock, and the more fertile and prosperous land in the south and east, which was suitable for grain crops as well as pastoral farming.5 Even within these parameters, however, there were countless points of local distinction. Fenland regions, for example, encompassing parts of Yorkshire, Lincolnshire, Norfolk and Somerset sustained unique traditional methods of agriculture, structured around the annual inundation of the land.6 Other regions, most notably in Kent, specialized in orchards, while market-gardens flourished on the outskirts of the nation’s cities and towns. Even by 1500 structures of marketing had taken England ‘a very long way from the era of fully self-supporting rural communities’, while ongoing improvements in road and water transportation further encouraged regional specialization.7 Hence, at the turn of the eighteenth century the travel diarist Celia Fiennes routinely observed the strengths of local regions and their markets; she noted, for example, the ‘vast trade’ in serge at Exeter, which ‘turns the most money of a week of anything in England’.8 Throughout the period, rural society was divided into several categories of social degree. At the top of the scale, the nobility and gentry were the most prominent landowners, typically holding large estates and occupying a leading role in their communities. Next, yeomen generally held land under the gentry or nobility; however, they were distinguished from their neighbours

xiv Introduction

at once by the substantial size of their landholdings and their greater orientation towards market production. Though they comprised only three to four per cent of the population in 1500, their numbers increased considerably in the course of our period, as market forces increasingly polarized the rural population.9 A larger number of husbandmen held smaller parcels of land, and their production was typically directed by a concern to provide for the family. While their situations could often be precarious, many husbandmen also seized opportunities to rise into the yeomanry: through a combination of individual endeavour and favourable economic conditions (such as those afforded by the early decades of the sixteenth century).10 Beneath that level, a considerable number of men and women survived as cottagers, labourers and servants in husbandry, often piecing together a subsistence from very small landholdings, rights of use in common lands and paid labour on the farms of those of higher degree.11 At least in theory, the social structure was held together by the interlinked institutions of the parish and the manorial estate. The parish provided the most tangible social and administrative frameworks for the average woman or man.12 Since the Church was involved in matters ranging from the administration of social welfare to the legal enforcement of moral standards, ministers and parish officers carried a considerable weight of responsibility. The manorial estate, which usually covered a similar – though not identical – region as the parish, was lauded by conservative commentators as a site within which men and women of all degrees might live together harmoniously. It was, as one Jacobean writer declared, ‘a little commonwealth’, and the bonds between the lord and his inferiors were like those of a father and his children.13 Such rhetoric, of course, is more wish-fulfilment than reality. Nonetheless, most historians agree that vertical bonds of deference and responsibility, within parish and manor alike, were commonly more important in day-to-day lives than the horizontal ties which characterize a modern class structure. Moreover, the agricultural activities of individual farmers were profoundly interconnected, particularly when an estate adhered to the common field system, which required intricate patterns of cooperation and coordination.14 But while this model remained important, the realities of life in many parts of the country were considerably more complex. Despite the ideal of a resident landlord, much of the nation’s land, particularly early in the period, was in fact owned by institutions, such as the Church or the Crown, and on countless other estates the landlord was not resident, and thus contributed little to local society. Conditions for yeomen and husbandmen could also vary enormously, and many moved from one place to another, either out of necessity or with an eye to economic advancement. The labouring population was similarly mobile. Many people spent at least some of their lives – especially in their youth – as servants, often moving beyond their home villages in order to find positions. Others were forced into itinerant

Introduction xv

lives, especially in times of dearth and famine. Further, as several historians have demonstrated, the manorial model was more common in the lowland fielden regions than in the upland areas of forest. In the latter, settlement patterns were less concentrated, landlords were more frequently absent, and there was less need for cooperation, so manorial control was more difficult to maintain.15 Population patterns in these regions were also volatile, as they attracted considerable numbers of immigrants, particularly from the poorer levels of society. Woodland villages in the Midlands, for example, ‘grew by 30 to 50 per cent more than open-field ones in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, largely because of immigration’.16 Conditions of life were also affected by differing forms of land tenure. Despite often considerable regional differentiations, the three most important categories were: freehold, which was close to modern conceptions of property ownership, though often also required a minimal fixed rent; copyhold, which usually involved the payment of a substantial ‘fine’ on admittance to the land, as well as a lower annual rent; and leasehold, for terms up to 21 years.17 These offered widely variant levels of security and flexibility. Some freeholders and copyholders were able to prosper under conditions of inflation, if the terms of their tenure kept their costs low while prices rose. Most landholders, though, were subject to more severe increases in rents, and many landlords converted copyholds into leaseholds, which tended to be more remunerative and market-sensitive. In the sixteenth century a wealth of moral discourse castigated landlords who chose to ‘rack and stretch out the rents of their houses and lands’; yet rack-rents – literally, rents charged annually at market rates – became increasingly prevalent.18 In many instances land would stay in the same family’s hands for generations. Among the gentry and nobility, codes of patriarchy and primogeniture were framed in the interests of continuity down a male line, while at the lower levels of society parents were also concerned to provide for their children (though they typically did so in a more equitable manner).19 But the land market was lively, and there are myriad cases of family fortunes rising or falling. In the mid-sixteenth century, the Crown’s seizure and sales of monastic lands provided an enormous stimulus to the market; subsequently, the level of sales was impelled largely by the accumulation of capital on the one hand, and the tendency of landowners to become enmeshed in financial difficulties on the other.20 Women were generally forced into subordinate positions within these structures by virtue of legal and cultural restraints. A girl would be raised under the control of her father, and in marriage a woman could typically hold no property of her own and would have little say over the management of her husband’s land. Yet these strictures were not universally enforced, and women could sometimes assert significant influence, particularly if they survived their husbands and assumed control over property as widows.21 Moreover, beyond this limited access to authority, women played a vital role

xvi Introduction

in the rural economy. Thomas Tusser, Elizabethan author of the best-selling Five Hundred Points of Good Husbandry, recognized their contributions when he added a section of ‘Points of Huswiferie’ for the text’s second edition.22 The tasks he teaches are chiefly those concerned with managing the house and supervising servants. Women also comprised a substantial part of the rural workforce, employed mainly as labourers and servants, particularly before marriage and later in life. In arable regions, their most common work was weeding, harvesting and gleaning, while in pastoral regions they were widely employed in the cloth and dairying industries. But even when women performed the same work as men they were routinely paid less, while the considerable labours involved in child-rearing were entirely unremunerated. For poorer women, especially those who were widowed or deserted, the countryside could be a site of bitter and incessant struggle.23 The pace of social and economic change across rural England was driven, above all else, by the nation’s growing population. The rate of population increase was by no means steady, either across time or space. For example, it fell slightly in the latter half of the seventeenth century; however, from 1751 to 1801 it surged from 5.7 million to 8.7 million.24 Similarly, whereas the population of Cambridgeshire rose only 34 per cent in the hundred years after 1563, that of Staffordshire expanded by about 130 per cent in the same period.25 These developments placed considerable stress on existing structures of rural society, particularly as they raised demand for agricultural produce. A related problem – equally volatile and equally feared – was inflation. In the second half of the sixteenth century, for instance, the real wages of an average agricultural labourer steadily declined until in the 1620s his or her daily wage bought only half what it had in the late fifteenth century.26 These conditions were exploited by some, who translated success in the marketplace into increased landholdings: indeed in the arable farming regions there was a gradual concentration of ownership and occupancy of land into fewer hands.27 Other people, however, moved into the forests and wastelands, bringing new land under cultivation with varying degrees of success. And at the bottom of the scale, many suffered extreme hardship, especially at times when harvest failures and consequent food shortages created conditions of mortality crisis.28 The most notable and controversial manifestation of rural change – attitudes to which we will trace throughout the book – was enclosure. The act of enclosure replaced traditional common-field structures of farming with stricter definitions of individual rights. It occurred either on wastes and commons, or else in arable fields where cultivated strips could be exchanged and consolidated in the hands of individual landholders.29 Although it was not a new phenomenon, since by 1500 roughly half of the country was already enclosed, its effects were particularly striking in the early modern period. In fact, it seems clear that the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were pivotal in the history of English enclosure, with over a third of the

Introduction xvii

nation’s total surface area being enclosed in these years.30 And since the progress of enclosure was at any one time highly localized, its impact as a consequence was typically concentrated in ways that observers found either disturbing or exhilarating. Most significantly in our period, enclosure transformed that half of the country, ‘most of it lying in the East Midlands, the south and the south-east, where corn-growing systems of farming predominated’.31 In the late eighteenth century, it also reshaped the agriculture and society of many wastes and commons, including hitherto unaffected northern regions. Though generally described as a ‘movement’, it is equally important to appreciate the way in which decisions to enclose could be influenced by particular attitudes and interests. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, it might be effected either unilaterally at the behest of a powerful landowner, by agreement among all landholders with an interest in an estate, or by various combinations of coercion and assent.32 Some estates hurried towards change because the landlord or some of his larger tenants saw an opportunity for economic advancement, while others held out against regional trends due merely to a tradition of conservatism within the resident landowning family. In the eighteenth century, enclosure was more commonly brought about by an Act of Parliament. Indeed these parliamentary enclosures, which gathered pace in the latter decades of the century, were especially sweeping in their impact, transforming the society of certain regions in the space of a generation. Much of the Yorkshire Wolds, for example, was enclosed within just two decades, between 1760 and 1780. Enclosure reshaped pre-existent structures of rural society and economy. It was most controversial when it led to depopulation as a result of a decision by a large landowner to convert land from arable to pastoral uses. And while depopulation did not happen in the majority of cases, the fundamental point is that enclosure created this possibility, by encoding new concepts of absolute property. Under the common-field system, a farmer did not necessarily ‘feel fiercely that he owned this land, that it was his’. Instead, the individual landholder held a place within the hierarchy of use-rights; the right to send his beasts, with a follower, down the lane-sides, to tether his horse in the sykes or on the baulks, the right to unloose his stock for lammas grazing, or for the cottager the right to glean and to get away with some timber-foraging and casual grazing.33 By contrast, enclosure underpinned a system within which a landholder could make entirely independent decisions about issues of land management. Therefore, although it was not necessarily a process undertaken for capitalist ends, it created the conditions within which capitalism could emerge. As Tusser proclaimed, in an early endorsement of rural individualism:

xviii Introduction

‘Again what a joy is it known, / When men may be bold of their own!’34 Yet for those lower in the social scale, who had been dependent upon rights of common and who gained at best meagre plots of land after an enclosure settlement, there was less cause for ‘joy’. One effect of enclosure was the creation of a class of people loosened from the communal bonds of the manorial estate, with little or no rights in land. Throughout the sixteenth century and into the seventeenth century, public opinion was weighted against enclosure. In the mid-sixteenth century, as the nation experienced a series of erratic harvest fluctuations and conditions of steep inflation, preachers and writers depicted enclosure as a quintessential manifestation of covetousness. Like many others, Thomas Becon invoked the authority of the prophet Isaiah, as he inveighed against ‘rich men’ and ‘sheepmongers’, who ‘join . . . lordship to lordship, manor to manor, farm to farm, land to land, pasture to pasture, house to house’.35 Tudor governments shared this anxiety, and passed a series of laws aimed to protect the production of grain and to limit the size of sheep-farms.36 Moreover, people affected by enclosure sometimes took direct action in an effort to protect their rights. In theory the common law offered some protection for tenants, although the extent to which these interests were in fact upheld in the courts remains unclear.37 In other cases, villagers rioted in opposition to enclosing landlords, and physically uprooted hedges which had been planted to enclose fields. The Midlands’ Revolt of 1607, for instance, was essentially a popular action against local enclosures. As in many other enclosure riots, the participants in this uprising were united in their ‘perception of the extent of enclosure which required legal redress by the government’. Rather than perceiving themselves as outlaws, the rioters in fact ‘felt that they were putting the King’s laws into execution’.38 Although such actions were rarely successful, they occasionally prompted government inquiries, and in a surprising number of cases the rioters escaped punishment. Through the course of the early modern period, however, opinion gradually turned in favour of enclosure. In the 1630s, while Archbishop William Laud was reputed to have had ‘an almost fanatical prejudice against enclosers’, his pursuit of depopulators appears to have been conceived by the government ‘primarily as a revenue-raising device, rather than as a remedy for social evils’.39 Similarly, attitudes shifted among the gentry and aristocracy. Enclosure was freshly represented as a spur to individual initiative; as the eighteenth-century agricultural writer Arthur Young declared, ‘Enclosing has changed the man as much as it has improved the country’.40 This development necessitated a similar transformation in ideas about poverty. Whereas the poor had once been understood as the responsibility of a local community, they were now refigured as a ‘productive resource’, whose unnecessary idleness could be translated into economic gain. A medieval commitment to charity thus gave way to a discourse of improvement, as seventeenth-century economic writers ‘frequently treated their

Introduction xix

audience to calculations of the daily consumption, daily lost labour, daily savings when idleness was turned to industry’.41 Finally, by the eighteenth century the government decisively swung its weight behind the movement, sponsoring new swathes of enclosures. For many rural communities, these were especially devastating, and as a consequence this century was marked by some of the most bitter anti-enclosure protests of all. Changes in the structures of landholding were accompanied by wider processes of innovation. The term ‘agricultural revolution’ is often used to describe a nexus of developments in economic practices, social relations and farming methods, which led to substantial increases in productivity. Although historians once agreed that this movement took place in the latter part of the eighteenth century and the early decades of the nineteenth century, more recent research has identified important changes much earlier, so that the revolution might now be seen to span the period 1560–1880.42 One aspect of this process was a drive to bring more land under cultivation, particularly by the drainage of fens and the disafforestation of forests.43 More importantly, farmers in established agricultural regions introduced new methods, such as the floating of water meadows (temporary and controlled inundation used as a method of fertilization), and the use of ‘upand-down husbandry’ (‘the conversion of permanent tillage and permanent grassland or of temporary and shifting cultivations, to permanently cultivated arable alternating between temporary tillage and temporary grass leys’).44 Also significant was the spread of new crops, including root vegetables such as carrots and turnips, and cash crops such as tobacco and woad. By the end of the early modern period, largely as a result of these interconnected changes in the distribution and use of the nation’s land, rural society had been transformed irrevocably. Those with land and money were in a position to benefit from the developments, and many rose to positions of increased wealth and authority. It has been estimated that between 1500 and 1620 the size of the gentry and aristocracy trebled, a process attributable ‘partly to the increase of land in private ownership’, and partly also ‘to the generation of new wealth in trade, the law, office and agriculture’.45 The land market was a vehicle through which individuals could legitimize their success by transforming capital into landed property; throughout the period, land provided the basis for social status and political influence. After the rise of the local gentry in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, however, from the late seventeenth century the most significant development was a tendency for land to be accumulated by the owners of very large estates.46 Though always highly stratified, English society had perhaps never been so markedly polarized between the rich and poor. As we have already seen in the case of enclosure, this process was accompanied by a shift in attitudes towards rural society. While the relation between attitudes and practices is complex and dynamic – a point underscored time and again by the texts in this volume – the terms of debate over rural England

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Introduction

gradually shifted over the course of the early modern period. Although pockets of conservative resistance remained, even into the nineteenth century, economic conditions increasingly favoured the innovators and the individualists.47 In the words of the seventeenth-century reformer Samuel Hartlib, qualities of ‘experimental industriousness’ held the promise of ‘infinite increase . . . beyond that which is attainable in the ordinary way’.48 Those among the yeomanry and lower gentry were often the quickest to seize upon such ideas, though even individuals holding the nation’s greatest estates were increasingly ready to ‘embrace a market philosophy’.49 As a result, relations between landlords, tenants and labourers were increasingly dominated by commercial forces. Moreover, the gradual decline of traditional values of manorial community was manifested in new forms of architecture and estate planning, which isolated landlords from the society of their land. As will become apparent in Chapter 7, the eighteenth century was the great age of landscape design, as landowners sought to mould their estates as aesthetic objects which would signify to the nation their taste and status.50 At the lower levels of the social scale, the effects of change were frequently crushing. By 1800, conditions of tenure had become less secure and more exposed to market forces, while labourers were more commonly employed for short periods rather than being incorporated into the life of an estate as residential servants.51 Countless people were simply displaced from the land. From the Tudor period onward, historians have documented the emergence of ‘a growing army of landless, or almost landless, labourers . . . dependent on wages alone for their livelihood’.52 While many such people stayed in the same locality, often becoming dependent upon poor relief, others chose to move. Rates of internal migration were high throughout the period, and many people drifted into small rural industries or made their way to the towns and cities.53 Some fell into itinerant lives. In the early part of the period in particular, such people lived on the margins of society and in constant fear of the law which defined them as vagrants or ‘masterless men’.54 Indeed the period’s ideology of placement, though founded upon paternalistic ideals, was often oppressive in its impact, coercing individuals into remaining in hopeless situations. Even the labour demands of the early Industrial Revolution did not significantly affect these conditions: while some of the displaced found work in urban factories, the vast majority remained trapped in rural poverty.

Genres, modes and literary traditions One purpose of this anthology is to demonstrate that literary modes of writing are not simply something which poets do or which bear no relation to a world beyond the literary: the choice of genre or mode is part of the way in which writers articulate their understanding of, and position in, the world. Here, we should begin by recognizing an important distinction

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between mode and genre. For, while genres tend to be mutually exclusive – lyric, epic, tragedy and so on – a mode can have a far more widespread influence across a range of genres. In the seven chapters which follow we offer a wide range of modes and genres, from satire and drama to prose essays and the novel, but we also draw particular attention to two modes: pastoral and georgic.55 There is much these two modes share – their focus on rural life, their attachment to classical models and their concern with the relationship between leisure and labour – but there are also crucial distinctions to be made and inflections to be recognized. As a specialized form, georgic has been given a section to itself, whereas pastoral is at once so central to and pervasive in rural writing that it will be found in various kinds of writing throughout the anthology, including lyric poetry, drama and the novel. However, this is not to say that pastoral is unaffected by genre: throughout the early modern period, the idea of decorum and the hierarchy of genres (first established by Horace in his Art of Poetry) continued to be influential. According to such thinking, nobility and royalty are the proper subject of ‘high’ genres such as epic and tragedy whereas peasants, shepherds and labourers are fit only for ‘lower’ forms. As a schema this was far from rigid and Shakespeare famously plays with, and ridicules, the convention (as for example in Hamlet, II.ii when Polonius speaks of the ‘tragical-comical-historical-pastoral’); but it continued to be a matter of concern well into the eighteenth century, whether in Gay’s Shepherd’s Week, with its burlesque mismatch of vulgar rustic life and elegant pastoral forms, or in Samuel Johnson’s dismissal of pastoral as simply an outdated mode for the modern age. Part of the complexity of pastoral as a form arises from an awareness of audience. For all that it takes ‘nature’ as its subject, as Frank Kermode has noted, ‘the first condition of pastoral is that it is an urban product’ and it is created for a largely urban audience.56 That is, pastoral looks from the city to the country but also uses this imagined country to look back at the city: it faces in opposing directions simultaneously and if it is implicitly a satire on the city (the country is imagined to offer those things the city makes unavailable) it is also written from the normative viewpoint of a sophisticated urban culture. In this sense, then, it is important to recognize that pastoral conventions take their own conventionality in part as their subject. Pastoral should not, therefore, be dismissed as mere ‘escapism’, rather, as Michael McKeon has argued, it ‘exists to oppose nature and art in such a way as to intimate simultaneously their interpenetration. . . An artful impersonation of nature, pastoral deploys the sophisticated technology of poetic culture to represent its absence, and it is in the self-consciousness of this paradox that we recognize the characteristic complexity of the genre’.57 While we may tend to think of pastoral as denoted by shepherds and shepherdesses – and certainly this is the origins of the term (‘pastor’ is Latin for ‘shepherd’, ‘bucolic’ is from the Greek for ‘herdsman’) – in practice it has

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always had wider concerns: even the classic setting of pastoral – a Golden Age of long ago – invites a comparison between the past and the present, and thus raises questions of progress and the moral state of ‘primitive’ and contemporary cultures.58 Twentieth-century critics have taken this a stage further by seeing the shepherds and shepherdesses of what we might term formal pastoral as simply the trappings or signifiers of a mood. The most notable exponent of this very broad account has been William Empson in Some Versions of Pastoral, in which he identifies the pastoral process ‘of putting the complex into the simple’, and pastoral as any text which contrasts a simpler life imagined to exist in the past with the complexity of the modern age. Here the pastoral mode is the articulation of longing, the desire for simplicity, innocence, sensuous pleasure and freedom from death and mutability. Part of the purpose of this anthology, however, is to resist the notion that pastoral is somehow timeless or divorced from the period in which it was written. As a nostalgic form, pastoral’s representation of the past is fundamentally concerned with the expression of longing in the present and it is important to recognize that the audience for pastoral changes across the early modern period and that the language of pastoral changes likewise: we can map out important changes in pastoral’s relationship with social structure and urban and agricultural practices precisely because pastoral questions the relationship between leisure and labour, the country and the city, the past and the present. If we are aware of what is actually happening in the fields which sustained English rural life, it may seem that the trajectory of pastoral would inevitably be towards social criticism. There was certainly a strong medieval tradition of complaint which represented the shepherd as a struggling, oppressed labourer and the courtier as lazy and corrupt.59 However, the huge increase of pastoral verse produced in the courtly culture of Elizabeth and James (1559–1603, 1603–25) is striking for nothing so much as the way in which it rejects that element of social subversion and instead establishes pastoral as a quintessentially aristocratic mode. In part this was achieved by representing the shepherds of pastoral as ‘naturally’ aristocratic and in part by insisting that the landscape of pastoral was a place of mythical perfection with only the most limited relation to the English fields. Central to Renaissance justifications of the pastoral mode and of retirement was the state of otium: broadly, an escape from business, whether public or private, an escape from worry, an escape from thoughts of death, but also therefore an opportunity to cultivate true happiness and intellectual endeavour. If its opposite, negotium (business, public duty, the city), was never far away, it was this ability to link leisure with intellectual activity, meditation and true happiness which was to prove one of pastoral’s major attractions but which, for Renaissance writers, was also to establish it as a mode only available to the cultural elite. In these terms, pastoral is not simply a way of seeing, but a way of seeing fundamentally predicated on

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social status and the wealth which allows individuals the leisure to ‘see’. Thus, as a justification of aristocratic leisure, pastoral is inevitably also a rejection of plebeian labour. This is not, however, to say that Elizabethan and early Jacobean courtly culture was unaware of what was happening around it: as Raymond Williams has noted, one of the most influential works of Elizabethan pastoral, Sir Philip Sidney’s Arcadia, ‘was written in a park which had been made by enclosing a whole village and evicting the tenants’. What this demonstrates to us, he argues, is that ‘The elegant game [of pastoral] was then only at arm’s length – a rough arm’s length – from a visible reality of country life’.60 In turn, what we should then recognize is that if poets knew of the social realities and upheavals taking place around them, the choice of pastoral conventions is precisely that: a choice. On the face of it, that choice may seem to be an odd one, but as Louis Montrose has argued, ‘Such a poetry is not concerned to embrace the lot of Elizabethan husbandmen or to advance egalitarian ideas but to recreate an elite community in pastoral form’.61 While pastoral could serve the ends of the individual in the ways Montrose suggests, it could also lay claim to a larger national agenda. For if there was a concern to separate pastoral landscapes from the language of complaint, there was also a sustained attempt to anglicize classical traditions (notably for example in the work of Spenser); and we should recognize this not simply as something happening in literary tradition, but as part of a larger political process which aimed to raise the stature of England, which engaged in an emergent nationalism based on England and which used the rural environment both as a physical / social foundation and as a site for national myth-making. Critics have long noted the decline of formal pastoral by the eighteenth century, with Pope’s youthful Pastorals (1704, published 1709) being among the last to insist on a world of idealized shepherds and shepherdesses. Even here, while Pope includes these traditional figures in his poems, the purpose of pastoral is explicitly the imagination of a simpler world in a past age and emphatically not the representation of modern manners among lowly rustics.62 Moreover, the fun to be had in using the language of contemporary ‘rustics’ within the elegant forms of pastoral poetry was not lost on his contemporaries, and Pope’s close friend John Gay was to explore exactly this mismatch of ideas and ideals in his Shepherd’s Week of 1714. By the mid-eighteenth century formal pastoral was undoubtedly on the wane and the degree to which it had fallen from favour is famously marked by Samuel Johnson’s uncomprehending dismissal of Milton’s Lycidas. According to Johnson, ‘Its form is that of a pastoral, easy, vulgar, and therefore disgusting: whatever images it can supply, are long ago exhausted; and its inherent improbability always forces dissatisfaction on the mind’.63 For Johnson, ‘an intelligent reader, acquainted with the scenes of real life, sickens at the mention of the crook, the pipe, the shet, and the kide, which it is not

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necessary to bring forward to notice, for the poet’s art is selection, and he ought to show the beauties without the grossness of the country life.’64 Johnson’s insistence on ‘real life’ is effectively a rejection of formal pastoral as simply out of date and inappropriate for the modern age. It is also quite recognizably, of course, a repetition of that much earlier insistence on gentility and good manners. Thus the problem with pastoral here is not that it evokes a simple life but that it confuses simplicity with vulgarity in a manner not suited to a genteel audience. We have already seen how Gay’s Shepherd’s Week parodies that elision, but the eighteenth century was also to see a new form of writing which insisted not on an aristocratic vision of pastoral ease, but on the hardship of physical labour in the fields. Modern critics have termed this new ‘realism’ a form of anti-pastoral and we can trace it in the poetry of rural labouring poets like Stephen Duck, Mary Collier and Ann Yearsley, but perhaps more insistently at the end of the century in Crabbe’s anti-pastoral, The Village, where he famously writes that he represents rural life, ‘As truth will paint it and as bards will not’. If formal pastoral, with elegant shepherds and their crooks, no longer retained the cultural centrality it had in Spenser’s time, pastoral as a form of rural nostalgia continued unabated and in various forms. In the late eighteenth century, Goldsmith’s Deserted Village offers us something clearly recognizable as pastoral, with its plaintive language of nostalgia, but the ‘trappings’ have undoubtedly changed: we are no longer offered shepherds and shepherdesses but a recognizable ‘modern’ society, both rural and urban. What is pastoral in Goldsmith’s poem is not simply the focus on rural community, nor even the emphasis on easy labour, but the lament for a lost way of life, and specifically a way of life now lost to the poet. In this, though writing well over a century later, Goldsmith shared something with the royalist poets in the first half of the seventeenth century whose evocation of English rural life was also an insistent lament for the loss of an older social order. Among royalist poets the choice of pastoral marks a keen awareness of what is at stake in the larger ideological battles of the mid-seventeenth century. In Herrick’s poem, ‘The Hock Cart’, for example, it is a georgic understanding of rural labour which ultimately undermines and sees through pastoral conventions and those who adopt them. In Goldsmith’s poem we might argue the reverse. From his opening lines, Goldsmith offers us the happy labouring swain whose world is being destroyed by enclosure; but if labour here invites us to think of the georgics, it is an easy and welcome labour – a pastoral labour – which could only exist in an idyllic past. What both poets draw to our attention is the complex ways in which pastoral leisure and georgic labour, pastoral nostalgia and georgic progress, are intimately intertwined. It is to georgic, then, that we should now turn. So far we have mapped out the importance but also the effective decline of formal pastoral across the early modern period; against that decline, however, we can also trace the striking rise of that other most rural of forms,

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the georgic.65 If anything, georgic is more of a problem to define than pastoral despite its specific derivation from Virgil’s Georgics. Like pastoral, it is helpful to recognize georgic as a mode rather than a genre. As Anthony Low has argued, we might see it as ‘an informing spirit, an attitude towards life’ and ‘a mode that stresses the value of intensive and persistent labour against hardships and difficulties’.66 Crucially, more than simply being a description of agricultural life, it is also a celebration of the potential of labour to regenerate the individual and improve the nation. In this sense, Virgil’s poem provided the basis for a tradition of rural literature which would run counter to that of pastoral. In The Country and the City, Raymond Williams aligned the growing popularity of georgic in England with the growth of agrarian capitalism and saw georgic as a form of apologetic for this new form of economic activity and its social structure. In this account, georgic becomes the expression of a progressivist narrative of history: in speaking of ‘improvement’ it assumes that human history moves from the primitive towards a state of perfection, but it also assumes that capitalism is part of the answer, part of the reason for ‘progress’. More recently, however, critics have come to recognize georgic’s ability to articulate something much more complex than this. In particular, critics such as John Barrell and Karen O’Brien have stressed the utility of georgic for writers wishing to engage with an increasingly commercialized and indeed globalized economy.67 From Dryden’s translation of Virgil in the 1690s until at least the loss of the American colonies in the 1780s, it was georgic which was to provide writers with a ready model for Britain’s imperial expansion and massive colonial growth during the eighteenth century. Thus if there is an obvious concern with the relationship between the city and the country in the ways that Williams suggests, recent work points to other concerns: to the way in which georgic can express the newly emerging viewpoint of the middling sort, to the implicit opposition of this to an aristocratic pastoral mode, to the place of farming within the nation as a whole, and indeed to the relationship between nation and empire. Virgil’s poem is very much about physical processes, about man’s relationship with the land and the inherent dignity of labour; but it also offers a vision of national greatness and just as it is a poem about agricultural practice, so it is a poem about the wealth of the nation and about the productivity which creates this wealth. A central motif is the seasons, the cycles of nature, and man’s place within them. Importantly, in Virgil, and in those who follow him, an account of seasonal changes and cycles is not simply the representation of a single year or a single activity; rather, individual moments and episodes are repeatedly expanded into a vision of man’s history, of universal history, and the digressive form of the georgics becomes a means of bringing ‘nature’ together with science, culture, history and all forms of human activity.

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Virgil wrote the Georgics at the end of a period of civil war explicitly to celebrate peace and the newly established rule of the emperor Augustus, but also to celebrate a new age of national greatness and of imperial expansion. Thus in a poem which tells us that its concern is how to farm, how to keep bees, what to do during the different seasons of the year and so on, the viewpoint is in fact very wide. Episodes which seem to be focused on the very local and the very specific invite us to see beyond them, to recognize in the small scale and local the global, the international and indeed the universal. In part this springs from a further recognition that agriculture is the basis of national wealth and that all else follows from this; in part it is because, for Virgil, the farmer is an everyman figure, and an everyman precisely because he represents man’s struggle with nature. More than anything, it is that sense of struggle, of labour, which marks out the georgics from pastoral writing. If we look to the classic pastoral motif of the sponte sua, of fish willingly being caught and nature offering itself up to aristocratic owners (as, for example, in Jonson’s ‘To Penshurst’ or Carew’s ‘To Saxham’), something quite different is emphasized in georgic. Here man is not in easy harmony with nature but in competition and must struggle to survive: the laborious taming of nature is part of the process of civilization. However, as we have seen, in the early modern period ‘labour’ comes to mean quite different things to different groups within society. Notably, for example, in the sixteenth and early seventeenth century a writer’s choice of georgic tends to mark a specifically unaristocratic emphasis on labour and is used as much to mark divisions within society as it is to assert a common goal. As the early texts in Chapter 5 suggest, ideas of ‘improvement’ could be placed ambiguously between the personal and the national, the spiritual and the economic. By the 1690s, however, and Dryden’s hugely influential translation of Virgil, we can see something different again. Written only a generation after England’s own civil war, Dryden’s Georgics not only recognize the farmer as an everyman but use him as an allegory of the nation’s distress and of its coming glory. Following Dryden’s lead, eighteenth-century georgic tends to place agriculture as the foundation of empire, but whereas earlier georgics tended to emphasize personal labour, what is striking in eighteenth-century georgic is the way in which ‘labour’ is increasingly used as a ready analogy for the rapidly expanding world of industry and trade. In James Thomson’s The Seasons and John Dyer’s The Fleece the concern is most centrally with what we might call the connectedness of things, with the many forms of commercial activity and the intricate means by which all aspects of national and international economy are linked together. Here, a robust British agriculture becomes part of a recognizably global system of commerce in which British trade will export British civilization across the world.

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Just as in Herrick’s ‘The Hock Cart’ – where we must ask who is actually doing the labour and how that term is being employed – so in the eighteenth century, we must be aware of the way in which individual labour may be subsumed within the ‘industry’ of a national economy and personal improvement replaced by claims of national progress. Equally, when texts do focus on individual labour, we must also be aware of the other kinds of exclusions and occlusions: if Stephen Duck chooses to adopt georgic at key moments in order to resist the class bias of pastoral, he also articulates a gendered division of labour which effectively denies the reality of women’s work. It is this which Mary Collier was to react against so strongly in The Woman’s Labour. Thus it is not simply a question of labour which is at issue here, but how the individual is placed in relation to that labour. The crucial question georgic texts raise, then, is not simply who works, but who benefits from work?

Aesthetics of the land Central to representations of the rural environment is the troubled relationship between leisure and labour and so far we have seen how both pastoral and georgic move between these different understandings of the land. As we have suggested, both of these modes can appear in many different forms of writing and it is to the range of aesthetic responses to land and landscape that we should now turn. The strategies of what we have termed ‘formal’ pastoral rely on the relatively narrow perspective of an urban elite looking at itself in country guise and finding an idealized vision of social relations; in the late seventeenth and eighteenth century what emerges, however, is a far wider range of people experiencing land as landscape and laying claim to ‘aesthetic’ experience. What emerges also is new ways of thinking about and representing the English countryside; more than this, we can see how the aesthetic is fundamentally intertwined with the ideological and thus how representations of the rural are used as a means both of constructing an account of culture and of legitimizing a writer’s position within that culture. As readers, that is, we must focus not simply on what is described – the material environment being reported – but on the ways in which description is itself framed and the strategies employed by individual writers in order to stage themselves and their relationship with an imagined public audience. Interest in ‘landscape’ as a recognizably distinct literary form and a way of seeing only really appears towards the end of the sixteenth century, but it does so in a range of different kinds of writing.68 Chapter 2 moves from some of the origins of this new interest in landscape in the early seventeenth century to its widening popularity in the late eighteenth century. Many of the early works here are heavily engaged in merging classical models and traditions with the contemporary landscape and the result

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can be that there is little to see except those traditions and conventions. However, in the chorographical works and in poetry which follows, something rather different emerges, as a specifically English setting is layered with different modes of understanding. Thus, for example, in Richard Carew’s description of Cornwall, stress falls on the land as a set of ‘commodities’; it is a place of pleasure and leisure, but it is also understood in terms of ownership and heredity; it is recognized – in terms explicitly drawn from the visual arts – as a ‘prospect’, and it relies on the convention of a spectator or viewer separated from the scene which is viewed. In this sense, Carew gives his readers directions not just on what there is to see but on how to see it. Like Drayton and Strode, Carew clearly envisages the land as ‘landscape’ and draws on visual models to order his account of place and space.69 Perhaps the most obvious way in which works of both the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries are structured, and in turn structure the landscape, is through their mimicking of the eye and its movement across a scene. Strode, for example, appears to offer something close to the lived experience of landscape as the poem follows both the movement of the eye across the land and of the imagination across time. This emphasis on the temporal and geographical – ’here’, ‘there’, ‘sometimes’ – is characteristic of much of the topographical writing produced in both the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. So too is the recognition that landscape is not simply experienced from a particular viewpoint, but shaped by a point of view. Indeed, as the latter phrase suggests, a viewpoint, then, is not just the ground on which one stands, but the mental structures and assumptions which enable one to see in a particular way. Care is taken to draw this recognition of ‘landscape’ to the reader’s attention, and we may then imagine that what is at issue here is some kind of aesthetic experience deliberately divorced from a world of economic and agricultural activity. But this cannot be the whole story. Notably, for example in Strode’s ‘Westwell Downs’, as the poem continues it becomes apparent that this kind of aestheticization of the land into landscape not only emphasizes pleasure but is reliant for that pleasure on a sense of distance and separation. Moreover, once we come to the lines, ‘Here would I sleep, or read, or pray / From early morn till flight of day’, Strode signals, only more clearly than elsewhere, those conventions we recognize from pastoral: retirement, leisure, meditation. We return, that is, to an aestheticized landscape as an ideal imagined space in which the meditative mind can operate. As a result, even in works which claim to be quite geographically specific and which may suggest to us a degree of ‘objectivity’, the modes of understanding and the frames of reference insist finally on the ideas and the ideals of the leisured gentleman, on the importance of the viewer in creating the view. If in the seventeenth century many writers claimed this as a male preserve and linked the appreciation of landscape with genteel masculinity, the

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eighteenth century saw a major expansion in the number of people who travelled in order to enjoy the experience of landscape. An increasingly wealthy middling sort, combined with better roads and infrastructure, made travel far more possible than in previous centuries.70 With this came what we might term a democratization of the aesthetic sphere, as more and more people found ways of claiming validity for their own, subjective responses to the aesthetic and their own experiences of ‘nature’.71 Crucially, this emerging language of picturesque taste – previously used only by the cultural elite – became far more widely available to men of the middling sort, but also to women; it is with women and with the picturesque that we conclude Chapter 2.72 More than any writer it was perhaps William Gilpin who was to give the late eighteenth-century public a language and a set of directions with which to see the ‘picturesque’. While Gilpin’s picturesque works – full of Latin quotations and references to Old Masters – addressed themselves to the traditions of patrician culture, they functioned more importantly to popularize the language of taste and to make it available to both men and women. In this sense the picturesque refocuses landscape in important ways. While seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century writers frequently justify their travels in terms of economic usefulness, Gilpin turns to leisure and to a delight in making pictures which frequently exclude the realities of labour, industry and enclosure. By defining the picturesque as a purely aesthetic experience of picture-making (whether in a Claude glass, on paper or in the imagination), Gilpin repeatedly ignores – or at least seeks to occlude – a vision of the rural as productive space.73 It is very much Gilpin’s account of the picturesque which Jane Austen was to satirize in Northanger Abbey (begun 1798, published 1818), but that satire was also a recognition that the picturesque – as a language and as a social practice – brought together leisured men and women of all ranks. What both writers highlight for us at the end of the eighteenth century was the effective opening of the aesthetic sphere to women as well as men, and to the middling sort as well as to the elite.74 For all of its connoisseurial terminology (in Austen’s words, ‘fore-grounds, distances, and second distances – side-screens and perspectives – lights and shades’), the picturesque was not the abstruse practice of the few but an inclusive language of polite sociability.75 However, if Gilpin brings a new emphasis on leisure to the experience of seeing the countryside as a series of pictures, he shares with many of his predecessors an insistence on the aesthetic distance required to create a ‘scene’ and the implicit recognition that aesthetic distance is also social distance. In requiring the traveller to create foregrounds, middle distances and side-screens, the picturesque repeatedly frames the rural environment as landscape, and if it brought together leisured travellers in the mutual appreciation of an aesthetic scene it served equally to separate them from a living rural society.76

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Implicit in much of the writing towards the end of the early modern period is the issue of who can take pleasure in landscape. We have already noted the close relationship between ‘landscape’ as an aesthetic category and gentility as a social one, and nowhere is this more an issue than in the English landscape garden. By the mid-eighteenth century the landscape gardens created by both great and small landowners were often claimed to be a new and peculiarly English invention. Indeed one of the myths of the English landscape garden in the eighteenth century was of its almost miraculous ‘discovery’ as a wholly native art in the early years of the Hanoverian succession. In the last twenty years garden historians have challenged this politicized history of gardens, however, and shown it to be the ideological construct that it always was, with its nationalist agenda and its insistence on property, progress and the power of great men. John Dixon Hunt has shown the powerful influence of Italian designs on English gardens of the early eighteenth century;77 Tom Williamson has challenged the claims for a gradual transition from the unnatural to the natural, from the formal to the informal;78 and Douglas Chambers has shifted the chronology of the landscape garden’s genesis back towards the middle of the seventeenth century by looking to Virgil’s Georgics as a sustaining myth for the garden.79 What is undoubtedly true is that the relationship between landscape gardens and the culture of commodities was fraught with contradictions: if landscape gardens suggest a world of landowning apparently distinct from commercial capitalism, they are nevertheless implicated in a culture of commodities and are strikingly concerned with spending money and with conspicuous display. Gardens set out to mark their own difference from the productive agricultural land around them, and it has been suggested that the landscape parks of the second half of the eighteenth century became so widespread because they seemed to offer a shared aesthetic space, and to assert a class identity common to both the propertied middling sort and an aristocratic elite.80 According to this account, in distinguishing themselves from economic profit, landscape gardens laid claim to their polite status as products and objects of leisure, and in recognizing the aesthetic value of such landscapes, visitors laid claim to membership of polite society.81 Such claims of cultural unity become difficult to sustain, however, once we turn to the multitude of ways in which both owners and visitors responded to landscapes which were at once public spaces and private possessions.82 Thus in our final chapter we focus on the Midlands gardens of Hagley and the Leasowes in order to explore these concerns and to demonstrate the cultural diversity of those who both gardened and laid claim to gardens.83 Socially, these writers range from influential aristocrats (such as Lord Lyttelton) through to minor gentry (such as William Shenstone) and lowly craftsmen (such as the shoemaker James Woodhouse). Notably, what they articulate is at once the awareness of an appropriate public response to gardens and the more personal, subjective and even

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impolite reactions which are possible in private company. As Peter deBolla has noted, ‘Eighteenth-century visitors “looked” in highly determined ways’, and for that very reason the coding of the ‘real’ offered in descriptions of gardens is ‘not an obstruction but on the contrary a significant aid’ to our understanding of eighteenth-century culture.84 What is at stake in these widely various accounts of gardens is not simply the writers’ senses of place in a physical landscape, but their recognitions of what we would now term space, that complex meeting point of physical and cultural geography.

The conditions of writing and reading The Writing of Rural England gathers together a diverse range of texts, written for different purposes and audiences, and consumed in different contexts by different types of people. For example, although anti-enclosure polemic is a feature of many texts in the volume, some of those in which it features are otherwise utterly disparate. On the one hand, More’s Utopia was written in Latin for an audience of European humanist intellectuals. On the other hand, ‘The Diggers of Warwickshire to all other Diggers’ was written directly to a local audience, exhorting oppressed rural farmers and labourers to revolt. Yet despite the different readerships envisaged by the respective authors, the texts may not be completely without points of connection. For, although More declared in 1533 that he would rather burn his book than see it translated into the vernacular and applied to the English problems of the day, it appeared in English regardless after his death in 1551, and was consistently invoked thereafter in discussions of the nation’s rural problems.85 It is by no means inconceivable, therefore, that the anonymous author(s) of the Warwickshire tract were at least aware of More’s arguments. Such details highlight the importance of attending in this volume to a text’s cultural functions and uses. While specific points about individual pieces will be raised in headnotes, it will be useful at this stage to consider generally conditions of textual composition, publication and consumption. The technology of print was introduced to England in the latter decades of the fifteenth century, and the volume of printed material soared throughout the early modern era. As the example of More indicates, though, some writers experienced considerable anxieties when they contemplated the uncontrolled dissemination of their work. There were indeed many reasons, from the personal to the political, why some material remained only in manuscript form, and The Writing of Rural England includes a number of such texts. For example, the georgic poetry of John Kay of Woodsome (Chapter 5), printed here for the first time, was intended only for a family audience, although it clearly relates to contemporary printed works. Further, ‘Andrew Abington’s Commandments’ (Chapter 6), could not have been printed because it is libellous, satirically inverting the Ten Commandments in order to ridicule a local landlord. Despite remaining in manuscript form,

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this text was effectively ‘published’ among its only relevant audience, since it was fixed to the gate of Abington’s church and recited at local gatherings. Among elite poets of the seventeenth century, similarly, distribution of work in manuscript form could be an effective and respected way of reaching an audience. In this period many poets chose to avoid printed publication, and instead circulated poems among select readers, who would copy pieces into personal verse miscellanies. Herrick (Chapter 4) was a popular poet within this context, while Strode’s ‘On Westwell Downs’ (Chapter 2) was only available in manuscript form in the early modern period. The development of print culture offered new possibilities for the dissemination of texts, across both geographical distances and barriers of social degree. The very possibility of widespread textual circulation influenced the construction of a national state and culture. Thanks to print, a monarch could readily distribute throughout his realm a statement about the purposes and practices of rural recreations, as we may see in the Jacobean ‘Book of Sports’ (Chapter 4). Similarly, as a result of print the same ballad might be sung at once in Cornwall and Yorkshire, whereas once such texts had been products of oral culture and hence profoundly localized in character. The publication of ballads also evidences the capacity for print to bring literature to a socially diverse audience, and as a result of this development new types of authors emerged. A man such as John Taylor (Chapter 5), despite his middling origins, worked through a lifetime of cheap publications to construct for himself a public identity and a considerable following. Like the Renaissance stage, therefore, popular print offered a pathway to fame. The experience of Stephen Duck in the eighteenth century, however, demonstrates the potential pitfalls of this route. After years of lowly rural labour, Duck rose to prominence on the publication of his poem, The Thresher’s Labour (Chapter 6). But rather than achieving independence through his publication, he in fact became dependent upon the patronage of Queen Caroline, who gave him a salary and employed him as a guide at Richmond Park. Moreover, under the influence of this patronage he turned in his later work from the brutal realism of The Thresher’s Labour towards idealized pastoral representations of the countryside. The grim conclusion to this narrative of dislocation and acculturation was Duck’s suicide by drowning himself in a pond, near Reading.86 The example of Duck also highlights the significance of patronage for writers. Early modern England may be described as a patronage society, since networks of patron–client relationships suffused the court and all arms of government, as well as affecting cultural production.87 Indeed in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, inadequate levels of legal protection for writers meant that few could afford to rely merely on the marketplace for remuneration. Although conditions improved in the eighteenth century, when developments in copyright law ensured that authors would be rewarded in accordance with the sales of their books, patronage remained an

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important fact of life for most of the writers represented in this volume. Out of a patronage relationship, a writer would hope to gain financial support, positions of office, various forms of hospitality, and a certain cultural status or authority. In return, he or she might be expected to confer fame upon the patron through artful praise, or to support the patron’s moral or political causes. Spenser, for example, spent much of his career glorifying the person and reign of Queen Elizabeth I, motivated in part by a burning desire for preferment within the Elizabethan government. Accordingly, his ‘April’ eclogue from The Shepheardes Calender (Chapter 2) praises the monarch as it praises her land, thereby creating a version of pastoral steeped in royal panegyric. In the following century, patterns of aristocratic patronage underpinned the generic development of the country house poem, which provided poets with a vehicle for indirect praise of their patrons. Most famously, Jonson’s ‘To Penshurst’ (Chapter 3) contains a central image of the poet himself, enjoying the generous hospitality of his patron’s table. The mythology of the English country house is to a considerable extent a product of such acts of patronage. If patronage worked by rewarding authors for producing texts that accorded with the views of those in positions of power, structures of censorship provided a threat of punishment for those who dared to oppose society’s dominant forces. The shadow of censorship hung heavily over early modern writers, particularly in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Censorship laws were often vaguely expressed, yet they effectively quashed statements considered to be politically or socially subversive. In some cases direct action was taken against particular books and authors; more significantly, however, every potential author was aware of the strictures on freedom of expression, and the consequent risks associated with transgressive statements. But the lack of such statements does not necessarily mean that the population was universally compliant. Significantly, when the censorship regime collapsed briefly in the revolutionary years of the mid-seventeenth century, a plethora of radical texts was printed.88 One such work was Winstanley’s The True Levellers Standard Advanced (Chapter 6), an eloquent argument for the abolition of private property. Unfortunately it is almost impossible to determine how many people were thinking or saying similar things in other periods; however, it is certainly conceivable that Winstanley brought into the realm of print culture ideas which had a long and continuous existence.89 The term ‘digger’ provides one tantalizing hint of such continuity. While it would be attached to those involved in Winstanley’s communist experiment, it appears earlier in the unprinted tract ‘The Diggers of Warwickshire to all other Diggers’ (Chapter 6). Finally, even after a text is put into circulation, its cultural significance is determined largely by the size and nature of the readership that it reaches. This was the fact that troubled More: Utopia was one thing when read by humanist intellectuals, but it might become something quite different when

xxxiv Introduction

read by a more popular audience. Throughout the early modern period, the principal consumers of books were those from the higher levels of society, who had the requisite money and education to participate in literary culture. This fact alone undoubtedly informed the work of many writers. The labouring poets of the eighteenth century, for example, were often painfully aware that their audience was largely composed of members of a social elite, who were curious to discover manifestations of apparently untutored genius, but had little sympathy with the poetry’s political content. Yet it is important not to overstate this case. Even among those of the most lowly degree there were people who could read, and texts could also be brought to the illiterate through practices of reading aloud. Ballads, for instance, were cheap and easy to distribute. Within a local community, they were commonly sung at local gatherings, and might even be pasted to the walls of an alehouse for future use.90 A Lantern for Landlords (Chapter 1) might well have been disseminated in such ways, thereby confirming communal opposition to the exploitative methods of landowners. But nor is it impossible, as we have seen, that some of the readers and listeners in the alehouse were equally familiar with More’s Utopia. The boundaries between ‘high’ and ‘low’ cultures in early modern England remained intriguingly porous.

1 Feudalism and Beyond: the Anxiety of Change

The transition from feudalism to capitalism in the English countryside, which has been the subject of considerable historical debate, is perhaps best appreciated as a process that spanned the early modern period. While the feudal system had effectively collapsed by 1500, commentators worried endlessly about structures of rural social and economic order, and repeatedly sought to define ideals in the face of unsettling patterns of change. Throughout the period covered by this anthology, the dominant conservative ideal was that of the manorial estate. Essentially a postfeudal model, the manorial estate was figured as a strictly hierarchical community, knit together by moralized bonds of deference and responsibility. The model therefore resisted both change and competition. Estates were to be passed in an orderly manner from father to son, tenants and labourers were to live and die on the land, agriculture was geared towards manorial self-sufficiency rather than the demands of a market, and families were expected to know and accept their places within the socioeconomic hierarchy. In many respects it was a seductive ideal, especially for those at the top of the social order; however, it always bore a tenuous relation to more complex realities, and it was relentlessly eroded by changing practices and values. The texts collected in this section document the concerns of contemporary writers in the face of those processes of change. Many lament a perceived tendency for landowners to place the pursuit of commercial gain ahead of the maintenance of manorial community. Throughout the period (as noted in the Introduction) the signal manifestation of this was enclosure, a practice routinely lambasted by conservative commentators throughout this period. Sir Thomas More’s highly influential complaint focuses on instances of enclosure which lead to the depopulation of villages, as landowners replace sites of community with large market-oriented sheepfarms. Others judge such activities against popular moral standards, or focus on the elite commitment to excessive expenditure which drives landowners to exploit their tenants. By the eighteenth century, perceptions of social 1

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The Writing of Rural England

polarization in the countryside were widespread, and commentators repeatedly criticized the landed for ignoring the living communities of their estates in favour of the pleasures of the town. The country, many felt, was being transformed into a source of status and pleasure for the rich, but a site of hardship and misery for the poor. As our selection demonstrates, however, similar views can be translated into a variety of different textual modes. More’s representation of a landscape denuded by an immorally inverted system of values aligns with a wealth of complaint and satire over the following centuries. Robert Crowley’s fable of an exploitative landlord called to divine reckoning and Philip Massinger’s satiric comedy about a contemporary over-reacher were written for very different audiences, yet each effectively follows a conventional satirical model. The ballad ‘A Lantern for Landlords’ infuses into this model a measure of popular fantasy, with its grisly narrative of providential retribution. For eighteenth-century poets, faced with a landscape increasingly transformed by enclosure, the question of tone became a matter of intense debate. As we shall see, Oliver Goldsmith’s influential The Deserted Village responds to an instance of depopulation in elegiac strains, shaped by the period’s discourses of sentimentality. George Crabbe, however, perceived Goldsmith’s approach as politically complacent and lacking in the righteous anger of the dispossessed. In a manner that parallels the efforts of the labourer-poets represented in Chapter 4, Crabbe dismisses the ‘tinsel trappings of poetic pride’, offering instead a passionate fusion of traditional complaint and almost novelistic realism. Suggested secondary reading Robert C. Allen, Enclosure and the Yeoman (Oxford, 1992). Andrew McRae, God Speed the Plough: The Representation of Agrarian England, 1500–1660 (Cambridge, 1996). J. M. Neeson, Commoners: Common Right, Enclosure and Social Change in England, 1700–1820 (Cambridge, 1993). Joyce Oldham Appleby, Economic Thought and Ideology in Seventeenth-Century England (Princeton, NJ, 1978). John Peter, Complaint and Satire in Early English Literature (Oxford, 1956). K. D. M. Snell, Annals of the Labouring Poor: Social Change and Agrarian England, 1660–1900 (Cambridge, 1985). Helen C. White, Social Criticism in Popular Religious Literature of the Sixteenth Century (New York, 1944).

Thomas More, from Utopia (1516) Utopia, written by Sir Thomas More (1478–1535) in Latin and published in an English translation in 1551, is best known for its second book, in which the mysterious traveller Hythlodaeus describes the government and

Feudalism and Beyond 3

customs of Utopia. The shorter first book, however, contains an extended discussion of social problems in England, shaped by More’s humanist commitment to social reform. One of the book’s finest passages is the following attack on depopulating enclosure. The practice of enclosing common land was becoming highly controversial in the early sixteenth century, as the rapidly expanding population placed new pressures on the available resources and the rising price of wool made sheep-rearing increasingly lucrative. More’s attack on enclosure is founded on an assumption that landlords owe their tenants a moral duty of care. Any attempt to place economic interests ahead of this duty may be identified simply as the sin of covetousness. Recommended edition Utopia, ed. Richard Marius (London, 1985).

Suggested secondary reading J. H. Hexter, Utopia; Biography of an Idea (Princeton, NJ, 1952). George M. Logan, The Meaning of More’s ‘Utopia’ (Princeton, NJ, 1983). David Norbrook, Poetry and Politics in the English Renaissance (London, 1984).

[At this point in the text, early in Book One, Hythlodaeus is expounding on the predominant social problems in England. He has just finished a discussion of the dangers posed by unemployed soldiers.] ‘But yet this is not only the necessary cause of stealing.1 There is another which as I suppose is proper and peculiar to you English men alone.’ ‘What is that?’ quoth the Cardinal. ‘Forsooth,’2 quoth I, ‘your sheep that were wont3 to be so meek and tame, and so small eaters, now, as I hear say, be become so great devourers and so wild, that they eat up and swallow down the very men themselves.4 They consume, destroy and devour whole fields, houses and cities.5 For look in what parts of the realm doth grow the finest, and therefore dearest wool, there noblemen, and gentlemen; yea and certain abbots,6 holy men God wot,7 not contenting themselves with the yearly revenues and profits that were wont to grow to their forefathers and predecessors of their lands, nor being content that they live in rest and pleasure nothing profiting; yea, much annoying the weal public,8 leave no ground for tillage. They enclose all in pastures; they throw down houses; they pluck down towns, and leave nothing standing but only the church to make of it a sheephouse. And as though you lost no small quantity of ground by forests, chases, lands and parks,9 those good holy men turn all dwellings, places and glebe land10 into desolation and wilderness.11 Therefore that one covetous and unsatiable cormorant12 and very plague of his native country may compass about13 and enclose many thousand

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The Writing of Rural England

acres of ground together within one pale14 or hedge, the husbandmen be thrust out of their own, or else either by covin15 or fraud, or by violent oppression they be put besides it, or by wrongs and injuries they be so wearied that they be compelled to sell all: by one means therefore or by other, either by hook or by crook they must needs depart away, poor, silly,16 wretched souls, men, women, husbands, wives, fatherless children, widows, woeful mothers with their young babes, and their whole household small in substance and much in number, as husbandry requireth many hands. Away they trudge, I say, out of their known and accustomed houses, finding no places to rest in. All their household stuff, which is very little worth, though it might well abide the sale:17 yet being suddenly thrust out, they be constrained to sell it for a thing of nought.18 And when they have, wandering about, soon spent that, what can they else do but steal, and then justly, God wot,19 be hanged, or else go about a begging? And yet then also they be cast in prison as vagabonds, because they go about and work not; whom no man will set a-work, though they never so willingly offer themselves thereto. For one shepherd or herdman is enough to eat up that ground with cattle, to the occupying whereof about husbandry many hands were requisite.20 And this is also the cause that victuals21 be now in many places dearer. Yea, besides this the price of wool is so risen that poor folks, which were wont to work it and make cloth of it, be now able to buy none at all.22 And by this means very many be fain23 to forsake work, and to give themselves to idleness. For after that so much ground was enclosed for pasture, an infinite number of sheep died of the rot,24 such vengeance God took of their inordinate and unsatiable covetousness, sending among the sheep that pestiferous murrain,25 which much more justly should have fallen on the sheepmasters’ own heads. And though the number of sheep increase never so fast, yet the price falleth not one mite, because there be so few sellers. For they be almost all come into a few rich men’s hands, whom no need driveth to sell before they lust,26 and they lust not before they may sell as dear as they lust.

Robert Crowley, ‘Of Rent Raisers’ (1550) During the reign of Edward VI (1547–53) radical Protestants briefly gained unprecedented access to pulpits and printing presses, and Crowley (1518?–88), preacher, poet, pamphleteer and publisher, stood at the centre of this reform movement. Many people at this time believed that religious reform might be linked to a corresponding reassessment of the social and economic structures of the nation. They focused particularly on the rights of the poor, and attacked any signs of economic individualism; paradoxically, they linked a progressive vision of religious reform with a profoundly traditional social agenda. Accordingly, ‘Of Rent Raisers’ promotes a doctrine of

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social responsibility which defines landowners as stewards, responsible to God for the lives of those working on their estates. Recommended edition The Select Works of Robert Crowley, ed. J. M. Cowper (Early English Text Society, London, 1872).

Suggested secondary reading John N. King, English Reformation Literature: The Tudor Origins of the Protestant Tradition (Princeton, NJ, 1982), ch. 7. Andrew McRae, God Speed the Plough: The Representation of Agrarian England, 1500–1660 (Cambridge, 1996), ch. 1. John Peter, Complaint and Satire in Early English Literature (Oxford, 1956), ch. 5.

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A man that had lands of ten pound by year,27 Surveyed the same28 and let it out dear; So that of ten pound he made well a score More pounds by the year than other did before.29 But when he was told what danger it was To oppress his tenants, he said he did not pass.30 For this thing, he said, full certain he wist,31 That with his own he might always do as he list.32 But immediately, I trow,33 this oppressor fell sick: Of a voice that he heard,34 ‘Give accounts of thy bailiwick!’35

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Anon., A Lantern for Landlords (c.1630) A Lantern for Landlords was published as a broadsheet ballad, and was clearly directed towards a popular audience in the countryside. Its narrative develops themes apparent in some of the earlier works in this section: most notably Robert Crowley’s poem, which ends with the voice of God promising retribution against an exploitative landlord. In this ballad, the landlord’s crimes and punishments are described at greater length, in a mode of popular melodrama. Indeed the attention lavished on the downfall of his family assumes among the readership a reservoir of barely suppressed resentment

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directed against landowners. The narrative of divine retribution is designed to appeal to all readers who have felt aggrieved by the actions of those in positions of economic power. Recommended edition The Pepys Ballads, ed. W. G. Day, 5 vols (Cambridge, 1987).

Suggested secondary reading Bernard Capp, ‘Popular Literature’, in Popular Culture in Seventeenth-Century England, ed. Barry Reay (London and Sydney, 1985), pp. 198–243. Margaret Spufford, Small Books and Pleasant Histories: Popular Fiction and Its Readership in Seventeenth-Century England (London, 1981). Tessa Watt, Cheap Print and Popular Piety, 1550–1640 (Cambridge, 1991).

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With sobbing grief my heart will break Asunder in my breast, Before this story of great woe, I truly have expressed: Therefore let all kind-hearted men, And those that tender be, Come bear a part of this my grief,36 and jointly say with me, Woe worth the man, etc.37 Not long ago in Lincoln dwelt,38 As I did understand, A labouring man from thence set forth39 to serve in Ireland:40 And there in prince’s wars was slain, As doth that country know,41 But left his widow great with child as ever she could go. This woman having gone her time, Her husband being dead, Of two fine pretty boys at once was sweetly brought to bed:42 Whereat her wicked landlord straight, Did ponder in his mind, How that their wants he should relieve, and succour for them find. For being born upon his ground, This was his vile conceit,43 That he the mother should maintain,44 and give the other meat:45 Which to prevent he hied fast,

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Unto this widow poor, And on the day she went to church, he turned her out of door. Her household goods he strained upon,46 To satisfy the rent, And left her scarce a rag to wear, so wilful was he bent.47 Her pretty babes that sweetly slept Upon her tender breast, Were forced by the miser’s rage, by nights in streets to rest. Quoth she, ‘my husband in your cause,48 In wars did lose his life, And will you use thus cruelly his harmless wedded wife? O God revenge a widow’s wrong, That all the world may know, How you have forced a soldier’s wife a-begging for to go.’ From Lincoln thus this widow went, But left her curse behind, And begged all the land about, her maintenance to find.49 At many places where she came She knew the whipping post,50 Constrained still as beggars be, to taste on such like roast.51

[The woman’s twins, at the age of two, get lost and die in a field of barley, where later the woman discovers their corpses in the course of the harvest. The woman determines to return to Lincoln ‘To prosecute the law against / The causer of this deed’.]

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But see the judgement of the Lord, How he in fury great, Did bring this miser to distress, Though wealthy was his seat.52 For when to Lincoln she was brought, The caitiff he was gone.53 Of all his cursed family, remaining was but one. For first the house wherein she dwelt, Did prove unfortunate,54 Which made the landlord and his friends,

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to marvel much thereat. For tenants four there dwelt therein, A twelvemonth and a day,55 Yet none of them could thrive at all, but beggars went away. Whereat this miserable wretch Did turn it to a barn, And filled it full in harvest time with good red wheat and corn:56 To keep it safely from the poor, Until there came a year, That famine might oppress them all and make all victuals dear.57 But God forgetting not the wrongs, He did this widow poor, Sent down a fire from heaven, which soon consumed all his store: By which this wicked miser man, Was brought to beggary, And likewise laid a grievous scourge58 upon his family. His wife she proved a cursed witch, And burned for the same,59 His daughter now a strumpet is at London in defame.60 At Leicester at the ‘sizes last61 Was hanged his eldest son, For there consenting wickedly unto a murder done. His second son was fled away Unto the enemy,62 And proved disloyal to his prince, and to his own country. His youngest son had like mishap, Or worser in my mind, For he consented to a bitch, contrary unto kind:63 For which, the Lord without delay, Rained vengeance on his head, Who like a sinful sodomite64 defiled Nature’s bed. For there were two great mastiff dogs That met him in a wood, And tore his limbs in pieces small,

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devouring up his blood: Whereof when as his father heard, Most like a desperate man, Within a channel drowned himself, that down the street it ran, Whereas water could scarce suffice,65 To drown a silly mouse. And thus the ruin you have heard of him and all his house.66 The widow she was soon possessed Of all the goods he left, In recompence of those sweet babes mischance from her bereft.67 Wherefore let all hard-hearted men, By this example take, That God is just, and will be true, for woeful widows’ sake.

Philip Massinger, from A New Way to Pay Old Debts (1633) A New Way to Pay Old Debts, one of the most popular plays written by Massinger (1583–1640), is set in the country and concerned with rural issues. The villainous Sir Giles Overreach begins his career as a London merchant, before moving to Nottinghamshire and extending his personal wealth by exploiting his tenants and neighbours. In this passage, as throughout the play, Overreach is undone by his own aspirations. He has been tricked into believing that Lord Lovell wishes to marry his daughter, Margaret, and he wants to seize the opportunity to situate his family within the aristocracy, by combining his own money with Lovell’s title. In his eagerness to impress Lovell, Overreach betrays his rapacious vision of the country. In Overreach’s mind, the order of rural society may be redrawn through sheer force of will, according to what he might consider ‘convenient’ or ‘useful’. Recommended edition The Plays and Poems of Philip Massinger, eds. Philip Edwards and Colin Gibson, 5 vols (Oxford, 1976), vol. 2.

Suggested secondary reading Martin Butler, ‘A New Way to Pay Old Debts: Massinger’s Grim Comedy’, in English Comedy, eds. Michael Cordner, Peter Holland and John Kerrigan (Cambridge, 1994), pp. 119–36. Nancy S. Leonard, ‘Overreach at Bay: Massinger’s A New Way to Pay Old Debts’, in Philip Massinger: A Critical Reassessment, ed. Douglas Howard (Cambridge, 1985), pp. 171–92.

10 The Writing of Rural England Michael Neill, ‘Massinger’s Patriarchy: The Social Vision of A New Way to Pay Old Debts’, Renaissance Drama, n.s., 10 (1979), pp. 185–213.

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Overreach. To my wish, we are private. I come not to make offer with my daughter A certain portion, that were poor, and trivial:68 In one word I pronounce all that is mine, In lands, or leases, ready coin, or goods, With her, my lord, comes to you; nor shall you have One motive to induce you to believe I live too long, since every year I’ll add Something unto the heap, which shall be yours too. Lovell. You are a right kind father. Overreach. You shall have reason To think me such; how do you like this seat?69 It is well wooded, and well watered, the acres Fertile, and rich; would it not serve for change To entertain your friends in a summer progress?70 What thinks my noble lord? Lovell. ’Tis a wholesome air, And well built pile, and she that’s mistress of it71 Worthy the large revenue. Overreach. She the mistress?72 It may be so for a time: but let my lord Say only that he likes it, and would have it, I say ere long ’tis his. Lovell. Impossible. Overreach. You do conclude too fast, not knowing me, Nor the engines that I work by; ’tis not alone73 The Lady Alworth’s lands, for those once Welborne’s (As by her dotage on him, I know they will be) Shall soon be mine. But point out any man’s In all the shire, and say they lie convenient, And useful for your lordship, and once more I say aloud, they are yours. Lovell. I dare not own What’s by unjust, and cruel means extorted. My fame, and credit are more dear to me,74 Than so to expose ’em to be censured by The public voice. Overreach. You run, my Lord, no hazard. Your reputation shall stand as fair In all good men’s opinions as now. Nor can my actions, though condemned for ill,

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Cast any foul aspersion upon yours; For though I do contemn report myself,75 As a mere sound, I still will be so tender Of what concerns you in all points of honour, That the immaculate whiteness of your fame, Nor your unquestioned integrity Shall ere be sullied with one taint, or spot That may take from your innocence, and candour. All my ambition is to have my daughter Right honourable, which my lord can make her.76 And might I live to dance upon my knee A young Lord Lovell, borne by her unto you, I write nil ultra to my proudest hopes.77 As for possessions, and annual rents Equivalent to maintain you in the port78 Your noble birth, and present state requires, I do remove that burden from your shoulders, And take it on mine own: for though I ruin The country to supply your riotous waste, The scourge of prodigals, want, shall never find you.79 Lovell. Are you not frighted with the imprecations,80 And curses, of whole families made wretched By your sinister practices? Overreach. Yes, as rocks are When foamy billows split themselves against Their flinty ribs; or as the moon is moved, When wolves with hunger pined, howl at her brightness.81 I am of a solid temper, and like these82 Steer on a constant course: with mine own sword If called into the field, I can make that right, Which fearful enemies murmured at as wrong. Now, for these other piddling complaints Breathed out in bitterness, as when they call me Extortioner, tyrant, cormorant, or intruder83 On my poor neighbour’s right, or grand encloser Of what was common, to my private use;84 Nay, when my cares are pierced with widows’ cries, And undone orphans wash with tears my threshold;85 I only think what ’tis to have my daughter Right honourable; and ’tis a powerful charm Makes me insensible of remorse, or pity, Or the least sting of conscience. (IV. i. 57–131)

12 The Writing of Rural England

Richard Gough, from The History of Myddle (1700) Gough (1635–1723) wrote the history of his native parish in the final years of the seventeenth century and left the text unpublished at his death. Unlike the other writers represented in this section, Gough does not appear to hold any strong position on issues of rural change. He is, however, a meticulous observer of his local society, and his descriptions of proprietorial rights and disputes provide superb insights into the complexity of agrarian life. In the following description of Myddle Wood Common, the land is appreciated as meaning many things to many people, and Gough is careful to note instances in which this jigsaw puzzle of rights and responsibilities has given rise to disputes. Gough therefore reminds us that the local significance of common land is often more complicated than many writers would lead us to believe. Recommended edition The History of Myddle, ed. David Hey (Harmondsworth, 1981).

Suggested secondary reading David G. Hey, An English Rural Community: Myddle under the Tudors and Stuarts (Leicester, 1974). Robert Mayer, ‘The History of Myddle: Memory, History, and Power’, Studies in Philology, 93 (1996), pp. 64–92.

‘Myddle Wood Common’ This belongs to Myddle and Marton, but some persons in Fennymeare do claim common here by reason of vicinage;86 but certain it is that the whole common lies in the manor and parish of Myddle. It was formerly a famous wood of timber; there is a great part of it enclosed, some into tenements,87 as Challoner’s, Cooper’s, Watson’s, Davies’, Challoner’s (a cooper), Jones’s, and Parker’s tenements. Several persons have cottages88 on this common, and one or two pieces enclosed to every cottage, as Endley, Jones, Higinson, Rogers the glover, Blanthorne, Rogers the tailor, Reves, Hanmer and Groome. Several pieces of this common have been enclosed and added to tenements in Myddle and Marton. This common was cut, and burnt, and sowed with corn in the later end of the war time, temp. Car. I.89 The first crop was winter corn, which was a very strong crop; the next was a crop of barley, which was so poor that most of it was pulled up by the root, because it was too short to be cut. That time there was a great dearth and plague about Oswaldstree.90 Mr. Richardson was then rector, and had the tithe in this common, but not without some opposition.91 There has been several attempts to find coal in this common; once in our father’s time, and three several times in my memory, but all proved ineffectual.

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Whitrish Lane is a small common in this Lordship, and was so found by the Grand Jury at Myddle Court some years ago. One William Sturdy, who then lived in Whitrish House, held the lower end of this lane enclosed for some years, and was presented for the encroachment at Myddle Court, and paid his amercements to the bailiff of the manor of Myddle.92 But the end of this lane, which is next to Balderton, is called Balderton Green, and the inhabitants of Balderton do claim this common to be their common; but the truth is, that they may turn their cattle into their own street, and there is nothing to hinder them, but they may streak down to this common, and this is all the right that Balderton has to this common.93 Billmarsh Green, this is a small common, much controverted94 whether it lies in the Lordship of Myddle, or in the parish of Broughton and liberties of Salop.95 All that I can say is, that when the inhabitants of Myddle parish do walk their boundaries,96 they take their small common wholly within their bounds; and when the parishioners of Broughton do walk their boundaries, they take it, and a little croft97 that lies between it and the barn at Billmarsh, within their bounds. But the tithes of the croft are paid at Myddle parish. But all Billmarsh was formerly a common, and it should seem that this green was left out of it when it was enclosed, for all other places make Heyment from Billmarsh, except this green.

Oliver Goldsmith, The Deserted Village (1770) Oliver Goldsmith (1730?–1774) was born in Ireland but moved to London and became a prominent member of Dr Johnson’s literary circle. He was both a prolific and successful writer, able to turn his hand not only to poetry but to drama, fiction, biography, history and journalism. Constantly in debt, he was all too aware of the commercial culture with which The Deserted Village takes issue. The attack on enclosure and the subsequent rural depopulation was a repeated theme in his writing during the 1760s. An exposition of the issues appeared in prose as ‘The Revolution in Low Life’ in Lloyd’s Evening Post, 14–16 June 1762 and in another poem, ‘The Traveller’ of 1764. The poem was highly successful but also frequently challenged on its claims of depopulation and for what, by 1770, were its largely unfashionable attacks on luxury and commerce. The Deserted Village draws on the tradition of topographical poetry with its emphasis on place, but differs in its stress on personal experience and meditation over ‘objective’ and distanced description. The poem laments the loss of an organic rural community destroyed by ‘luxurious’ trade, and it works in part by a nostalgic contrast of before and after (‘A time there was . . . But times are altered’) in which the garden of the city landowner (a seeming paradox in itself) is defined by the absences it creates, and the subjects of Goldsmith’s poem represent all the things this garden destroys or

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which it fails to be. Thus, in a poem ostensibly concerned with a village swept away by enclosure and a modish landscape park, Goldsmith merges moral tropes and visual images of village life and depopulation, luxurious trade and agricultural prosperity, the evils of the city and the results of emigration. Country virtue is challenged by commercial vice, and timehonoured land-use bows under the pressure of fashionable aesthetics and the evils of ‘luxury’. Recommended edition The Poems of Thomas Gray, William Collins, Oliver Goldsmith, ed. Roger Lonsdale (London and Harlow, 1969).

Suggested secondary reading Robert C. Allen, Enclosure and the Yeoman (Oxford, 1992), ch. 3. H. J. Bell, ‘The Deserted Village, and Goldsmith’s Social Doctrine’, PMLA, 54 (1944), pp. 747–72. Vincent Newey, ‘“Pensive Plain”: Re-Viewing The Deserted Village’, in Early Romantics: Perspectives in British Poetry from Pope to Wordsworth, ed. Thomas Woodman (Houndsmill, 1998), pp. 93–116. K. D. M. Snell, Annals of the Labouring Poor: Social Change and Agrarian England, 1660–1900 (Cambridge, 1985), ch. 4.

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Sweet Auburn, loveliest village of the plain,98 Where health and plenty cheered the labouring swain,99 Where smiling spring its earliest visit paid, And parting summer’s lingering blooms delayed, Dear lovely bowers of innocence and ease, Seats of my youth, when every sport could please, How often have I loitered o’er thy green, Where humble happiness endeared each scene; How often have I paused on every charm, The sheltered cot, the cultivated farm,100 The never-failing brook, the busy mill, The decent church that topped the neighbouring hill, The hawthorn bush, with seats beneath the shade, For talking age and whispering lovers made.101 How often have I blessed the coming day,102 When toil remitting lent its turn to play, And all the village train, from labour free, Led up their sports beneath the spreading tree,103 While many a pastime circled in the shade, The young contending as the old surveyed; And many a gambol frolicked o’er the ground, And sleights of art and feats of strength went round.104 And still as each repeated pleasure tired,

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Succeeding sports the mirthful band inspired; The dancing pair that simply sought renown, By holding out to tire each other down; The swain mistrustless of his smutted face,105 While secret laughter tittered round the place, The bashful virgin’s sidelong looks of love, The matron’s glance that would those looks reprove.106 These were thy charms, sweet village; sports like these, With sweet succession, taught even toil to please; These round thy bowers their cheerful influence shed, These were thy charms – But all these charms are fled. Sweet smiling village, loveliest of the lawn, Thy sports are fled and all thy charms withdrawn; Amidst thy bowers the tyrant’s hand is seen, And desolation saddens all thy green: One only master grasps the whole domain, And half a tillage stints thy smiling plain;107 No more thy glassy brook reflects the day, But choked with sedges, works its weedy way.108 Along thy glades, a solitary guest, The hollow-sounding bittern guards its nest;109 Amidst thy desert walks the lapwing flies,110 And tires their echoes with unvaried cries. Sunk are thy bowers in shapeless ruin all,111 And the long grass o’ertops the mouldering wall,112 And trembling, shrinking from the spoiler’s hand,113 Far, far away thy children leave the land.114 Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey, Where wealth accumulates and men decay;115 Princes and lords may flourish, or may fade; A breath can make them, as a breath has made. But a bold peasantry, their country’s pride, When once destroyed, can never be supplied.116 A time there was, ere England’s griefs began,117 When every rood of ground maintained its man;118 For him light labour spread her wholesome store, Just gave what life required, but gave no more. His best companions, innocence and health; And his best riches, ignorance of wealth. But times are altered; trade’s unfeeling train119 Usurp the land and dispossess the swain; Along the lawn, where scattered hamlets rose, Unwieldy wealth, and cumbrous pomp repose;120 And every want to luxury allied,

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And every pang that folly pays to pride.121 These gentle hours that plenty bade to bloom, Those calm desires that asked but little room, Those healthful sports that graced the peaceful scene, Lived in each look and brightened all the green; These far departing, seek a kinder shore, And rural mirth and manners are no more.122 Sweet Auburn! parent of the blissful hour, Thy glades forlorn confess the tyrant’s power. Here as I take my solitary rounds,123 Amidst thy tangling walks, and ruined grounds,124 And, many a year elapsed, return to view Where once the cottage stood, the hawthorn grew, Here, as with doubtful, pensive steps I range, Trace every scene, and wonder at the change, Remembrance wakes with all her busy train, Swells at my breast and turns the past to pain. In all my wanderings round this world of care, In all my griefs – and God has given my share – I still had hopes my latest hours to crown,125 Amidst these humble bowers to lay me down; My anxious day to husband near the close,126 And keep life’s flame from wasting by repose. I still had hopes, for pride attends us still, Amidst the swains to show my book-learned skill, Around my fire an evening group to draw, And tell of all I felt, and all I saw; And, as a hare whom hounds and horns pursue, Pants to the place from whence at first she flew, I still had hopes, my long vexations past, Here to return – and die at home at last. O blessed retirement, friend to life’s decline,127 Retreats from care that never must be mine, How blessed is he who crowns in shades like these,128 A youth of labour with an age of ease; Who quits a world where strong temptations try, And, since ’tis hard to combat, learns to fly. For him no wretches, born to work and weep, Explore the mine or tempt the dangerous deep;129 No surly porter stands in guilty state To spurn imploring famine from the gate, But on he moves to meet his latter end, Angels around befriending virtue’s friend; Bends to the grave with unperceived decay,

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While resignation gently slopes the way; And all his prospects brightening to the last, His Heaven commences ere the world be past! Sweet was the sound, when oft at evening’s close, Up yonder hill the village murmur rose; There, as I passed with careless steps and slow,130 The mingling notes came softened from below; The swain responsive as the milk-maid sung, The sober herd that lowed to meet their young; The noisy geese that gabbled o’er the pool, The playful children just let loose from school; The watch-dog’s voice that bayed the whispering wind, And the loud laugh that spoke the vacant mind,131 These all in soft confusion sought the shade, And filled each pause the nightingale had made. But now the sounds of population fail, No cheerful murmurs fluctuate in the gale, No busy steps the grass-grown foot-way tread, But all the bloomy flush of life is fled. All but yon widowed, solitary thing132 That feebly bends beside the plashy spring;133 She, wretched matron, forced, in age, for bread, To strip the brook with mantling cresses spread,134 To pick her wintry faggot from the thorn,135 To seek her nightly shed, and weep till morn; She only left of all the harmless train,136 The sad historian of the pensive plain.137 Near yonder copse, where once the garden smiled, And still where many a garden flower grows wild; There, where a few torn shrubs the place disclose, The village preacher’s modest mansion rose. A man he was, to all the country dear, And passing rich with forty pounds a year;138 Remote from towns he ran his godly race, Nor ere had changed, nor wished to change his place;139 Unskilful he to fawn, or seek for power,140 By doctrines fashioned to the varying hour; Far other aims his heart had learned to prize, More bent to raise the wretched than to rise.141 His house was known to all the vagrant train,142 He chid their wanderings, but relieved their pain;143 The long remembered beggar was his guest, Whose beard descending swept his aged breast; The ruined spendthrift, now no longer proud,

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Claimed kindred there, and had his claims allowed; The broken soldier, kindly bade to stay, Sat by his fire, and talked the night away; Wept o’er his wounds, or tales of sorrow done, Shouldered his crutch, and showed how fields were won.144 Pleased with his guests, the good man learned to glow, And quite forgot their vices in their woe; Careless their merits, or their faults to scan, His pity gave ere charity began.145 Thus to relieve the wretched was his pride, And even his failings leaned to Virtue’s side; But in his duty prompt at every call, He watched and wept, he prayed and felt, for all. And, as a bird each fond endearment tries, To tempt its new fledged offspring to the skies; He tried each art, reproved each dull delay, Allured to brighter worlds, and led the way. Beside the bed where parting life was laid, And sorrow, guilt, and pain, by turns dismayed, The reverend champion stood. At his control,146 Despair and anguish fled the struggling soul; Comfort came down the trembling wretch to raise, And his last faltering accents whispered praise. At church, with meek and unaffected grace, His looks adorned the venerable place; Truth from his lips prevailed with double sway, And fools, who came to scoff, remained to pray. The service past, around the pious man, With ready zeal, each honest rustic ran; Even children followed with endearing wile, And plucked his gown, to share the good man’s smile. His ready smile a parent’s warmth expressed, Their welfare pleased him, and their cares distressed; To them his heart, his love, his griefs were given, But all his serious thoughts had rest in heaven. As some tall cliff that lifts its awful form147 Swells from the vale, and midway leaves the storm, Though round its breast the rolling clouds are spread, Eternal sunshine settles on its head. Beside yon straggling fence that skirts the way, With blossomed furze unprofitably gay,148 There, in his noisy mansion, skilled to rule, The village master taught his little school; A man severe he was, and stern to view;

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I knew him well, and every truant knew; Well had the boding tremblers learned to trace149 The day’s disasters in his morning face; Full well they laughed with counterfeited glee, At all his jokes, for many a joke had he; Full well the busy whisper, circling round, Conveyed the dismal tidings when he frowned; Yet he was kind, or if severe in aught, The love he bore to learning was in fault; The village all declared how much he knew; ’Twas certain he could write, and cipher too;150 Lands he could measure, terms and tides presage,151 And even the story ran that he could gauge.152 In arguing too, the parson owned his skill,153 For ev’n though vanquished, he could argue still; While words of learned length, and thundering sound Amazed the gazing rustics ranged around, And still they gazed, and still the wonder grew, That one small head could carry all he knew. But past is all his fame. The very spot Where many a time he triumphed, is forgot. Near yonder thorn, that lifts its head on high, Where once the sign-post caught the passing eye, Low lies that house where nut-brown draughts inspired,154 Where grey-beard mirth and smiling toil retired, Where village statesmen talked with looks profound, And news much older than their ale went round. Imagination fondly stoops to trace The parlour splendours of that festive place; The white-washed wall, the nicely sanded floor, The varnished clock that clicked behind the door; The chest contrived a double debt to pay,155 A bed by night, a chest of drawers by day; The pictures placed for ornament and use, The twelve good rules, the royal game of goose;156 The hearth, except when winter chilled the day, With aspen boughs, and flowers, and fennel gay, While broken tea-cups, wisely kept for show, Ranged o’er the chimney, glistened in a row. Vain transitory splendours! Could not all Reprieve the tottering mansion from its fall!157 Obscure it sinks, nor shall it more impart An hour’s importance to the poor man’s heart; Thither no more the peasant shall repair

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To sweet oblivion of his daily care; No more the farmer’s news, the barber’s tale, No more the wood-man’s ballad shall prevail; No more the smith his dusky brow shall clear, Relax his ponderous strength, and lean to hear; The host himself no longer shall be found Careful to see the mantling bliss go round;158 Nor the coy maid, half willing to be pressed, Shall kiss the cup to pass it to the rest. Yes! let the rich deride, the proud disdain, These simple blessings of the lowly train, To me more dear, congenial to my heart, One native charm, than all the gloss of art; Spontaneous joys, where Nature has its play, The soul adopts, and owns their first born sway; Lightly they frolic o’er the vacant mind,159 Unenvied, unmolested, unconfined. But the long pomp, the midnight masquerade,160 With all the freaks of wanton wealth arrayed,161 In these, ere triflers half their wish obtain, The toiling pleasure sickens into pain; And, even while fashion’s brightest arts decoy, The heart distrusting asks, if this be joy. Ye friends to truth, ye statesmen who survey The rich man’s joys increase, the poor’s decay, ’Tis yours to judge, how wide the limits stand Between a splendid and an happy land. Proud swells the tide with loads of freighted ore, And shouting Folly hails them from her shore; Hoards, even beyond the miser’s wish abound, And rich men flock from all the world around. Yet count our gains. This wealth is but a name That leaves our useful products still the same.162 Not so the loss. The man of wealth and pride, Takes up a space that many poor supplied; Space for his lake, his park’s extended bounds, Space for his horses, equipage and hounds;163 The robe that wraps his limbs in silken sloth, Has robbed the neighbouring fields of half their growth; His seat, where solitary sports are seen, Indignant spurns the cottage from the green;164 Around the world each needful product flies,165 For all the luxuries the world supplies. While thus the land adorned for pleasure all,166

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In barren splendour feebly waits the fall.167 As some fair female unadorned and plain, Secure to please while youth confirms her reign, Slights every borrowed charm that dress supplies, Nor shares with art the triumph of her eyes. But when those charms are passed, for charms are frail, When time advances, and when lovers fail, She then shines forth solicitous to bless, In all the glaring impotence of dress. Thus fares the land, by luxury betrayed, In nature’s simplest charms at first arrayed, But verging to decline, its splendours rise, Its vistas strike, its palaces surprise;168 While scourged by famine from the smiling land, The mournful peasant leads his humble band; And while he sinks without one arm to save, The country blooms – a garden, and a grave. Where then, ah, where shall poverty reside, To scape the pressure of contiguous pride?169 If to some common’s fenceless limits strayed, He drives his flock to pick the scanty blade, Those fenceless fields the sons of wealth divide, And even the bare-worn common is denied.170 If to the city sped – What waits him there? To see profusion that he must not share; To see ten thousand baneful arts combined To pamper luxury, and thin mankind;171 To see each joy the sons of pleasure know, Extorted from his fellow-creature’s woe. Here, while the courtier glitters in brocade, There the pale artist plies the sickly trade;172 Here, while the proud their long drawn pomps display, There the black gibbet glooms beside the way.173 The dome where pleasure holds her midnight reign,174 Here richly decked admits the gorgeous train, Tumultuous grandeur crowds the blazing square, The rattling chariots clash, the torches glare; Sure scenes like these no troubles e’er annoy! Sure these denote one universal joy! Are these thy serious thoughts? – Ah, turn thine eyes Where the poor houseless shivering female lies.175 She once, perhaps, in village plenty blest, Has wept at tales of innocence distressed; Her modest looks the cottage might adorn,

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Sweet as the primrose peeps beneath the thorn; Now lost to all; her friends, her virtue fled, Near her betrayer’s door she lays her head, And pinched with cold and shrinking from the shower, With heavy heart deplores that luckless hour, When idly first, ambitious of the town, She left her wheel and robes of country brown.176 Do thine, sweet Auburn, thine, the loveliest train, Do thy fair tribes participate her pain?177 Even now, perhaps, by cold and hunger led, At proud men’s doors they ask a little bread! Ah, no. To distant climes, a dreary scene,178 Where half the convex world intrudes between, To torrid tracts with fainting steps they go, Where wild Altama murmurs to their woe.179 Far different there from all that charmed before, The various terrors of that horrid shore. Those blazing suns that dart a downward ray, And fiercely shed intolerable day; Those matted woods where birds forget to sing, But silent bats in drowsy clusters cling, Those poisonous fields with rank luxuriance crowned Where the dark scorpion gathers death around; Where at each step the stranger fears to wake The rattling terrors of the vengeful snake; Where crouching tigers wait their hapless prey,180 And savage men more murderous still than they; While oft in whirls the mad tornado flies, Mingling the ravaged landscape with the skies. Far different these from every former scene, The cooling brook, the grassy vested green, The breezy covert of the warbling grove, That only sheltered thefts of harmless love. Good Heaven! what sorrows gloomed that parting day,181 That called them from their native walks away; When the poor exiles, every pleasure past, Hung round their bowers, and fondly looked their last, And took a long farewell, and wished in vain For seats like these beyond the western main;182 And shuddering still to face the distant deep, Returned and wept, and still returned to weep. The good old sire, the first prepared to go To new found worlds, and wept for others’ woe. But for himself, in conscious virtue brave,

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He only wished for worlds beyond the grave. His lovely daughter, lovelier in her tears, The fond companion of his helpless years, Silent went next, neglectful of her charms, And left a lover’s for her father’s arms. With louder plaints the mother spoke her woes, And blessed the cot where every pleasure rose; And kissed her thoughtless babes with many a tear, And clasped them close, in sorrow doubly dear; Whilst her fond husband strove to lend relief In all the decent manliness of grief. O luxury! Thou cursed by Heaven’s decree, How ill exchanged are things like these for thee! How do thy potions with insidious joy,183 Diffuse their pleasures only to destroy! Kingdoms, by thee, to sickly greatness grown, Boast of a florid vigour not their own. At every draught more large and large they grow, A bloated mass of rank unwieldy woe; Till sapped their strength, and every part unsound, Down, down they sink, and spread a ruin round.184 Even now the devastation is begun, And half the business of destruction done; Even now, methinks, as pondering here I stand, I see the rural virtues leave the land. Down where yon anchoring vessel spreads the sail That idly waiting flaps with every gale, Downward they move a melancholy band, Pass from the shore, and darken all the strand. Contented toil, and hospitable care,185 And kind connubial tenderness are there;186 And piety with wishes placed above, And steady loyalty, and faithful love. And thou, sweet Poetry, thou loveliest maid,187 Still first to fly where sensual joys invade; Unfit in these degenerate times of shame, To catch the heart, or strike for honest fame; Dear charming nymph, neglected and decried, My shame in crowds my solitary pride. Thou source of all my bliss, and all my woe, That found’st me poor at first, and keep’st me so; Thou guide by which the nobler arts excell, Thou nurse of every virtue, fare thee well. Farewell, and O where’er thy voice be tried,

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On Torno’s cliffs or Pambamarca’s side,188 Whether where equinoctial fervours glow,189 Or winter wraps the polar world in snow, Still let thy voice prevailing over time, Redress the rigours of the inclement clime; Aid slighted truth, with thy persuasive strain Teach erring man to spurn the rage of gain; Teach him that states of native strength possessed, Though very poor, may still be very blessed; That trade’s proud empire hastes to swift decay,190 As ocean sweeps the laboured mole away;191 While self dependent power can time defy, As rocks resist the billows and the sky.

George Crabbe, The Village, Book I (1783) George Crabbe (1754–1832) was born in Aldeburgh, Suffolk, the son of a poor customs officer. In 1780 he went to London to become a professional writer but had little success until he gained the patronage of Edmund Burke. With Burke’s help, Crabbe not only published his first poem, The Library but was ordained as a priest. While chaplain to the Duke of Rutland, Crabbe drew on his experience of Aldeburgh and its landscape to write the poem which was to make his name with the public, The Village, published in two books in 1783. By the 1780s conventional pastoral poetry was largely out of fashion but a nostalgic pastoralization of rural life was not (see Dodsley’s Agriculture, in Chapter 5). The Village, as Raymond Williams has noted, is an ‘anti-pastoral’: it sets itself the task of describing rural life, ‘As truth will paint it, and as bards will not’. The bard Crabbe has in mind is Oliver Goldsmith and his hugely popular poem, The Deserted Village. Goldsmith’s poem shares with Crabbe’s a sense of social injustice and attacks enclosure and indifference to the suffering it created; but it also offers a highly sentimental and nostalgic vision of rural community. Crabbe replaces Goldsmith’s benevolent parish priest and eccentric schoolmaster with the socially aspiring cleric, the cynical quack, and the harsh realities of the poorhouse. The early 1780s saw a series of bad harvests which led to high prices, low wages and extreme suffering among poor rural labourers. Crabbe’s satire is on the outdated system of parish relief which was unable to cope with such suffering and on the callousness inherent in hiding that suffering behind pastoral conventions. But the satire is also on that pastoral vision of the countryside which assumes rural community holds the last remnants of the nation’s moral wealth. What marks out The Village is its unwillingness to indulge in nostalgic visions of a happy rural life which, for Crabbe, has never existed.

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Recommended edition George Crabbe, The Complete Works, eds. Norma Dalrymple-Champneys and Arthur Pollard (Oxford, 1988), vol. 1.

Suggested secondary reading Ronald B. Hatch, Crabbe’s Arabesque: Social Drama in the Poetry of George Crabbe (Montreal, 1976). Annabel Patterson, Pastoral and Ideology: Virgil to Valéry (Berkeley, CA, 1987), pp. 228–34. Raymond Williams, The Country and the City (London, 1973), ch. 9.

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The village life, and every care that reigns O’er youthful peasants and declining swains;192 What labour yields, and what, that labour past, Age, in its hour of languor, finds at last;193 What forms the real Picture of the Poor, Demands a song – The Muse can give no more. Fled are those times, if e’er such times were seen, When rustic poets praised their native green; No shepherds now in smooth alternate verse,194 Their country’s beauty or their nymphs’ rehearse;195 Yet still for these we frame the tender strain,196 Still in our lays fond Corydons complain,197 And shepherds’ boys their amorous pains reveal, The only pains, alas! they never feel. On Mincio’s banks, in Caesar’s bounteous reign,198 If Tityrus found the golden age again,199 Must sleepy bards the flattering dream prolong, Mechanic echo’s of the Mantuan song? From truth and nature shall we widely stray, Where Virgil, not where fancy, leads the way?200 Yes, thus the Muses sing of happy swains, Because the Muses never knew their pains: They boast their peasants’ pipes, but peasants now Resign their pipes and plod behind the plough; And few amid the rural tribe have time To number syllables and play with rhyme; Save honest Duck, what son of verse could share201 The poet’s rapture and the peasant’s care? Or the great labours of the field degrade, With the new peril of a poorer trade?202 From one chief cause these idle praises spring, That, themes so easy, few forbear to sing; They ask no thought, require no deep design,

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But swell the song and liquefy the line;203 The gentle lover takes the rural strain, A nymph his mistress, and himself a swain; With no sad scenes he clouds his tuneful prayer, But all, to look like her, is painted fair. I grant indeed that fields and flocks have charms, For him that gazes or for him that farms; But when amid such pleasing scenes I trace The poor laborious natives of the place, And see the mid-day sun, with fervid ray, On their bare heads and dewy temples play; While some, with feebler hands and fainter hearts, Deplore their fortune, yet sustain their parts, Then shall I dare these real ills to hide, In tinsel trappings of poetic pride? No, cast by Fortune on a frowning coast, Which can no groves nor happy valleys boast; Where other cares than those the Muse relates, And other shepherds dwell with other mates; By such examples taught, I paint the cot,204 As truth will paint it, and as bards will not:205 Nor you, ye poor, of letter’d scorn complain, To you the smoothest song is smooth in vain; O’ercome by labour, and bow’d down by time, Feel you the barren flattery of a rhyme? Can poets sooth you, when you pine for bread, By winding myrtles round your ruin’d shed?206 Can their light tales your weighty griefs o’erpower, Or glad with airy mirth the toilsome hour?207 ... Where are the swains, who, daily labour done, With rural games play’d down the setting sun; Who struck with matchless force the bounding ball, Or made the pond’rous quoit obliquely fall;208 While some huge Ajax, terrible and strong,209 Engag’d some artful stripling of the throng, And foil’d beneath the young Ulysses fell; When peals of praise the merry mischief tell? Where now are these? Beneath yon cliff they stand, To show the freighted pinnace where to land;210 To load the ready steed with guilty haste, To fly in terror o’er the pathless waste, Or when detected in their straggling course, To foil their foes by cunning or by force;

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Or, yielding part (when equal knaves contest), To gain a lawless passport for the rest.211 Here, wand’ring long amid these frowning fields,212 I sought the simple life that Nature yields; Rapine and Wrong and Fear usurp’d her place,213 And a bold, artful, surly, savage race; Who, only skill’d to take the finny tribe,214 The yearly dinner, or septennial bribe,215 Wait on the shore, and as the waves run high,216 On the tossed vessel bend their eager eye; Which to their coast directs its vent’rous way; Theirs, or the ocean’s, miserable prey. As on their neighbouring beach yon swallows stand, And wait for favouring winds to leave the land; While still for flight the ready wing is spread: So waited I the favouring hour, and fled;217 Fled from these shores where guilt and famine reign, And cried, Ah! hapless they who still remain; Who still remain to hear the ocean roar, Whose greedy waves devour the lessening shore;218 Till some fierce tide, with more imperious sway, Sweeps the low hut and all it holds away; When the sad tenant weeps from door to door; And begs a poor protection from the poor. But these are scenes where Nature’s niggard hand219 Gave a spare portion to the famish’d land;220 Her’s is the fault, if here mankind complain Of fruitless toil and labour spent in vain; But yet in other scenes more fair in view, When Plenty smiles – alas! she smiles for few, And those who taste not, yet behold her store, Are as the slaves that dig the golden ore, The wealth around them makes them doubly poor: Or will you deem them amply paid in health, Labour’s fair child, that languishes with Wealth? Go then! and see them rising with the sun, Through a long course of daily toil to run; Like him to make the plenteous harvest grow,221 And yet not share the plenty they bestow; See them beneath the dog-star’s raging heat,222 When the knees tremble and the temples beat; Behold them, leaning on their scythes, look o’er The labour past, and toils to come explore; See them alternate suns and showers engage,

其

28 The Writing of Rural England

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And hoard up aches and anguish for their age; Thro’ fens and marshy moors their steps pursue, When their warm pores imbibe the evening dew; Then own that labour may as fatal be To these thy slaves, as luxury to thee.223 Amid this tribe too oft a manly pride224 Strives in strong toil the fainting heart to hide; There may you see the youth of slender frame Contend with weakness, weariness, and shame; Yet, urg’d along, and proudly loth to yield, He strives to join his fellows of the field: Till long-contending nature droops at last, Declining health rejects his poor repast, His cheerless spouse the coming danger sees, And mutual murmurs urge the slow disease. Yet grant them health, ’tis not for us to tell, Though the head droops not, that the heart is well; Or will you urge their homely, plenteous fare,225 Healthy and plain and still the poor man’s share? Oh! trifle not with wants you cannot feel, Nor mock the misery of a stinted meal;226 Homely, not wholesome, plain not plenteous, such As you who envy would disdain to touch. Ye gentle souls, who dream of rural ease, Whom the smooth stream and smoother sonnet please;227 Go! if the peaceful cot your praises share, Go look within, and ask if peace be there: If peace be his – that drooping weary sire, Or theirs, that offspring round their feeble fire; Or her’s, that matron pale, whose trembling hand Turns on the wretched hearth th’ expiring brand.228 Nor yet can time itself obtain for these Life’s latest comforts, due respect and ease;229 For yonder see that hoary swain, whose age230 Can with no cares except its own engage; Who, propped on that rude staff, looks up to see The bare arms broken from the withering tree; On which, a boy, he climbed the loftiest bough, Then his first joy, but his sad emblem now. He once was chief in all the rustic trade, His steady hand the straightest furrow made; Full many a prize he won, and still is proud To find the triumphs of his youth allowed; A transient pleasure sparkles in his eyes,

Feudalism and Beyond 29

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He hears and smiles, then thinks again and sighs: For now he journeys to his grave in pain; The rich disdain him; nay, the poor disdain; Alternate masters now their slave command,231 And urge the efforts of his feeble hand; Who, when his age attempts its task in vain, With ruthless taunts of lazy poor complain. ... Thus, groan the old, till by disease oppressed, They taste a final woe, and then they rest. Theirs is yon house that holds the parish poor,232 Whose walls of mud scarce bear the broken door; There, where the putrid vapours flagging, play, And the dull wheel hums doleful through the day; There children dwell who know no parents’ care, Parents, who know no children’s love, dwell there; Heart-broken matrons on their joyless bed, Forsaken wives and mothers never wed; Dejected widows with unheeded tears, And crippled age with more than childhood-fears; The lame, the blind, and, far the happiest they! The moping idiot, and the madman gay. Here too the sick their final doom receive, Here brought amid the scenes of grief, to grieve; Where the loud groans from some sad chamber flow, Mixed with the clamours of the crowd below; Here sorrowing, they each kindred sorrow scan, And the cold charities of man to man. Whose laws indeed for ruined age provide,233 And strong compulsion plucks the scrap from pride; But still that scrap is bought with many a sigh, And pride embitters what it can’t deny. Say ye, oppressed by some fantastic woes,234 Some jarring nerve that baffles your repose; Who press the downy couch, while slaves advance With timid eye, to read the distant glance; Who with sad prayers the weary doctor tease, To name the nameless ever-new disease; Who with mock patience dire complaints endure, Which real pain, and that alone can cure; How would ye bear in real pain to lie, Despised, neglected, left alone to die? How would ye bear to draw your latest breath, Where all that’s wretched paves the way for death?

30 The Writing of Rural England

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Such is that room which one rude beam divides, And naked rafters form the sloping sides; Where the vile bands that bind the thatch are seen, And lath and mud is all that lie between;235 Save one dull pane, that, coarsely patched, gives way To the rude tempest, yet excludes the day: Here, on a matted flock, with dust o’erspread,236 The drooping wretch reclines his languid head; For him no hand the cordial cup applies, Nor wipes the tear that stagnates in his eyes; No friends with soft discourse his pain beguile, Nor promise hope till sickness wears a smile. But soon a loud and hasty summons calls, Shakes the thin roof, and echoes round the walls; Anon, a figure enters, quaintly neat,237 All pride and business, bustle and conceit; With looks unaltered by these scenes of woe, With speed that entering, speaks his haste to go; He bids the gazing throng around him fly, And carries fate and physic in his eye;238 A potent quack, long versed in human ills,239 Who first insults the victim whom he kills; Whose murd’rous hand a drowsy bench protect,240 And whose most tender mercy is neglect. Paid by the parish for attendance here, He wears contempt upon his sapient sneer;241 In haste he seeks the bed where misery lies, Impatience marked in his averted eyes; And, some habitual queries hurried o’er, Without reply, he rushes on the door; His drooping patient, long inured to pain, And long unheeded, knows remonstrance vain; He ceases now the feeble help to crave Of man, and mutely hastens to the grave. But ere his death some pious doubts arise, Some simple fears which ‘bold bad’ men despise;242 Fain would he ask the parish priest to prove His title certain to the joys above; For this he sends the murmuring nurse, who calls The holy stranger to these dismal walls; And doth not he, the pious man, appear, He, ‘passing rich with forty pounds a year?’243 Ah! no, a shepherd of a different stock, And far unlike him, feeds this little flock:

Feudalism and Beyond 31

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A jovial youth, who thinks his Sunday’s task As much as God or man can fairly ask; The rest he gives to loves and labours light, To fields the morning and to feasts the night;244 None better skilled, the noisy pack to guide, To urge their chase, to cheer them or to chide; Sure is his shot, his game he seldom missed, And seldom failed to win his game at whist; Then, while such honours bloom around his head, Shall he sit sadly by the sick man’s bed To raise the hope he feels not, or with zeal To combat fears that ev’n the pious feel? Now once again the gloomy scene explore, Less gloomy now; the bitter hour is o’er, The man of many sorrows sighs no more.245 Up yonder hill, behold how sadly slow The bier moves winding from the vale below;246 There lie the happy dead, from trouble free, And the glad parish pays the frugal fee;247 No more, oh! Death, thy victim starts to hear Churchwarden stern, or kingly overseer; No more the farmer gets his humble bow, Thou art his lord, the best of tyrants thou!

2 The Discovery of Landscape

‘Landskip’, observed an English connoisseur of the visual arts in 1606, ‘is a Dutch word, and it is as much as we should say in English landship, or expressing of the land by hills, woods, castles, seas, valleys, ruins, hanging rocks, cities, towns etc. as far as may be showed within our horizon’ (Henry Peacham, The Art of Drawing, p. 28). This statement drew attention to a new artistic concept in England. Landscape painting was virtually non-existent at this time; while visual representations of the land exist from earlier periods, they tend to be peripheral to the main purpose of a picture, as evident in certain portraits which include a rural background. Similarly, writers devoted surprisingly little attention to the aesthetic representation of their native land, often eschewing attention to local detail in favour of generic pastoral environments, informed by classical and continental sources. Over the following decades, however, painters and poets developed increasingly coherent approaches to the representation of landscape. This movement was influenced not only by continental art, but also by political and cultural forces within England itself. From the reign of Elizabeth there was a fresh interest in the country, especially among the landed elite. In particular, the development of cartography informed new understandings of the land, whether as an entire nation (as in Christopher Saxton’s 1579 Atlas) or as the property of individual landowners (as in the vogue for estate maps). Increasingly thereafter the land became an object not only for empirical investigation, but also for aesthetic representation. By the eighteenth century, those who looked for the pleasures of landscape were no longer confined to the social elite, and while they might include aristocrats such as Celia Fiennes, both men and women of the middling sort began to claim landscape as their own. The present chapter is concerned with this literary and cultural movement. It suggests that the mature landscape poetry of the mid-seventeenth century is the product of various converging influences apparent from the reign of Elizabeth, and it traces into the eighteenth century the increasing popularity of a language of landscape which came to be known 32

The Discovery of Landscape 33

as the picturesque. The selection of material begins with two works of Elizabethan pastoral literature, which combine classical and continental literary conventions for the treatment of rural life with idealized representations of an identifiably native environment, then traces an interest in landscape through works of chorography and topographical poetry. In the middle decades of the seventeenth century, which is represented here in the work of William Strode, Anne Kemp and (at greatest length) Sir John Denham, landscape poetry adopted more regularized forms, influenced not only by the visual arts but also by political and philosophical movements. A powerful ethos of rural retirement infuses much of the rural poetry of this period, particularly that written by royalists during the turbulent decades of the 1640s and 1650s, when traditional structures of society appeared to be under threat. (Hence there are many points of connection between the texts in this section and those in Chapters 3 and 4 below.) When such writers turned to the landscape, therefore, there was inevitably more at stake than aesthetics. Indeed the texts in this section evidence various ways in which representations of the natural environment are infused with ideology, particularly as dominant forces within society seek to legitimize and glorify their positions. In the reign of Elizabeth, Edmund Spenser was drawn to celebrate the beauties of rural England within the context of a panegyric on its queen. The wondrous monarch and her beautiful land are, in a sense, imaginatively fused. Subsequent writers looked increasingly to local scenes, often reflecting in the process on specific owners of the land. As Richard Carew’s description of a Cornish estate amply demonstrates, the appreciation of landscape was effectively reserved for the propertied through much of the seventeenth century. However, the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were remarkable for a huge increase in domestic tourism. As Britain’s infrastructure of roads developed, the cost of travel dropped and rather than being the preserve of the wealthy, travelling emerged as a leisure activity for a much wider section of polite society and was catered for by an increasing number of guidebooks and manuals such as William Gilpin’s hugely popular series of Observations. Though less frequently, women travelled and wrote of their travels, and as Miss J—M—’s letter suggests, like men, women were forced to place themselves, their class, and their gender in relation to the cultural assumptions of their readers. If such travellers did not own the rural landscapes they viewed, in recognizing land as landscape – whether visually or verbally – they nevertheless claimed a form of aesthetic ownership of the scene before them. In this sense the picturesque at once denied the ownership of others (strikingly in its rejection of gardens and ‘made’ scenery) while asserting an aesthetic possession all its own, even if that possession took the fleeting form of a sketch, a view or a scene described.

34 The Writing of Rural England

Suggested reading Malcolm Andrews, The Search for the Picturesque: Landscape, Aesthetics and Tourism, 1760–1800 (Aldershot, 1989). Elizabeth A. Bohls, Women Travel Writers and the Language of Aesthetics 1716–1818 (Cambridge, 1995), pp. 66–107. Sukanta Chaudhuri, Renaissance Pastoral and its English Developments (Oxford, 1989). Henry V. S. Ogden and Margaret Ogden, English Taste in Landscape in the Seventeenth Century (Ann Arbor, MI, 1955). Ian Ousby, The Englishman’s England: Taste, Travel and the Rise of Tourism (Cambridge, 1990). Maren-Sofie Røstvig, The Happy-Man: Studies in the Metamorphoses of a Classical Ideal 1600–1700 (Oxford, 1954). James Turner, The Politics of Landscape: Rural Scenery and Society in English Poetry 1630–1660 (Cambridge, MA, 1979).

Edmund Spenser, from ‘April’ eclogue, The Shepheardes Calender (1579) The Shepheardes Calender is a series of pastoral ‘eclogues’ modelled on the classical traditions of Theocritus and Virgil. Spenser (c.1552–99) employed pastoral in accordance with contemporary poetic theory, which suggested that under the ‘veil of homely persons’ a writer might ‘insinuate and glance at greater matters’.1 The shepherd consequently becomes a figure rich in significance, who may claim a right to speak on matters as diverse as love, poetry, religion, politics and morality. Such pastoral poetry is also decidedly allusive; The Shepheardes Calender is in fact rich in specific comment on contemporary issues, and many of the ‘shepherds’ have been identified as representative of courtiers, poets and clergymen. But while Spenser was not primarily concerned with real English shepherds, he subtly translates classical pastoral into an English context. Most strikingly, in the ‘April’ eclogue, Colin Clout (Spenser’s own pastoral persona) eulogizes Queen Elizabeth in terms which evoke the natural beauties of her land, albeit in a manner heavy with symbolism. In the process Spenser not only furthers the emergent cult of the perfect and virginal queen, but also fashions a remarkable and influential statement of native pastoralism. Spenser’s self-consciously archaic style makes modernizing his verse especially difficult; here we have followed the work of Douglas Brooks-Davies. We have also included most of the contemporary annotatations to the text, written by someone identified only as ‘E. K.’ Recommended edition Edmund Spenser: Selected Shorter Poems, ed. Douglas Brooks-Davies (London and New York, 1995).

The Discovery of Landscape 35

Suggested secondary reading John D. Bernard, Ceremonies of Innocence: Pastoralism in the Poetry of Edmund Spenser (Cambridge, 1989). Harold Bloom, ed., Edmund Spenser (New York, 1986). Nancy Hoffman, Spenser’s Pastorals: ‘The Shepheardes Calender’ and Colin Clout (Baltimore, MD, 1977). Lynn Stanley Johnson, The Shepheardes Calender: An Introduction (University Park, PA and London, 1990).

[After the opening passages of a dialogue between Thenot and Hobbinol, which frames the eclogue, Hobbinol agrees to recite Colin Clout’s song in praise of ‘fair Eliza, queen of shepherds all’.]

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Ye dainty nymphs, that in this blessed brook Do bathe your breast, Forsake your watery bowers, and hither look, At my request; And eke you virgins, that on Parnass’ dwell,2 Whence floweth Helicon the learned well,3 Help me to blaze4 Her worthy praise, Which in her sex doth all excel. Of fair Eliza be your silver song, That blessed wight:5 The flower of virgins, may she flourish long, In princely plight.6 For she is Syrinx daughter without spot, Which Pan the shepherds’ god of her begot:7 So sprung her grace Of heavenly race, No mortal blemish may her blot. See, where she sits upon the grassy green, (O seemly sight)8 Yclad in scarlot like a maiden queen,9 And ermines white.10 Upon her head a crimson coronet,11 With damask roses and daffadillies set:12 Bay-leaves between, And primroses green Embellish the sweet violet.13 Tell me, have ye seen her angelic face, Like Phoebe fair?14

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Her heavenly haviour, her princely grace,15 Can you well compare? The red rose meddled with the white yfere,16 In either cheek depincten lively cheer.17 Her modest eye, Her majesty, Where have you seen the like, but there? I saw Phoebus thrust out his golden head,18 Upon her to gaze: But when he saw, how broad her beams did spread, It did him amaze. He blushed to see another sun below, Ne durst again his fiery face out-show:19 Let him, if he dare, His brightness compare With hers, to have the overthrow.20 Show thyself, Cynthia, with thy silver rays,21 And be not abashed: When she the beams of her beauty displays, O how art thou dashed? But I will not match her with Latona’s seed, Such folly great sorrow to Niobe did breed.22 Now she is a stone, And makes daily moan, Warning all other to take heed. Pan may be proud, that ever he begot Such a bellibone,23 And Syrinx rejoice, that ever was her lot To bear such an one. Soon as my younglings cryen for the dam, To her will I offer a milk-white lamb: She is my goddess plain,24 And I her shepherd swain,25 Albe forswonk and forswat I am.26 I see Calliope speed her to the place,27 Where my goddess shines: And after her the other Muses trace, With their violins. Bene they not bay branches, which they do bear,28 All for Eliza in her hand to wear? So sweetly they play,

The Discovery of Landscape 37

And sing all the way, That it a heaven is to hear.

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Lo, how finely the Graces can it foot29 To the instrument: They dancen deftly, and singen soot,30 In their merriment. Wants not a fourth grace, to make the dance even?31 Let that room to my lady be yeven:32 She shall be a Grace, To fill the fourth place, And reign with the rest in heaven.

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And whither rens this bevy of ladies bright,33 Ranged in a row? They bene all ladies of the lake behight,34 That unto her go. Chloris, that is the chiefest nymph of all,35 Of olive branches bears a coronal:36 Olives bene for peace,37 When wars do surcease:38 Such for a princess bene principal.39

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Ye shepherds’ daughters, that dwell on the green, Hie you there apace:40 Let none come there, but that virgins bene,41 To adorn her grace. And when you come, whereas she is in place,

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See, that your rudeness do not you disgrace: Bind your fillets fast,42 And gird in your waist, For more finesse, with a tawdry lace.43 100

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Bring hither the pink and purple columbine, With gillyflowers:44 Bring coronations, and sops-in-wine,45 Worn of paramours.46 Strew me the ground with daffadowndillies, And cowslips, and kingcups, and loved lilies:47 The pretty paunce,48 And the chevisance,49 Shall match with the fair flower de lis.50 Now rise up, Eliza, decked as thou art, In royal array:

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And now ye dainty damsels may depart Each one her way. I fear, I have troubled your troops too long: Let dame Eliza thank you for her song. And if you come hither, When damsons I gather,51 I will part them all you among.

Sir Philip Sidney, from The Countess of Pembroke’s Arcadia (The New Arcadia) (1590) The Arcadia, a prose romance with interspersed poetry, was written in two versions by Sir Philip Sidney (1554–86) but not printed in his lifetime. Although the Arcadia is not set in England, it has long been associated with Sidney’s native land, and his pastoral vision of the countryside would be influential throughout the early modern period. The following description of Arcadia demonstrates Sidney’s perception of landscape. He depicts the scene in highly stylized terms, which suggest at once a debt to classical pastoral literature and a comparison with the visual arts. The passage is also underpinned by a concern with social order, which is a central concern of the Arcadia. It is made clear that the landscape of the neighbouring land of Laconia has been devastated because of a peasant uprising; in Arcadia itself, a more stable appreciation of hierarchy is subtly encoded in the land itself, through the use of terms such as ‘stately’, ‘humble’ and ‘base’. Recommended edition The Countess of Pembroke’s Arcadia : The New Arcadia, ed. Victor Skretkowicz (Oxford, 1987).

Suggested secondary reading Katherine Duncan-Jones, Sir Philip Sidney: Courtier Poet (New Haven, CT and London, 1991). Arthur Kinney (ed.), Essential Articles for the Study of Sir Philip Sidney (Hamden, CT, 1986). Jon S. Lawry, Sidney’s Two ‘Arcadias’: Pattern and Proceeding (Ithaca, NY and London, 1972).

[At this point, in the second chapter of Book One, two shepherds, Claius and Strephon, are escorting the shipwrecked prince Musidorus to the home of Kalander, in the land of Arcadia. They eventually arrive in Arcadia, after first crossing Laconia.] So that the third day after, in the time that the morning did strew roses and violets in the heavenly floor against the coming of the sun,52 the

The Discovery of Landscape 39

nightingales, striving one with the other which could in most dainty variety recount their wrong-caused sorrow,53 made them put off their sleep; and rising from under a tree, which that night had been their pavilion, they went on their journey, which by and by welcomed Musidorus’ eyes (wearied with the wasted soil of Laconia)54 with delightful prospects.55 There were hills which garnished their proud heights with stately trees; humble valleys, whose base estate seemed comforted with refreshing of silver rivers; meadows enamelled with all sorts of eyepleasing flowers; thickets, which being lined with most pleasant shade, were witnessed so to56 by the cheerful deposition of many well-tuned birds; each pasture stored with sheep feeding with sober security, while the pretty lambs with bleating oratory craved the dams’ comfort. Here a shepherd’s boy piping as though he should never be old; there a young shepherdess knitting, and withal singing, and it seemed that her voice comforted her hands to work and her hands kept time to her voice’s music. As for the houses of the country (for many houses came under their eye), they were all scattered, no two being one by the other, and yet not so far off as that it barred mutual succour: a show, as it were, of an accompanable solitariness, and of a civil wildness.57 ‘I pray you,’ said Musidorus, then first unsealing his long-silent lips, ‘what countries be these we pass through, which are so diverse in show, the one wanting no store,58 the other having no store but of want?’59 ‘The country,’ answered Claius, ‘where you were cast ashore, and now are passed through, is Laconia; not so poor by the barrenness of the soil (though in itself not passing fertile),60 as by a civil war, which being these two years within the bowels of that estate61 between the gentlemen and the peasants (by them named Helots),62 hath in this sort as it were disfigured the face of nature, and made it so unhospital63 as now you have found it: the towns neither of the one side nor the other willingly opening their gates to strangers, nor strangers willingly entering for fear of being mistaken. ‘But this country (where now you set your foot) is Arcadia;64 and even hard by is the house of Kalander65 whither we lead you: this country being thus decked with peace, and the child of peace, good husbandry. These houses you see so scattered are of men, as we two are, that live upon the commodity of their sheep, and therefore in the division of the Arcadian estate are termed shepherds;66 a happy people, wanting little, because they desire not much.’

Richard Carew, from The Survey of Cornwall (1602) Richard Carew of Antony (1555–1620) was a writer and translator, an antiquarian scholar and a member of one of Cornwall’s leading families. All of these interests are evident in his Survey of Cornwall, which is one of

40 The Writing of Rural England

the earliest and best examples of Renaissance chorography. The book is driven throughout by a strong sense of local pride, maintains a personable narrative voice and is not overly weighted with antiquarian research. In the following passage he describes a landscape which has been artfully shaped by its owners. Carew’s description dwells on the multiple pleasures afforded by the site: as aesthetically pleasing, a place of recreation, and an opportunity for reflection on the economic and military strength of both Cornwall and England. Recommended edition The Survey of Cornwall, ed. F. E. Halliday (London, 1953).

[Carew is describing the Hundred of West, an area in the south-east of the county.] It is hemmed in on the west by the east side of Fowey Haven,67 at whose mouth stands Hall,68 in Cornish a moor,69 and (perhaps) such it was before better manurance reduced it to the present fruitfulness.70 The same descended to Sir Reynold Mohun from his ancestors, by their match with the daughter and heir of Fitzwilliams; and amongst other commodities71 is appurtenanced with72 a walk, which if I could as plainly show you, as myself have oftentimes delightfully seen it, you might and would avow the same to be a place of diversified pleasings. I will therefore do my best to trace you a shadow thereof,73 by which you shall (in part) give a guess at the substance. It is cut out in the side of a steep hill, whose foot the salt water washes, evenly levelled, to serve for bowling;74 floored with sand for soaking up the rain, closed with two shorn hedges and banked with sweet-scenting flowers. It widens to a sufficient breadth, for the march of five or six in front, and extendeth to not much less than half a London mile;75 neither doth it lead wearisomely forthright,76 but yields varied and yet not overbusy77 turnings, as the ground’s opportunity affords;78 which advantage increases the prospect and is converted on the foreside into platforms, for the planting of ordinance79 and the walkers’ sitting; and on the back part into summer-houses, for their more private retreat and recreation. In passing along your eyes shall be called away from guiding your feet, to descry by their farthest kenning80 the vast ocean, sparkled with ships that continually this way trade, forth and back, to most quarters of the world. Nearer home, they take view of all sized cocks,81 barges and fisher-boats, hovering on the coast. Again, contracting your sight to a narrower scope, it lights82 on the fair and commodious haven, where the tide daily presents his double service of flowing and ebbing, to carry and recarry whatsoever the inhabitants shall be pleased to charge him withal, and his creeks (like a young wanton lover) fold about the land with many embracing arms.

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Michael Drayton, ‘A Description of Romney Marsh’, from Poly-Olbion (1612) Drayton (1563–1631) describes the 14,000-line Poly-Olbion as a ‘chorographical description of tracts, rivers, mountains, forests . . . with intermixture of the most remarkable stories, antiquities, wonders, rarities, pleasures, and commodities of the same’. But while the poem is endebted to the chorographical tradition, it diverges in its construction of a natural mythology of the land. Drayton consistently anthropomorphizes natural features; seas, rivers, plains and mountains assume identities, with their own qualities, relationships and rivalries. The following passage exemplifies this strategy, as it describes Romney Marsh’s unrequited love for the Rother River. The passage is also noteworthy for Drayton’s use of the word ‘landskip’. Although Drayton does not consistently develop formal landscape descriptions, his work marks a significant development in representations of the land, and links works of Elizabethan pastoral literature with the landscape poetry of the mid-seventeenth century. Recommended edition The Works of Michael Drayton, ed. J. William Hebel, 5 vols (Oxford, revised edn, 1961), vol. 4.

Suggested secondary reading Richard Helgerson, Forms of Nationhood: The Elizabethan Writing of England (Chicago and London, 1992), ch. 3. Claire McEachern, The Poetics of English Nationhood, 1590–1612 (Cambridge, 1996), ch. 4. Andrew McRae, God Speed the Plough: The Representation of Agrarian England, 1500–1660 (Cambridge, 1996), ch. 8.

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Of Rother’s happy match, when Romney Marsh heard tell,83 Whilst in his youthful course himself he doth apply, And falleth in her sight into the sea at Rye,84 She thinketh with herself how she a way might find To put the homely isle quite out of Rother’s mind; Appearing to the flood most bravely like a queen, Clad (all) from head to foot in gaudy summer’s green; Her mantle richly wrought, with sundry flowers and weeds; Her moistful temples bound with wreaths of quivering reeds: Which loosely flowing down upon her lusty thighs, Most strongly seem to tempt the river’s amorous eyes. And on her loins a frock, with many a swelling pleat, Embossed with well-spread horse, large sheep and full-fed neat.85 Some wallowing in the grass, there lie a while to batten;86 Some sent away to kill; some thither brought to fatten;

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With villages amongst, oft powdered here and there;87 And (that the same more like to landskip should appear)88 With lakes and lesser fords, to mitigate the heat89 (In summer when the fly doth prick the gadding neat,90 Forced from the brakes, where late they browsed the velvet buds)91 In which, they lick their hides, and chew their savoury cuds. Eighteenth Song, ll. 20–40

William Strode, ‘On Westwell Downs’ (1630s?) The poetry of William Strode (1602–45) was not printed in his lifetime but circulated in manuscript form. Although he is not widely known for topographical writing, ‘On Westwell Downs’ is a valuable study in the poetic representation of landscape, striking particularly for its analogies between the land and the human face or body. The poem’s representation of country people, however, is less sympathetically engaged. The speaker, carefully identified as a man of substance and culture, is throughout a casual observer rather than an active participant in the landscape. In this respect the poem is in accord with seventeenth-century poetry of rural retirement, written mainly by royalist poets during the Interregnum. Although there is a published edition of Strode’s poetry, we have followed here the superior (though unpublished) work of M. A. Forey, ‘A Critical Edition of the Poetical Works of William Strode, Excluding The Floating Island’, BLitt thesis, University of Oxford (1966). Suggested secondary reading Maren-Sofie Røstvig, The Happy-Man: Studies in the Metamorphoses of a Classical Ideal 1600–1700 (Oxford, 1954), ch. 3.

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When Westwell Downs I gan to tread,92 Where cleanly winds the green did sweep,93 Methought a landskip there was spread, Here a bush and there a sheep. The pleated wrinkles on the face Of wave–swol’n earth did lend such grace94 As shadowings in imagery,95 Which both deceive and please the eye. The sheep sometimes do tread a maze By often winding in and in, And sometimes round about they trace, Which milkmaids call a fairy ring;96 Such semicircles they have run,

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Such lines across so trimly spun,97 That shepherds learn whene’er they please A new geometry with ease. The slender food upon the down Is always even, always bare,98 Which neither spring nor winter’s frown Can aught improve or aught impair:99 Such is the barren eunuch’s chin, Which thus doth evermore begin With tender down to be o’ercast, Which never comes to hair at last. Here and there two hilly crests Amidst them hug a pleasant green, And these are like two swelling breasts That close a tender vale between;100 Here would I read or sleep or play From early morn till flight of day – But hark, a sheeps-bell calls me up, Like Oxford college bells, to sup.101

Anne Kemp, A Contemplation on Basset’s Down Hill (1658?) This poem, published in only one edition in a single-sheet broadside format, is the only known work of Anne Kemp. A Contemplation was probably influenced by Sir John Denham’s Cooper’s Hill, which was published in 1642 and 1655, before the final printed version of 1668 (reproduced below). Kemp’s poem, however, lacks Denham’s sustained politicized vision of landscape. Whereas Denham chooses a hill which affords views of significant national sites, Basset’s Down Hill (probably situated near Swindon) appears to be significant to Kemp for personal rather than political reasons. From this position, she represents the ‘prospect’ afforded by the hill in terms laden with pastoral conventions. She constructs rural England as an idyllic and harmonious environment, in which the only ‘strife’ is that ‘all strive to be good’.

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If that exact Apelles now did live,102 And could a picture of Elysium give;103 He might portrait the prospect which this hill Doth show; and make the eye command at will.104 Here’s many a shire whose pleasantness for sight Doth yield to the spectators great delight. There’s a large field gilded with Ceres’ gold.105 Here a green mead doth many heifers hold;

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There’s pasture grown with verdant grass, whose store Of argent sheep shows th’owner is not poor. Here springs do intricate meanders make Excelling far oblivion’s Lethe lake;106 There woods and coppices harbour as many And sweet melodious choristers, as any Elisium yields; whose Philomelan lays107 Merit the highest of the lyric’s praise. Here’s Flora decked with robes of or and azure,108 Fragrantly smelling yields to senses pleasure. Hence Zephyrus doth breathe his gentle gales109 Cool on the hills, and sweet throughout the vales. How happy are they that in this climate dwell? Alas! they can’t their own sweet welfare tell; Scarce I myself whilst I am here do know it ’Til I see its antithesis to show it.110 Here are no smoking streets, nor howling cries, Deaf’ning the ears, nor blinding the eyes; No noisome smells t’infect, and choke the air, Breeding diseases envious to the fair.111 Deceit is here exiled from the flesh, and blood (Strife only reigns, for all strive to be good). With Will his verse I here will make an end112 And as the crab doth always backward bend So, though from this sweet place I go away My loyal heart will in this climate stay.113 Thus heartless, doth my worthless body rest Whilst my heart liveth with the ever-blessed.

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Sir John Denham, Cooper’s Hill (1668) Cooper’s Hill was by far the most influential landscape poem of the seventeenth century, and laid a foundation for much important poetry in the century of Pope, whose own Windsor Forest is deeply indebted to Denham’s work. Sir John Denham (1615–69), a royalist poet and playwright, wrote several different versions of the poem between the early 1640s and the late 1660s. Like so much early modern landscape poetry, Cooper’s Hill fuses naturalistic description with political argument. The sites on which he focuses, although all technically visible from his vantage point (a hill not far from London), are also impregnated with political significance, as the poem reflects upon England’s history and national identity. As several critics have argued, Denham relates the topographical and the political most notably through the mechanism of concordia discors, or harmony through opposition.

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Recommended edition Expans’d Hieroglyphicks: A Critical Edition of Sir John Denham’s Coopers Hill, ed. Brendan O Hehir (Berkeley, CA and Los Angeles, 1969).

Suggested secondary reading James Turner, The Politics of Landscape: Rural Scenery and Society in English Poetry 1630–1660 (Cambridge, MA, 1979), ch. 3. Earl R. Wasserman, The Subtler Language: Critical Readings of Neoclassic and Romantic Poems (Baltimore, MD, 1959), ch. 3.

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Sure there are poets which did never dream Upon Parnassus, nor did taste the stream114 Of Helicon; we therefore may suppose115 Those made not poets, but the poets those. And as courts make not kings, but kings the court, So where the Muses and their train resort, Parnassus stands; if I can be to thee A poet, thou Parnassus art to me. Nor wonder, if (advantaged in my flight, By taking wing from thy auspicious height) Through untraced ways, and airy paths I fly, More boundless in my fancy than my eye:116 My eye, which swift as thought contracts the space That lies between, and first salutes the place Crowned with that sacred pile, so vast, so high,117 That whether ’tis a part of earth, or sky, Uncertain seems, and may be thought a proud Aspiring mountain, or descending cloud, Paul’s, the late theme of such a muse whose flight Has bravely reached and soared above thy height:118 Now shalt thou stand though sword, or time, or fire, Or zeal more fierce than they, thy fall conspire,119 Secure, whilst thee the best of poets sings,120 Preserved from ruin by the best of kings.121 Under his proud survey the city lies, And like a mist beneath a hill doth rise; Whose state and wealth the business and the crowd, Seems at this distance but a darker cloud: And is to him who rightly things esteems, No other in effect than what it seems: Where, with like haste, though several ways, they run Some to undo, and some to be undone; While luxury, and wealth, like war and peace, Are each the other’s ruin, and increase;

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As rivers lost in seas some secret vein Thence reconveys, there to be lost again.122 Oh happiness of sweet retired content! To be at once secure, and innocent. Windsor the next (where Mars with Venus dwells. Beauty with strength) above the valley swells Into my eye, and doth itself present With such an easy and unforced ascent, That no stupendous precipice denies Access, no horror turns away our eyes:123 But such a rise, as doth at once invite A pleasure, and a reverence from the sight. Thy mighty master’s emblem, in whose face Sat meekness, heightened with majestic grace: Such seems thy gentle height, made only proud To be the basis of that pompous load,124 Than which, a nobler weight no mountain bears, But Atlas only that supports the spheres.125 When Nature’s hand this ground did thus advance,126 ’Twas guided by a wiser power than chance; Marked out for such a use, as if ’twere meant T’invite the builder, and his choice prevent.127 Nor can we call it choice, when what we choose, Folly, or blindness only could refuse. A crown of such majestic towers doth grace The gods’ great mother, when her heavenly race128 Do homage to her, yet she cannot boast Amongst that numerous, and celestial host, More heroes than can Windsor, nor doth fame’s Immortal book record more noble names. Not to look back so far, to whom this isle Owes the first glory of so brave a pile,129 Whether to Caesar, Albanact, or Brute,130 The British Arthur, or the Danish Knute,131 (Though this of old no less contest did move, Than when for Homer’s birth seven cities strove;132 Like him in birth, thou should’st be like in fame, As thine his fate, if mine had been his flame)133 But whosoe’er it was, nature designed First a brave place, and then as brave a mind. Not to recount those several kings, to whom It gave a cradle, or to whom a tomb, But thee (great Edward) and thy greater son134 (The lilies which his father wore, he won)135

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And thy Bellona,136 who the consort came Not only to thy bed, but to thy fame, She to thy triumph led one captive king,137 And brought that son, which did the second bring.138 Then didst thou found that order (whether love139 Or victory thy royal thoughts did move) Each was a noble cause, and nothing less Than the design, has been the great success: Which foreign kings, and emperors esteem The second honour to their diadem.140 Had thy great destiny but given thee skill, To know as well, as power to act her will, That from those kings, who then thy captives were, In after-times should spring a royal pair141 Who should possess all that thy mighty power, Or thy desires more mighty, did devour; To whom their better fate reserves what e’er The victor hopes for, or the vanquished fear; That blood, which thou and thy great grandsire shed,142 And all that since these sister nations bled, Had been unspilt, had happy Edward known That all the blood he spilt, had been his own. When he that patron chose, in whom are joined143 Soldier and martyr, and his arms confined Within the azure circle, he did seem144 But to foretell, and prophesy of him,145 Who to his realms that azure round hath joined, Which nature for their bound at first designed.146 That bound, which to the world’s extremest ends, Endless itself, its liquid arms extends; Nor doth he need those emblems which we paint, But is himself the soldier and the saint.147 Here should my wonder dwell, and here my praise, But my fixed thoughts my wandering eye betrays, Viewing a neighbouring hill, whose top of late148 A chapel crowned, till in the common fate,149 The adjoining abbey fell. (May no such storm150 Fall on our times, where ruin must reform.) Tell me (my muse) what monstrous dire offence, What crime could any Christian king incense151 To such a rage? Was’t luxury, or lust? Was he so temperate, so chaste, so just? Were these their crimes? They were his own much more: But wealth is crime enough to him that’s poor,

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Who having spent the treasures of his crown, Condemns their luxury to feed his own. And yet this act, to varnish o’er the shame Of sacrilege, must bear devotion’s name. No crime so bold, but would be understood A real, or at least a seeming good.152 Who fears not to do ill, yet fears the name,153 And free from conscience, is a slave to fame.154 Thus he the Church at once protects, and spoils: But princes’ swords are sharper than their styles.155 And thus to th’ages past he makes amends, Their charity destroys, their faith defends.156 Then did religion in a lazy cell,157 In empty, airy contemplations dwell; And like the block, unmoved lay: but ours, As much too active, like the stork devours.158 Is there no temperate region can be known, Betwixt their frigid, and our torrid zone?159 Could we not wake from that lethargic dream, But to be restless in a worse extreme? And for that lethargy was there no cure, But to be cast into a calenture?160 Can knowledge have no bound, but must advance So far, to make us wish for ignorance? And rather in the dark to grope our way, Than led by a false guide to err by day? Who sees these dismal heaps, but would demand161 What barbarous invader sacked the land? But when he hears, no Goth, no Turk did bring This desolation, but a Christian king; When nothing, but the name of zeal, appears ’Twixt our best actions and the worst of theirs, What does he think our sacrilege would spare, When such th’effects of our devotions are? Parting from thence ’twixt anger, shame, and fear, Those for what’s past, and this for what’s too near:162 My eye descending from the hill, surveys Where Thames amongst the wanton valleys strays. Thames, the most loved of all the oceans’ sons, By his old sire to his embraces runs, Hasting to pay his tribute to the sea,163 Like mortal life to meet eternity. Though with those streams he no resemblance hold, Whose foam is amber, and their gravel gold;164

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His genuine, and less guilty wealth t’explore,165 Search not his bottom, but survey his shore; O’er which he kindly spreads his spacious wing, And hatches plenty for th’ensuing spring. Nor then destroys it with too fond a stay, Like mothers which their infants overlay.166 Nor with a sudden and impetuous wave, Like profuse kings, resumes the wealth he gave.167 No unexpected inundations spoil The mower’s hopes, nor mock the ploughman’s toil: But godlike his unwearied bounty flows; First loves to do, then loves the good he does. Nor are his blessings to his banks confined, But free, and common, as the sea or wind; When he to boast, or to disperse his stores Full of the tributes of his grateful shores,168 Visits the world, and in his flying towers169 Brings home to us, and makes both Indies ours;170 Finds wealth where ‘tis, bestows it where it wants; Cities in deserts, woods in cities plants. So that to us no thing, no place is strange, While his fair bosom is the world’s exchange.171 O could I flow like thee, and make thy stream My great example, as it is my theme! Though deep, yet clear, though gentle, yet not dull, Strong without rage, without o’erflowing full.172 Heaven her Eridanus no more shall boast,173 Whose fame in thine, like lesser currents lost, Thy nobler streams shall visit Jove’s abodes, To shine amongst the stars, and bathe the gods. Here nature, whether more intent to please Us or herself, with strange varieties (For things of wonder give no less delight To the wise maker’s, than beholder’s sight; Though these delights from several causes move For so our children, thus our friends we love) Wisely she knew, the harmony of things, As well as that of sounds, from discords springs.174 Such was the discord, which did first disperse175 Form, order, beauty through the universe; While dryness moisture, coldness heat resists,176 All that we have, and that we are, subsists. While the steep horrid roughness of the wood Strives with the gentle calmness of the flood.

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Such huge extremes when nature doth unite, Wonder from thence results, from thence delight. The stream is so transparent, pure, and clear, That had the self-enamoured youth gazed here, So fatally deceived he had not been, While he the bottom, not his face had seen.177 But his proud head the airy mountain hides Among the clouds; his shoulders, and his sides A shady mantle clothes; his curled brows Frown on the gentle stream, which calmly flows, While winds and storms his lofty forehead beat: The common fate of all that’s high or great. Low at his foot a spacious plain is placed,178 Between the mountain and the stream embraced: Which shade and shelter from the hill derives, While the kind river wealth and beauty gives; And in the mixture of all these appears Variety, which all the rest endears. This scene had some bold Greek, or British bard179 Beheld of old, what stories had we heard, Of fairies, satyrs, and the nymphs their dames,180 Their feasts, their revels, and their amorous flames: ’Tis still the same, although their airy shape All but a quick poetic sight escape. There Faunus and Sylvanus keep their courts,181 And thither all the horned host resorts,182 To graze the ranker mead, that noble herd183 On whose sublime and shady fronts is reared Nature’s great masterpiece; to show how soon Great things are made, but sooner are undone.184 Here have I seen the king, when great affairs185 Give leave to slacken, and unbend his cares,186 Attended to the chase by all the flower Of youth, whose hopes a nobler prey devour:187 Pleasure with praise, and danger, they would buy, And wish a foe that would not only fly.188 The stag now conscious of his fatal growth,189 At once indulgent to his fear and sloth, To some dark covert his retreat had made, Where nor man’s eye, nor heaven’s should invade190 His soft repose; when th’unexpected sound Of dogs, and men, his wakeful ear doth wound. Roused with the noise, he scarce believes his ear, Willing to think th’illusions of his fear

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Had given this false alarm, but straight his view Confirms, that more than all he fears is true. Betrayed in all his strengths, the wood beset, All instruments, all arts of ruin met;191 He calls to mind his strength, and then his speed, His winged heels, and then his armed head; With these t’avoid, with that his fate to meet: But fear prevails, and bids him trust his feet. So fast he flies, that his reviewing eye192 Has lost the chasers, and his ear the cry; Exulting, till he finds, their nobler sense Their disproportioned speed does recompense.193 Then curses his conspiring feet, whose scent Betrays that safety which their swiftness lent. Then tries his friends, among the baser herd, Where he so lately was obeyed, and feared, His safety seeks: the herd, unkindly wise, Or chases him from thence, or from him flies. Like a declining statesman, left forlorn To his friends’ pity, and pursuers’ scorn, With shame remembers, while himself was one Of the same herd, himself the same had done.194 Thence to the coverts, and the conscious groves, The scenes of his past triumphs, and his loves;195 Sadly surveying where he ranged alone Prince of the soil, and all the herd his own; And like a bold knight errant did proclaim Combat to all, and bore away the dame;196 And taught the woods to echo to the stream His dreadful challenge, and his clashing beam.197 Yet faintly now declines the fatal strife; So much his love was dearer than his life. Now every leaf, and every moving breath Presents a foe, and every foe a death. Wearied, forsaken, and pursued, at last All safety in despair of safety placed, Courage he thence resumes, resolved to bear All their assaults, since ’tis in vain to fear. And now too late he wishes for the fight That strength he wasted in ignoble flight: But when he sees the eager chase renewed, Himself by dogs, the dogs by men pursued, He straight revokes his bold resolve, and more Repents his courage, than his fear before;

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Finds that uncertain ways unsafest are, And doubt a greater mischief than despair.198 Then to the stream, when neither friends, nor force, Nor speed, nor art avail, he shapes his course; Thinks not their rage so desperate t’assay199 An element more merciless than they.200 But fearless they pursue, nor can the flood Quench their dire thirst; alas, they thirst for blood. So towards a ship the oar-finned galleys ply,201 Which wanting sea to ride, or wind to fly, Stands but to fall revenged on those that dare Tempt the last fury of extreme despair. So fares the stag among th’enraged hounds, Repels their force, and wounds returns for wounds. And as a hero, whom his baser foes202 In troops surround, now these assails, now those, Though prodigal of life, disdains to die203 By common hands; but if he can descry Some nobler foes approach, to him he calls, And begs his fate, and then contented falls. So when the king a mortal shaft lets fly204 From his unerring hand, then glad to die, Proud of the wound, to it resigns his blood, And stains the crystal with a purple flood. This a more innocent, and happy chase, Than when of old, but in the self-same place,205 Fair liberty pursued, and meant a prey To lawless power, here turned, and stood at bay.206 When in that remedy all hope was placed Which was, or should have been at least, the last.207 Here was that Charter sealed, wherein the Crown All marks of arbitrary power lays down: Tyrant and slave, those names of hate and fear, The happier style of king and subject bear: Happy, when both to the same centre move, When kings give liberty, and subjects love. Therefore not long in force this Charter stood; Wanting that seal, it must be sealed in blood.208 The subjects armed, the more their princes gave, Th’advantage only took the more to crave.209 Till kings by giving, give themselves away, And even that power, that should deny, betray. ‘Who gives constrained, but his own fear reviles, Not thanked, but scorned; nor are they gifts, but spoils.’210

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Thus kings, by grasping more than they could hold, First made their subjects by oppression bold: And popular sway, by forcing kings to give211 More than was fit for subjects to receive, Ran to the same extremes; and one excess Made both, by striving to be greater, less. When a calm river raised with sudden rains, Or snows dissolved, o’erflows th’adjoining plains, The husbandmen with high-raised banks secure Their greedy hopes, and this he can endure. But if with bays and dams they strive to force His channel to a new, or narrow course; No longer then within his banks he dwells, First to a torrent, then a deluge swells: Stronger, and fiercer by restraint he roars, And knows no bound, but makes his power his shores.

Celia Fiennes, from The ‘Great Journey’ (1698) Celia Fiennes (1662–1741) was the granddaughter of the first Viscount Saye and Sele and an inveterate traveller; between 1685 and 1703 she visited every county in England. Fiennes recorded her travels in a series of journals which were first published in 1888 by a family descendent, Mrs Griffiths (whose text – Through England on a Side Saddle – we follow here). Most of what is known of Fiennes comes from these journals and this is sketchy at best. She claims that she travelled so insistently both for her health and in order to learn more of the country in which she lived. Indeed, in the preface to the journals she berates her countrymen for not exploring their own nation, and argues that gentlemen, who have greater access to information than women travellers, should consider it a duty to learn about their native land at first hand. Notwithstanding the restrictions of gender, family connections gave her a wide range of acquaintances across England and in combination with her own keen observation and willingness to talk to the local inhabitants, Fiennes is able to offer a lively and informed account of the places she visits: her description of part of the Lake District in 1698 is reproduced here. Notably, while Fiennes appreciates the sounds and sights of these regions, she also insists on the pleasures of cultivation and the beauties of enclosures. For Fiennes, enclosure represents both prosperity and the taming of the wild. Recommended edition Christopher Morris, ed., The Illustrated Journeys of Celia Fiennes, c.1682–c.1712 (Exeter, 1982).

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Suggested secondary reading Andrew McRae, ‘Female Mobility and National Space in Restoration England: the Travel Diaries of Celia Fiennes’, Meridian, 18:1 (2001), pp. 105–13. Margaret Willy, Three Women Diarists (London, 1964).

This Kendall is the biggest town and much the heart of Westmoreland, but Appleby 10 miles off is the shire town where the session and assizes212 are held and is 7 miles to this great Lake Windermere or great standing water which is 10 miles long and near half a mile over in some places . . . Thence I rode almost all the way in sight of this great water, sometimes I lost it by reason of the great hills interposing and so a continued up hill and down hill and that pretty steep, even when I was in that they called bottoms which are very rich good grounds, and so I gained by degrees from lower to higher hills which I always went up and down before I came to another hill. At last I attained to the side of one of these hills or fells of rocks, which I passed on the side much about the middle,213 for looking down to the bottom it was at least a mile all full of those lesser hills and enclosures, so looking upward I was as far from the top which was all rocks, and something more barren though there was some trees and woods growing in the rocks and hanging over all down the brow of some of the hills. From these great fells there are several springs out of the rock that trickle down their sides, and as they meet with stones and rocks in the way, when something obstructs their passage and so they come with more violence, that gives a pleasing sound and murmuring noise. These descend by degrees at last fall into the low grounds and fructify214 it which makes the land so fruitful in the valleys, and upon those very high fells or rocky hills it’s (though) so high yet a moorish sort of ground whence they dig abundance of peat which they use for their fuel, being in many places a barren ground yielding no wood etc. I rode in sight of this Windermere Water as I was ascending another of those barren fells which though I at last was not half way up, yet was an hour going it up and down on the other side, going only on the side of it about the middle of it, but it was of such a height as to show one a great deal of the country when it happens to be between those hills, else those interposing hinders any sight but of the clouds. I see a good way behind me another of those waters or meres but not very big. These great hills are so full of loose stones and shelves215 of rocks that it’s very unsafe to ride them down. There is good marble amongst those rocks. As I walked down at this place I was walled on both sides by those inaccessible high rocky barren hills which hangs over one’s head in some places and appears very terrible,216 and from them springs many little currents of water from the sides and clefts, which trickle down to some lower part where it runs swiftly over the stones and shelves in the way, which makes a pleasant rush and murmuring noise and like a snowball is increased by each spring trickling

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down on either side of those hills, and so descends into the bottoms which are a moorish ground in which in many places the waters stand, and so form some of those lakes as it did here. The confluence of all these little springs being gathered together in this lake, which was so deep as the current of water that passed through it was scarce to be perceived till one came to the farther end from whence it run a good little river and pretty quick, over which many bridges are laid. Here I came to villages of sad little huts made up of dry walls, only stones piled together and the roofs of same slate; there seemed to be little or no tunnels for their chimneys and have no mortar or plaster within or without. For the most part I took them at first sight for a sort of houses or barns to fodder cattle in, not thinking them to be dwelling houses, they being scattering houses, here one, there another, in some places they may be 20 or 30 together; and the churches the same. It must needs be very cold dwellings, but it shows something of the laziness of the people; indeed here and there there was a house plastered, but there is sad entertainment – that sort of clap bread217 and butter and cheese and a cup of beer all one can have, they are 8 miles from a market town and their miles are tedious to go both for illness of way and length of the miles.218 . . . Here I crossed one of the stone bridges that was pretty large which entered me into Cumberlandshire.219 This river together with the additional springs continually running into it all the way from those vast precipices comes into a low place and form a broad water which is very clear and reaches 7 miles in length, Ullswater it’s called, such another water as that of Windermere only that reaches ten miles in length, from Ambleside to the sea,220 and this is but 7 such miles long. It’s full of such sort of stones and flats221 in the bottom as the other, near the brim where it’s shallow you see it clear to the bottom; this is secured on each side by such formidable heights as those rocky fells in same manner as the other was. I rode the whole length of this water by its side, sometimes a little higher upon the side of the hill and sometimes just by the shore, and for 3 or 4 miles I rode through a fine forest or park where was deer skipping about and hares, which by means of a good greyhound I had a little course,222 but we being strangers could not so far pursue it in the grounds full of hillocks and furze223 and so she escaped us . . .

Miss J—M—, Letter to William Shenstone (1760; published 1778) The anonymous Miss J—M— was a member of a circle of friends including the poet William Shenstone and the publisher Robert Dodsley. Miss M—’s letter brings into focus many of the problems for a woman engaging in the predominantly male tradition of travel writing: she confronts the difficulty of addressing a well-known man of letters but more important of finding a language in which to articulate an experience which might be dismissed as

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trivial. Her opening ploy is to describe herself as prattling and insignificant, a mere ‘giddy girl’, but it is important to recognize that she also produces a sustained description not only of the sights around Bristol and south Wales but of the social freedoms travel allows. Miss M— adopts the polite language of taste – beauty, delight, variety – even as she seeks to marginalize herself from a perceived male domain of judgement and justice. Equally, in using that language, Miss M— both plays to and seeks to exploit a gendered stereotype of female sensibility. In its stress on the excessive, the wild and the whimsical, this is a language differentiating itself and offering deference to the dominance of elite aesthetics, but one also looking for a mode of selfrepresentation, a means of registering individual female experience. Recommended edition Selected Letters between the late Duchess of Somerset, Lady Luxborough, Miss Dolman, Mr. Whistler, Mr. R. Dodsley, William Shenstone, Esq; and others (London, 1778).

Suggested secondary reading Elizabeth Bohls, Women Travel Writers and the Language of Aesthetics 1716–1818 (Cambridge, 1995).

Scarce was I sat down after our agreeable jaunt,224 when I was welcomed by my dear Mr. Shenstone’s polite favour.225 You are particularly good in conferring so much honour on a poor, prattling, insignificant being like me; yet, however ill I may confess I deserve it in my ability to repay it, I will venture to affirm, that my merits, if rated by the value I set on it, are equal to those of any other wild female in the circle of your acquaintance. But is it come to this? And must I really take pen in hand, and describe our little peregrinations?226 I must, for you have commanded me. If I even wanted an inducement beyond your command, it is at hand. I mean our common friend, Mr Hull.227 I applied to him for counsel, and he flatly says, I shall be rude, if I decline to obey. Here then, my good sir, take it in the best manner I am able to execute a descriptive letter, and if it is badly done, you must be my advocate to yourself, for having drawn me into such a dilemma; in short, your own humane heart must make allowances for whatever is unworthy your judgement.228 Be it known unto you then, that last Wednesday morning, we all four (you know our party) got into a coach, at six o’clock, and drove at no slow rate, for we got to Bristol229 at eight. There we were met by a gentleman and a lady from the Hot-well,230 as wild and as whimsical as ourselves; we are all of a spinning231 I can tell you. We just took a bit of breakfast at Bristol, and then made the best of our way to Aust,232 the old passage over to Wales; there we dined, and then, after driving a long way over the rocks, amongst sea-weed, and I can’t tell what, with some

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difficulty we got into a stable, in which we were to cross the water – A stable! methinks I hear you say – Why yes, in truth, good sir; for pray what can one better compare a thing to, that was littered from one end to the other with dirty straw, and filled with as many horses as people? Oh, we went most sociably over, horses, coach, and ourselves, all together: this, however, was the worst of the bargain, all the best was to come. When we arrived in Wales, we just took a little refreshment, and then drove to Chepstow, remarkable for the great height of its bridge, the tide rising higher by some degree there than in any part of the three kingdoms.233 At this place we were to sleep, so we went to the best inn to get accommodations. These secured, we made the best of our way to Persfield,234 the seat of Mr. Morris;235 and such a place, for the variety and beauty of its prospects, I never saw. The gardens are seven miles round, so our poor old lady236 was forced to occupy a seat just by the house, and the rest of us then walked as far as our legs were able to carry us. We could not compass the whole round, but saw the principal prospects. To attempt describing them is impossible, at least to do it with justice to their merit, yet though unequal to the task, I must say something. The gardens are situated on the rocks, I cannot call them the banks, of the river Wye, and cut into walks, in themselves excessively beautiful, but the superior beauty of the views they command, so entirely engrosses the eye, that they can be very little heeded. Sometimes we look down upon the river, from an eminence of near four hundred feet, which winds itself round as in a semi-circle. The opposite side is bounded by rocks of equal height, some barren, and resembling the ruins of old fortifications; others covered with the most pleasing variety of greens the eye can wish to behold, while at the bottom, cattle are feeding in the sweet pastures by the river’s side: cattle, we were told the creatures were which we saw; but really our faith had need be stronger to believe it, since they appeared to our view more like hens and chickens, and I do assure you, one of our company took them for such. Here we saw a place called the Lover’s-Leap, it was at the summit of a rock full four hundred feet high from the river, and I believe, if used, would be a certain cure for love or any other kind of trouble. After having delighted our eyes as long as our feet would support us, we went back to the reverend lady; and one of our company being acquainted with a lady at Mr Morris’s house, we were invited to eat a bit of cake and drink a glass of wine; this was a most agreeable repast after our fatigue, and helped us on very notably. But here, methinks, I hear you say, alas, the poor old lady! She saw none of these fine sights! – Yes, but she did, sir, as you shall hear; we had a servant of Mr Morris’s to attend our coach, and he conducted us through various fields to some views we had not seen in the part of the gardens we walked over, and from these the reverend dame feasted her eyes; so you see she came in for a share of the show.

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We now returned to Chepstow, where, after spending as laughable an evening as could be desired, (I have before told you, we were all of a spinning) we retired to rest, a thing not at all unpleasing after the employment of the day. Next morning we got into a large boat, with two pair of oars, and went up the river Wye, to a place called Tintern-Abbey. Here we had the extreme pleasure of contemplating the most curious piece of ruins I ever beheld; I do not believe your Balbecks or Palmiras237 can much exceed it. It is the remains of a cathedral; all the outside walls remain so far entire, as to be a fence to keep people out, but are in a cracked ruinous state; most of the pillars on the inside are standing, though robbed of the fine carving which adorned them; yet we had some notion of their former beauty, from the many pieces tolerably entire, which lay scattered here and there on the ground. Grass and wood strawberries238 here supply the place of a pavement, except in one small part, where it has not yet been broken. Here is discernible a very pretty kind of tile or stone, the ground yellow, flowered with black. The top of the church is entirely off, so that birds build all around in the pillars and walls. There are planted a great variety of trees in many parts of the edifice, some fruit-trees: I myself ate three strawberries I gathered in the body of the church. This place, it seems, was dedicated to the Virgin Mary, and part of an image remains, which still bears some resemblance to her. There is likewise one of an Earl of Pembroke, formerly lord of the place; that earl who was surnamed Strong-Bow,239 and as tradition says, who had five fingers and two thumbs on each hand; one hand of the monumental figure is so perfect, that we could distinguish the five fingers and two thumbs. In short, I never in my life saw any place so well worth visiting of its kind as this Tintern-Abbey, and we were as loath to quit it, as I seem now to be of finishing my wild description . . .

William Gilpin, from Observations on the River Wye . . . relative chiefly to Picturesque Beauty (1782) William Gilpin (1724–1804) came to national attention with the publication of a series of picturesque tours which began with the Wye Valley (1782). Gilpin was by far the most popular and influential writer on the picturesque and the manuscript tours were seen by royalty, aristocracy and prominent men and women of letters, while the many published editions of his tours reached an even wider audience. Gilpin’s stress on the traveller’s ability to create imaginative scenes may suggest an easy delight in the pleasures of visual experience, but he was also acutely aware of the place of the picturesque within a landowning culture and the tours were designed for a society in which landownership was both fundamental and unchallenged. If he bowed to pressure from his friends and was careful to edit out much of

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the social criticism in the published versions of his texts, he also demonstrates an understanding not simply of the visual aspects of landscape but of the social implications of landowning. At Tintern Abbey, in the extract we reproduce here (from the first edition), the question of moral engagement becomes as much a part of the picturesque experience as the discussion of composition and colouring. There is also a paradox here: for all that picturesque travellers engage with the natural world, the picturesque can only operate by maintaining aesthetic distance. This comes into sharp relief in those moments when the picturesque traveller, busy transforming rural economy into aesthetic landscape, is confronted by rural distress and the suffering of the poor. These moments shake any easy confidence that the country is no more than an aesthetic theme-park through which the traveller can pass untroubled. Recommended edition Observations on the River Wye [reprint of first edition], with a new introduction by Sutherland Lyall (Richmond, 1973).

Suggested secondary reading Carl Paul Barbier, William Gilpin, his Drawings, Teachings, and Theory of the Picturesque (Oxford, 1963). Stephen Copley, ‘Gilpin and the Black Lead Mines’, in The Politics of the Picturesque: Literature, Landscape and Aesthetics since 1770, eds. Stephen Copley and Peter Garside (Cambridge, 1994). Kim Ian Michasiw, ‘Nine Revisionist Theses on the Picturesque’, Representations, 38 (1992), pp. 76–100.

During the whole course of our voyage from Ross,240 we had scarce seen one corn-field. The banks of the Wye consist, almost entirely either of wood, or of pasturage; which I mention as a circumstance of peculiar value in landscape. Furrowed-lands, and waving-corn, however charming in pastoral poetry, are ill-accommodated to painting. The painter never desires the hand of art to touch his grounds. – But if art must stray among them – if it must mark out the limits of property,241 and turn them to the uses of agriculture; he wishes, that these limits may be as much concealed as possible; and that the lands they circumscribe, may approach, as nearly as may be, to nature – that is, that they may be pasturage. Pasturage not only presents an agreeable surface: but the cattle, which graze it, add great variety, and animation to the scene. The meadows, below Monmouth, which run shelving242 from the hills to the water-side, were particularly beautiful, and well inhabited. Flocks of sheep were everywhere hanging on their green steeps; and herds of cattle occupying the lower grounds. We often sailed past groups of them laving their sides in the water; or retiring from the heat under sheltered banks:

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—— vallem, amnemq; tenebant.243 In this part of the river, which now begins to widen, we were often entertained with light vessels gliding past us. Their white sails passing along the sides of the hills were very picturesque . . . From Monmouth we reached, by a late breakfast-hour, the noble ruin of Tintern-abbey; which belongs to the Duke of Beaufort; and is esteemed, with its appendages, the most beautiful and picturesque view on the river. Castles, and abbeys have different situations, agreeable to their respective uses. The castle, meant for defence, stands boldly on the hill: the abbey, intended for meditation, is hid in the sequestered vale. Ah! happy thou, if one superior rock Bear on its brow, the shivered fragment huge Of some old Norman fortress: happier far, Ah then most happy, if thy vale below Wash, with the crystal coolness of its rills, Some mould’ring abbey’s ivy-vested wall.244 Such is the situation of Tintern-abbey. It occupies a gentle eminence in the middle of a circular valley, beautifully screened on all sides by woody hills; through which the river winds its course; and the hills, closing on its entrance, and on its exit, leave no room for inclement blasts to enter. A more pleasing retreat could not easily be found. The woods, and glades intermixed; the winding of the river; the variety of the ground; the splendid ruin, contrasted with the objects of nature; and the elegant line formed by the summits of the hills, which include the whole; make all together a very enchanting piece of scenery. Every thing around breathes an air so calm, and tranquil; so sequestered from the commerce of life, that it is easy to conceive, a man of warm imagination, in monkish times,245 might have been allured by such a scene to become an inhabitant of it. No part of the ruins of Tintern is seen from the river, except the abbeychurch. It has been an elegant Gothic pile;246 but it does not make that appearance as a distant object, which we expected. Though the parts are beautiful, the whole is ill-shaped. No ruins of the tower are left, which might give form, and contrast to the walls, and buttresses, and other inferior parts. Instead of this, a number of gable-ends247 hurt the eye with their regularity; and disgust it by the vulgarity of their shape. A mallet judiciously used (but who durst use it?) might be of service in fracturing some of them; particularly those of the cross aisles,248 which are not only disagreeable in themselves, but confound the perspective. But were the building ever so beautiful, encompassed as it is with shabby houses, it could make no appearance from the river. From a stand near the road, it is seen to more advantage.

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But if Tintern-abbey be less striking as a distant object, it exhibits, on a nearer view, (when the whole together cannot be seen, but the eye settles on some of its nobler parts,) a very enchanting piece of ruin. Nature has now made it her own. Time has worn off all traces of the rule:249 it has blunted the sharp edges of the chisel; and broken the regularity of opposing parts. The figured ornaments of the east-window are gone; those of the west-window are left.250 Most of the other windows, with their principal ornaments, remain. To these are superadded the ornaments of time. Ivy, in masses uncommonly large, has taken possession of many parts of the wall; and gives a happy contrast to the grey-coloured stone, of which the building is composed. Nor is this undecorated. Mosses of various hues, with lichens, maidenhair,251 penny-leaf,252 and other humble plants, overspread the surface; or hang from every joint, and crevice. Some of them were in flower, others only in leaf; but, all together, they give those full-blown tints, which add the richest finishing to a ruin. Such is the beautiful appearance, which Tintern-abbey exhibits on the outside, in those parts, where we can obtain a near view of it. But when we enter it, we see it in most perfection: at least, if we consider it as an independent object, unconnected with landscape. The roof is gone: but the walls, and pillars, and abutments,253 which supported it, are entire. A few of the pillars indeed have given way; and here, and there, a piece of the facing of the wall: but in correspondent parts, one always remains to tell the story. The pavement is obliterated: the elevation of the choir254 is no longer visible: the whole area is reduced to one level; cleared of rubbish; and covered with neat turf, closely shorn; and interrupted with nothing, but the noble columns, which formed the isles, and supported the tower. When we stood at one end of this awful piece of ruin; and surveyed the whole in one view – the elements of air, and earth, its only covering, and pavement; and the grand, and venerable remains, which terminated both – perfect enough to form the perspective; yet broken enough to destroy the regularity; the eye was above measure delighted with the beauty, the greatness, and the novelty of the scene. More picturesque it certainly would have been, if the area, unadorned, had been left with all its rough fragments of ruin scattered round; and bold was the hand that removed them: yet as the outside of the ruin, which is the chief object of picturesque curiosity, is still left in all its wild, and native rudeness; we excuse – perhaps we approve – the neatness, that is introduced within. It may add to the beauty of the scene – to its novelty it undoubtedly does. Among other things in this scene of desolation, the poverty and wretchedness of the inhabitants were remarkable. They occupy little huts, raised among the ruins of the monastery; and seem to have no employment, but begging: as if a place, once devoted to indolence,255

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could never again become the seat of industry. As we left the abbey, we found the whole hamlet at the gate, either openly soliciting alms; or covertly, under the pretence of carrying us to some part of the ruins, which each could show; and which was far superior to anything, which could be shown by any one else. The most lucrative occasion could not have excited more jealousy and contention. One poor woman we followed, who had engaged to show us the monk’s library. She could scarce crawl; shuffling along her palsied256 limbs, and meagre, contracted body, by the help of two sticks. She led us, through an old gate, into a place overspread with nettles, and briars; and pointing to the remnant of a shattered cloister, told us, that was the place. It was her own mansion. All indeed she meant to tell us, was the story of her own wretchedness; and all she had to show us, was her own miserable habitation. We did not expect to be interested: but found we were. I never saw so loathsome a human dwelling. It was a cavity, loftily vaulted, between two ruined walls; which streamed with various-coloured stains of unwholesome dews. The floor was earth, yielding, through moisture, to the tread. Not the merest utensil, or furniture of any kind, appeared, but a wretched bedstead, spread with a few rags, and drawn into the middle of the cell, to prevent its receiving the damp, which trickled down the walls. At one end was an aperture, which served just to let in light enough to discover the wretchedness within. – When we stood in the midst of this cell of misery; and felt the chilling damps, which struck us in every direction, we were rather surprised, that the wretched inhabitant was still alive; than that she had only lost the use of her limbs.257

3 The Country House

From its first appearance in England in early seventeenth-century poetry, the country house has been used as a locus amoenus (or delightful place), as an emblem of the owner of the estate and as a microcosm of an imagined perfect world. The orderliness of architecture and of the household act as a model for the world beyond them. This pattern was set by Ben Jonson’s ‘To Penshurst’ and continued in numerous country house and estate poems throughout the seventeenth century. The country house – explicitly separated from court and city – characteristically insists on ‘use’, a term which implies a sense of structured community and established moral values: the house and its estate becomes a means of asserting a set of ‘civilized’ values, but values threatened by, or absent from, the modern world. For Jonson, Penshurst was to be distinguished from the prodigy houses he saw springing up in the country early in the seventeenth century; a century later Alexander Pope could still offer the ideals inherent in the architecture of Lord Burlington as something notably absent in those around him. The traditional account of country house poetry was mapped out in a classic article by G. R. Hibbard which traces a trajectory from Jonson to Herrick and Marvell. For Hibbard and others this was a male tradition which looked back to the classical models of Horace and Martial and it was to be understood in part by its close resemblance to the rural ethos promoted by the early Stuart governments (see Chapter 4, and especially the Book of Sports). Of late, however, our understanding of the tradition has been expanded and complicated in important ways. Alistair Fowler has argued that such works need to be set in the context of a much broader category of ‘estate poems’ which would include invitations to the country, retirement pieces, park poems, hunting and sporting pieces, etc. More radically, there has been growing awareness of women’s place in country house writing, and where once Jonson began the tradition in 1616, the importance of Amelia Lanyer’s ‘Description of Cookham’ of 1611 is now recognized. With this has come the recognition also that the image of the country house may be used for very different purposes. If there is a conservative nostalgia at work which 63

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places the lordly landowner at the head of an established hierarchy, it is also important to note that such works are predominantly written not by estate owners but by servants, and an insistence on social structure may also be a means of confirming the place of the lowly writer within that structure. Conversely, as the poems by Lanyer and Leapor suggest, the happiness of a country house hierarchy can also be questioned by a voice which dramatizes its own marginality; or, as in the case of Sarah Scott, established social hierarchy may be reaffirmed even as traditionally gendered assumptions about ownership and moral worth are revised. In country house writing of both the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, what appears to be the comforting solidity of architecture as an image of social stability is combined with the dynamic fluidity of changing social relations. The image of the country house remains important throughout the period, but its meanings and significance are repeatedly revised by writers who recognize its importance as an image of society and its conflicting pressures. Suggested secondary reading Dana Arnold, The Country House in Georgian England (London, 1998). Mark Girouard, Life in the English Country House (New Haven, CT, 1978). G. R. Hibbard, ‘The Country House Poem of the Seventeenth Century’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 19 (1956), pp. 159–74. Gervase Jackson-Stops et al., eds, The Fashioning and Functioning of the British Country House, Studies in the History of Art 25, National Gallery of Art, Washington (Hanover, NH and London, 1989). Malcolm Kelsall, The Great Good Place: The Country House in English Literature (London, 1993). Virginia C. Kenny, The Country-House Ethos in English Literature 1688–1750: Themes of Personal Retreat and National Expansion (Brighton, 1984). Charles Molesworth, ‘Property and Virtue: the Genre of the Country-House Poem in the Seventeenth Century’, Genre, 1 (1968), pp. 141–57. Raymond Williams, The Country and the City (London, 1973), ch. 3.

Aemilia Lanyer, ‘The Description of Cookham’ (1611) Lanyer (1569–1645), who lived on the fringes of the court and the established systems of literary patronage, might be considered a proto-feminist. Her one book of poetry, Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum, is notable for its considered defences of women and its series of poems addressed to female patrons. ‘The Description of Cookham’ is the most impressive example of such verse, as it adopts the vehicle of topographical description to praise Margaret Clifford, Countess of Cumberland, and her daughter Lady Anne Clifford. This specifically gendered approach sets the poem apart from the tradition which literary history generally traces back to Ben Jonson’s slightly later poem, ‘To Penshurst’. While country house poems in the masculine line

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endorse an order in which the lord dwells comfortably on his estate, Lanyer’s poem is instead marked by an appreciation of the precarious position of women within early modern society. Significantly, it is presented as a valedictory address, and coloured by an almost elegiac tone. Recommended edition The Poems of Amelia Lanyer: Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum, ed. Susanne Woods (Oxford, 1993).

Suggested secondary reading Elaine V. Beilin, Redeeming Eve: Women Writers of the English Renaissance (Princeton, NJ, 1987), ch. 7. Barbara Kiefer Lewalski, Writing Women in Jacobean England (Cambridge, MA and London, 1993), ch. 8. Su Fang Ng, ‘Aemilia Lanyer and the Politics of Praise’, English Literary History, 67 (2000), pp. 433–51.

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Farewell (sweet Cookham) where I first obtained1 Grace from that grace where perfect grace remained; And where the muses gave their full consent,2 I should have power the virtuous to content: Where princely Pallas willed me to indite,3 The sacred story of the soul’s delight.4 Farewell (sweet place) where virtue then did rest, And all delights did harbour in her breast: Never shall my sad eyes again behold Those pleasures which my thoughts did then unfold. Yet you (great lady) mistress of that place,5 From whose desires did spring this work of grace;6 Vouchsafe to think upon those pleasures past,7 As fleeting worldly joys that could not last; Or, as dim shadows of celestial pleasures,8 Which are desired above all earthly treasures. Oh how (me thought) against you thither came,9 Each part did seem some new delight to frame! The house received all ornaments to grace it, And would endure no foulness to deface it. The walks put on their summer liveries,10 And all things else did hold like similies:11 The trees with leaves, with fruits, with flowers clad, Embraced each other, seeming to be glad, Turning themselves to beauteous canopies, To shade the bright sun from your brighter eyes; The crystal streams with silver spangles graced, While by the glorious sun they were embraced;

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The little birds in chirping notes did sing, To entertain both you and that sweet spring; And Philomela with her sundry lays,12 Both you and that delightful place did praise. Oh how me thought each plant, each flower, each tree Set forth their beauties then to welcome thee! The very hills right humbly did descend, When you to tread upon them did intend. And as you set your feet, they still did rise, Glad that they could receive so rich a prize. The gentle winds did take delight to be Among those woods that were so graced by thee, And in sad murmur uttered pleasing sound, That pleasure in that place might more abound: The swelling banks delivered all their pride,13 When such a Phoenix once they had espied.14 Each arbour, bank, each seat, each stately tree, Thought themselves honoured in supporting thee. The pretty birds would oft come to attend thee, Yet fly away for fear they should offend thee. The little creatures in the burrow by Would come abroad to sport them in your eye; Yet fearful of the bow in your fair hand, Would run away when you did make a stand.15 Now let me come unto that stately tree,16 Wherein such goodly prospects you did see;17 That oak that did in height his fellows pass, As much as lofty trees, low growing grass: Much like a comely cedar straight and tall,18 Whose beauteous stature far exceeded all. How often did you visit this fair tree, Which seeming joyful in receiving thee, Would like a palm tree spread his arms abroad,19 Desirous that you there should make abode: Whose fair green leaves much like a comely veil,20 Defended Phoebus when he would assail;21 Whose pleasing boughs did yield a cool fresh air, Joying his happiness when you were there.22 Where being seated, you might plainly see, Hills, vales, and woods, as if on bended knee They had appeared, your honour to salute, Or to prefer some strange unlooked for suit:23 All interlaced with brooks and crystal springs, A prospect fit to please the eyes of kings;

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And thirteen shires appeared all in your sight,24 Europe could not afford much more delight. What was there then but gave you all content, While you the time in meditation spent, Of their creator’s power, which there you saw, In all his creatures held a perfect law; And in their beauties did you plain descry, His beauty, wisdom, grace, love, majesty. In these sweet woods how often did you walk, With Christ and his apostles there to talk, Placing his holy writ in some fair tree, To meditate what you therein did see:25 With Moses you did mount his holy hill, To know his pleasure, and perform his will.26 With lovely David you did often sing,27 His holy hymns to heaven’s eternal king.28 And in sweet music did your soul delight, To sound his praises, morning, noon, and night. With blessed Joseph you did often feed Your pined brethren, when they stood in need.29 And that sweet Lady sprung from Cliffords race, Of noble Bedfords blood, fair stem of grace;30 To honourable Dorset now espoused,31 In whose fair breast true virtue then was housed. Oh what delight did my weak spirits find In those pure parts of her well-framed mind;32 And yet it grieves me that I cannot be Near unto her, whose virtues did agree With those fair ornaments of outward beauty, Which did enforce from all both love and duty.33 Unconstant fortune, thou art most to blame, Who casts us down into so low a frame:34 Where our great friends we cannot daily see, So great a difference is there in degree. Many are placed in those orbs of state,35 Parters in honour, so ordained by fate;36 Nearer in show, yet farther off in love, In which, the lowest always are above. But whither am I carried in conceit?37 My wit too weak to conster of the great.38 Why not? Although we are but borne of earth, We may behold the heavens, despising death; And loving heaven that is so far above, May in the end vouchsafe us entire love.39

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Therefore sweet memory do thou retain Those pleasures past, which will not turn again:40 Remember beauteous Dorset’s former sports, So far from being touched by ill reports; Wherein my self did always bear a part, While reverend love presented my true heart.41 Those recreations let me bear in mind, Which her sweet youth and noble thoughts did find: Whereof deprived, I evermore must grieve, Hating blind fortune, careless to relieve.42 And you sweet Cookham, whom these ladies leave, I now must tell the grief you did conceive At their departure; when they went away, How every thing retained a sad dismay. Nay long before, when once an inkling came,43 Me thought each thing did unto sorrow frame:44 The trees that were so glorious in our view, Forsook both flowers and fruit, when once they knew Of your depart, their very leaves did wither, Changing their colours as they grew together. But when they saw this had no power to stay you, They often wept, though speechless, could not pray you;45 Letting their tears in your fair bosoms fall, As if they said, ‘Why will ye leave us all?’ This being vain, they cast their leaves away, Hoping that pity would have made you stay. Their frozen tops, like age’s hoary hairs,46 Shows their disasters, languishing in fears: A swarthy rivelled ryne all over spread,47 Their dying bodies half alive, half dead. But your occasions called you so away,48 That nothing there had power to make you stay: Yet did I see a noble grateful mind, Requiting each according to their kind; Forgetting not to turn and take your leave Of these sad creatures, powerless to receive Your favour, when with grief you did depart, Placing their former pleasures in your heart; Giving great charge to noble memory, There to preserve their love continually. But specially the love of that fair tree, That first and last you did vouchsafe to see:49 In which it pleased you oft to take the air,50 With noble Dorset, then a virgin fair;51

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Where many a learned book was read and scanned52 To this fair tree, taking me by the hand, You did repeat the pleasures which had past, Seeming to grieve they could no longer last. And with a chaste, yet loving kiss took leave, Of which sweet kiss I did it soon bereave:53 Scorning a senseless creature should possess54 So rare a favour, so great happiness. No other kiss it could receive from me, For fear to give back what it took of thee: So I ingrateful creature did deceive it, Of that which you vouchsafed in love to leave it. And though it oft had giv’n me much content, Yet this great wrong I never could repent, But of the happiest made it most forlorn, To show that nothing’s free from fortune’s scorn, While all the rest with this most beauteous tree, Made their sad consort sorrow’s harmony.55 The flowers that on the banks and walks did grow, Crept in the ground, the grass did weep for woe. The winds and waters seemed to chide together,56 Because you went away they knew not whither: And those sweet brooks that ran so fair and clear, With grief and trouble wrinkled did appear. Those pretty birds that wonted were to sing,57 Now neither sing, nor chirp, nor use their wing; But with their tender feet on some bare spray,58 Warble forth sorrow, and their own dismay. Fair Philomela leaves her mournful ditty,59 Drowned in dead sleep, yet can procure no pity: Each arbour, bank, each seat, each stately tree, Looks bare and desolate now for want of thee; Turning green tresses into frosty grey,60 While in cold grief they wither all away. The sun grew weak, his beams no comfort gave, While all green things did make the earth their grave: Each brier, each bramble, when you went away,61 Caught fast your clothes, thinking to make you stay. Delightful Echo wonted to reply To our last words, did now for sorrow die:62 The house cast off each garment that might grace it, Putting on dust and cobwebs to deface it. All desolation then there did appear, When you were going whom they held so dear.

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This last farewell to Cookham here I give, When I am dead thy name in this may live, Wherein I have performed her noble hest,63 Whose virtues lodge in my unworthy breast, And ever shall, so long as life remains, Tying my heart to her by those rich chains.

Ben Jonson, ‘To Penshurst’ (1616) The most influential of all country house poems was written in praise of the Kentish estate of Sir Robert Sidney, Lord Lisle (1563–1626). While Jonson (1572–1637) draws heavily on classical sources, the poem is fundamentally concerned with contemporary issues of ethics and national identity. Jonson artfully shapes his poem as a panegyric on Sidney and his family, an attack on the excesses of other estates and their owners, and ultimately a moral essay about rural life. The poem moves from the grounds of the estate towards the great hall, which is represented as the heart of the manorial community. It progresses also through the social order, first describing the arrival of local tenants and labourers, and ultimately narrating an unannounced visit by the king. At the close, the poem’s ethos of hospitality and rural stewardship is condensed in the assertion that while other lords have built grand mansions, Penshurst’s lord rightly ‘dwells’. Recommended edition Poems, ed. Ian Donaldson (London, 1975).

Suggested secondary reading Alastair Fowler, Conceitful Thought: The Interpretation of English Renaissance Poems (Edinburgh, 1975), ch. 6. J. C. A. Rathmell, ‘Jonson, Lord Lisle, and Penshurst’, English Literary Renaissance, 1 (1971), pp. 250–60. Don E. Wayne, Penshurst: The Semiotics of Place and the Poetics of History (London, 1984).

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Thou art not, Penshurst, built to envious show,64 Of touch, or marble, nor canst boast a row65 Of polished pillars, or a roof of gold; Thou hast no lantern, whereof tales are told,66 Or stair, or courts; but stand’st an ancient pile,67 And these grudged at, art reverenced the while.68 Thou joy’st in better marks, of soil, of air, Of wood, of water: therein thou art fair. Thou hast thy walks for health, as well as sport: Thy mount, to which the dryads do resort,

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Where Pan and Bacchus their high feasts have made,69 Beneath the broad beech, and the chestnut shade; That taller tree, which of a nut was set, At his great birth, where all the muses met.70 There, in the writhed bark, are cut the names71 Of many a sylvan, taken with his flames;72 And thence the ruddy satyrs oft provoke73 The lighter fauns, to reach thy lady’s oak.74 Thy copse, too, named of Gamage, thou hast there,75 That never fails to serve thee seasoned deer,76 When thou would’st feast, or exercise thy friends. The lower land, that to the river bends, Thy sheep, thy bullocks, kine, and calves do feed;77 The middle grounds thy mares, and horses breed. Each bank, doth yield thee coneys; and the tops78 Fertile of wood, Ashore, and Sidney’s copse,79 To crown thy open table, doth provide The purpled pheasant, with the speckled side; The painted partridge lies in every field,80 And, for thy mess, is willing to be killed. And if the high-swoll’n Medway fail thy dish,81 Thou hast thy ponds, that pay thee tribute fish:82 Fat, aged carps, that run into thy net; And pikes, now weary their own kind to eat,83 As loath, the second draught, or cast to stay,84 Officiously, at first, themselves betray; Bright eels, that emulate them, and leap on land, Before the fisher, or into his hand.85 Then hath thy orchard fruit, thy garden flowers, Fresh as the air, and new as are the hours:86 The early cherry, with the later plum, Fig, grape, and quince, each in his time doth come; The blushing apricot, and woolly peach Hang on thy walls, that every child may reach. And though thy walls be of the country stone, They’re reared with no man’s ruin, no man’s groan;87 There’s none, that dwell about them, wish them down, But all come in, the farmer and the clown,88 And no one empty-handed, to salute Thy lord, and lady, though they have no suit.89 Some bring a capon, some a rural cake,90 Some nuts, some apples; some that think they make The better cheeses, bring ’em; or else send By their ripe daughters, whom they would commend

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This way to husbands, and whose baskets bear An emblem of themselves, in plum, or pear. But what can this (more than express their love) Add to thy free provisions, far above91 The need of such? whose liberal board doth flow, With all, that hospitality doth know! Where comes no guest, but is allowed to eat, Without his fear, and of thy lord’s own meat; Where the same beer, and bread, and self-same wine, That is his lordship’s, shall be also mine. And I not fain to sit, as some, this day, At great men’s tables, and yet dine away.92 Here no man tells my cups, nor, standing by,93 A waiter, doth my gluttony envy, But gives me what I call for, and lets me eat; He knows, below, he shall find plenty of meat;94 Thy tables hoard not up for the next day. Nor, when I take my lodging, need I pray For fire, or lights, or livery: all is there,95 As if thou, then, wert mine, or I reigned here; There’s nothing I can wish, for which I stay.96 That found King James, when hunting late, this way, With his brave son, the prince, they saw thy fires97 Shine bright on every hearth as the desires98 Of thy Penates had been set on flame,99 To entertain them; or the country came, With all their zeal, to warm their welcome here. What (great, I will not say, but) sudden cheer100 Didst thou, then, make ’em! and what praise was heaped On thy good lady, then! who therein reaped The just reward of her high housewifery:101 To have her linen, plate, and all things nigh,102 When she was far; and not a room but dressed,103 As if it had expected such a guest! These, Penshurst, are thy praise, and yet not all. Thy lady’s noble, fruitful, chaste withal.104 His children thy great lord may call his own: A fortune, in this age, but rarely known. They are, and have been taught religion: thence Their gentler spirits have sucked innocence. Each morn, and even, they are taught to pray, With the whole household, and may, every day, Read, in their virtuous parents’ noble parts, The mysteries of manners, arms, and arts.105

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Now, Penshurst, they that will proportion thee106 With other edifices, when they see Those proud, ambitious heaps, and nothing else, May say, their lords have built, but thy lord dwells.

Thomas Carew, ‘To Saxham’ (1631–2) This country house poem, written by the courtier poet Thomas Carew (1594–1640), is clearly indebted to Jonson’s ‘To Penshurst’, but also presents several important points of difference. By setting his poem on a day when Saxham is covered in snow, Carew effectively isolates the great house, setting the culture of the building against the harsh natural world outside. But ‘To Saxham’ also lacks the sense of community, and the associated ethics, which underpin ‘To Penshurst’. At Saxham the estate and its inhabitants are equally hidden from sight, and the undeniable hospitality consequently differs in character. Whereas the feast at Penshurst was represented as binding together a community, the unending hospitality at Saxham has a more random character. The estate is figured as a site of unending consumption and charity, a beacon of light and hope in an otherwise bleak world. Recommended edition The Poems of Thomas Carew, ed. Rhodes Dunlap (Oxford, 1949).

Suggested secondary reading Mary Ann McGuire, ‘The Cavalier Country-House Poem: Mutations on a Jonsonian Tradition’, SEL, 19 (1979), pp. 93–108. Kevin Sharpe, Criticism and Compliment: The Politics of Literature in the England of Charles I (Cambridge, 1987), ch. 3.

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Though frost, and snow, locked from mine eyes, That beauty which without door lies, Thy gardens, orchards, walks, that so I might not all thy pleasures know; Yet, Saxham, thou within thy gate,107 Art of thy self so delicate,108 So full of native sweets, that bless109 Thy roof with inward happiness, As neither from, nor to thy store Winter takes ought, or Spring adds more.110 The cold and frozen air had sterved111 Much poor, if not by thee preserved;112 Whose prayers have made thy table blessed With plenty, far above the rest.113

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The season hardly did afford Coarse cates unto thy neighbour’s board,114 Yet thou hadst dainties, as the sky115 Had only been thy volary;116 Or else the birds, fearing the snow117 Might to another deluge grow,118 The pheasant, partridge, and the lark, Flew to thy house, as to the ark.119 The willing ox, of himself came Home to the slaughter, with the lamb, And every beast did thither bring Himself, to be an offering.120 The scaly herd, more pleasure took,121 Bathed in thy dish, than in the brook; Water, earth, air, did all conspire, To pay their tributes to thy fire,122 Whose cherishing flames themselves divide123 Through every room, where they deride124 The night, and cold abroad, whilst they Like suns within, keep endless day. Those cheerful beams send forth their light, To all that wander in the night, And seem to beckon from aloof,125 The weary pilgrim to thy roof;126 Where if refreshed, he will away, He’s fairly welcome, or if stay127 Far more, which he shall hearty find, Both from the master, and the hind.128 The stranger’s welcome, each man there Stamped on his cheerful brow, doth wear;129 Nor doth this welcome, or his cheer130 Grow less, ’cause he stays longer here. There’s none observes (much less repines)131 How often this man sups or dines.132 Thou hast no porter at the door T’examine, or keep back the poor; Nor locks, nor bolts, thy gates have bin133 Made only to let strangers in; Untaught to shut, they do not fear To stand wide open all the year, Careless who enters, for they know,134 Thou never didst deserve a foe; And as for thieves, thy bounty’s such; They cannot steal, thou giv’st so much.

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Timothy Nourse, from ‘Of a Country House’ (1700) Timothy Nourse (d.1699) was a bursar at Oxford who left the university on his conversion to Catholicism; the ‘Essay of a Country Life’ is part of his larger volume, Campania Foelix, which gives detailed advice to the gentleman about how to run his estate and the various problems he should expect from a generally workshy and devious rural population. The essay describes the larger setting for the country house, complete with park, gardens, private walks, stables, coach house, etc.; there is to be an inn and a small town or village at the entrance to the estate to provide all the necessary trades, but not a market as this would be both a noisy and messy distraction from the retired life. For Nourse, the country house offers a structured, patrician society, with people in their place, but part of his design for such a house is that it will accommodate a far more troublesome social order (thus the need for the village beyond the park gates). The book as a whole takes care to detail the problems of this rural society, and recognizes, if not explicitly, that the social structures which produced the country house are gone: in the section reproduced here (from the first edition of 1700), after all the detailed accounts of how to build and occupy a lordly country house, that vision is finally rejected. What appears instead is a small-scale pastoral idyll, a country house for the gentleman of the middling sort: championing a little house and a limited prospect, Nourse champions also the virtues of those in the middle station of life. In this, the ‘Essay’ is an important move away from the traditional association of the country house with the aristocratic landowner. Recommended edition Timothy Nourse, Campania Foelix; or, a Discourse of the benefits and improvements of Husbandry (London, 1700).

Suggested secondary reading J. H. Bettey, Estates and the English Countryside (London, 1993), chs 4–5. Mark Girouard, Life in the English Country House (New Haven, CT, 1978).

An Essay of a Country Life By a country house I do not understand a farm, nor the ordinary mansion house of a country gentleman; nor yet a villa, or a little house of pleasure and retreat, where gentlemen and citizens betake themselves in the summer for their private diversions, there to pass an evening or two, or perhaps a week, in the conversation of a friend or two, in some neat little house amidst a vineyard or garden, sequestered from the noise of a city, and the embarras135 and distractions of business, or perhaps the anxious and servile attendance of a court. By a country house then, I understand a greater fabric, fit to lodge a nobleman136 endued with ample fortunes

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and a virtuous mind, where he may sweeten the travels of a vexatious life, and pass away his days amidst the solid and serene enjoyments of the country . . . It is true, all countries do not afford us the natural advantages for such a seat as I have now described; nor indeed are there many persons to be found who have such a largeness of mind and fortune as to undertake and finish a design of such expense. However, some there are, who as their fortunes lie without the straighter limits of anxiety and care, so are they privileged from the vexations of a busy life, and have therefore means and leisure in some measure or other to employ their time, and to spend their days amidst the enjoyments of retreat. What is said in this kind is not to be understood in justification of those who abandon themselves to a supine and sleepy course of life, retiring to their Country House as to a seraglio,137 where they pass their time in all manner of sensuality, or bestiality rather, as did Sardanapalas of old, and Tiberius in the Isle of Copias,138 sheltering their enormous lusts from the observations of the world under the mask of a sequestered life. No, no; such brutes have always met with their rewards, feeding and fattening within their sties in order only to their slaughter: the true design then of such places of pleasure and retreat is to sweeten the fatigues both of the body and of the mind, and to recover us to our former bent139 of duty, which is but in some measure to restore man to his lost station:140 for God doubtless would never have placed him in a paradise, had not a garden of pleasure been consistent with innocence; which being once forfeited, to drudge and labour amongst the thorns and briars were to be his punishment, and even the very employment of his life.141 Solomon,142 after he had built stately palaces adorned with orchards, vineyards, pools, gardens, and with other ornaments of pomp and grandeur tells us, Ecclesiastes 2143 that all this was done by him even then when he was under the conduct of wisdom; which shows plainly, that the greatest souls, and such as are divinely inspired, may seek content from temporal blessings, though with Solomon too they must remember, that all such delights are vanity, as are all other contrivances and enjoyments whatsoever compared with what is truly durable and solid. Some men who are born to great fortunes may not have those qualifications which may recommend them to public employments, or offices of state: they may want an insinuating address,144 heat of spirit, boldness, or perhaps a ready and refined capacity to understand intrigues, and to turn and wind through all the labyrinths of a court: or if they be duly qualified, they may have perhaps more prudence than to hazard the fortunes they were born to upon the slippery chances of a state-interest,145 or upon the inconstant favours of a prince who may himself be the sport possibly of fortune; or peradventure, though they be never so happy in

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the air of a court, they may still be obnoxious to popular disgusts, which generally prove fatal. They indeed who have little to lose may venture, and possibly make their fortunes: but one born to a flourishing estate, can rarely improve his fortune this way, but after all his travels146 and services is in a very fair post147 of wasting it. How many are there of these seeming-happy darlings, princes and subjects, who sink every day under the weight of their golden chains? Or if they arrive through a continual series of honours and success to old age, yet then how grateful must it be to human nature, overworn with business to find a place of repose! So that the ablest statesmen, even in the highest tide of prosperity, are glad to recollect their spirits a little by withdrawing themselves ever and anon from the noise, ceremonies, and intrigues of a splendid but fallacious148 attendance, where they themselves waste their days, and I may say nights too, in contriving to undermine others, who at the same time are no less vigilant to return the like kindness into their own bosoms: whereas a nobleman or a gentleman in his country-house has all within his territory at his command, and in subjection either to his courtesy149 or power. He wants no pleasure which man can reasonably propose. His enjoyments are without competition or jealousy, and such as advance the health of his body as well as the content of his mind: he lies out of sight of those more expensive temptations to which a city-conversation is obnoxious,150 and in lieu thereof lets the overflowings of his estate spread it self in a laudable151 hospitality, by which he creates to himself a firm interest in the affections of his country, which will be always at hand to second him upon occasion. Besides; it looks great in a man, and carries something of a divine character stamped upon it, to be able to frame a building after the idea he has within himself;152 that is, to be able to give a durable existence to something which was not before, and to adorn it with all the graces of symmetry and beauty. And if he be a man of a contemplative genius, the seat of his house153 cannot but suggest manlike154 thoughts. The same eminence of ground which displays the beauties of the earth by day entertains him with a much larger and more beautiful prospect of the heavens by night, which may direct his desires towards a more lasting mansion.155 The variety of flowers beautiful and fragrant, with which his gardens are adorned, opening themselves and dying one after another, must admonish him of the fading state of earthly pleasures, of the frailty of life, and of the succeeding generations to which he must give place.156 The constant current of a fountain or rivulet157 must mind158 him of the flux of time which never returns, nor causes to run on, till it ends in immensity. But if he find fastidiousness159 amidst fruition, as it happens usually in the greatest pleasures (those excepted of the mind) he may then recollect himself and think, that since such pleasures are unsatisfactory and transitory, the mind is yet capable of farther enjoyments more durable and sincere,

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which since it cannot meet with amidst earthly divertisements,160 it must look for a plentiful entertainment in another region. Upon this consideration, doubtless, it was that many brave men, especially of the Middle Age161 (so much condemned as it was for blindness and superstition) did voluntarily exchange the pomp and grandeur of life for the surest and chaste delights of retirement; and even at this day we may observe how the most rigid orders of the monastic state or institution do sweeten all their severities with the caulk162 and innocent refreshments of a garden. So that the little partitions of a Carthusian’s cell163 may yield as much pleasure and content to a virtuous mind as the stupendous fabrics, of the Louvre and the Escurial.164 For to speak truly, when we converse daily with noble structures, our admiration becomes less by acquaintance; so that it is not their greatness but their order165 which does ravish the thought; which beauty of order may be found in a little model, as well as in the voluminous contrivances of art. The little wren has its pretty curious nest proportionable to its body and nature, and though humbly built, yet is it framed with as much accurateness, perhaps with more than that of the eagle in the high rocks, and on the top of mountains bordering on the clouds.166 A little, well designed house, neatly kept, and seated in a good air and a dry soil, as likewise on the side of a hill, with a shady wood or grove about it, and a pretty spring or running stream before it, may afford infinite delight to one who may carry a generous and high born soul under the circumstances of a narrow fortune. The neighbouring woods, as it yields him fuel against the severities of winter, defends him from many a cold storm and blast; so does it relieve him by its shades against the scorching sun in summer, and is to him as a continual aviary. The sweetest stream running by his door serves not only the occasions of life, but murmuring amongst the pebbles makes a grateful warbling noise altogether as pleasing though not so thundering, as that of the Girandola.167 The industry and working of his little bees, their elaborate cells, with their constant intercourse, may be as much diversion to him, as it may be to the greatest prince living to have the constant visit of friends with their numerous trains168 about the gates of his palace. A person of such an humble but advantageous post is at no expense nor labour to suck in the wholesome air; it comes into his doors freely, and of its own accord. The neighbouring banks and thickets yield him sweet smelling flowers and turfs suitable to the several seasons of the year, and for the service of nature: his little flocks of sheep, with other such like animals, requite his care with constant supplies of food and raiment:169 all which and many other delights, attend him constantly without charge and travel, without disturbance and fear, without sneaking attendance,170 flattery and envy, being placed in that middle region of happiness which lies above oppression and necessity, and below the menaces and storms to

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which higher fortunes are exposed. And if an open prospect can yield content, he is abundantly rewarded with the various scenes of the under spacious valley,171 where he beholds numberless objects, with the remoter seats and habitations of others, chequered with light and shadows, answerable to the course of the clouds and breakings-out of the sun: all which succeeding one another in a constant flux, cannot but show him the mutability of fortune, or the interchanges of prosperity and adversity to which the world under us is subject; and by this means he may reap instruction for future occurrences, whilst he enjoys the blessings of his present condition, and in his little circle be as perfectly charmed as he who is surrounded with the immeasurable blessings of Nature and Fortune, and with all the contrivance of art.

Alexander Pope, ‘To Richard Boyle, Earl of Burlington, Of the Uses of Riches’ (1731–44) Alexander Pope (1688–1744) was the most famous poet of his day and, alongside Milton and Shakespeare, perhaps the greatest influence on English poetry throughout the eighteenth century. Pope repeatedly returns to the idea of the country house in his poetry and the ‘Epistle to Burlington’ sets the country house at the centre of modern culture and the conflicts of that culture: the description of houses and gardens, good and bad, is an account not simply of individual ‘taste’ but of opposing models of society. Burlington, a close friend of Pope’s, was the foremost champion of the new Palladian style in architecture and his house and gardens at Chiswick were a conscious rejection of vast show houses in favour of a more human sense of proportion. Burlington’s house, his garden, his friends, become the ideal of moral life in the modern age. For Pope they are the model of proportion, the demonstration of a natural (God given) good sense. As such they are to be set against the false taste and false values of those who build, collect or entertain merely for show, those who misunderstand or pervert the purpose of the country house and who embrace the luxuries of wealth at the expense of community. In this sense, the Palladian ‘proportion’ espoused by Burlington, and celebrated by Pope, is symptomatic of Pope’s own position as a poet: it is a return to what is valuable in the ancient world even as it is a championing of the modern. The poem was first published in 1731 but the account of the country house was developed in subsequent editions. We reproduce Pope’s final revision from the edition he completed shortly before his death in 1744 (published 1748). Recommended edition John Butt et al., eds, The Twickenham Edition of the Poems of Alexander Pope, 11 vols (London, 1939–69), vol. 3.

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Suggested secondary reading David Fairer, Pope’s Imagination (Manchester, 1984). Maynard Mack, The Garden and the City: Retirement and Politics in the Later Poetry of Pope, 1731–1743 (London, 1969). Julian Ferraro, ‘Taste and Use: Pope’s Epistle to Burlington’, British Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies, 19: 2 (1996), pp. 141–59.

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’Tis strange, the Miser should his cares employ, To gain those riches he can ne’er enjoy: Is it less strange, the Prodigal should waste His wealth, to purchase what he ne’er can taste? Not for himself he sees, or hears, or eats; Artists must choose his pictures, music, meats:172 He buys for Topham, drawings and designs,173 For Pembroke statues, dirty gods and coins;174 Rare monkish manuscripts for Hearne alone,175 And books for Mead, and butterflies for Sloane.176 Think we all these are for himself? no more Than his fine wife, alas! or finer whore. For what has Virro painted, built, and planted? Only to show, how many tastes he wanted. What brought Sir Visto’s ill got wealth to waste? Some Demon whisper’d, ‘Visto! have a taste.’ Heav’n visits with a taste the wealthy fool, And needs no rod but Ripley with a rule.177 See! sportive fate, to punish awkward pride, Bids Bubo build, and sends him such a guide:178 A standing sermon, at each year’s expense, That never coxcomb reached magnificence! You show us, Rome was glorious, not profuse, And pompous buildings once were things of use. Yet shall (my Lord) your just, your noble rules179 Fill half the land with imitating fools; Who random drawings from your sheets shall take, And of one beauty many blunders make; Load some vain church with old theatric state, Turn arcs of triumph to a garden-gate;180 Reverse your ornaments, and hang them all On some patch’d dog-hole ek’d with ends of wall,181 Then clap four slices of pilaster on’t,182 That, laced with bits of rustic, makes a front.183 Shall call the winds through long arcades to roar, Proud to catch cold at a Venetian door;184 Conscious they act a true Palladian part,

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And if they starve, they starve by rules of art. Oft have you hinted to your brother peer,185 A certain truth, which many buy too dear: Something there is more needful than expense, And something previous ev’n to taste – ‘tis sense: Good sense, which only is the gift of heav’n, And though no science, fairly worth the seven:186 A light, which in yourself you must perceive; Jones and Le Nôtre have it not to give.187 To build, to plant, whatever you intend, To rear the column, or the arch to bend, To swell the terrace, or to sink the grot;188 In all, let Nature never be forgot. But treat the goddess like a modest fair,189 Nor over-dress, nor leave her wholly bare; Let not each beauty ev’ry where be spied, Where half the skill is decently to hide. He gains all points, who pleasingly confounds, Surprises, varies, and conceals the bounds. Consult the Genius of the Place in all;190 That tells the waters or to rise, or fall,191 Or helps th’ambitious hill the heav’ns to scale, Or scoops in circling theatres the vale, Calls in the country, catches opening glades, Joins willing woods, and varies shades from shades, Now breaks or now directs, th’intending lines;192 Paints as you plant, and, as you work, designs. Still follow Sense, of ev’ry art the soul, Parts answ’ring parts shall slide into a whole, Spontaneous beauties all around advance, Start ev’n from difficulty, strike from chance; Nature shall join you, Time shall make it grow A work to wonder at – perhaps a Stowe.193 Without it, proud Versailles! thy glory falls;194 And Nero’s Terraces desert their walls:195 The vast parterres a thousand hands shall make,196 Lo! Cobham comes, and floats them with a lake:197 Or cut wide views through mountains to the plain, You’ll wish your hill or sheltered seat again. Ev’n in an ornament its place remark, Nor in an hermitage set Dr. Clarke.198 Behold Villario’s ten-years toil complete; His quincunx darkens, his espaliers meet,199 The wood supports the plain, the parts unite,

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And strength of shade contends with strength of light; A waving glow the bloomy beds display, Blushing in bright diversities of day, With silver-quiv’ring rills meandered o’er – Enjoy them, you! Villario can no more; Tired of the scene parterres and fountains yield, He finds at last he better likes a field. Through his young woods how pleased Sabinus strayed, Or sat delighted in the thick’ning shade, With annual joy the red’ning shoots to greet, Or see the stretching branches long to meet! His son’s fine taste an op’ner vista loves, Foe to the dryads of his father’s groves,200 One boundless green, or flourished carpet views With all the mournful family of yews; The thriving plants ignoble broomsticks made, Now sweep those alleys they were born to shade. At Timon’s Villa let us pass a day,201 Where all cry out, ‘What sums are thrown away!’ So proud, so grand, of that stupendous air, Soft and agreeable come never there. Greatness, with Timon, dwells in such a draught As brings all Brobdignag before your thought.202 To compass this, his building is a town, His pond an ocean, his parterre a down: Who but must laugh, the master when he sees, A puny insect, shiv’ring at a breeze! Lo, what huge heaps of littleness around! The whole, a laboured quarry above ground. Two cupids squirt before: a lake behind Improves the keenness of the northern wind. His gardens next your admiration call, On ev’ry side you look, behold the wall! No pleasing intricacies intervene, No artful wildness to perplex the scene; Grove nods at grove, each alley has a brother, And half the platform just reflects the other. The suff’ring eye inverted Nature sees, Trees cut to statues, statues thick as trees, With here a fountain, never to be played, And there a summer-house, that knows no shade; Here Amphitrite sails through myrtle bow’rs;203 There gladiators fight, or die in flow’rs; Un-watered see the drooping sea-horse mourn,

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And swallows roost in Nilus’ dusty urn. My Lord advances with majestic mien,204 Smit with the mighty pleasure, to be seen:205 But soft – by regular approach – not yet – First through the length of yon hot Terrace sweat, And when up ten steep slopes you’ve dragged your thighs, Just at his study-door he’ll bless your eyes. His study! with what authors is it stored? In books, not authors, curious is my Lord; To all their dated backs he turns you round, These Aldus printed, those Du Suëil has bound.206 Lo some are vellum, and the rest as good207 For all his Lordship knows, but they are wood.208 For Locke or Milton ’tis in vain to look,209 These shelves admit not any modern book. And now the chapel’s silver bell you hear, That summons you to all the pride of prayer:210 Light quirks of music, broken and uneven, Make the soul dance upon a jig to Heav’n. On painted ceilings you devoutly stare, Where sprawl the saints of Verrio or Laguerre,211 On gilded clouds in fair expansion lie, And bring all paradise before your eye. To rest, the cushion and soft Dean invite,212 Who never mentions hell to ears polite. But hark! the chiming clocks to dinner call; A hundred footsteps scrape the marble hall: The rich buffet well-coloured serpents grace, And gaping Tritons spew to wash your face.213 Is this a dinner? this a genial room? No, ’tis a temple, and a hecatomb.214 A solemn sacrifice, performed in state, You drink by measure, and to minutes eat. So quick retires each flying course, you’d swear Sancho’s dread doctor and his wand were there.215 Between each act the trembling salvers ring,216 From soup to sweet-wine, and God bless the King. In plenty starving, tantalized in state, And complacently helped to all I hate, Treated, caressed, and tired, I take my leave, Sick of his civil pride from morn to eve; I curse such lavish cost, and little skill, And swear no day was ever passed so ill. Yet hence the poor are clothed, the hungry fed;

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Health to himself, and to his infants bread The lab’rer bears: what his hard heart denies, His charitable vanity supplies. Another age shall see the golden ear Imbrown the slope, and nod on the parterre,217 Deep harvests bury all his pride has planned, And laughing Ceres re-assume the land.218 Who then shall grace, or who improve the soil? Who plants like Bathurst, or who builds like Boyle.219 ’Tis use alone that sanctifies expense, And Splendour borrows all her rays from Sense. His father’s acres who enjoys in peace, Or makes his neighbours glad, if he increase; Whose cheerful tenants bless their yearly toil, Yet to their Lord owe more than to the soil; Whose ample lawns are not ashamed to feed The milky heifer and deserving steed; Whose rising forests, not for pride or show, But future buildings, future navies grow: Let his plantations stretch from down to down,220 First shade a country; and then raise a town. You too proceed! make failing arts your care, Erect new wonders, and the old repair, Jones and Palladio to themselves restore,221 And be whate’er Vitruvius was before:222 Till kings call forth th’ideas of your mind, Proud to accomplish what such hands designed, Bid harbours open, public ways extend, Bid temples, worthier of the God, ascend; Bid the broad arch the dang’rous flood contain, The mole projected break the roaring main;223 Back to his bounds their subject sea command, And roll obedient rivers through the land:224 These honours, peace to happy Britain brings, These are imperial works, and worthy kings.225

Mary Leapor, ‘Crumble-Hall’ (1751) Mary Leapor (1722–46) was dismissed from her job as a cook at Edgcote House, Northamptonshire, apparently for reading too much; she wrote ‘Crumble Hall’ some time later. After her death, two collections of her poems were published with the help of her patron Bridget Freemantle and a group of gentlemen including Samuel Richardson. While the country house poem has often been thought of as a male preserve, critics

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have suggested an alternative female tradition (see Lanyer, above) including this, Leapor’s major work. Leapor creates a voice distinct from earlier country house poets who, while also ‘outsiders’, largely seek to celebrate the estate and its owner. ‘Crumble Hall’ subtly but insistently highlights class divisions within the supposedly harmonious hierarchy of the country house, and points – as do many of the poems in ‘Voices from the Margins’ – to the hard labour of servants and the pretensions of the gentry. The narrating ‘Mira’ is insistently excluded from the kind of pastoral vision open to the landowning class, and remains confined within the working world of the house and its kitchen garden. Leapor’s poetry was heavily influenced by Pope, whose ‘Epistle to Burlington’ (see above) is the only country house poem it is certain she read. We reprint the text from her posthumous Poems (London, 1751) in which the poem first appeared. Recommended edition Mary Leapor, Poems upon several occasions, 2 vols (London, 1748–51).

Suggested secondary reading Richard Greene, Mary Leapor: A Study in Eighteenth-Century Women’s Poetry (Oxford, 1993). Donna Landry, The Muses of Resistance: Laboring-Class Women’s Poetry in Britain, 1739–1796 (Cambridge, 1990). Valerie Rumbold, ‘The Alienated Insider: Mary Leapor in “Crumble Hall” ’, British Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies, 19: 1 (Spring, 1996), pp. 63–76.

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When friends of fortune frown on Mira’s lay,226 Or gloomy vapours hide the lamp of day;227 With low’ring forehead, and with aching limbs,228 Oppressed with head-ache, and eternal whims,229 Sad Mira vows to quit the darling crime:230 Yet takes her farewell, and repents, in rhyme. But see (more charming than Armida’s wiles)231 The sun returns, and Artemisia smiles:232 Then in a trice the resolutions fly; And who so frolic as the Muse and I? We sing once more, obedient to her call; Once more we sing and ’tis of Crumble-Hall; That Crumble-Hall; whose hospitable door Has fed the stranger, and relieved the poor; Whose gothic towers, and whose rusty spires, Were known of old to knights, and hungry squires. There powdered beef, and warden-pies, were found;233 And pudding dwelt within her spacious bound: Pork, peas, and bacon (good old English fare!),

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With tainted ven’son, and with hunted hare:234 With humming beer her vats were wont to flow,235 And ruddy nectar in her vaults to glow.236 Here came the wights, who battled for renown,237 The sable friar, and the russet clown:238 The loaded tables sent a sav’ry gale, And the brown bowls were crowned with simp’ring ale;239 While the guests ravaged on the smoking store,240 Till their stretched girdles would contain no more. Of this rude palace might a poet sing From cold December to returning spring; Tell how the building spreads on either hand, And two grim giants o’er the portals stand; Whose grisled beards are neither combed nor shorn,241 But look severe, and horribly adorn. Then step within – there stands a goodly row242 Of oaken pillars – where a gallant show Of mimic pears and carved pom’granates twine, With the plump clusters of the spreading vine. Strange forms above, present themselves to view; Some mouths that grin, some smile, and some that spew.243 Here a soft maid or infant seems to cry: Here stares a tyrant, with distorted eye: The roof – no cyclops e’er could reach so high:244 Not Polypheme, though formed for dreadful harms, The top could measure with extended arms. Here the pleased spider plants her peaceful loom:245 Here weaves secure, nor dreads the hated broom. But at the head (and furbished once a year) The herald’s mystic compliments appear:246 Round the fierce dragon Honi Soit entwines, And royal Edward o’er the chimney shines.247 Safely the mice through yon dark passage run, Where the dim windows ne’er admit the sun. Along each wall the stranger blindly feels; And (trembling) dreads the spectre at his heels. The sav’ry kitchen much attention calls: Wesphalia hams adorn the sable walls:248 The fires blaze; the greasy pavements fry;249 And steaming odours from the kettles fly. See! yon brown parlour on the left appears, For nothing famous, but its leathern chairs, Whose shining nails like polished armour glow, And the dull clock beats audible and slow.

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But on the right we spy a room more fair: The form – ’tis neither long, nor round, nor square; The walls how lofty, and the floor how wide, We leave for learned Quadrus to decide.250 Gay China bowls o’er the broad chimney shine, Whose long description would be too sublime: And much might of the tapestry be sung:251 But we’re content to say, the parlour’s hung. We count the stairs, and to the right ascend, Where to the walls the gorgeous colours blend. There doughty George bestrides the goodly steed;252 The dragon’s slaughtered, and the virgin freed: And there (but lately rescued from their fears) The Nymph and serious Ptolemy appears:253 Their awkward limbs unwieldy are displayed; And, like a milk-wench, glares the royal maid. From hence we turn to more familiar rooms; Whose hangings ne’er were wrought in Grecian looms: Yet the soft stools, and eke the lazy chairs,254 To sleep invite the weary, and the fair. Shall we proceed? – Yes, if you’ll break the wall: If not, return, and tread once more the hall. Up ten stone steps now please to drag your toes,255 And a brick passage will succeed to those. Here the strong doors were aptly framed to hold Sir Wary’s person, and Sir Wary’s gold.256 Here Biron sleeps, with books encircled round; And him you’d guess a student most profound, Not so – in form the dusty volumes stand: There’s few that wear the mark of Biron’s hand. Would you go further? – Stay a little then: Back through the passage – down the steps again; Through yon dark room – Be careful how you tread Up these steep stairs – or you may break your head. These rooms are furnished amiably, and full: Old shoes, and sheep-ticks bred in stacks of wool; Grey Dobbin’s gears, and drenching-horns enow;257 Wheel-spokes – the irons of a tattered plough. No further – Yes, a little higher, pray: At yon small door you’ll find the beams of day, While the hot leads return the scorching ray.258 Here a gay prospect meets the ravished eye: Meads, fields, and groves, in beauteous order lie. From hence the muse precipitant is hurled,259

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And drags down Mira to the nether world.260 Thus far the palace – Yet there still remain Unsung the gardens and the menial train.261 Its groves anon – its people first we sing: Hear, Artemisia, hear the song we bring. Sophronia first in verse shall learn to chime,262 And keep her station, though in Mira’s rhyme; Sophronia’s sage! whose learned knuckles know To form round cheese-cakes of the pliant dough; To bruise the curd, and through her fingers squeeze Ambrosial butter with the tempered cheese:263 Sweet tarts and pudding, too, her skill declare; And the soft jellies, hid from baneful air.264 O’er the warm kettles, and the sav’ry steams, Grave Colinettus of his oxen dreams: Then startling, anxious for his new-mown hay, Runs headlong out to view the doubtful day: But dinner calls with more prevailing charms; And surly Grusso in his awkward arms Bears the tall jug, and turns a glaring eye, As though he feared some insurrection nigh From the fierce crew, that gaping stand a-dry.265 O’er-stuffed with beef; with cabbage much too full, And dumpling too (fit emblem of his skull!) With mouth wide open, but with closing eyes Unwieldy Roger on the table lies. His able lungs discharge a rattling sound: Prince barks, Spot howls, and the tall roofs rebound. Him Ur’sla views; and, with dejected eyes, ‘Ah Roger, Ah!’ the mournful maiden cries: ‘Is wretched Ur’sla then your care no more, That, while I sigh, thus you can sleep and snore? Ingrateful Roger! Wilt thou leave me now? For you these furrows mark my fading brow: For you my pigs resign their morning due: My hungry chickens lose their meat for you: And, was it not, ah! was it not for thee, No goodly pottage would be dressed by me.266 For thee these hands wind up the whirling jack,267 Or place the spit across the sloping rack. I baste the mutton with a cheerful heart, Because I know my Roger will have part’. Thus she – But now her dish-kettle began To boil and blubber with the foaming bran.268

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The greasy apron round her hips she ties, And to each plate the scalding clout applies:269 The purging bath each glowing dish refines, And once again the polished pewter shines. Now to those meads let frolic fancy rove,270 Where o’er yon waters nods a pendant grove; In whose clear waves the pictured boughs are seen, With fairer blossoms, and a brighter green. Soft flow’ry banks the spreading lakes divide: Sharp-pointed flags adorn each tender side.271 See! the pleased swans along the surface play; Where yon cool willows meet the scorching ray, Where fierce Orion gives too warm a day.272 But hark, what scream the wond’ring ear invades! The dryads howling for their threatened shades:273 Round the dear grove each nymph distracted flies (Though not discovered but with poet’s eyes):274 And shall those shades, where Philomeda’s strain275 Has oft to slumber lulled the hapless swain Where turtles used to clap their silken wings;276 Whose rev’rend oaks have known a hundred springs; Shall these ignobly from their roots be torn,277 And perish shameful, as the abject thorn; While the slow car bears off their aged limbs,278 To clear the way for slopes, and modern whims; Where banished nature leaves a barren gloom, And awkward art supplies the vacant room? Yet (or the muse for vengeance calls in vain) The injured nymphs shall haunt the ravaged plain: Strange sounds and forms shall tease the gloomy green; And fairy-elves by Ur’sla shall be seen: Their new-built parlour shall with echoes ring: And in their hall shall doleful crickets sing. Then cease, Diracto, stay thy desp’rate hand; And let the grove, if not the parlour, stand.

Sarah Scott, from A Description of Millenium Hall (1762) Sarah Scott (1723–95) was a prominent member of the early feminist ‘bluestocking’ circle founded by her sister, Elizabeth Montagu, in the mid-eighteenth century. She devoted much of her life to improving the lives of women and in particular supported the kind of secular women’s communities described in her most famous novel, Millenium Hall. The novel offers a utopian re-reading of the country house and claims the largely masculine

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territory of architecture and estate management for the female sphere. Scott’s narrator is a leisured gentleman travelling in the company of the lively if frivolous Mr Lamont, and her novel relates the misfortunes of the various women who now live peacefully at Millenium Hall. Earlier in the eighteenth century the theme of country retirement had been used by a number of women novelists in order to narrate the lives of ‘fallen’ women; in works such as Eliza Haywood’s The British Recluse (1722), country retirement and penury are, if not a punishment, at least the only options available to women who step outside patriarchal traditions and values. Scott, however, offers something more than this with a positive vision of self-sufficient benevolence, a model of sentimental, organic community to challenge the misguided values of contemporary society, partially voiced in this extract by Mr Lamont. The following extracts are reprinted from the first edition of 1762. Recommended edition Sarah Scott, A Description of Millenium Hall, ed. Gary Kelly (Peterborough, Ontario, 1995).

Suggested secondary reading Dorice Williams Elliott, ‘Sarah Scott’s Millenium Hall and Female Philanthropy’, Studies in English Literature 1500–1900, 35: 3 (1995), pp. 535–53. David J. Macey Jr, ‘Eden Revisited: Re-Visions of the Garden in Astell’s Serious Proposal, Scott’s Millenium Hall, and Graffigny’s Lettres d’une Peruvienne’, Eighteenth-Century Fiction, 9: 2 (1997), pp. 161–82. Nicole Pohl, ‘ “Sweet Place, Where Virtue Then Did Rest”: the Appropriation of the Country-House Ethos in Sarah Scott’s Millenium Hall’, Utopian Studies: Journal of the Society for Utopian Studies, 7: 1 (1996), pp. 49–59. Christine Rees, Utopian Imagination and Eighteenth-Century Fiction (Harlow, 1996), ch. 7.

We approached the house, wherein, as it was the only human habitation in view, we imagined must reside the Primum Mobile279 of all we had yet beheld. We were admiring the magnificence of the ancient structure, and inclined to believe it the abode of the genius280 which presided over this fairy land, when we were surprised by a storm, which had been for some time gathering over our heads, though our thoughts had been too agreeably engaged to pay much attention to it. We took shelter under the thick shade of a large oak, but the violence of the thunder and lightning made our situation rather uncomfortable. All those whom we had a little before seen so busy, left their work on hearing the first clap of thunder, and ran with the utmost speed to Millenium Hall, so I shall call the noble mansion of which I am speaking, as to an assured asylum against every evil. Some of these persons, I imagine, perceived us; for immediately after they entered, came out a woman, who, by her air and manner of address,

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we guessed to be the house-keeper, and desired us to walk into the house till the storm was over. We made some difficulties281 about taking that liberty, but she still persisting in her invitation, had my curiosity to see the inhabitants of this hospitable mansion been less, I could not have refused to comply, as by prolonging these ceremonious altercations I was detaining her in the storm, we therefore agreed to follow her. If we had been inclined before to fancy ourselves on enchanted ground,282 when after being led through a large hall, we were introduced to the ladies, who knew nothing of what had passed, I could scarcely forbear believing myself in the Attick school.283 The room where they sat was about forty-five feet long, of a proportionable breadth, with three windows on one side, which looked into a garden, and a large bow284 at the upper end. Over against the windows were three large book-cases, upon the top of the middle one stood an orrery,285 and a globe on each of the others. In the bow sat two ladies reading, with pen, ink, and paper on a table before them, at which was a young girl translating out of French. At the lower end of the room was a lady painting, with exquisite art indeed, a beautiful Madonna; near her another, drawing a landscape out of her own imagination; a third, carving a picture-frame in wood, in the finest manner; a fourth, engraving; and a young girl reading aloud to them; the distance from the ladies in the bow-window being such, that they could receive no disturbance from her. At the next window were placed a group of girls, from the age of ten years old to fourteen. Of these, one was drawing figures, another a landscape, a third a perspective view, a fourth engraving, a fifth carving, a sixth turning in wood,286 a seventh writing, an eighth cutting out linen, another making a gown, and by them an empty chair and a tent,287 with embroidery, finely fancied,288 before it, which we afterwards found had been left by a young girl who was gone to practise on the harpsichord . . . In the high pale which encloses this wood I observed a little door; curiosity induced me to pass through it; I found it opened on a row of the neatest cottages I ever saw, which the wood had concealed from my view. They were new and uniform, and therefore I imagined all dedicated to the same purpose. Seeing a very old woman spinning at one of the doors, I accosted289 her, by admiring the neatness of her habitation . . . As my new acquaintance seemed as loquacious as her age promised, I hoped for full satisfaction, and asked her, ‘How she and her neighbours employed themselves?’ ‘Not all alike, replied the good woman, I will tell you all about it. There are twelve of us that live here. We have every one a house of two rooms, as you may see, beside other conveniences, and each a little garden, but though we are separate, we agree as well, perhaps better, than if we lived together, and all help one another. Now, there is neighbour Susan, and neighbour Rachel; Susan is lame, so she spins clothes for Rachel; and Rachel cleans Susan’s house, and does such things

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for her as she cannot do for herself. The ladies settled all these matters at first, and told us, that as they, to please God, assisted us, we must in order to please him serve others; and that to make us happy they would put us in a way, poor as we are, to do good to many. Thus neighbour Jane, who poor woman is almost stone deaf, they thought would have a melancholy life if she was to be always spinning and knitting, seeing other people around her talking, and not be able to hear a word they said, so the ladies busy her in making broths and caudles,290 and such things, for all the sick poor in this and the next parish, and two of us are fixed upon291 to carry what they have made to those that want them; to visit them often, and spend more or less time with them every day according as they have, or have not relations to take care of them; for though the ladies always hire nurses for those who are very ill, yet they will not trust quite to them, but make us overlook them, so that in a sickly time we shall be all day going from one to another.’ ‘But, said I, there are I perceive many children amongst you, how happens that? Your ages shew they are not your own.’ ‘Oh! as for that, replied my intelligencer, I will tell you how that is. You must know these good ladies, heaven preserve them! take every child after the fifth of every poor person, as soon as it can walk, till when they pay the mother for nursing it; these children they send to us to keep out of harm, and as soon as they can hold a knitting-needle to teach them to knit, and to spin, as much as they can be taught before they are four or five years old, when they are removed into one of the schools. They are pretty company for us, and make us mothers again, as it were, in our old age; then the children’s relations are all so fond of us for our care of them, that it makes us a power of292 friends, which you know is very pleasant, though we want nothing from them but their good wills.’ Here I interrupted her by observing, that it must take up a great deal of time, and stop their work, consequently lessen their profits. ‘There is nothing in that, continued the good woman, the ladies’ steward sends us in all we want in the way of meat, drink, and firing; and our spinning we carry to the ladies; they employ a poor old weaver, who before they came broke293 for want of work, to weave it for us, and when there is not enough they put more to it, so we are sure to have our clothing; if we are not idle that is all they desire, except that we should be cleanly too. There never passes a day that one or other of the ladies does not come and look all over our houses, which they tell us, and certainly with truth, for it is a great deal of trouble to them, is all for our good, for that we cannot be healthy if we are not clean and neat. Then every saint’s day,294 and every Sunday after church, we all go down to the hall, and the ladies read prayers, and a sermon to us, and their own family; nor do they ever come here without giving us some good advice. We used to quarrel, to be sure, sometimes when we first came to these houses, but the ladies

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condescended295 to make it up amongst us, and showed us so kindly how much it was our duty to agree together, and to forgive every body their faults, or else we could not hope to be forgiven by God, against whom we so often sinned, that now we love one another like sisters . . . the ladies seem so pleased when we do any kindness to one another, as to be sure is a great encouragement; and if any of us are sick they are so careful and so good, that it would be a shame if we did not do all we can for one another, who have been always neighbours and acquaintance, when such great ladies, who never knew us, as I may say, but to make us happy, and have no reason to take care of us but that we are poor, are so kind and condescending to us.’

4 Merry England: Property, Pastoral and Rural Pleasures

The notion of merry England has a deceptively timeless air. It evokes images of rural bounty and festivity, sustained by values of community and underpinned by centuries of tradition. Some of the texts in this section have helped to shape such appreciations of the countryside. Yet the section as a whole explores the historical contingency of ‘merry England’, through a collection of texts which demonstrate important struggles over the meaning of the countryside. The issue of rural mirth was thrust onto the national stage in late sixteenth-century England as a direct result of contemporary religious discord. Emerging Puritan interests pointed to the pagan origins of many customs, and condemned any distractions from the service of God on the sabbath. In the face of such attacks, the early Stuart monarchs vigorously defended the festive, as part of a concerted attempt to uphold social stability and cultural tradition. James I’s ‘Book of Sports’, reproduced in full below, was a bold statement of national identity. This declaration was aligned with further royal directives which attempted to uphold rural hospitality and community, while a vibrant literary tradition celebrated a countryside invigorated by the monarch’s ideals. As the nation lurched towards civil war, ‘the politics of mirth’ offered a dream of social cohesion, nurtured even in the midst of the conflict by nostalgic royalists such as Robert Herrick. In the less fraught environment of Restoration England, literary celebrations of rural festivities gradually decreased in number, and lost the earlier sense of urgency. At a time when social and intellectual elites sought to distinguish their cultural practices from those of the populace, myths of cultural community were increasingly looked upon with a detached irony, as is apparent in John Gay’s pastoral poetry. The texts here demonstrate at once the strength and diversity of a vital national mythology. The momentum towards an aesthetics of land and society characterizes almost all of the selections. Yet more pragmatic considerations are never far from the surface. For example, James I considers the military 94

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advantages of a fit and spirited rural population, while Herrick perceives the harvest festival as a moment of refreshment which serves the interests of the landlord by keeping his labourers happy. The beguiling aesthetics were embedded from the start in the politics of landscape. Suggested reading Peter Burke, Popular Culture in Early Modern Europe (London, 1978). David Cressy, Bonfires and Bells: National Memory and the Protestant Calendar in Elizabethan and Stuart England (London, 1989). Ronald Hutton, The Rise and Fall of Merry England: The Ritual Year 1400–1700 (Oxford, 1994). François Laroque, Shakespeare’s Festive World: Elizabethan Seasonal Entertainment and the Professional Stage (Cambridge, 1991). Leah S. Marcus, The Politics of Mirth: Jonson, Herrick, Milton, Marvell, and the Defense of Old Holiday Pastimes (Chicago and London, 1986).

Philip Stubbes, from The Anatomie of Abuses (1583) The voluminous attack on social and religious abuses written by Philip Stubbes (1555?–1611?) is often read as a central statement of Elizabethan Puritanism. There are some dangers in this approach, however, as Stubbes wrote as a London gentleman with no apparent links with radicals in the Church. It is perhaps more profitable to consider Stubbes as an agitant for a second wave of Protestant reform, to reinforce the assault on Catholic ritual and associated communal customs launched under Henry VIII and Edward VI. Stubbes maintains a tradition of social and religious complaint, which had become an important form of Protestant polemic over the preceding fifty years. Complaint texts operate in terms of moral absolutes, bringing the fundamentalism of biblical injunctions to bear upon contemporary practices. The writer of complaint typically aligns himself with Old Testament prophets such as Isaiah, who berated his ‘sinful nation, a people laden with iniquity’ (Isaiah, 1:4). If Protestant England could be compared to the elect nation of Israel, as many writers and preachers insisted, it was also subject to the corruptions which plagued that state. The Anatomie is in dialogue form. Stubbes’ mouthpiece, Philoponus, is introduced as a traveller, who has been observing the nature and practices of the people of Ailgna, a barely-veiled image of England. His companion, who serves mainly to keep the dialogue moving by asking questions, is Spudeus. Suggested secondary reading Patrick Collinson, The Birthpangs of Protestant England: Religious and Cultural Change in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (London, 1988), ch. 4. Ronald Hutton, The Rise and Fall of Merry England: The Ritual Year 1400–1700 (Oxford, 1994), ch. 4 John Peter, Complaint and Satire in Early English Literature (Oxford, 1956).

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Philoponus. Against May, Whitsunday or other time, all the young men and wives run gadding over night to the woods, groves, hills and mountains, where they spend all the night in pleasant pastimes, and in the morning they return bringing with them birch and branches of trees, to deck their assemblies withal, and no marvel, for there is a great lord present amongst them, as superintendent and lord over their pastimes and sports, namely, Satan prince of hell: but the chiefest jewel they bring home from thence is their Maypole, which they bring home with great veneration, as thus. They have twenty or forty yoke of oxen, every ox having a sweet nosegay of flowers placed on the tip of his horns, and these oxen draw home this Maypole (this stinking idol rather) which is covered all over with flowers, and herbs bound round about with strings from top to the bottom, and sometime painted with variable colours, with two or three hundred men, women and children following it with great devotion. And thus being reared up, with handkerchiefs and flags hovering on the top, they straw the ground round about,1 bind green boughs about it, set up summer halls, bowers and arbors hard by it. And then fall they to dance about it like as the heathen people did at the dedication of the idols, whereof this is a perfect pattern, or rather the thing itself. I have heard it credibly reported...by men of great gravity and reputation, that of forty, threescore, or a hundred maids going to the wood over night, there have scarcely the third part of them returned home again undefiled.... [The manner of keeping of wakes2 and feasts in Ailgna] Philoponus. This is their order therein: every town, parish and village, some at one time of the year, some at another (but so that every town, parish and village keep his proper day assigned and appropriate to itself, which they call their wake day) use to make great preparation, and ordinance3 for good cheer. To the which all their friends and kinsfolks far and near are invited, where is such gluttony: such drunkenness: such saturity4 and impletion5 used, as the like was never seen. In so much, as the poor men that bear the charges of these feasts and wakes, are the poorer, and keep the worser houses a long time after. And no marvel, for many spend more at one of these wakes, than in all the whole year besides. This makes many a one to thripple6 and pinch, to run into debt and danger, and finally, brings many a one to utter ruin and decay. Spudeus. Would you not have one friend to visit another at certain times of the year? Philoponus. I disallow it not, but much commend it. But why at one determinate7 day, more than at another (except business urged it)? Why should one and the same day continue forever, or be distinct from other days, by the name of a wake day? Why should there be more excess of

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meats and drinks at that day, than at another? Why should they abstain from bodily labour two or three days after, peradventure, the whole week, spending it in drunkenness, whoredom, gluttony, and other filthy sodomitical exercises. Spudeus. Seeing you allow of one friend to visit another, would you not have them to congratulate8 their coming with some good cheer? Philoponus. Yes truly, but I allow not of such excess of riot and superfluity as is there used. I think it convenient for one friend to visit another (at sometimes) as opportunity and occasion shall offer itself, but wherefore should the whole town, parish, village and country, keep one and the same day, and make such gluttonous feasts as they do? And therefore, to conclude, they are to no end, except it be to draw a great frequency of whores, drabs,9 thieves and varlets10 together, to maintain whoredom, bawdry, gluttony, drunkenness, theft, murder, swearing and all kind of mischief and abomination. For, these be the ends whereto these feasts and wakes do tend. Spudeus. From whence sprang these feasts and wakes first of all, can you tell? Philoponus. I cannot tell, except from the pagans and heathen people, who when they were assembled together, and had offered sacrifices to their wooden gods and blockish idols, made feasts and banquets together before them, in honour and reverence of them, so appointed the same yearly to be observed in memorial of the same. But whence soever they had their exordium,11 certain it is, the devil was the father of them, to drown us in perdition and destruction of body and soul, which God forfend.12 (sigs. M3b–M4a, M6a–M7b) Michael Drayton, from Pastorals (1606) Early in his long career, Michael Drayton (1563–1631) wrote a collection of pastoral eclogues, published as Idea The Shepheards Garland (1593). Like Spenser’s Shepheardes Calender (1579), Drayton’s eclogues employ pastoral principally as a vehicle for love complaint and moral teaching. But if at times his eclogues warrant the poet’s later claim that they contain ‘almost nothing pastoral . . . but the name’, elsewhere they offer striking glimpses of an unmistakably native pastoral landscape. ‘The Ninth Eclogue’, added to the volume when it was republished in 1606, is set in the Cotswolds, and employs a shearing-feast as a framework for a series of pastoral songs. More than any preceding work of English Renaissance pastoral, this poem fuses a literary tradition with aspects of folk culture. Hence the first of two inset songs, the Daffodil Song, brings Petrarchan terms of praise into conjunction with a realm of a simple folk humour, thereby achieving a playful form of art pastoral. The second is more elaborate in its terms of praise, centring on the conceit of the supernatural powers of the beautiful shepherdess. The

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final song is still more elevated in tone. It moves through the pastoral world towards a poetic idiom weighted with allusions to classical mythology. Recommended edition Michael Drayton, Works, ed. J. William Hebel, 5 vols (Oxford, 1931–41).

Suggested secondary reading Sukanta Chaudhuri, Renaissance Pastoral and its English developments (Oxford, 1989), ch. 10. Helen Cooper, Pastoral: Mediaeval into Renaissance (Ipswich, 1977), ch. 5. Joan Grundy, The Spenserian Poets (London, 1969), ch. 4.

‘The Ninth Eclogue’ Late ’twas in June, the fleece when fully grown, In the full compass of the passed year,13 The season well by skilful shepherds known, That them provide immediately to shear. 5

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Their lambs late waxed so lusty and so strong,14 That time did them their mothers’ teats forbid, And in the fields the common flocks among, Eat of the same grass that the greater did. Now not a shepherd any thing that could, But greased his start-ups black as autumn’s sloe,15 And for the better credit of the wold,16 In their fresh russets every one doth go.17 Who now a posy pins not in his cap? And not a garland baldric-wise doth wear?18 Some, of such flowers as to his hand doth hap, Others, such as a secret meaning bear: He from his lass him lavender hath sent, Showing her love, and doth requital crave, Him rosemary his sweetheart, whose intent, Is that, he her should in remembrance have. Roses, his youth and strong desire express, Her sage, doth show his sovereignty in all, The July-flower declares his gentleness,19 Time, truth, the pansy, heart’s-ease maidens call:20

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In cotes such simples, simply in request,21 Wherewith proud courts in greatness scorn to mell,22 For country toys become the country best, And please poor shepherds, and become them well.

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When the new-washed flock from the river’s side, Coming as white as January’s snow, The ram with nosegays bears his horns in pride, And no less brave, the bell-wether doth go.23 After their fair flocks in a lusty rout,24 Came the gay swains with bagpipes strongly blown,25 And busied, though this solemn sport about, Yet had each one an eye unto his own. And by the ancient statutes of the field,26 He that his flocks the earliest lamb should bring, (As it fell out then, Rowland’s charge to yield)27 Always for that year was the shepherds’ king. And soon preparing for the shepherds’ board,28 Upon a green that curiously was squared,29 With country cates being plentifully stored:30 And ’gainst their coming handsomely prepared:

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New whig, with water from the clearest stream,31 Green plums, and wildings, cherries chief of feast,32 Fresh cheese, and dowsets, curds and clotted cream,33 Spiced syllabubs, and cider of the best.34 And to the same down solemnly they sit, In the fresh shadow of their summer bowers, With sundry sweets them every way to fit, The neighbouring vale despoiled of her flowers.35 And whilst together merry thus they make, The sun to west a little ’gan to lean, Which the late fervour, soon again did slake,36 When as the nymphs came forth upon the plain. Here might you many a shepherdess have seen, Of which no place, as Cotswold, such doth yield, Some of it native, some for love I ween,37 Thither were come from many a fertile field. There was the widow’s daughter of the glen, Dear Rosalynd, that scarcely brooked compare,38 The moorland-maiden, so admired of men, Bright Goldy-Locks, and Phillida the fair.

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Lettice and Parnel, pretty lovely peats,39 Cusse of the fold, the virgin of the well, Fair Ambry with the alabaster teats,40

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And more, whose names were here too long to tell. 70

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Which now came forward following their sheep, Their battening flocks on grassy leas to hold,41 Thereby from scathe, and peril them to keep,42 Till evening come that it were time to fold. When now, at last, as liked the shepherds’ king, (At whose command they all obedient were) Was pointed, who the roundelay should sing, And who again the under-song should bear:43 The first whereof he Batte doth bequeath,44 A wittier wag on all the wold’s not found, Gorbo, the man, that him should sing beneath, Which his loud bagpipe skilfully could sound. Who amongst all the nymphs that were in sight, Batte his dainty Daffadil there missed, Which, to enquire of, doing all his might, Him his companion kindly doth assist.

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Batte Gorbo, as thou cam’st this way, By yonder little hill, Or, as thou, through the fields didst stray, Saw’st thou my Daffadil? She’s in a frock of Lincoln green, Which colour likes her sight, And never hath her beauty seen, But through a veil of white. Then roses richer to behold, That trim up lovers’ bowers, The pansy and the marigold, Tho Phoebus paramours.45 Gorbo Thou well describest the daffodil, It is not full an hour, Since, by the spring, near yonder hill, I saw that lovely flower. Batte Yet my fair flower thou did not meet, Nor news of her did bring,

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And yet my Daffadil’s more sweet, Then that by yonder spring. 105

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Gorbo I saw a shepherd that doth keep, In yonder field of lilies, Was making (as he fed his sheep) A wreath of daffodillies. Batte Yet, Gorbo, thou delud’st me still,46 My flower thou didst not see, For, know, my pretty Daffadil Is worn of none but me. To show itself but near her seat, No lily is so bold, Except to shade her from the heat, Or keep her from the cold. Gorbo Through yonder vale as I did pass, Descending from the hill, I met a smirking bonny lass,47 They call her Daffadil: Whose presence, as along she went, The pretty flowers did greet, As though their heads they downward bent, With homage to her feet. And all the shepherds that were nigh, From top of every hill, Unto the valleys loud did cry, There goes sweet Daffadil. Batte I, gentle shepherd, now with joy Thou all my flocks dost fill, That’s she alone, kind shepherd’s boy, Let us to Daffadil. The easy turns and quaintness of the song, And slight occasion whereupon ’twas raised, Not one this jolly company among, (As most could judge) highly that not praised. When Motto next with Perkin pay their debt,48 The moorland maiden Sylvia that espied, From th’other nymphs a little that was set,

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In a near valley by a river’s side. Whose sovereign flowers her sweetness well expressed, And honoured sight a little them not moved; To whom their song they reverently addressed, Both as her loving, both of her beloved.

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Motto: Tell me, thou skilful shepherd’s swain, Who’s yonder in the valley set? Perkin: Oh, ’tis she, whose sweets do stain The lily, rose, the violet.49 Motto: Why doth the sun against his kind, Stay his bright chariot in the skies? Perkin: He pauseth, almost strooken blind,50 With gazing on her heavenly eyes. Motto: Why do thy flocks forbear their food, Which sometime was their chief delight? Perkin: Because they need no other good, That live in presence of her sight. Motto: How come these flocks to flourish still, Not withering with sharp winter’s breath? Perkin: She hath robbed Nature of her skill, And comforts all things with her breath. Motto: Why slide these brooks so slow away, As swift as the wild roe that were?51 Perkin: O, muse not shepherd, that they stay, When they her heavenly voice do hear.

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Motto: From whence come all these goodly swains, And lovely girls attired in green? Perkin: From gathering garlands on the plains, To crown their Syl our shepherds’ queen. Motto: The sun that lights this world below, Flocks, brooks, and flowers, can witness bear. Perkin: These shepherds, and these nymphs do know, Thy Sylvia is as chaste, as fair. Lastly, it came unto the clownish king, Who, to conclude, this shepherds’ yearly feast, Bound as the rest, his roundelay to sing, As all the other him were to assist. When she (whom then, they little did expect, The fairest nymph that ever kept in field)

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Idea, did her sober pace direct52 Towards them, with joy that every one beheld. And whereas other drave their careful keep,53 Hers did her follow, duly at her will, For, through her patience she had learnt her sheep,54 Where ere she went, to wait upon her still.

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A milk-white dove upon her hand she brought, So tame, ’twould go, returning at her call, About whose neck was in a collar wrought, ‘Only like me, my mistress hath no gall’.55 To whom her swain (unworthy though he were) Thus unto her his roundelay applies, To whom the rest the underpart did bear,56 Casting upon her their still-longing eyes. Rowland: Of her pure eyes (that now is seen) Chorus: Come, let us sing, ye faithful swains. Rowland: Oh, she alone the shepherds’ queen. Chorus: Her flock that leads, The goddess of these meads, These mountains and these plains. Rowland: Those eyes of hers that are more clear, Chorus: Than can poor shepherd’s songs express, Rowland: Then be his beams that rules the year.57 Chorus: Fie on that praise, In striving things to raise: That doth but make them less. Rowland: That do the flowery spring prolong.58 Chorus: So all things in her sight do joy, Rowland: And keeps the plenteous summer young: Chorus: And do assuage The wrathful winter’s rage, That would our flocks annoy. Rowland: Jove saw her breast that naked lay, Chorus: A sight most fit for Jove to see: Rowland: And swore it was the Milky Way, Chorus: Of all most pure, The path (we us assure) To his bright court to be.59 Rowland: He saw her tresses hanging down,

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Chorus: That moved with the gentle air, Rowland: And said that Ariadne’s crown,60 Chorus: With those compared, The gods should not regard, Nor Berenice’s hair.61 Rowland: When she hath watched my flocks by night, Chorus: O happy flocks that she did keep, Rowland: They never needed Cynthia’s light,62 Chorus: That soon gave place, Amazed with her grace, That did attend thy sheep. Rowland: Above, where heaven’s high glories are, Chorus: When she is placed in the skies, Rowland: She shall be called the shepherds’ star, Chorus: And evermore, We shepherds will adore Her setting and her rise.

King James VI and I, The Kings Majesties Declaration to his Subjects, Concerning lawful Sports to be used (1618) The declaration written by James I of England (reigned 1603–25), commonly known as the Book of Sports, was initially prompted by a local dispute over rural festivities in Lancashire in 1617. While the text printed in the following year retains information about this localized context, it boldly placed the issue of popular customs on the national political agenda. James’s statement is remarkably explicit about the place of sports in the construction of social stability and national identity. He attacks both Puritans and Catholics as religious extremists, and fashions images of native cultural practices nurtured within traditional political and social structures. But the Book of Sports did not so much resolve conflict as clarify it. In a fraught environment of religious controversy and social unrest, popular festive practices could provoke intense conflict. The most fundamental point of contention was prompted by the fourth commandment, to ‘keep the sabbath day to sanctify it’. Sundays were appreciated variously as a time for religious instruction, spiritual meditation or communal celebration. Within this context, the principal significance of the Book is that its publication in 1618, and again under Charles I in 1633, forced people to confront such issues. In 1641 the House of Commons moved against a plethora of customs, and in so doing acknowledged the cultural status of the Book of Sports. They ordered that it be burned.

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Suggested secondary reading Julian Davies, The Caroline Captivity of the Church: Charles I and the Remoulding of Anglicanism 1625–1641 (Oxford, 1992), ch. 5. Ronald Hutton, The Rise and Fall of Merry England: The Ritual Year 1400–1700 (Oxford, 1994), ch. 5. Kenneth Parker, The English Sabbath: A Study of Doctrine and Discipline from the Reformation to the Civil War (Cambridge, 1988).

Whereas upon our return the last year out of Scotland, we did publish our pleasure touching the recreations of our people in those parts under our hand: For some causes us thereunto moving, we have thought good to command these our directions then given in Lancashire with a few words thereunto added, and most applicable to these parts of our realms, to be published to all our subjects.63 Whereas we did justly in our progress through Lancashire, rebuke some puritans and precise people,64 and took order that the like unlawful carriage65 should not be used by any of them hereafter, in the prohibiting and unlawful punishing of our good people for using their lawful recreations, and honest exercises upon Sundays and other holy days, after the afternoon sermon or service: we now find that two sorts of people wherewith that country66 is much infested (we mean papists and puritans) have maliciously traduced and calumniated those our just and honourable proceedings. And therefore lest our reputation might upon the one side (though innocently) have some aspersion laid upon it, and that upon the other part our good people in that country be misled by the mistaking and misinterpretation of our meaning: we have therefore thought good hereby to clear and make our pleasure to be manifested to all our good people in those parts. It is true that at our first entry to this crown, and kingdom, we were informed, and that too truly, that our county of Lancashire abounded more in popish recusants67 than any other county of England, and thus hath still continued since to our great regret, with little amendment, save that now of late, in our last riding through our said county, we find both by the report of the judges, and of the bishop of that diocese that there is some amendment now daily beginning, which is no small contentment to us. The report of this growing amendment amongst them, made us the more sorry, when with our own ears we heard the general complaint of our people, that they were barred from all lawful recreation, and exercise upon the Sunday’s afternoon, after the ending of all divine service, which cannot but produce two evils: the one, the hindering of the conversion of many, whom their priests will take occasion hereby to vex, persuading them that no honest mirth or recreation is lawful or tolerable in our religion, which cannot but breed a great discontentment in our people’s

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hearts, especially of such as are peradventure upon the point of turning;68 the other inconvenience is, that this prohibition barreth the common and meaner69 sort of people from using such exercises as may make their bodies more able for war, when we or our successors shall have occasion to use them. And in place thereof sets up filthy tipplings and drunkenness, and breeds a number of idle and discontented speeches in their alehouses. For when shall the common people have leave to exercise, if not upon the Sundays and holidays, seeing they must apply their labour, and win their living in all working days? Our express pleasure therefore is, that the laws of our kingdom, and canons of our Church be as well observed in that county, as in all other places of this our kingdom. And on the other part, that no lawful recreation shall be barred to our good people, which shall not tend to the breach of our aforesaid laws, and canons of our Church:70 which to express more particularly, our pleasure is, that the bishop, and all other inferior churchmen, and churchwardens, shall for their part be careful and diligent, both to instruct the ignorant, and convince and reform them that are misled in religion, presenting them that will not conform themselves,71 but obstinately stand out to our judges and justices: whom we likewise command to put the law in due execution against them. Our pleasure likewise is, that the bishop of that diocese take the like straight order72 with all the puritans and precisians within the same, either constraining them to conform themselves, or to leave the country according to the laws of our kingdom, and canons of our Church, and so to strike equally on both hands, against the condemners of our authority, and adversaries of our Church. And as for our good people’s lawful recreation, our pleasure likewise is, that after the end of divine service, our good people be not disturbed, letted,73 or discouraged from any lawful recreation; such as dancing, either men or women, archery for men, leaping, vaulting, or any other such harmless recreation, nor from having of May-Games,74 Whitsun Ales,75 and Morris dances,76 and the setting up of Maypoles77 and other sports therewith used, so as the same be had in due and convenient time, without impediment or neglect of divine service: and that women shall have leave to carry rushes to the Church for the decoring78 of it, according to their old custom.79 But withal we do here account still as prohibited all unlawful games to be used upon Sundays only, as bear and bull-baitings,80 interludes,81 and at all times in the meaner sort of people by law prohibited, bowling.82 And likewise we bar from this benefit and liberty, all such known recusants, either men or women, as will abstain from coming to Church or divine service, being therefore unworthy of any lawful recreation after the said service, that will not first come to the Church and serve God: prohibiting in like sort the said recreations to any that, though conform

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in religion, are not present in the Church at the service of God, before their going to the said recreations. Our pleasure likewise is, that they to whom it belongeth in office, shall present and sharply punish all such as in abuse of this our liberty, will use these exercises before the ends of all divine services for that day. And we likewise straightly command, that every person shall resort to his own parish church to hear divine service, and each parish by itself to use the said recreation after divine service. Prohibiting likewise any offensive weapons to be carried or used in the said times of recreations. And our pleasure is, that this our declaration shall be published by order from the bishop of the diocese, through all the parish churches, and that both our judges of our circuit,83 and our justices of the peace be informed thereof.

John Milton, ‘L’Allegro’ (1645) ‘L’Allegro’ was published with Milton’s first collection of poetry in 1645, though it was probably written in the early years of the 1630s. Its vision of rural mirth is balanced by its companion piece, ‘Il Penseroso’, which considers the contrary pleasures of melancholy. Significantly, the 1645 Poems also included several other works crucial to the development of an English pastoral tradition, including ‘Lycidas’, ‘Comus: A Masque’ and ‘On the Morning of Christ’s Nativity’. ‘L’Allegro’ itself is principally a poem of retreat, celebrating a rural environment which nurtures and inspires the speaker. It is remarkable for its interweaving of classical mythology, commonplace pastoral elements and evocations of a native spirit of place. Given Milton’s commitment to the Puritan side in the political and religious struggles of the time, ‘L’Allegro’ is sometimes considered as a product of the poet’s youth and dismissed as unrepresentative of his later thought. A more profitable approach to the poem, however, might consider the way in which Milton shapes for his own purposes the concept of mirth, which is linked here not with controversial games, but with a poetic spirit of creativity and a politicized notion of ‘liberty’. Recommended edition The Poems of John Milton, eds. John Carey and Alastair Fowler (Harlow, 1980).

Suggested secondary reading Stanley Fish, ‘What It’s Like to Read L’Allegro and Il Penseroso’, Milton Studies, 7 (1975), pp. 77–99. J. B. Leishman, Milton’s Minor Poems (London, 1969), ch. 6. Michael Wilding, ‘John Milton: the Early Works’, in The Cambridge Companion to English Poetry: Donne to Marvell (Cambridge, 1993), pp. 221–41.

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Hence loathed Melancholy Of Cerberus, and blackest Midnight born, In Stygian cave forlorn.84 ’Mongst horrid shapes, and shrieks, and sights unholy, Find out some uncouth cell,85 Where brooding Darkness spreads his jealous wings,86 And the night-raven sings;87 There under ebon shades, and low-browed rocks, As ragged as thy locks, In dark Cimmerian desert ever dwell.88 But come thou goddess fair and free, In heaven yclept Euphrosyne,89 And by men, heart-easing Mirth, Whom lovely Venus at a birth With two sister Graces more To ivy-crowned Bacchus bore;90 Or whether (as some sager sing) The frolic wind that breathes the spring,91 Zephyr with Aurora playing,92 As he met her once a-Maying, There on beds of violets blue, And fresh-blown roses washed in dew, Filled her with thee a daughter fair, So buxom, blithe, and debonair.93 Haste thee nymph, and bring with thee Jest and youthful Jollity, Quips and cranks, and wanton wiles,94 Nods, and becks, and wreathed smiles,95 Such as hang on Hebe’s cheek,96 And love to live in dimple sleek; Sport that wrinkled Care derides, And Laughter holding both his sides. Come, and trip it as you go97 On the light fantastic toe, And in thy right hand lead with thee, The mountain nymph, sweet Liberty; And if I give thee honour due, Mirth, admit me of thy crew To live with her, and live with thee, In unreproved pleasures free;98 To hear the lark begin his flight, And singing startle the dull night, From his watch-tower in the skies, Till the dappled dawn doth rise;

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Then to come in spite of sorrow, And at my window bid good morrow,99 Through the sweet-briar, or the vine, Or the twisted eglantine. While the cock with lively din, Scatters the rear of darkness thin,100 And to the stack, or the barn door,101 Stoutly struts his dames before, Oft list’ning how the hounds and horn Cheerly rouse the slumb’ring morn, From the side of some hoar hill,102 Through the high wood echoing shrill. Sometime walking not unseen By hedgerow elms, on hillocks green, Right against the eastern gate, Where the great sun begins his state,103 Robed in flames, and amber light, The clouds in thousand liveries dight,104 While the ploughman near at hand, Whistles o’er the furrowed land, And the milkmaid singeth blithe,105 And the mower whets his scythe, And every shepherd tells his tale Under the hawthorn in the dale. Straight mine eye hath caught new pleasures Whilst the landscape round it measures, Russet lawns, and fallows grey,106 Where the nibbling flocks do stray, Mountains on whose barren breast The labouring clouds do often rest: Meadows trim with daisies pied, Shallow brooks, and rivers wide. Towers, and battlements it sees Bosomed high in tufted trees, Where perhaps some beauty lies, The cynosure of neighbouring eyes.107 Hard by, a cottage chimney smokes, From betwixt two aged oaks, Where Corydon and Thyrsis met,108 Are at their savoury dinner set Of herbs, and other country messes,109 Which the neat-handed Phillis dresses; And then in haste her bower she leaves,110 With Thestylis to bind the sheaves;

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Or if the earlier season lead To the tanned haycock in the mead, Sometimes with secure delight The upland hamlets will invite,111 When the merry bells ring round, And the jocund rebecks sound112 To many a youth, and many a maid, Dancing in the chequered shade; And young and old come forth to play On a sunshine holiday, Till the livelong daylight fail, Then to the spicy nut-brown ale, With stories told of many a feat, How Faery Mab the junkets eat,113 She was pinched, and pulled she said, And by the friars lantern led114 Tells how the drudging goblin sweat,115 To earn his cream-bowl duly set, When in one night, ere glimpse of morn, His shadowy flail hath threshed the corn, That ten day-labourers could not end, Then lies him down the lubber fiend.116 And stretched out all the chimney’s length, Basks at the fire his hairy strength; And crop-full out of doors he flings,117 Ere the first cock his matin rings.118 Thus done the tales, to bed they creep, By whispering winds soon lulled asleep. Towered cities please us then, And the busy hum of men, Where throngs of knights and barons bold, In weeds of peace high triumphs hold,119 With store of ladies, whose bright eyes Rain influence, and judge the prize, Of wit, or arms, while both contend To win her grace, whom all commend. There let Hymen oft appear120 In saffron robe, with taper clear, And pomp, and feast, and revelry, With mask, and antique pageantry, Such sights as youthful poets dream On summer eves by haunted stream. Then to the well-trod stage anon, If Jonson’s learned sock be on,121

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Or sweetest Shakespeare fancy’s child, Warble his native wood-notes wild, And ever against eating cares, Lap me in soft Lydian airs,122 Married to immortal verse Such as the meeting soul may pierce123 In notes, with many a winding bout124 Of linked sweetness long drawn out, With wanton heed, and giddy cunning,125 The melting voice through mazes running; Untwisting all the chains that tie The hidden soul of harmony. That Orpheus’ self may heave his head From golden slumber on a bed Of heaped Elysian flowers, and hear Such strains as would have won the ear Of Pluto, to have quite set free His half-regained Eurydice.126 These delights, if thou canst give, Mirth with thee, I mean to live.

Robert Herrick, ‘Corinna’s Going a Maying’ (1648) Hesperides (1648) is a miscellaneous collection of verse written over the course of a career that took Herrick (1591–1674) from the licentious periphery of the courts of James I and Charles I to a gloomy rural retirement as a Devon clergyman in the 1640s. One recurrent concern, however, is with the beauties and festivities of the country. The ‘Argument’ to the volume proclaims that the author will ‘sing of brooks, of blossoms, birds, and bowers’, and also ‘of Maypoles, hock carts, wassails, wakes’. Published at a time when the powers of Puritan reform were in the ascendant, Hesperides thus presents a courageous and eloquent celebration of rural mirth. ‘Corinna’s going a Maying’ is written in accord with a further promise of the ‘Argument’, to ‘sing of cleanly wantonness’. This paradox epitomizes Herrick’s attempt to justify the moral and spiritual virtue of the festive. Hence the poem embraces the ephemeral pleasures afforded by May Day, in a manner which marshals the rich resources of the pastoral mode to depict the native landscape. Yet it also reaches beyond the earthly plane, particularly through a striking use of religious language and imagery. Herrick reaches towards an argument for the religious value of festive customs, even at moments when they appear to be purely instances of physical licence. Recommended edition Robert Herrick, Poetical Works, ed. L. C. Martin (Oxford, 1956).

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Suggested secondary reading Robert H. Deming, Ceremony and Art: Robert Herrick’s Poetry (The Hague and Paris, 1974), pp. 47–57. Leigh A. DeNeef, ’This Poetick Liturgy’: Robert Herrick’s Ceremonial Mode (Durham, NC, 1974), pp. 54–66. Leah S. Marcus, The Politics of Mirth: Jonson, Herrick, Milton, Marvell, and the Defense of Old Holiday Pastimes (Chicago and London, 1986), ch. 5 Rober B. Rollin, Robert Herrick, revised edn (Toronto, 1992), ch. 4.

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Get up, get up for shame, the blooming morn Upon her wings presents the god unshorn.127 See how Aurora throws her fair128 Fresh-quilted colours through the air: Get up, sweet slug-a-bed, and see The dew-bespangling herb and tree.129 Each flower has wept and bowed toward the east, Above an hour since; yet you not dressed, Nay, not so much as out of bed? When all the birds have matins said, And sung their thankful hymns: ’tis sin, Nay, profanation to keep in,130 When as a thousand virgins on this day, Spring, sooner than the lark, to fetch in May.131 Rise; and put on your foliage, and be seen To come forth, like the spring-time, fresh and green; And sweet as Flora. Take no care132 For jewels for your gown, or hair: Fear not; the leaves will strew Gems in abundance upon you. Besides, the childhood of the day has kept, Against you come, some orient pearls unwept:133 Come, and receive them while the light Hangs on the dew-locks of the night, And Titan on the eastern hill134 Retires himself, or else stands still Till you come forth. Wash, dress, be brief in praying: Few beads are best, when once we go a-Maying.135 Come, my Corinna, come; and coming, mark How each field turns a street; each street a park Made green, and trimmed with trees. See how Devotion gives each house a bough, Or branch: each porch, each door, ere this, An ark, a tabernacle, is136

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Made up of white-thorn neatly interwove, As if here were those cooler shades of love. Can such delights be in the street, And open fields, and we not see’t? Come, we’ll abroad; and let’s obey The proclamation made for May:137 And sin no more, as we have done, by staying; But my Corinna, come, let’s go a-Maying.

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There’s not a budding boy, or girl, this day, But is got up, and gone to bring in May. A deal of youth, ere this, is come Back, and with white-thorn laden home.138 Some have dispatched their cakes and cream, Before that we have left to dream;139 And some have wept, and wooed, and plighted troth, And chose their priest, ere we can cast off sloth. Many a green-gown has been given;140 Many a kiss, both odd and even; Many a glance too has been sent From out the eye, love’s firmament; Many a jest told of the keys betraying This night, and locks picked, yet we’re not a-Maying.

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Come, let us go, while we are in our prime,141 And take the harmless folly of the time. We shall grow old apace, and die Before we know our liberty. Our life is short; and our days run As fast away as does the sun: And as a vapour, or a drop of rain Once lost, can ne’er be found again. So when or you or I are made142 A fable, song, or fleeting shade; All love, all liking, all delight Lies drowned with us in endless night. Then while time serves, and we are but decaying; Come, my Corinna, come, let’s go a-Maying

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Robert Herrick, ‘The Hock-Cart, or Harvest Home. To the Right Honourable, Mildmay Fane, Earl of Westmorland’ (1648) Like ‘Corinna’s going a Maying’, Herrick’s celebration of the harvest home festivities, framed as a verse epistle to the poet Mildmay Fane, was published in Hesperides. In accordance with the aims of that volume, ‘The Hock-Cart’ is

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aligned with the pastoral mode, as it fashions an idealized image of the English rural community. The poem’s emphasis on labour and productivity, however, suggests a concurrent debt to the georgic mode, which became increasingly influential in the course of the seventeenth century. Herrick’s representation of labour in the poem has been the subject of considerable critical attention. The celebratory tone is complicated by the fact that the speaker appears to shift without warning from joining with the workers in a festive spirit, to placing himself alongside his noble addressee. There is certainly a counter-strain in this poem – evident most notably in the concluding lines – which lays bare the economic underpinnings of rural prosperity. The ‘sons of summer’ of the opening line are concurrently identified as an agrarian workforce, subject to the demands and interests of their employers. Recommended edition Robert Herrick, Poetical Works, ed. L. C. Martin (Oxford, 1956).

Suggested secondary reading Anthony Low, The Georgic Revolution (Princeton, NJ, 1985), pp. 262–74. Andrew McRae, God Speed the Plough: The Representation of Agrarian England, 1500–1660 (Cambridge, 1996), ch. 9. Leah S. Marcus, The Politics of Mirth: Jonson, Herrick, Milton, Marvell, and the Defense of Old Holiday Pastimes (Chicago and London, 1986), ch. 5 Peter Stallybrass, ‘“We feaste in our Defense”: Patrician Carnival in Early Modern England and Robert Herrick’s Hesperides’, English Literary Renaissance, 15 (1985), pp. 234–52.

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Come sons of summer, by whose toil, We are the lords of wine and oil:143 By whose tough labours, and rough hands, We rip up first, then reap our lands.144 Crowned with the ears of corn, now come, And, to the pipe, sing harvest home. Come forth, my lord, and see the cart Dressed up with all the country art.145 See, here a Malkin, there a sheet,146 As spotless pure, as it is sweet: The horses, mares, and frisking fillies, (Clad, all, in linen, white as lilies.) The harvest swains, and wenches bound For joy, to see the hock-cart crowned. About the cart, here, how the rout147 Of rural younglings raise the shout; Pressing before, some coming after, Those with a shout, and these with laughter.

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Some bless the cart; some kiss the sheaves; Some prank them up with oaken leaves;148 Some cross the fill-horse; some with great149 Devotion, stroke the home-borne wheat: While other rustics, less attent To prayers, than to merriment, Run after with their breeches rent. Well, on, brave boys, to your lord’s hearth, Glitt’ring with fire; where, for your mirth, Ye shall see first the large and chief Foundation of your feast, fat beef: With upper stories, mutton, veal And bacon (which makes full the meal) With several dishes standing by, As here a custard, there a pie, And here all-tempting frumenty.150 And for to make the merry cheer, If smirking wine be wanting here,151 There’s that, which drowns all care, stout beer; Which freely drink to your lord’s health, Then to the plough (the commonwealth) Next to your flails, your fanes, your fatts;152 Then to the maids with wheaten hats: To the rough sickle, and crookt scythe,153 Drink frolic boys, till all be blithe. Feed, and grow fat; and as ye eat, Be mindful, that the lab’ring neat154 (As you) may have their fill of meat. And know, besides, ye must revoke The patient ox unto the yoke, And all go back unto the plough And harrow, (though they’re hanged up now). And, you must know, your lord’s word’s true, Feed him ye must, whose food fills you. And that this pleasure is like rain, Not sent ye for to drown your pain, But for to make it spring again.

Anon., Rural Recreations: or, The Young Men and Maids’ Merriment at their Dancing round a Country Maypole (1688–9) The ballad is a poetic form steeped in aural cultural traditions; however, the innovation of print led to a proliferation of ballads on a vast range of topics, and their slight format and cheap cost meant that they reached

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people across the country and throughout the social order. Balladeers were widely suspected of spreading idle lies and promoting moral laxity; at a time when a recognizably modern notion of literary value was emerging, ballads were commonly confined to the margins of literature. Within this context, a number of seventeenth-century ballads celebrating rural festivities offer the promise of an authentic popular voice. But while a poem such as the following may have helped to perpetuate certain customs and attitudes, its origins perhaps owe more to the commercial demands of the ballad market than to any upsurge of enthusiasm for the subject. While early modern notions of ‘merry England’ owed much to popular practices, by the late seventeenth century a commercial balladeer might equally have drawn on established literary traditions, as exemplified in some of the texts above. Hence the rough mix in this piece of rustic language, pastoral convention and hackneyed evocation of May Day tradition. Recommended edition The Pepys Ballads, ed. W. G. Day, 5 vols (Cambridge, 1987).

Suggested secondary reading Sharon Achinstein, ‘Audiences and Authors: Ballads and the Making of English Renaissance Literary Culture’, Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 22 (1992), pp. 311–26. Bernard Capp, ‘Popular Literature’, in Popular Culture in Seventeenth-Century England, ed. Barry Reay (London and Sydney, 1985), pp. 198–243. Margaret Spufford, Small Books and Pleasant Histories: Popular Fiction and Its Readership in Seventeenth-Century England (London, 1981).

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Joan to the Maypole away let’s run, The time is swift and will be gone. There to the lasses away to the green, Where their beauties may be seen. Nan, Doll, Kate and Moll, Brave lasses have lads to attend ’em,155 Hodge, Nick, Tom, Dick,156 Brave dancers, who can amend ’em.157 Did you not see the Lord of the May Walk along in his rich array?158 There goes the lass that is only his, See, how they meet, and how they kiss! Come Will, run Gill, Or dost thou list to lose thy labour?159 Kit crowd, scrape aloud,160 Tickle her Tom with a pipe and a tabor.161

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Lately I went to a masque at the court, Where I see the dances of every sort. There they did dance with time and measure, But none like the country dances for pleasure. There they did dance, just as in France, Not like the English lofty manner.162 And every she, must furnished be With a feathered knack when she sweats for to fan her.163 But when we dance, and do happen to sweat, Have a napkin to hand for to wipe off the wet, And with our doxies do jig it about,164 Not like the court that are often out.165 If the tabor do play, we thump it away, And turn and meet our lasses to kiss ’em. Nay, they will be, ready as we, That hardly at any time can miss ’em. Bridget as fair as the blushing rose, With loving Roger freely goes. Lord of the May he shall never be, For I can dance as well as he. Sweet Joan, ’tis well known, We have danced for many a wager; Bridget now, shall allow Joan the most expert, I engage her. ...

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Uds-zooks, yound Joan she does now out-vie,166 The rest of all the company: For this pleasant dance which I have seen, I’ll give her a fair gown of green.167 Pigsnies, how I prize168 Every glance of thy amorous beauty. Sweet face, we’ll embrace: It is no more than a lover’s duty. And if we hold on as we begin, Joan thee and I the garland shall win. Nay, if thou livest till another day, I’ll make thee Lady of the May. Dance about, in and out, Turn and kiss, and then for a greeting. Now Joan, we have done, Fare thee well till the next merry meeting.

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John Gay, from The Shepherd’s Week (1714) The collection of six pastorals written by John Gay (1685–1732) was conceived as part of a literary squabble, concerned at once with individual reputations and the nature of pastoral poetry. Gay intended to satirize Ambrose Philips, whose Pastorals (1708) conformed to a contemporary taste among the elite for highly stylized forms of pastoral. By contrast, Gay’s proem proclaimed, his poetry will confront bucolic stereotypes with the language and practice of contemporary rural life. Readers will ‘not find my shepherdesses idly piping on oaten reeds, but milking the kine, tying up the sheaves, or if the hogs are astray driving them to their sties’. The tone of The Shepherd’s Week, however, is notoriously ambiguous. While it is predominantly parodic, undermining the pretensions of Philips with strategies of burlesque, the Week also has a vigour borne out of Gay’s sympathetic appreciation for popular culture. In the words of Samuel Johnson, Gay was a poet ‘of a lower order’, indebted not only to the literary heritage claimed by contemporary poets, but also to the cultural traditions of balladeers. Within this context, the following piece translates the singing contest of classical pastoral (specifically Virgil’s third and seventh Eclogues) into an unmistakably English context. Recommended edition John Gay, Poetry and Prose, ed. Vinton A. Dearing, 2 vols (Oxford, 1974).

Suggested secondary reading Adina Forsgren, John Gay: Poet ‘of a Lower Order’, 2 vols (Stockholm, 1964–71), 1.105–67. David Nokes, John Gay: A Profession of Friendship (Oxford, 1995), pp. 140–57.

Monday; or, the Squabble. [The early lines of the poem present Cuddy and Lobbin Clout, who agree to sing the virtues of their respective loves, wagering an oaken staff against a tobacco pouch on the better song.]

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Lobbin Clout169 My Blouzelinda is the blithest lass,170 Than primrose sweeter, or the clover grass. Fair is the king-cup that in meadow blows, Fair is the daisy that beside her grows, Fair is the gillyflower, of gardens sweet, Fair is the marigold, for pottage meet.171

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But Blouzelinda’s than gillyflower more fair, Than daisy, marigold, or king-cup rare.

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Cuddy172 My brown Buxoma is the featest maid,173 That e’er at wake delightsome gambol played.174 Clean as young lambkins or the goose’s down, And like the goldfinch in her Sunday gown. The witless lambs may sport upon the plain, The frisking kid delight the gaping swain, The wanton calf may skip with many a bound, And my cur Tray play deftest feats around:175 But neither lamb nor kid, nor calf nor Tray, Dance like Buxoma on the first of May. Lobbin Clout Sweet is my toil when Blouzelind is near, Of her bereft ’tis winter all the year. With her no sultry summer’s heat I know; In winter, when she’s nigh, with love I glow. Come Blouzelinda, ease thy swain’s desire, My summer’s shadow and my winter’s fire! Cuddy As with Buxoma once I worked at hay, Ev’n noon-tide labour seemed an holiday; And holidays, if haply she were gone, Like worky-days I wished would soon be done. Eftsoons, O sweet-heart kind, my love repay,176 And all the year shall then be holiday. Lobbin Clout As Blouzelinda in a gamesome mood, Behind a haycock loudly laughing stood, I slyly ran, and snatched a hasty kiss, She wiped her lips, nor took it much amiss. Believe me, Cuddy, while I’m bold to say, Her breath was sweeter than the ripened hay. Cuddy As my Buxoma in a morning fair, With gentle finger stroked her milky care,177 I quaintly stole a kiss; at first, ’tis true178 She frowned, yet after granted one or two. Lobbin, I swear, believe who will my vows, Her breath by far excelled the breathing cow’s.

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Lobbin Clout Leek to the Welsh, to Dutchmen butter’s dear,179 Of Irish swains potato is the cheer; Oats for their feasts the Scottish shepherds grind, Sweet turnips are the food of Blouzelind. While she loves turnips, butter I’ll despise, Nor leeks, nor oatmeal, nor potato prize. Cuddy In good roast beef my landlord sticks his knife, The capon fat delights his dainty wife,180 Pudding our parson eats, the squire loves hare,181 But white-pot thick is my Buxoma’s fare.182 While she loves white-pot, capon ne’er shall be, Nor hare, nor beef, nor pudding, food for me. Lobbin Clout As once I played at blindman’s-buff, it happed About my eyes the towel thick was wrapped. I missed the swains, and seized on Blouzelind; True speaks that ancient proverb, Love is blind. Cuddy As at hot-cockles once I laid me down,183 And felt the weighty hand of many a clown;184 Buxoma gave a gentle tap, and I Quick rose, and read soft mischief in her eye. Lobbin Clout On two near elms the slackened cord I hung, Now high, now low my Blouzelinda swung. With the rude wind her rumpled garment rose, And showed her taper leg and scarlet hose. Cuddy Across the fallen oak the plank I laid, And myself poised against the tottering maid; High leapt the plank; adown Buxoma fell: I spied. – But faithful sweethearts never tell. Lobbin Clout This riddle, Cuddy, if thou canst, explain, This wily riddle puzzles every swain. What flower is that which bears the virgin’s name, The richest metal joined with the same?185

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Cuddy Answer, thou carl, and judge this riddle right,186 I’ll frankly own thee for a cunning wight. What flower is that which royal honour craves,187 Adjoin the virgin, and ’tis strown on graves.188 Cloddipole Forbear, contending louts, give o’er your strains,189 An oaken staff each merits for his pains.190 But see the sun-beams bright to labour warn, And gild the thatch of goodman Hodges’ barn.191 Your herds for want of water stand adry, They’re weary of your songs – and so am I.

5 The Georgic Imperative: Labour, Thrift, Improvement

With their insistence that labour and struggle are at the heart of man’s relationship with nature, Virgil’s Georgics set the tone for many of the literary accounts of agriculture which were to follow and they found a particular resonance in England in the early modern period. According to Raymond Williams, the growing popularity of georgic in England can be aligned with the growth of agrarian capitalism and rearticulates the classical model of a country–city divide. More recently, however, critics have come to recognize georgic’s ability to articulate a far more complex relationship not only between city and country, but between nation and empire, aristocrats and yeoman farmers, merchants and the middle classes. Virgil’s poem is a celebration of the rebirth of a nation and the re-establishment of an empire after years of civil strife. If agriculture is the basis of national greatness it is also recognized as being in competition with nature, and the farmer’s laborious taming of the natural world is part of the process of civilization. As Addison was to insist in his influential essay on Virgil’s poem, part of the attraction of the Georgics lay in its multifariousness, its lack of obvious unity, and its consequent ability to speak of all things: more than anything, it was the diversity of the poem which allowed later writers to mould it to their own concerns while still retaining a sense of their classical model. For Virgil the farmer is an everyman figure and the tribulations which face him are those of all men, but in the early modern period ‘labour’ would come to mean quite different things to different groups in society. Thus, in the early works in this chapter, the choice of georgic tends to mark an unaristocratic emphasis on labour and is used as much to mark divisions within society as it is to assert a common goal. Conversely, Dryden’s insistently nationalist translation of the poem in 1697 was to herald a new phase of British imperial georgic in which individual labour was subsumed within a larger world of global trade. For much of the eighteenth century it was this more expansive merging of agriculture, labour and imperialism which found favour with poets. Following Virgil’s lead, poets in particular developed Virgil’s celebration of empire and found in ‘labour’ a ready 122

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analogy for the rapidly expanding world of industry and trade. Agriculture was at once the foundation of imperial power and a mere cog in the vast world of global interaction. The georgic model did not, however, go unchallenged, and we also include in this section John Wesley’s trenchant debunking of the happy farming life. Georgic was to lose much of its attraction by the end of the eighteenth century, not least perhaps because its easy optimism about empire made for uncomfortable reading after the loss of the American colonies. It did not altogether fade, however, and we might read country house writing, a tradition which continued well into the twentieth century, as itself a manifestation of georgic’s insistence on the value of working the land (see Chapter 3). Suggested secondary reading Karen O’Brien, ‘Imperial Georgic, 1660–1789’, in The Country and the City Revisited: England and the Politics of Culture, 1550–1850, eds. Gerald Maclean, Donna Landry and Joseph P. Ward (Cambridge, 1999). Frans De Bruyn, ‘From Virgilian Georgic to Agricultural Science: An Instance in the Transvaluation of Literature in Eighteenth-Century Britain’, in Augustan Subjects: Essays in Honour of Martin C. Battestin, ed. Albert. J. River. (Newark and London, 1997), pp. 47–67. John Chalker, The English Georgic: A Study in the Development of a Form (London, 1969). Dwight L. Durling, Georgic Tradition in English Poetry (New York, 1935). Richard Feingold, Nature and Society: Later Eighteenth-Century Uses of the Pastoral and Georgic (New Brunswick, 1978). Alastair Fowler, ‘The Beginnings of English Georgic’, in Renaissance Genres, ed. Barbara K. Lewalski (Cambridge, MA, 1986), pp. 105–25. Anthony Low, The Georgic Revolution (Princeton, NJ, 1985). Andrew McRae, God Speed the Plough: The Representation of Agrarian England, 1500–1660 (Cambridge, 1996), ch. 7.

Thomas Palmer, ‘Love God with all thy Heart’ (c.1565) The relatively obscure scholar Thomas Palmer wrote Two Hundred Poosees while resident at St John’s College, Oxford. Although not published in his lifetime, the text is England’s earliest known emblem book, which derives its general idea and many of its illustrations from continental sources but is otherwise unapologetically English. This poem, written to accompany a drawing of a ploughman looking behind him while at work, typifies a native tradition of Christian georgic. Within this tradition, the ploughman was employed as a figure of either the Protestant clergyman or the individual Christian. But Palmer’s poem is also notable for its pervasive language of economic negotiation, which simultaneously situates the ploughman in fields of agricultural labour. The poem consequently highlights a redirection of georgic in early modern culture, as the Christian tradition was gradually absorbed into a discourse more concerned with individual endeavour and agrarian improvement.

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Recommended edition The Emblems of Thomas Palmer: Two Hundred Poosees. Sloane MS 3794, ed. John Manning (New York, 1988).

Suggested secondary reading Andrew McRae, ‘Fashioning a Cultural Icon: The Ploughman in Renaissance Texts’, Parergon, 14:1 (1996), pp. 187–204.

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Who holds the plough, and looketh back, He is no man for me;1 Who doth his business by the halves,2 Is worthy of no fee.3 Thou must one Master wholly serve, And wholly do his hest;4 So shall the landlord for thy hire,5 Receive thee to his rest.6

Thomas Tusser, ‘September’s Husbandry’, from Five Hundred Points of Good Husbandry (1580) Five Hundred Points of Good Husbandry, a husbandry manual composed entirely in verse, was the biggest-selling book of poetry published during the reign of Elizabeth I. Although its author, Thomas Tusser (1524?–80), claims no association with classical georgic, the text develops an uniquely vibrant and informed celebration of agricultural labour. Like much georgic literature, Tusser structures his book as a calendar, which follows the cycle of agricultural and domestic tasks on an English farm. Through his doggerel verse he forges a memorable aphoristic style, which not only summarises a farmer’s tasks but also encodes values of thrift and industry; Tusser’s husbandman was a man who sought through labour to improve both his land and his status. Given his concern with farmers of middling degree, it is appropriate that the calendar begins with the following piece, which is centrally concerned with a tenant farmer entering a new landholding. Recommended edition Five Hundred Points of Good Husbandry, ed. Geoffrey Grigson (Oxford, 1984).

At Michaelmas lightly, new farmer comes in;7 New husbandry forceth him, new to begin. Old farmer, still taking the time to him given,8 Makes August to last, until Michaelmas even.9 5

New farmer may enter (as champions say)10 On all that is fallow, at Lent Lady Day;11

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In woodland, old farmer, to that will not yield, For losing of pasture, and feed of his field.12 10

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Provide against Michaelmas, bargain to make,13 For farm to give over, to keep or to take; In doing of either, let wit bear a stroke,14 For buying or selling, of pig in a poke.15 Good farm and well stored, good housing and dry,16 Good corn and good dairy, good market and nigh; Good shepherd, good till-man, good Jack and good Jill,17 Makes husband and housewife, their coffers to fill.18 Let pasture be stored, and fenced about,19 And tillage set forward, as needeth without, Before ye do open, your purse to begin, With any thing doing, for fancy within. No storing of pasture, with baggedglie tit,20 With ragged, with aged, and evil athit;21 Let carren and barren, be shifted away,22 For best is the best, whatsoever ye pay.

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Horse, oxen, plough, tumbrel, cart, wagon and wain,23 The lighter and stronger, the greater thy gain; The soil and the seed, with the sheaf and the purse, the lighter in substance, for profit the worse. To borrow today, and tomorrow to miss,24 For lender and borrower, noyance it is;25 Then have of thine own, without lending unspilt,26 What followeth needful, here learn if thou wilt.27

John Kay of Woodsome, from ‘A Brief Note or Account of Mine Own Estate 1591’ John Kay was a farmer in Yorkshire, and through the latter decades of the sixteenth century and the early decades of the seventeenth century he helped his family to rise from relatively humble origins into the ranks of the gentry. His unpublished poetry survives in a collection of family papers, interspersed with account books and practical information about estate management. Consequently, it provides a fascinating example of a farmer applying georgic values to his own circumstances. Kay praises Thomas Tusser for his ‘learned says’, and much of his own poetry bears Tusser’s influence. Yet it is also more personal, and reflects repeatedly on his own success in husbandry. ‘A Brief Note or Account of Mine Own Estate 1591’ survives in more than one version in Kay’s papers. In his description of his life, Kay

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shifts interestingly from an acceptance of God’s will, to a celebration of his own industry and achievements.

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My wife and I together met According to our parents’ will; Wedded we were at years sixteen,28 When neither of us had great skill. Yet did the Lord our wants fulfil And sent us children ten and five: Whereof but ten are now alive. These ten and I do yet remain To walk and wander to and fro, Here in this vale most uncertain, Sometimes in wealth, sometimes in woe: As please the Lord, it must be so; Until such time He crown with bliss, All such as shall be ’compted his.29 Our feoffment was but twenty marks A year, to bring all things to pass;30 My father lived such time complete, ’Til six and forty years I was. The grange and Lyngerthes he did purchase31 With nine oxgangs in Farnley town,32 That his heir might have more elbow room.33 Besides my bringing up this charge,34 And sums of money that I paid (Marling and building both were large)35 The charge of all I have defrayed.36 All men content, all men well paid: My living eke, I have augment37 Full fifty pounds, in penny rent.38 Folger Shakespeare Library, MS X.d.449, p. 11

John Taylor, from Taylor on Thame-Isis (1632) Taylor (1578–1653) was a London boatman who became one of the most prolific and popular writers of his time. The self-styled ‘Water Poet’ was best known for pamphlets describing various strange and difficult journeys undertaken on the strength of wagers. One journey which Taylor took more seriously, however, was a 1631 trip along the Thames as part of a team surveying the river’s navigational problems. (The context of public agitation and government action is surveyed in Mary Prior, Fisher Row: Fishermen,

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Bargemen, and Canal Boatmen in Oxford, 1500–1900 (Oxford, 1982), pp. 112–23.) His pamphlet written in the wake of this expedition, Taylor on Thame-Isis, is largely devoted to detailed description of the river, though all related in his characteristic style: ‘My threadbare wit a mad wool gathering goes,’ he writes, ‘To show the things in verse I saw in prose.’ In the following passage, the conclusion to the tract, he develops a strong georgic strain as he looks optimistically to the benefits the nation would derive from a ‘clean’ Thames. Recommended edition Works of John Taylor the Water Poet, Not Included in the Folio Volume of 1630, 5 vols (Spenser Society, London, 1870–8; reprinted New York, 1967), vol. 1.

Suggested secondary reading Bernard Capp, The World of John Taylor the Water Poet 1578–1653 (Oxford, 1994). Simon Schama, Landscape and Memory (London, 1995), ch. 6.

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Thus have I showed Thames’ wrongs in general, And wish they may be moved, or mended all;39 And who can but with pity here behold These multitudes of mischiefs manifold? Shall Thames be barred its course with stops and locks, With mills, and hills, with gravel beds, and rocks?40 With weirs, and weeds, and forced islands made,41 To spoil a public for a private trade?42 Shame fall the doers, and almighty’s blessing43 Be heaped upon their heads that seek redressing! Were such a business to be done in Flanders,44 Or Holland ’mongst the industrious Netherlanders, They to deep passages would turn our hills, To windmills they would change our watermills. All helps unto this river they would aid, And all impediments should be destroyed; Our vagabonds (the wandering brood of Cain),45 They would enforce those runagates take pain,46 Whereby much profit quickly would accrue, (For labour robs the hangman of his due).47 In common reason, all men must agree That if the river were made clean and free, One barge, with eight poor men’s industrious pains, Would carry more than forty carts or wains;48 And every wain to draw them horses five, And each, two men or boys to guide or drive, Charge of an hundred horse and eighty men

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With eight men’s labour would be served then. Thus men would be employed, and horse preserved, And all the country at cheap rates be served. ’Tis said the Dutchmen taught us drink and swill; I’m sure we go beyond them in that skill. I wish (as we exceed them in what’s bad) That we some portion of their goodness had: Then should this worthy work be soon begun, And with successful expedition done;49 Which I despair not of, but humbly plead, That God his blessings will increase and spread On them that love this work, and on their heirs, Their goods and chattels, and on all that’s theirs. I wish them blessed external, and internal,50 And in the end with happiness eternal.

George Wither, ‘The husbandman doth sow the seeds / And, then, on hope, ’til harvest feeds’ (1635) Wither (1588–1667) was a prolific and often controversial writer, motivated for much of his career by interests of political and religious reform. His Collection of Emblemes, which continued a growing tradition of English emblem books, was one of his more popular works. As several critics have noted, the text is remarkable for its concern with values of industry and thrift. Indeed it claims a central position in the development of georgic in the seventeenth century, as it conflates rich Christian traditions with the agricultural detail and flinty individualism of Tusser. In the following poem, based on a picture of Hope guiding a plough, the ‘painful husbandman’ is fashioned as an archetype of the individual Christian, who struggles through worldly trials towards the ‘glory’ of heaven. Simultaneously, though, the poem’s appreciation of rural labour asserts another argument, promising earthly rewards for the diligent and godly worker. Recommended edition George Wither, A Collection of Emblemes, Ancient and Moderne (1635), facsimile edn. (Renaissance English Text Society, Columbia, SC, 1975).

Suggested secondary reading Joan Grundy, The Spenserian Poets (London, 1969), ch. 8. Rosemary Freeman, English Emblem Books (London, 1967), ch. 5. Anthony Low, The Georgic Revolution (Princeton, NJ, 1985), ch. 5.

The painful husbandman, with sweaty brows, Consumes in labour many a weary day;

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To break the stubborn earth, he digs and ploughs, And then the corn he scatters on the clay. When that is done, he harrows in the seeds,51 And, by a well-cleansed furrow, lays it dry;52 He frees it from the worms, the moles, the weeds; He on the fences, also hath an eye. And, though he see the chilling winter bring Snows, floods, and frosts, his labours to annoy;53 Though blasting-winds do nip them in the spring,54 And summer’s mildews threaten to destroy:55 Yea, though not only days, but weeks, they are (Nay, many weeks, and many months beside) In which he must with pain, prolong his care, Yet, constant in his hopes he doth abide. For this respect, Hope’s emblem, here, you see56 Attends the plough, that men beholding it, May be instructed, or else minded be, What hopes, continuing labours will befit. Though long thou toiled hast, and long attended About such workings as are necessary,57 And, oftentimes, ere fully they are ended, Shalt find thy pains in danger to miscarry:58 Yet, be not out of hope, nor quite dejected, For, buried seeds will sprout when winter’s gone; Unlikelier things are many times effected, And, God brings help, when men their best have done. Yea, they that in good works their life employ; Although they sow in tears, shall reap in joy.

Joseph Addison, from ‘An Essay on Virgil’s Georgics’ (1697) Joseph Addison (1672–1719), the son of a dean at Lichfield, studied at Oxford where he soon gained a reputation for his Latin poetry and classical scholarship. Best known for his contributions to the journal The Spectator and his hugely successful play Cato, Addison became one of the most influential authors of the eighteenth century while also following a successful career in politics. His early ‘Essay on Virgil’s Georgics’ first appeared as the introduction to The Works of Virgil . . . Translated . . . By Mr Dryden (1697), a work which has come to mark an important shift in the fortunes of English georgic. Dryden’s translation did much to play up the relevance to Britain of the imperial aspect of Virgil’s poem, and it set the tone for many later works. Addison’s major contribution was to treat the Georgics as an exercise in style and voice, an opportunity for the poet to range from the mock-heroic to the didactic and from the trivial to the profound: the attractiveness of the form

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is that it allows for the merging of disparate elements in a single poem. The ‘Essay’ breaks into two parts, the first setting out what Addison sees as the ‘rules’ of georgic (beyond the merely formal constraints of a four-part poem on the life of a farmer), the second praising Virgil’s skill and distinguishing his writing from that of Hesiod. For Addison stress falls firmly upon variousness: georgic is marked by the elegance of its transitions from one subject to another, its use of digressions to draw the reader into greater understanding of the subject, and, crucially, by its ability to speak of ‘low’ subjects with a dignified voice. In defining this ‘middle style’, a voice that could move from high epic to detailed didacticism, Addison believed Virgil offered the modern author an ideal form for the modern age. Recommended edition The miscellaneous works of Joseph Addison, 2 vols, ed. A. C. Guthkelch (London, 1914), vol. 2.

Suggested secondary reading John Chalker, The English Georgic: A Study in the Development of a Form (London, 1969), ch. 1. Dwight L. Durling, Georgic Tradition in English Poetry (New York, 1935), ch. 1. Donald R. Johnson, ‘The Proper Study of Husbandry: Dryden’s Translation of the Georgics’, Restoration Studies in English Literary Culture, 1660–1700, 6:2 (1982), pp. 94–104.

VIRGIL may be reckoned the first who introduced three new kinds of poetry among the Romans, which he copied after three of the greatest masters of Greece. Theocritus59 and Homer60 have still disputed for the advantage over him in Pastoral and Heroics,61 but I think all are unanimous in giving him the precedence to Hesiod62 in his Georgics. The truth of it is, the sweetness and rusticity of a Pastoral cannot be so well expressed in any other tongue as in the Greek, when rightly mixed and qualified with the Doric63 dialect; nor can the majesty of an Heroic Poem any where appear well as in this language, which has a natural greatness in it, and can be often rendered more deep and sonorous by the pronunciation of the Ionians.64 But in the middle style,65 where the writers in both tongues are on a level: we see how far Virgil has excelled all who have written in the same way with him. There has been abundance of criticism spent on Virgil’s Pastorals and Aeneid, but the Georgics66 are a subject which none of the critics have sufficiently taken into their consideration; most of them passing it over in silence, or casting it under the same head with Pastoral; a division by no means proper, unless we suppose the style of a husbandman67 ought to be imitated in a Georgic as that of a shepherd is in Pastoral. But though the scene of both these poems lies in the same place, the speakers in them are of a quite different character, since the precepts of husbandry are not

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to be delivered with the simplicity of a Ploughman, but with the address of a poet. No rules therefore that relate to Pastoral, can any way affect the Georgics, which fall under that class of poetry which consists in giving plain and direct instructions to the reader; whether they be moral duties, as those of Theognis68 and Pythagoras;69 or philosophical speculations, as those of Aratus70 and Lucretius;71 or rules of practice, as those of Hesiod and Virgil. Among these different kinds of subjects, that which the Georgics go upon, is I think the meanest and least improving, but the most pleasing and delightful. Precepts of morality, besides the natural corruption of our tempers, which makes us averse to them, are so abstracted from ideas of sense, that they seldom give an opportunity for those beautiful descriptions and images which are the spirit and life of poetry. Natural philosophy72 has indeed sensible objects to work upon, but then it often puzzles the reader with the intricacy of its notions, and perplexes him with the multitude of its disputes. But this kind of poetry I am now speaking of, addresses itself wholly to the imagination: it is altogether conversant among the fields and woods, and has the most delightful part of nature for its province. It raises in our minds a pleasing variety of scenes and landscapes, whilst it teaches us, and makes the driest of its precepts look like a description. A Georgic therefore is some part of the science of husbandry put into a pleasing dress, and set off with all the beauties and embellishments of poetry. Now since this science of husbandry is of a very large extent, the poet shows his skill in singling out such precepts to proceed on, as are useful, and at the same time most capable of ornament. Virgil was so well acquainted with this secret, that to set off his first Georgic, he has run into a set of precepts, which are almost foreign to his subject, in that beautiful account he gives us of the signs of nature, which precede the changes of the weather. And if there be so much art in the choice of fit precepts, there is much more required in the treating of them; that they may fall in after each other by a natural unforced method, and show themselves in the best and most advantageous light. They should all be so finely wrought73 together in the same piece, that no coarse seam may discover where they join; as in a curious breed of needlework, one colour falls away by such just degrees, and another rises so insensibly, that we see the variety, without being able to distinguish the total vanishing of the one from the first appearance of the other. Nor is it sufficient to range and dispose this body of precepts into a clear and easy method, unless they are delivered to us in the most pleasing and agreeable manner: for there are several ways of conveying the same truth to the mind of man, and to choose the pleasantest of these ways, is that which chiefly distinguishes poetry from prose, and makes Virgil’s rules of husbandry pleasanter to read than Varro’s.74 Where the prose-writer tells us plainly what ought to be done, the poet often conceals the precept in a description, and represents his

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countryman performing the action in which he would instruct his reader. Where the one sets out as fully and distinctly as he can, all the parts of the truth, which he would communicate to us; the other singles out the most pleasing circumstance of this truth, and so conveys the whole in a more diverting manner to the understanding . . . . This way of writing is every where much in use among the poets, and is particularly practised by Virgil, who loves to suggest a truth indirectly, and without giving us a full and open view of it: to let us see just so much as will naturally lead the imagination into all the parts that lie concealed. This is wonderfully diverting to the understanding, thus to receive a precept, that enters as it were through a by-way,75 and to apprehend an idea that draws a whole train after it: for here the mind, which is always delighted with its own discoveries, only takes the hint from the poet, and seems to work out the rest by the strength of her own faculties. But since the inculcating precept upon precept will at length prove tiresome to the reader, if he meets with no entertainment, the poet must take care not to encumber his poem with too much business, but sometimes to relieve the subject with a moral reflection, or let it rest a while for the sake of a pleasant and pertinent digression. Nor is it sufficient to run out into beautiful and diverting digressions (as it is generally thought) unless they are brought in aptly, and are something of a piece with the main design of the Georgic: for they ought to have a remote alliance at least to the subject, that so the whole poem may be more uniform and agreeable in all its parts. We should never quite lose sight of the country, though we are sometimes entertained with a distant prospect of it. Of this nature are Virgil’s descriptions of the origin of agriculture, of the fruitfulness of Italy, of a country life, and the like, which are not brought in by force, but naturally rise out the principal argument and design of the poem . . . We now come to the style which is proper to a Georgic; and indeed this is the part on which the poet must lay out all his strength, that his words may be warm and glowing, and that every thing he describes may immediately present it self, and rise up to the reader’s view. He ought in particular to be careful of not letting his subject debase his style, and betray him into a meanness of expression, but every where to keep up his verse in all the pomp of numbers,76 and dignity of words. I think nothing which is a phrase or saying in common talk, should be admitted into a serious poem: because it takes off from the solemnity of the expression, and gives it too great a turn of familiarity; much less ought the low phrases and terms of art,77 that are adapted to husbandry, have any place in such a work as the Georgic, which is not to appear in the natural simplicity and nakedness of its subject, but in the pleasantest dress that poetry can bestow on it. Thus Virgil, to deviate from the common form of words, would not make use of tempore but sidere78 in his first verse, and every where else abounds with metaphors, Grecisms,79

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and circumlocutions,80 to give his verse the greater pomp, and preserve it from sinking into a plebeian style.81 And herein consists Virgil’s masterpiece, who has not only excelled all other poets, but even himself in the language of his Georgics; where we receive more strong and lively ideas of things from his words, than we could have done from the objects themselves, and find our imaginations more affected by his descriptions, than they would have been by the very sight of what he describes . . . I shall not here compare the style of the Georgics with that of Lucretius, which the reader may see already done in the preface to the second volume of Miscellany Poems;82 but shall conclude this poem to be the most complete, elaborate, and finished piece of all antiquity. The Aeneid indeed is of a nobler83 kind, but the Georgic is more perfect in its kind. The Aeneid has a greater variety of beauties in it, but those of the Georgic are more exquisite. In short, the Georgic has all the perfection that can be expected in a poem written by the greatest poet in the flower of his age, when his invention was ready, his imagination warm, his judgment settled, and all his faculties in their full vigour and maturity.

James Thomson, from The Seasons (1746) James Thomson (1700–48) was born in lowland Scotland and studied divinity at Edinburgh College before giving up on a career as a clergyman to make his fortune as a poet. He travelled to England in 1725 to work as a tutor to Lord Binning’s son, and his first major poem, Winter, appeared in 1726. This was to be the start of his most famous work, The Seasons, with Summer appearing in 1727, Spring in 1728, and Autumn as a part of the complete cycle in 1730. The Seasons is modelled on Virgil’s Georgics and is written in the Latinate language of Miltonic blank verse. In the passage we reproduce here (from the 1746 edition of Spring), Thomson addresses his classical model directly but also makes clear that his own writing will be a georgic for modern Britain. If Thomson stresses the individual labour required to create the nation’s wealth, he also characteristically places his ploughman in a global rather than a merely local setting. This movement from the local to the international, from the past to the present, and from agricultural production to the progress of civilization was to be highly influential for later English poets including John Dyer (see below). Recommended edition James Thomson, The Seasons and The Castle of Indolence, ed. James Sambrook (Oxford, 1984).

Suggested secondary reading John Barrell, English Literature in History, 1730–80: An Equal Wide Survey (London, 1983).

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Forth fly the tepid airs; and unconfined, Unbinding earth, the moving softness strays. Joyous, th’impatient husbandman perceives Relenting nature, and his lusty steers Drives from their stalls, to where the well-used plough Lies in the furrow, loosened from the frost. There unrefusing to the harnessed yoke, They lend their shoulder, and begin their toil, Cheered by the simple song and soaring lark. Meanwhile, incumbent o’er the shining share,84 The master leans, removes th’obstructing clay, Winds the whole work, and sidelong lays the glebe.85 White, through the neighbouring fields the sower stalks,86 With measured step; and, liberal, throws the grain Into the faithful bosom of the ground. The harrow follows harsh, and shuts the scene.87 Be gracious, heaven! for now laborious man Has done his part. Ye fostering breezes, blow! Ye softening dews, ye tender showers, descend! And temper all, thou world-reviving sun, Into the perfect year! Nor, ye, who live In luxury and ease, in pomp and pride,88 Think these lost themes unworthy of your ear:89 Such themes as these the rural Maro sung90 To wide-imperial Rome, in the full height Of elegance and taste, by Greece refined. In ancient times, the sacred plough employed The kings, and awful fathers of mankind: And some, with whom compared, your insect-tribes Are but the beings of a summer’s day, Have held the scale of empire, ruled the storm Of mighty war; then, with victorious hand, Disdaining little delicacies, seized The plough, and greatly independent scorned All the vile stores corruption can bestow.91 Ye generous Britons, venerate the plough! And o’er your hills, and long withdrawing vales, Let autumn spread his treasures to the sun, Luxuriant, and unbounded! As the sea, Far through his azure turbulent domain, Your empire owns, and from a thousand shores Wafts all the pomp of life into your ports;

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So with superior boon may your rich soil,92 Exuberant, nature’s better blessings pour O’er every land, the naked nations clothe, And be th’exhaustless granary of a world!93

Robert Dodsley, from Agriculture (1754) Robert Dodsley (1703–64) spent his early years as a footman before becoming successful as an author and publisher. His Poem Agriculture was intended to be part of a larger work entitled ‘Public Virtue’ although this was never completed. The extract from Agriculture (which we reproduce from the first edition of 1754) is essentially a paraphrase of Georgics, 2.458–74 (cf. John Wesley’s engagement with the same passage, below, and Goldsmith’s Deserted Village in Chapter 1). Like the Georgics, Dodsley’s poem is not for farmers but about farming: the farm becomes a repository for national values, an idealized image for those who do not farm. To this end, while the Georgics distinguishes itself by its insistence on labour and practical advice, the passage Dodsley chooses to imitate is unusual in that it offers a brief moment of pastoral delight: emphasis falls not on labour but on ease, strenuous activity is banished by an aesthetic vision of country pleasures. It is important, then, to recognize whose vision this is. The happiness in which Virgil delights is ultimately that not of the farmer but of one who looks on (‘O happy husbandmen! too happy, should they come to know their blessings’). More insistently than in the passage he imitates, however, his emphasis on the corruption of courtly culture suggests an insistence on the values of the middling sort. If the country house is the site of aristocratic excess, husbandry may be the province of the lowly and the vulgar. What saves it is the adoption of georgic conventions, and more particularly the pastoralization of georgic which Virgil himself provides. Pastoralized and made polite, farming here embodies the values of an increasingly confident middling sort: independent owners of property and taste position themselves as the true upholders of national worth. Recommended edition Robert Dodsley, Works (London, 1797).

Suggested secondary reading Annabel Patterson, Pastoral and Ideology: Virgil to Valéry (Berkeley, CA, 1987), pp. 230–31.

O happy he! happiest of mortal men!94 Who, far removed from slavery as from pride, Fears no man’s frown, nor cringing wants to catch The gracious nothing of a great man’s nod:95

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Where the laced beggar bustles for a bribe,96 The purchase of his honour; where deceit, And fraud, and circumvention, dressed in smiles, Hold shameful commerce, and beneath the mask97 Of friendship and sincerity, betrayed Him; nor the stately mansion’s gilded pride, Rich with whate’er the imitative arts, Painting or sculpture, yield to charm the eye; Nor shining heaps of massy plate, enwrought With curious, costly workmanship, allure. Tempted nor with the pride nor pomp of power, Nor pageants of ambition; nor the mines Of grasping av’rice, nor the poisoned sweets Of pampered luxury, he plants his foot With firmness on his own paternal fields, And stands unshaken. There sweet prospects rise,98 Of meadows smiling in their flow’ry pride, Green hills and dales, and cottages embowered,99 The scenes of innocence and calm delight. There the wild melody of warbling birds, And cool refreshing groves, and murm’ring springs, Invite to sacred thought, and lift the mind From low pursuits to meditate on God!

John Dyer, from The Fleece, Book 2 (1757) John Dyer (1699–1758) trained as a painter and first came to prominence as a poet in 1726 with the publication of his topographical poem Grongar Hill. Early in the 1730s he moved from London to take up farming in Herefordshire before changing careers again and taking holy orders in 1741. It was during his time as a country parson in Leicestershire that Dyer began to write what is undoubtedly his major poem, The Fleece (1757). From its opening lines, Dyer’s long georgic poem announces its major concerns: ‘The care of sheep, the labours of the loom, / And arts of trade, I sing.’ For Dyer, wool is the basis of national prosperity and the sound foundation of imperial expansion. Indeed, crucially, the poem is about trade and its role in global economy: this is a poem which insists on a countryside fully integrated into Britain’s commercial economy and one which resists the country–city divide with which Thomson struggles in The Seasons (see above). Georgic offers Dyer the opportunity to explore a fallen world of labour but also to celebrate national greatness (much as it had Virgil) and he looks forward to an age of prosperity at home and progressive imperial expansion abroad. Later in the century his optimism about rural improvement faced challenges from writers including Goldsmith and Crabbe (see Chapter 1) while his brand of confident

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imperial expansion received a severe blow with the loss of the American colonies. However, it is Dyer’s praise of enclosure and his vision of imperial trade in Book 2 that we reproduce here (from the first edition of 1757) complete with his characteristic transitions from local practices to global trade and from the contemporary to a larger historical perspective. Recommended edition Poems by John Dyer (1761), Scolar Press facsimile edition (Menston, 1971).

Suggested secondary reading John Barrell, English Literature in History, 1730–80: An Equal, Wide Survey (London, 1983), pp. 90–104. John Goodridge, Rural Life in Eighteenth-Century English Poetry (Cambridge, 1995), pp. 91–180.

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When many-coloured ev’ning sinks behind The purple woods and hills, and opposite Rises, full-orbed, the silver harvest-moon,100 To light th’unwearied farmer, late afield His scattered sheaves collecting; then expect The artists, bent on speed, from pop’lous Leeds, Norwich, or Frome: they traverse ev’ry plain,101 And ev’ry dale, where farm or cottage smokes: Reject them not; and let the season’s price102 Win thy soft treasures: let the bulky wain103 Through dusty roads roll nodding; or the bark,104 That silently adown the cerule stream105 Glides with white sails, dispense the downy freight106 To copsy villages on either side,107 And spiry towns, where ready diligence, The grateful burden to receive, awaits, Like strong Briareus, with his hundred hands.108 In the same fleece diversity of wool Grows intermingled, and excites the care Of curious skill to sort the sev’ral kinds.109 But in this subtle science none exceed Th’industrious Belgians, to the work who guide110 Each feeble hand of want: their spacious domes111 With boundless hospitality receive Each nation’s outcasts: there the tender eye112 May view the maim’d, the blind, the lame, employed, And unrejected age; ev’n childhood there Its little fingers turning to the toil

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Delighted; nimbly, with habitual speed, They sever lock from lock, and long, and short, And soft, and rigid, pile in sev’ral heaps. This the dusk hatter asks; another shines,113 Tempting the clothier; that the hosier seeks;114 The long bright lock is apt for airy stuffs;115 But often it deceives the artist’s care, Breaking unuseful in the steely comb:116 For this long spongy wool no more increase Receives, while winter petrifies the fields: The growth of autumn stops: and what though spring Succeeds with rosy finger, and spins on The texture? yet in vain she strives to link The silver twine to that of autumn’s hand.117 Be then the swain advised to shield his flocks From winter’s dead’ning frosts and whelming snows:118 Let the loud tempest rattle on the roof, While they, secure within, warm cribs enjoy, And swell their fleeces, equal to the worth Of clothed Apulian, by soft warmth improved:119 Or let them inward heat and vigour find, By food of cole or turnip, hardy plants.120 Besides, the lock of one continued growth Imbibes a clearer and more equal dye. But lightest wool is theirs, who poorly toil,121 Through a dull round, in unimproving farms Of common-field: enclose, enclose, ye swains;122 Why will you joy in common-field, where pitch,123 Noxious to wool, must stain your motley flock, To mark your property? The mark dilates, Enters the flake depreciated, defiled, Unfit for beauteous tint: besides, in fields124 Promiscuous held, all culture languishes;125 The glebe, exhausted, thin supply receives;126 Dull waters rest upon the rushy flats And barren furrows: none the rising grove127 There plants for late posterity, nor hedge To shield the flock, nor copse for cheering fire; And, in the distant village, ev’ry hearth Devours the grassy sward, the verdant food128 Of injured herds and flocks, or what the plough Should turn and moulder for the bearded grain;129 Pernicious habit, drawing gradual on

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Increasing beggary and nature’s frowns. Add too, the idle pilf’rer easier there130 Eludes detection, when a lamb or ewe From intermingled flocks he steals; or when, With loosened tether of his horse or cow, The milky stalk of the tall green-eared corn, The year’s slow-rip’ning fruit, the anxious hope Of his laborious neighbour, he destroys. There are, who over-rate our spongy stores,131 Who deem that nature grants no clime, but ours, To spread upon its fields the dews of heaven, And feed the silky fleece; that card, nor comb,132 The hairy wool of Gaul can e’er subdue, To form the thread, and mingle in the loom, Unless a third from Britain swell the heap: Illusion all; though of our sun and air Not trivial is the virtue; nor their fruit, Upon our snowy flocks, of small esteem; The grain of brightest tincture none so well133 Imbibes: the wealthy Gobelins must to this134 Bear witness, and the costliest of their looms. And though, with hue of crocus or of rose, No pow’r of subtle food, or air, or soil, Can dye the living fleece; yet ’twill avail To note their influence in the tinging vase.135 Therefore from herbage of old-pastured plains, Chief from the matted turf of azure marl,136 Where grow the whitest locks, collect thy stores. Those fields regard not, through whose recent turf The miry soil appears: not ev’n the streams137 Of Yare, or silver Stroud, can purify138 Their frequent-sullied fleece; nor what rough winds, Keen-biting on tempestuous hills, imbrown. Yet much may be performed, to check the force Of nature’s rigor: the high heath, by trees Warm-sheltered, may despise the rage of storms: Moors, bogs, and weeping fens, may learn to smile, And leave in dykes their soon-forgotten tears. Labour and art will every aim achieve Of noble bosoms. Bedford Level, erst139 A dreary pathless waste, the coughing flock Was wont with hairy fleeces to deform;140

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And, smiling with her lure of summer flow’rs, The heavy ox, vain-struggling, to engulf; Till one, of that high-honoured patriot name, Russell, arose, who drained the rushy fen,141 Confined the waves, bid groves and gardens bloom, And through his new creation led the Ouse, And gentle Camus, silver-winding streams:142 Godlike beneficence: from chaos drear To raise the garden and the shady grove. But see Ierne’s moors and hideous bogs,143 Immeasurable tract. The traveller Slow tries his mazy step on th’yielding tuft,144 Shudd’ring with fear: ev’n such perfidious wilds, By labour won, have yielded to the comb The fairest length of wool. See Deeping fens, And the long lawns of Bourne. ’Tis art and toil145 Gives nature value, multiplies her stores, Varies, improves, creates: ’tis art and toil Teaches her woody hills with fruits to shine, The pear and tasteful apple: decks with flow’rs And foodful pulse the fields, that often rise,146 Admiring to behold their furrows wave With yellow corn. What changes cannot toil, With patient art, effect? . . . Our valleys yield not, or but sparing yield, The dyer’s gay materials. Only weld,147 Or root of madder, here, or purple woad,148 By which our naked ancestors obscured149 Their hardy limbs, enwrought with mystic forms, Like Egypt’s obelisks. The pow’rful sun Hot India’s zone with gaudy pencil paints,150 And drops delicious tints o’er hill and dale, Which trade to us conveys. Nor tints alone; Trade to the good physician gives his balms; Gives cheering cordials to th’ afflicted heart; Gives, to the wealthy, delicacies high; Gives, to the curious, works of nature rare; And when the priest displays, in just discourse, Him, the all-wise Creator, and declares His presence, pow’r, and goodness, unconfined, ’Tis trade, attentive voyager, who fills His lips with argument. To censure trade, Or hold her busy people in contempt,

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Let none presume. The dignity, and grace, And weal, of human life, their fountains owe151 To seeming imperfections, to vain wants, Or real exigencies; passions swift Forerunning reason; strong contrarious bents,152 The steps of men dispersing wide abroad O’er realms and seas. There, in the solemn scene, Infinite wonders glare before their eyes, Humiliating the mind enlarged; for they153 The clearest sense of Deity receive, Who view the widest prospect of his works,154 Ranging the globe with trade through various climes: Who see the signatures of boundless love, Nor less the judgments of Almighty pow’r, That warn the wicked, and the wretch who ’scapes From human justice: who, astonished, view Etna’s loud thunders and tempestuous fires;155 The dust of Carthage; desert shores of Nile;156 Or Tyre’s abandoned summit, crowned of old157 With stately tow’rs; whose merchants, from their isles,158 And radiant thrones, assembled in her marts;159 Whither Arabia, whither Kedar, brought160 Their shaggy goats, their flocks and bleating lambs; Where rich Damascus piled his fleeces white,161 Prepared, and thirsty for the double tint,162 And flow’ring shuttle. While th’admiring world Crowded her streets; ah! then the hand of pride Sowed imperceptible his pois’nous weed, Which crept destructive up her lofty domes, As ivy creeps around the graceful trunk Of some tall oak. Her lofty domes no more, Not ev’n the ruins of her pomp, remain; Not ev’n the dust they sunk in; by the breath Of the Omnipotent, offended hurled Down to the bottom of the stormy deep: Only the solitary rock remains, Her ancient site; a monument to those,163 Who toil and wealth exchange for sloth and pride.

John Wesley, Journal (5 November 1766) John Wesley (1703–91) was born in Lincolnshire, the son of a clergyman, and was educated at Charterhouse School and Christ Church, Oxford. A minister of the Church of England for most of his life, Wesley was

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one of the founders of Methodism. He preached his first open-air sermon in 1739 and from that point on he travelled incessantly across the length and breadth of the country, preaching upwards of 40,000 sermons by the time of his death. Throughout his travels Wesley kept detailed diaries and journals. While these concentrate on his own spiritual development, they also record in detail his thoughts on the places he visited: more than many, Wesley was well placed to make a judgement on rural life, seeing it at first hand in every region of the country. The extract we reproduce here is the result both of Wesley’s constant travel in rural neighbourhoods and his consistent willingness to challenge conventional wisdom. Unlike many of the other extracts in this section, Wesley dismisses the happiness of farming life, as represented in literary writing, and insists instead on mere laboriousness and tedium. Without a larger georgic vision of honest struggle, or of labour which is as much spiritual as physical, Wesley’s farmers are not simply unaware of their blessings but have no blessings to know. Recommended edition The Works of John Wesley: Journals and Diaries V (1765–1775), eds. Reginald W. Ward and Richard P. Heitzenrater, 26 vol to date (Nashville, TN, 1993–), vol. 22.

I rode by Shoreham to Sevenoaks.164 In the little journeys which I have lately taken, I have thought much on the huge encomiums which have been for many ages bestowed on a country life. How have all the learned world cried out – O fortunati nimium, sua si bona norint, Agricolae!165 But, after all, what a flat contradiction is this to universal experience! See that little house, under the wood, by the river-side! There is rural life in perfection. How happy, then, is the farmer that lives there! Let us take a detail of his happiness. He rises with, or before, the sun, calls his servants, looks to his swine and cows, then to his stables and barns. He sees to the ploughing and sowing his ground, in winter or in spring. In summer and autumn he hurries and sweats among his mowers and reapers. And where is his happiness in the meantime? Which of these employments do we envy? Or do we envy the delicate repast166 that succeeds, which the poet so languishes for?– O quando faba, Phythagorae cognata, simulque Uncta satis pingui ponentur oluscula lardo!167 ‘O the happiness of eating beans well greased with fat bacon! Nay, and cabbage too!’ Was Horace in his senses when he talked thus, or the servile herd of his imitators? Our eyes and ears may convince us there is not a less happy body of men in all England than the country farmers. In general, their life is supremely dull; and it is usually unhappy too. For, of all people in the kingdom, they are the most discontented; seldom satisfied either with God or man.

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Arthur Young, from A Six Months Tour through the North of England (1770) Arthur Young (1741–1820) was a prolific author and one of the major champions of agricultural improvement in the second half of the eighteenth century. He produced a series of influential tours around Britain, as well as more specialized tracts on the economic aspects of farming. Born into a gentry family on the decline, Young took up farming to mend his fortune, though in this he was unsuccessful. His tours are notable for the way in which they combine detailed agricultural information (including tables, diagrams and descriptions) with an interest in the ‘polite’ world of painting, gardening and manners. Young’s popularizing approach was a deliberate attempt to move farming into the world of polite conversation and to represent the improving farmer – from aristocrats to the lower gentry – as part of a gentlemanly community with shared concerns and common goals. Though Young came to change his opinion about the benefits of enclosure and raised rents, we reproduce here a passage from volume 4 of A Six Months Tour through the North of England (London, 1770) in which the raising of farm rents is claimed as a crucial aspect of Britain’s continuing economic development. At this moment in Young’s career he champions less the dignity of georgic labour than the drive for profit as a moral good in itself. Increased rents must inevitably lead to increased productivity and landowners and their tenants who cling to outdated and uneconomic practices are not simply old-fashioned, rather they unpatriotically act against the greater good of the nation as a whole. Recommended edition Arthur Young, A Six Months tour through the North of England, Reprints of economic classics [a reprint of 2nd edn, corrected and enlarged 1771] (New York, 1967).

Suggested secondary reading The Autobiography of Arthur Young, with selections from his correspondence, ed. M. Betham-Edwards (London, 1898). Ina Ferris, ‘The Question of Ideological Form: Arthur Young, the Agricultural Tour, and Ireland’, in Ideology and Form in Eighteenth-Century Literature, ed. David H. Richter (Lubbock, TX, 1999). J. G. Gazley, ‘The Life of Arthur Young, 1741–1820’, Memoirs of the American Philosophical Society, vol. 97 (Philadelphia, 1973), ch. 2. G. E. Mingay (ed.), Arthur Young and his Times (London, 1975), chs 1–3.

It certainly must be a matter of vast consequence to keep the property of the kingdom on the increase; which I take to be the surest mark of a flourishing people . . . [A]griculture forms one of the grand pillars of the riches of the state; improvements in it increase property, and consequently income, and ought therefore to receive from politicians, and the Great, all possible encouragement. The rise in rent of one shilling per acre

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increases the rental of the lands of England £800,000 a year. Nor should it be considered as a transfer of income from the farmers to the landlords; but as a creation of fresh income. There is scarcely a track of country in the kingdom in which a rise of rent (to a certain pitch, which, by the way, is much higher than generally believed,) is not attended with a corresponding increase of product, but much beyond the proportion. Instances are everywhere innumerable of farms low rented that have been occupied by none but slovenly, poor, and ruined tenants; whereas the same farms doubled, or trebled in the rent, become the fortunes of succeeding occupiers.168 There is nothing in this difficult to be accounted for: high rents are an undoubted spur to industry; the farmer who pays much for his land, knows that he must be diligent, or starve. Land of 20 shillings an acre must yield good crops, or its occupier be ruined. Whatever be the nature of the soil, that circumstance will make it yield them. In no part of England, where rents are low, is there good husbandry. Norfolk is not an exception; the waste parts of that county were thrown into very large farms; the soil would yield nothing without marling; consequently none hired it but men who were either rich, or could command money. A first expense, of three or four pounds an acre, is, considering the value of ready money to a farmer, no low rent. Wherever land is under-let, twenty to one but the farmers are slovens . . . Hence let me remark, that there is no evil more pernicious to the public, than great families, through a false magnificence, letting their estates be rented at low rates, from father to son, by a pack of slovens, rather than not have it to boast, that their rents have never been raised; which is nothing more than saying, My tenants are poor; their husbandry bad; and the state injured in wealth, revenue and population. A very patriotic boast! Universal experience justifies this assertion. There is no good husbandry without high rents; and the landlords, who, through a false pride, will not raise, when they easily might, do an inconceivable prejudice to their country. I will venture to assert, that the man who doubles his rental, benefits the state more than himself.

6 Property and Oppression: Voices from the Margins

Literature is produced by individuals with sufficient time and inclination to write. By comparison, huge numbers of early modern English men and women living and working in the countryside simply never had the opportunity to turn their experience of rural life into literary form. They lived rather on the margins of English society, all but excluded from the nation’s dominant cultural traditions. Apart from the obvious constraints on the time and energy of a rural labourer, most people at this level of society achieved at best a crudely functional form of literacy, and only very few gained the sort of cultural literacy that underpinned the work of writers such as Ben Jonson or Alexander Pope. Yet some men and women of low social degree managed nevertheless to thrust their voices into the public domain, and research in recent decades by literary and social historians has done much to bring such work to our attention. While it would be overly simplistic to claim such texts as direct and unmediated expressions of those on the margins of society, they provide startling and rewarding instances of writers confronting elite perceptions of rural life and struggling to articulate visions for change. Since the socially powerless did not enjoy the luxury of an established literary tradition, the types of text gathered in this section vary greatly in form and style. Such writers, we might say, found voice on occasions when opportunity presented itself, or when the costs of silence seemed too great to bear. Some individuals and groups spoke out in the course of legal struggles, and consequently we reproduce here examples of petitions complaining about perceived oppression and pointed satires aimed at those in positions of economic power. Others gained access to the press in the turbulent decades in the middle of the seventeenth century, and worked their way through discourses of religious radicalism towards remarkable visions of social revolution. Arguably the most compelling of such writers is Gerrard Winstanley, whose work is also represented below. And still others gained an uneasy status within mainstream literary circles, as eighteenth-century patrons and publishers promoted a cult of the labouring poet. Men and women such as 145

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Stephen Duck and Ann Yearsley employed poetry to express the hardships of rural life; however, their poems are notable not only for their vivid images of labour, but equally for their struggle to fashion a genuine voice from below out of the poetic resources and traditions of the age. The politics of these texts are equally varied. In many cases the hard-pressed farmers and labourers simply replicate the arguments of social conservatism that we have already encountered in Chapter 1. Indeed the vast majority of rural protests and riots in the early modern period were motivated by a profound resistance to change, and sought to reaffirm traditional structures of social and economic life. Enclosure, in particular, was feared for the way that it elevated individual rights over those of a community, and for its eradication of a bundle of land-usage customs which were vital for those at the bottom of the social scale. Yet other writers, such as Winstanley, combined these traditional complaints with perceptions of systemic corruption. In Winstanley’s view, the only way to eradicate oppression was to eradicate property itself. The labouring poets of the subsequent decade were less forthright, yet persistently challenged elitist preconceptions of the countryside as a site of pastoral retreat. Duck, pointedly situating himself outside the parameters of the pastoral tradition, writes: ‘Can we, like shepherds, tell a merry tale? / The voice is lost, drowned by the noisy flail. / But we may think –’. That final verb, boldly claiming for labourers the privilege of critical reflection, harbours a distinctly radical potential. Suggested secondary reading A. L. Beier, The Problem of the Poor in Tudor and Early Stuart England (London and New York, 1983). H. Gustav Klaus, The Literature of Labour: Two Hundred Years of Working-Class Writing (Brighton, 1985). Donna Landry, The Muses of Resistance: Laboring-Class Women’s Poetry in Britain, 1739–1796 (Cambridge, 1990). J. M. Neeson, Commoners: Common Right, Enclosure and Social Change in England, 1700–1820 (Cambridge, 1993). E. P. Thompson, ‘The Crime of Anonymity’, in Albion’s Fatal Tree: Crime and Society in Eighteenth-Century England, eds Douglas Hay, Peter Linebaugh, John G. Rule, E. P. Thompson and Cal Winslow (London, 1975). E. P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class (Harmondsworth, 1968), ch. 7. Raymond Williams, The Country and the City (London, 1973).

‘The Diggers of Warwickshire to all other Diggers’ (1607) This document was written to justify the Midlands Revolt of 1607. This revolt was caused by a combination of severe regional economic hardship and a quickening pace of enclosure, and consisted of a series of riots, mainly in Northamptonshire, Warwickshire and Leicestershire. The rioters were

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predominantly from the lowest levels of rural society, and their principal goal was the levelling of enclosures. Significantly, this statement repeatedly proclaims loyalty to the king; indeed people involved in agrarian riots in this period typically represented themselves as defenders of a traditional social and political order. Yet here the conventional arguments against enclosure (comparable to those of a number of the texts in Chapter 1) are presented with distinct undertones of populist menace. It is noteworthy that the terms ‘digger’ and ‘leveller’, first used in relation to enclosure riots in 1607, would resurface in revolutionary discourse of the 1640s. Suggested secondary reading Roger B. Manning, Village Revolts: Social Protest and Popular Disturbances in England, 1509–1640 (Oxford, 1988), ch. 9. John E. Martin, Feudalism to Capitalism: Peasant and Landlord in English Agrarian Development (London, 1983), chs. 9–10.

Loving friends and subjects all under one renowned prince,1 for whom we pray long to continue in his most royal estate to the subverting of all those subjects, of what degree soever that have or would deprive his most true-hearted commonalty2 both from life and living. We as members of the whole do feel the smart of these encroaching tyrants,3 which would grind our flesh upon the whetstone4 of poverty, and make our loyal hearts to faint with breathing, so that they may dwell by themselves in the midst of their herds of fat wethers.5 It is not unknown unto yourselves the reason why these merciless men do resist with force against our good intents. It is not for the good of our most gracious sovereign, whom we pray God that long he may reign amongst us, neither for the benefit of the commonalty but only for their own private gain, for there is none of them but do taste the sweetness of our wants.6 They have depopulated and overthrown whole towns,7 and made thereof sheep pastures nothing profitable8 for our commonwealth. For the common fields being laid open would yield as much commodity,9 besides the increase of corn,10 on which stands our life. But if it should please God to withdraw his blessing in not prospering the fruits of the earth but one year11 (which God forbid) there would a worse and more fearful dearth12 happen than did in King Edward the Second’s time, when people were forced to eat cats’ and dogs’ flesh, and women to eat their own children.13 Much more we could give you to understand, but we are persuaded that you yourselves feel a part of our grievances, and therefore need not open the matter any plainer.14 But if you happen to show your face and might against us,15 we for our parts neither respect life nor living; for better it were in such case we manfully die, than hereafter to be pined to death for want of that which these devouring encroachers do serve their fat hogs and sheep withal.16 For God hath bestowed upon

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us most bountiful and innumerable blessings and the chiefest is our most gracious and religious king, who doth and will glory in the flourishing estate of his commonalty. And so we leave you, commending you to the sure hold and safeguard of the mighty Jehovah, both now and evermore. From Hampton-field17 in haste: We rest as poor delvers and day labourers18 for the good of the commonwealth till death. A. B. C. D. etc.19 British Library, Harleian MS 787, f. 9v

‘Andrew Abington’s Commandments’ (c.1618) This text is reproduced from records of a libel case brought by Andrew Abington, landlord of the manor of Over Compton, Dorset, against a number of his tenants. Abington alleged that his tenants were involved in a campaign to denigrate him in response to a programme of enclosure he was pursuing on his estates. The satiric version of the Ten Commandments was fixed to the gate of Abington’s local church, and was also repeated at public gatherings in Dorset and Somerset. It ranges from a generalized language of satiric inversion to particular allegations of fraudulent practice. Suggested secondary reading Adam Fox, ‘Ballads, Libels and Popular Ridicule in Jacobean England’, Past and Present, 145 (1994), pp. 47–83. Martin Ingram, ‘Ridings, Rough Music and Mocking Rhymes in Early Modern England’, in Popular Culture in Seventeenth-Century England, ed. Barry Reay (London and Sydney, 1985), pp. 166–97.

Thou shalt do no right nor thou shalt take20 no wrong. Thou shalt catch21 what thou canst that thou shalt pay no man. Thou shalt commit adultery. Thou shalt bear false witness against thy neighbour. Thou shalt covet thy neighbour’s wife. Thou shalt sell a hundred of sheep to Henry Hopkins after thou shalt draw the best of them.22 Thou shalt sell thy oxen twice.23 Thou shalt deny thy own hand.24 Public Record Office, STAC 8/42/14

Gerrard Winstanley, from The True Levellers Standard Advanced (1649) Gerrard Winstanley (1609?–1676) began his working life in the clothing trade in London; however, by the early 1640s his business had collapsed, and he was employed as an agricultural labourer in Surrey. Like many others at this highly unstable period in English history, Winstanley was attracted to

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religious nonconformism, and from this basis he developed ideas of social radicalism. Crucially, Winstanley perceived original sin not as a fact fixed in human history, but rather as a defeat of good by evil which is played out constantly, within each person and within society as a whole. He also believed that the fall can be overcome on earth: God’s elect can achieve redemption from sin, and the Christian nation can be restored by the abolition of private property. It is this identification of property as the source of human corruption that marks Winstanley as an important and original figure in the history of social and political thought. The True Levellers Standard Advanced (the bulk of which is reproduced here) is the first manifesto of a group which became known as the ‘Diggers’, which established a short-lived experiment in communal living. The text is notable for Winstanley’s insight into the causes of social inequality, and also for his visionary and richly metaphoric prose style. Recommended edition The Works of Gerrard Winstanley, ed. George H. Sabine (Ithaca, NY, 1941).

Suggested secondary reading G. E. Aylmer, ‘The Religion of Gerrard Winstanley’, in Radical Religion in the English Revolution, eds J. F. McGregor and B. Reay (Oxford, 1984), pp. 91–119. Christopher Hill, The World Turned Upside Down: Radical Ideas during the English Revolution (New York, 1972), ch. 7. Andrew McRae, God Speed the Plough: The Representation of Agrarian England, 1500–1660 (Cambridge, 1996), ch. 4. David W. Petegorsky, Left-Wing Democracy in the English Civil War: Gerrard Winstanley and the Digger Movement (reprint edn, Stroud, 1995).

A declaration to the powers of England, and to all the powers of the world, showing the cause why the common people of England have begun, and gives consent to dig up, manure,25 and sow corn26 upon George Hill in Surrey;27 by those that have subscribed,28 and thousands more that gives consent. In the beginning of time, the great Creator Reason29 made the earth to be a common treasury, to preserve beasts, birds, fishes, and man, the lord that was to govern this creation; for man had domination given to him, over the beasts, birds and fishes. But not one word was spoken in the beginning, that one branch of mankind should rule over another. And the reason is this: every single man, male and female, is a perfect creature of himself, and the same spirit that made the globe dwells in man to govern the globe; so that the flesh of man being subject to Reason, his maker, hath him to be his teacher and ruler within himself, therefore needs not run abroad after any teacher and ruler without him.30 For he needs not that any man should teach him, for the same anointing that ruled in the Son of man teacheth him all things.

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But since human flesh (that king of beasts)31 began to delight himself in the objects of the creation, more than in the Spirit Reason and righteousness, who manifests himself to be the indweller in the five senses, of hearing, seeing, tasting, smelling, feeling; then he fell into blindness of mind and weakness of heart, and runs abroad for a teacher and ruler. And so selfish imagination taking possession of the five senses, and ruling as king in the room of Reason therein, and working with covetousness, did set up one man to teach and rule over another;32 and thereby the Spirit was killed, and man was brought into bondage, and became a greater slave to such of his own kind than the beasts of the field were to him. And hereupon the earth (which was made to be a common treasury of relief for all, both beasts and men) was hedged into enclosures33 by the teachers and rulers, and the others were made servants and slaves; and that earth that is within this creation, made a common storehouse for all, is bought and sold, and kept in the hands of a few, whereby the great Creator is mightily dishonoured, as if he were a respecter of persons, delighting in the comfortable livelihood of some and rejoicing in the miserable poverty and straits of others. From the beginning it was not so. But this coming-in of bondage is called A-dam, because this ruling and teaching power without doth dam up the spirit of peace and liberty: first within the heart, by filling it with slavish fears of others; secondly without, by giving the bodies of one to be imprisoned, punished and oppressed by the outward power of another. And this evil was brought upon us through his own covetousness,34 whereby he is blinded and made weak, and sees not the law of righteousness in his heart, which is the pure light of Reason, but looks abroad for it, and thereby the creation is cast under bondage and curse, and the Creator is sleighted:35 first by the teachers and rulers that set themselves down in the Spirit’s room, to teach and rule, where he himself is only king; secondly by the other, that refuses the Spirit, to be taught and governed by fellow creatures, and this was called Israel’s sin, in casting off the Lord, and choosing Saul,36 one like themselves to be their king, when as they had the same Spirit of Reason and government in themselves as he had, if they were but subject. And Israel’s rejecting of outward teachers and rulers to embrace the Lord, and to be all taught and ruled by that righteous king, that Jeremiah prophesied shall rule in the new heavens and new earth in the latter days, will be their restoration from bondage. Jeremiah 23.5–6.37 But for the present state of the old world that is running up like parchment in the fire, and wearing away, we see proud imaginary flesh, which is the wise serpent,38 rises up in flesh and gets dominion in some to rule over others, and so forces one part of the creation man, to be a slave to another; and thereby the Spirit is killed in both. The one looks upon himself as a teacher and ruler, and so is lifted up in pride over his

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fellow creature; the other looks upon himself as imperfect, and so is dejected in his Spirit, and looks upon his fellow creature of his own image, as a lord above him. And thus Esau, the man of flesh, which is covetousness and pride, hath killed Jacob, the spirit of meekness and righteous government in the light of Reason, and rules over him;39 and so the earth that was made a common treasury for all to live comfortably upon, is become through man’s unrighteous actions one over another, to be a place wherein one torments another. Now the great creator, who is the Spirit Reason, suffered himself thus to be rejected, and trodden under foot by the covetous proud flesh, for a certain time limited; therefore saith he, The seed out of whom the creation did proceed, which is myself, shall bruise this serpent’s head, and restore my creation again from this curse and bondage; and when I the king of righteousness reigns in every man, I will be the blessing of the earth, and the joy of all nations.40 And since the coming in of the stoppage, or the A-dam, the earth hath been enclosed and given to the elder brother Esau, or the man of flesh, and hath been bought and sold from one to another; and Jacob, or the younger brother, that is to succeed or come forth next, who is the universal spreading power of righteousness that gives liberty to the whole creation, is made a servant. And this elder son, or man of bondage, hath held the earth in bondage to himself, not by a meek law of righteousness, but by subtle selfish counsels, and by open and violent force; for wherefore is it that there is such wars and rumours of wars in the nations of the earth? And wherefore are men so mad to destroy one another? But only to uphold civil propriety of honour, dominion and riches one over another, which is the curse the creation groans under, waiting for deliverance.41 [. . .] O thou powers of England, though thou hast promised to make this people a free people, yet thou hast so handled the matter, through thy self-seeking humour,42 that thou hast wrapped us up more in bondage, and oppression lies heavier upon us; not only bringing thy fellow creatures, the commoners, to a morsel of bread, but by confounding all sorts of people by thy government, of doing and undoing. First, thou hast made the people to take a covenant and oaths to endeavour a reformation, and to bring in liberty every man in his place;43 and yet while a man is in pursuing of that covenant, he is imprisoned and oppressed by thy officers, courts, and justices, so-called. Thou hast made ordinances to cast down oppressing, popish, episcopal, self-willed and prerogative laws;44 yet we see that self-will and prerogative power45 is the great standing law,46 that rules all in action and others in words.

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Thou hast made many promises and protestations to make the land a free nation; and yet at this very day, the same people to whom thou hast made such protestations of liberty, are oppressed by thy courts, sizes,47 sessions,48 by thy justices and clerks of the peace, so-called, bailiffs,49 committees,50 are imprisoned and forced to spend that bread that should save their lives from famine. And all this because they stand to maintain an universal liberty and freedom, which not only is our birthright, which our maker gave us, but which thou hast promised to restore unto us, from under the former oppressing powers that are gone before, and which likewise we have bought with our money, in taxes, free-quarter, and bloodshed;51 all which sums thou hast received at our hands, and yet thou hast not given us our bargain.52 Oh thou A-dam, thou Esau, thou Cain, thou hypocritical man of flesh, when wilt thou cease to kill thy younger brother? Surely thou must not do this great work of advancing the creation out of bondage; for thou art lost extremely, and drowned in the sea of covetousness, pride and hardness of heart. The blessing shall rise out of the dust which thou treadest under foot, even the poor despised people, and they shall hold up salvation to this land, and to all lands, and thou shalt be ashamed.53 Our bodies as yet are in thy hand; our Spirit waits in quiet and peace upon our Father for deliverance; and if he give our blood into thy hand, for thee to spill, know this, that he is our almighty captain. And if some of you will not dare to shed your blood,54 to maintain tyranny and oppression upon the creation, know this, that our blood and life shall not be unwilling to be delivered up in meekness to maintain universal liberty, that so the curse on our part may be taken off the creation. And we shall not do this by force of arms, we abhor it, for that is the work of the Midianites to kill one another;55 but by obeying the lord of hosts, who hath revealed himself in us, and to us, by labouring the earth in righteousness together, to eat our bread with the sweat of our brows,56 neither giving hire, nor taking hire, but working together, and eating together, as one man, or as one house of Israel restored from bondage; and so by the power of Reason, the law of righteousness in us, we endeavour to lift up the creation from that bondage of civil propriety, which it groans under. We are made to hold forth this declaration to you that are the great council, and to you the great army of the land of England,57 that you may know what we would have, and what you are bound to give us by your covenants and promises; and that you may join with us in this work, and so find peace. Or else, if you do oppose us, we have peace in our work, and in declaring this report: and you shall be left without excuse. The work we are going about is this: to dig up George’s Hill and the waste ground thereabouts,58 and to sow corn, and to eat our bread together by the sweat of our brows.

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And the first reason is this, that we may work in righteousness, and lay the foundation of making the earth a common treasury for all, both rich and poor, that every one that is born in the land may be fed by the earth his mother that brought him forth, according to the Reason that rules in the creation. Not enclosing any part into any particular hand, but all as one man, working together and feeding together as sons of one father, members of one family; not one lording over another but all looking upon each other, as equals in the creation. So that our maker may be glorified in the work of his own hands, and that every one may see, he is no respecter of persons, but equally loves his whole creation, and hates nothing but the serpent, which is covetousness,59 branching forth into selfish imagination, pride, envy, hypocrisy, uncleanness; all seeking the ease and honour of flesh, and fighting against the Spirit Reason that made the creation. For that is the corruption, the curse, the devil, the father of lies; death and bondage that serpent and dragon that the creation is to be delivered from.60 And we are moved hereunto for that reason, and others which hath been showed us, both by vision, voice, and revelation. For it is showed us, that so long as we, or any other, doth own the earth to be the peculiar interest61 of lords and landlords, and not common to others as well as them, we own the curse and hold the creation under bondage; and so long as we or any other doth own landlords and tenants, for one to call the land his or another to hire it of him, or for one to give hire and for another to work for hire, this is to dishonour the work of creation; as if the righteous creator should have respect to persons, and therefore made the earth for some and not for all. And so long as we, or any other, maintain this civil propriety, we consent still to hold the creation down under that bondage it groans under, and so we should hinder the work of restoration, and sin against light, that is given into us,62 and so through the fear of the flesh man,63 lose our peace. And that this civil propriety is the curse, is manifest thus, those that buy and sell land, and are landlords, have got it either by oppression, or murder, or theft; and all landlords live in the breach of the seventh and eighth commandments: Thou shalt not steal, nor kill.64 [. . .] Take notice, that England is not a free people ’til the poor that have no land have a free allowance to dig and labour the commons, and so live as comfortably as the landlords that live in their enclosures.65 For the people have not laid out their monies, and shed their blood, that their landlords, the Norman power,66 should still have its liberty and freedom to rule in tyranny in his lords, landlords, judges, justices, bailiffs, and state servants; but that the oppressed might be set free, prison doors opened, and the poor people’s hearts comforted by an universal consent of making the earth a common treasury, that they may live together as one house of

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Israel, united in brotherly love into one spirit, and having a comfortable livelihood in the community of one earth their mother. If you look through the earth, you shall see that the landlords, teachers and rulers, are oppressors, murderers and thieves in this manner; but it was not thus from the beginning. And this is one reason of our digging and labouring the earth one with another, that we might work in righteousness and lift up the creation from bondage; for so long as we own67 landlords in this corrupt settlement, we cannot work in righteousness, for we should still lift up the curse, and tread down the creation, dishonour the spirit of universal liberty, and hinder the work of restoration. Secondly, in that we begin to dig upon George Hill, to eat our bread together by righteous labour and sweat of our brows; it was showed us by vision in dreams, and out of dreams, that that should be the place we should begin upon; and though that earth in view of flesh be very barren,68 yet we should trust the Spirit for a blessing. And that not only this common or heath should be taken in and manured by the people, but all the commons and waste ground in England, and in the whole world, shall be taken in by the people in righteousness, not owning any propriety, but taking the earth to be a common treasury, as it was first made for all. Thirdly, it is showed us that all the prophecies, visions, and revelations of scriptures, of prophets and apostles, concerning the calling of the Jews, the restoration of Israel, and making of that people the inheritors of the whole earth, doth all seat themselves in this work of making the earth a common treasury; as you may read, Ezekiel 24.26–7, etc., Jeremiah 33.7–12, Isaiah 49.17–18, etc., Zechariah 8.4–12, Daniel 2.44–5, Daniel 7.27, Hosea 14.5–7, Joel 2.26–7, Amos 9.8 to the end, Obadiah [verses] 17, 18, 21, Micah 5.7 to the end, Habakkuk 2.6–8 and 13–14, Genesis 18.18, Romans 11.15, Zephaniah 3 etc., Zechariah 14.9.69 And when the Son of man was gone from the apostles, his Spirit descended upon the apostles and brethren, as they were waiting at Jerusalem; and the rich men sold their possessions and gave part to the poor; and no man said that ought that he possessed was his own, for they had all things common (Acts 4.32).70 Now this community was suppressed by covetous proud flesh, which was the powers that ruled the world; and the righteous Father suffered himself thus to be suppressed for a time, times and dividing of time,71 or for forty-two months, or for three days and a half, which are all but one and the same term of time;72 and the world is now come to the half day,73 and the Spirit of Christ, which is the Spirit of universal community and freedom is risen, and is rising, and will rise higher and higher, ’til those pure waters of Shiloh,74 the well springs of life and liberty to the whole creation, do over-run A-dam and drown those banks of bondage, curse and slavery.

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Fourthly, this work to make the earth a common treasury was showed us by voice in trance, and out of trance, which words were these, Work together, eat bread together, declare this all abroad. Which voice, was heard three times; and in obedience to the Spirit, we have declared this by word of mouth, as occasion was offered. Secondly, we have declared it by writing, which others may read. Thirdly, we have now begun to declare it by action, in digging up the common land and casting in seed, that we may eat our bread together in righteousness. And every one that comes to work shall eat the fruit of their own labours, one having as much freedom in the fruit of the earth as another. Another voice that was heard was this, Israel shall neither take hire, nor give hire. And if so, then certainly none shall say, ‘This is my land, work for me, and I’ll give you wages’. For the earth is the Lord’s, that is, man’s, who is Lord of the creation, in every branch of mankind; for as diverse members of our human bodies, make but one body perfect; so every particular man is but a member or branch of mankind, and mankind living in the light and obedience to Reason, the king of righteousness, is thereby made a fit and complete lord of the creation. And the whole earth is this Lord’s man,75 subject to the Spirit, and not the inheritance of covetous proud flesh, that is selfish, and enmity to the spirit. And if the earth be not peculiar to any one branch, or branches of mankind, but the inheritance of all; then it is free and common for all, to work together, and eat together. And truly, you counsellors76 and powers of the earth, know this, that wheresoever there is a people thus united by common community of livelihood into oneness, it will become the strongest land in the world, for then they will be as one man to defend their inheritance; and salvation (which is liberty and peace) is the walls and bulwarks of that land or city. Whereas on the other side, pleading for propriety and single interest divides the people of a land and the whole world into parties, and is the cause of all wars and bloodshed, and contention everywhere. Another voice that was heard in a trance, was this, Whosoever labours the earth for any person or persons, that are lifted up to rule over others, and doth not look upon themselves, as equal to others in the creation: the hand of the Lord shall be upon that labourer: I the Lord have spoke it, and I will do it. This declares likewise to all labourers, or such as are called poor people, that they shall not dare to work for hire, for any landlord, or for any that is lifted up above others; for by their labours, they have lifted up tyrants and tyranny, and by denying to labour for hire, they shall pull them down again. He that works for another, either for wages or to pay him rent, works unrighteously and still lifts up the curse; but they that are

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resolved to work and eat together, making the earth a common treasury, doth join hands with Christ, to lift up the creation from bondage and restore all things from the curse. Fifthly, that which does encourage us to go on in this work is this: we find the streaming out of love in our hearts towards all, to enemies as well as friends; we would have none live in beggary, poverty, or sorrow, but that every one might enjoy the benefit of his creation; we have peace in our hearts, and quiet rejoicing in our work, and [are] filled with sweet content, though we have but a dish of roots77 and bread for our food. And we are assured that in the strength of this Spirit that hath manifested himself to us we shall not be startled, neither at prison nor death, while we are about his work; and we have been made to sit down and count what it may cost us in undertaking such a work, and we know the full sum and are resolved to give all that we have to buy this pearl which we see in the field.78 For by this work we are assured, and Reason makes it appear to others, that bondage shall be removed, tears wiped away, and all poor people by their righteous labours shall be relieved, and freed from poverty and straits; for in this work of restoration, there will be no beggar in Israel, for surely if there was no beggar in literal Israel there shall be no beggar in spiritual Israel the antitype,79 much more. Sixthly, we have another encouragement that this work shall prosper, because we see it to be the fullness of time; for whereas the Son of Man, the Lamb, came in the fullness of time, that is, when the powers of the world made the earth stink everywhere, by oppressing others, under pretence of worshipping the Spirit rightly, by the types and sacrifices of Moses’ law, the priests were grown so abominably covetous and proud, that they made the people to loath the sacrifices, and to groan under the burden of their oppressing pride. Even so now in this age of the world, that the Spirit is upon his resurrection, it is likewise the fullness of time in a higher measure. For whereas the people generally in former times did rest upon the very observation of the sacrifices and types, but persecuted the very name of the Spirit, even so now professors80 do rest upon the bare observation of forms and customs, and pretend to the Spirit, and yet persecutes, grudges and hates the power of the Spirit; and as it was then, so it is now. All places stink with the abomination of self-seeking teachers and rulers; for do not I see that every one preacheth for money, counsels for money, and fights for money to maintain particular interests? And none of these three that pretend to give liberty to the creation, neither can they, for they are enemies to universal liberty; so that the earth stinks with their hypocrisy, covetousness, envy, sottish ignorance and pride. The common people are filled with good words from pulpits and council tables, but no good deeds; for they wait and wait for good and for deliverances, but none comes; while they wait for liberty, behold greater bondage

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comes instead of it, and burdens, oppressions, taskmasters, from sessions, lawyers, bailiffs of hundreds,81 committees,82 impropriators,83 clerks of peace,84 and courts of justice, so-called, does whip the people by old popish weather-beaten laws, that were excommunicate long ago by covenants, oaths and ordinances;85 but as yet are not cast out, but rather taken in again, to be standing pricks in our eyes, and thorns in our side;86 beside free-quartering,87 plundering by some rude soldiers, and the abounding of taxes, which if they were equally divided among the soldiery, and not too much bagged-up in the hands of particular officers and trustees, there would be less complaining; besides the horrible cheating that is in buying and selling, and the cruel oppression of landlords, and lords of manors, and quarter-sessions.88 Many that have been good house-keepers89 (as we say) cannot live, but are forced to turn soldiers, and so to fight to uphold the curse, or else live in great straits and beggary. Oh you A-dams of the earth, you have rich clothing, full bellies, have your honours and ease, and you puff at this, but know thou stout-hearted pharaoh that the day of judgement is begun, and it will reach to thee ere long! Jacob hath been very low, but he is rising, and will rise, do the worst thou canst; and the poor people whom thou oppress shall be saviours of the land; for the blessing is rising up in them, and thou shalt be ashamed. And thus you powers of England, and of the whole world, we have declared our reasons, why we have begun to dig upon George Hill in Surrey. One thing I must tell you more, in the close, which I received in voce90 likewise at another time, and when I received it my eye was set towards you. The words were these: Let Israel go free. Surely, as Israel lay 430 years under pharaoh’s bondage, before Moses was sent to fetch them out,91 even so Israel (the elect spirit spread in sons and daughters) hath lain three times so long already,92 which is the antitype,93 under your bondage and cruel taskmasters. But now the time of deliverance is come, and thou proud Esau, and stout-hearted covetousness, thou must come down and be lord of the creation no longer: for now the king of righteousness is rising to rule in, and over the earth.94 [. . .] Thus we have discharged our souls in declaring the cause of our digging upon George Hill in Surrey, that the Great Council and army of the land may take notice of it, that there is no intent of tumult or fighting, but only to get bread to eat, with the sweat of our brows; working together in righteousness, and eating the blessings of the earth in peace. And if any of you that are the great ones of the earth, that have been bred tenderly, and cannot work, do bring in your stock into this common treasury, as an offering to the work of righteousness, we will work for you,

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and you shall receive as we receive. But if you will not, but pharaoh-like cry, Who is the Lord that we should obey him?,95 and endeavour to oppose, then know that he that delivered Israel from pharaoh of old is the same power still, in whom we trust, and whom we serve; for this conquest over thee shall be got, not by sword or weapon, but by my spirit saith the Lord of Hosts.96

Stephen Duck, The Thresher’s Labour (1730) Stephen Duck (1705–56) was the first of the labouring poets to be ‘discovered’ by eighteenth-century polite society. Duck was born in Wiltshire and, until his rise to fame, worked as a farm labourer. With the aid of local patronage he became known in literary circles; by the 1730s he had a small pension from Queen Caroline; by the 1740s he had become a preacher at Kew. However, he finally committed suicide in 1756 by drowning himself in a pond. The Thresher’s Labour was first published in a pirated edition of 1730. Although Duck disowned it, this is in some respects a more ‘authentic’ rural text than the heavily revised and ‘classicized’ edition he produced for his polite patrons in 1736. Equally, even the early version, which we use here, is full of classical allusion: if this seems an anomaly in the poetry of an untaught genius, it highlights the nature of Duck’s endeavour and his need to negotiate a position in relation to polite society. Notably, the vision of the poet changes at different moments: it moves between a pastoral vision of aesthetic landscape, and the strenuous labour which blots out anything but the work at hand. Duck uses georgic as a way of insisting on labour in the rural landscape and clearly distinguishes this from the easy pastoral vision of shepherds, but he also sees beauty in fields of corn before the harvest and he regrets the loss of aesthetic vision that hard labour entails. Recommended edition The Thresher’s Labour: Stephen Duck (1736) and The Woman’s Labour: Mary Collier (1739), intro. Moira Ferguson, Augustan Reprint Society (New York, 1985).

Suggested secondary reading John Goodridge, Rural Life in Eighteenth-Century Poetry (Cambridge, 1995). Bridget Keegan, ‘Stephen Duck’s Poems on Several Occasions’, in Companion to Eighteenth-Century Literature, ed. David Womersley (Oxford, forthcoming). Raymond Williams, The Country and the City (London, 1973), ch. 9. Linda Zionkowski, ‘Strategies of Containment: Stephen Duck, Ann Yearsley, and the Problem of Polite Culture’, Eighteenth-Century Life, 13 (1989), pp. 91–108.

The grateful tribute of these rural lays,97 Which to her patron’s hand the muse conveys,98 Deign to accept: ’tis just she tribute bring To him, whose bounty gives her life to sing:

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To him whose generous favours tune her voice, And bid her, ’midst her poverty rejoice. Inspired by these, she dares her self prepare, To sing the toils of each revolving year: Those endless toils, which always grow anew, And the poor thresher’s destined to pursue; Ev’n these with pleasure can the muse rehearse, When you, and gratitude, command the verse.99 Soon as the harvest hath laid bare the plains, And barns well filled reward the farmer’s pains; What corn each sheaf will yield, intent to hear, And guess from thence the profits of the year; Or else impending ruin to prevent, By paying, timely, threat’ning landlord’s rent, He calls his threshers forth: around we stand,100 With deep attention waiting his command. To each our tasks he readily divides, And pointing, to our different stations guides. As he directs, to different barns we go; Here two for wheat, and there for barley two. But first, to show what he expects to find, These words, or words like these, disclose his mind: ‘So dry the corn was carried from the field, So easily ’twill thresh, so well ’twill yield; Sure large day’s works I well may hope for now;101 Come, strip, and try, let’s see what you can do.’ Divested of our clothes, with flail in hand,102 At a just distance, front to front we stand;103 And first the threshall’s gently swung, to prove104 Whether with just exactness it will move:105 That once secure, more quick we whirl them round, From the strong planks our crab-tree staves rebound,106 And echoing barns return the rattling sound. Now in the air our knotty weapons fly; And now with equal force descend from high: Down one, one up, so well they keep the time, The Cyclops hammers could not truer chime;107 Nor with more heavy strokes could Aetna groan,108 When Vulcan forged the arms for Thetis’ son.109 In briny streams our sweat descends apace, Drops from our locks, or trickles down our face. No intermission in our work we know; The noisy threshall must for ever go.

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Their master absent, others safely play; The sleeping threshall doth itself betray.110 Nor yet the tedious labour to beguile, And make the passing minutes sweetly smile, Can we, like shepherds, tell a merry tale?111 The voice is lost, drowned by the noisy flail. But we may think – Alas! what pleasing thing Here to the mind can the dull fancy bring?112 The eye beholds no pleasant object here: No cheerful sound diverts the list’ning ear. The shepherd well may tune his voice to sing, Inspired by all the beauties of the spring: No fountains murmur here, no lambkins play,113 No linnets warble, and no fields look gay; ’Tis all a gloomy, melancholy scene, Fit only to provoke the muses’ spleen.114 When sooty peas we thresh, you scarce can know115 Our native colour, as from work we go; The sweat, and dust, and suffocating smoke, Make us so much like Ethiopians look: We scare our wives, when evening brings us home; And frighted infants think the bug-bear come.116 Week after week we this dull task pursue, Unless when winnowing days produce a new;117 A new indeed, but frequently a worse, The threshall yields but to the master’s curse: He counts the bushels, counts how much a day,118 Then swears we’ve idled half our time away. ‘Why look ye, rogues! D’ye think that this will do? Your neighbours thresh as much again as you.’ Now in our hands we wish our noisy tools, To drown the hated names of rogues and fools; But wanting those, we just like school-boys look, When th’angry master views the blotted book: They cry, their ink was faulty, and their pen; We, ‘The corn threshes bad, ’twas cut too green.’ But now the winter hides his hoary head,119 And nature’s face is with new beauty spread; The spring appears, and kind refreshing showers New clothe the field with grass, and deck with flowers. Next her, the ripening summer presses on, And Sol begins his longest stage to run:120 Before the door our welcome master stands,121 And tells us the ripe grass requires our hands.122

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The long much-wished intelligence imparts123 Life to our looks, and spirit to our hearts: We wish the happy season may be fair, And joyful, long to breathe in opener air. This change of labour seems to give much ease;124 With thoughts of happiness our joy’s complete, There’s always bitter mingled with the sweet. When morn does through the eastern windows peep, Straight from our beds we start, and shake off sleep; This new employ with eager haste to prove, This new employ becomes so much our love: Alas! that human joys should change so soon, Even this may bear another face at noon! The birds salute us as to work we go, And a new life seems in our breasts to glow. Across one’s shoulder hangs a scythe well steeled,125 The weapon destined to unclothe the field: T’other supports the whetstone, scrip, and beer;126 That for our scythes, and these ourselves to cheer. And now the field designed our strength to try Appears, and meets at last our longing eye; The grass and ground each cheerfully surveys, Willing to see which way th’ advantage lays. As the best man, each claims the foremost place, And our first work seems but a sportive race:127 With rapid force our well-whet blades we drive, Strain every nerve, and blow for blow we give: Though but this eminence the foremost gains,128 Only t’excel the rest in toil and pains. But when the scorching sun is mounted high, And no kind barns with friendly shades are nigh, Our weary scythes entangle in the grass, While streams of sweat run trickling down a-pace; Our sportive labour we too late lament,129 And wish that strength again, we vainly spent. Thus in the morn a courser I have seen,130 With headlong fury scour the level green,131 Or mount the hills, if hills are in his way, As if no labour could his fire allay, Till the meridian sun with sultry heat,132 And piercing beams hath bathed his sides in sweat; The lengthened chase scarce able to sustain, He measures back the hills and dales with pain. With heat and labour tired, our scythes we quit,

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Search out a shady tree, and down we sit; From scrip and bottle hope new strength to gain; But scrip and bottle too are tried in vain. Down our parched throats we scarce the bread can get, And, quite o’er-spent with toil, but faintly eat; Nor can the bottle only answer all, Alas! the bottle and the beer’s too small.133 Our time slides on, we move from off the grass, And each again betakes him to his place. Not eager now, as late, our strength to prove, But all contented regular to move: Often we whet, as often view the sun, To see how near his tedious race is run;134 At length he veils his radiant face from sight, And bids the weary traveller good-night: Homewards we move, but so much spent with toil, We walk but slow, and rest at every stile. Our good expecting wives, who think we stay, Got to the door, soon eye us in the way; Then from the pot the dumpling’s catched in haste, And homely by its side the bacon’s placed. Supper and sleep by morn new strength supply, And out we set again our works to try: But not so early quite, nor quite so fast, As to our cost, we did the morning past. Soon as the rising sun hath drunk the dew, Another scene is opened to our view; Our master comes, and at his heels a throng135 Of prattling females, armed with rake and prong:136 Prepared, whilst he is here, to make his hay; Or, if he turns his back, prepared to play. But here, or gone, sure of this comfort still, Here’s company, so they may chat their fill. And were their hands as active as their tongues, How nimbly then would move their rakes and prongs? The grass again is spread upon the ground, Till not a vacant place is to be found; And while the piercing sun-beams on it shine, The haymakers have time allowed to dine: That soon dispatched, they still sit on the ground, And the brisk chat renewed, a-fresh goes round: All talk at once, but seeming all to fear, That all they speak so well, the rest won’t hear; By quick degrees so high their notes they strain,

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That standers-by can naught distinguish plain: So loud their speech, and so confused their noise, Scarce puzzled Echo can return a voice; Yet spite of this, they bravely all go on, Each scorns to be, or seem to be, outdone: Till (unobserved before) a low’ring sky,137 Fraught with black clouds, proclaims a shower nigh; The tattling crowd can scarce their garments gain, Before descends the thick impetuous rain: Their noisy prattle all at once is done, And to the hedge they all for shelter run. Thus have I seen on a bright summer’s day, On some green brake a flock of sparrows play;138 From twig to twig, from bush to bush they fly, And with continued chirping fill the sky; But on a sudden, if a storm appears, Their chirping noise no longer dins your ears; They fly for shelter to the thickest bush, There silent sit, and all at once is hush. But better fate succeeds this rainy day, And little labour serves to make the hay; Fast as ’tis cut, so kindly shines the sun, Turned once or twice, the pleasing work is done: Next day the cocks appear in equal rows,139 Which the glad master in safe reeks bestows.140 But now the field we must no longer range,141 And yet, hard fate! still work for work we change. Back to the barns again in haste we’re sent, Where lately so much time we pensive spent:142 Not pensive now; we bless the friendly shade, And to avoid the parching sun are glad. But few days here we’re destined to remain, Before our master calls us forth again: ‘For harvest now,’ says he, ‘yourselves prepare, The ripened harvest now demands your care. Early next morn I shall disturb your rest, Get all things ready, and be quickly dressed.’ Strict to his word, scarce the next dawn appears,143 Before his hasty summons fills our ears. Obedient to his call, straight up we get, And finding soon our company complete; With him, our guide, we to the wheat-field go; He, to appoint, and we, the work to do.

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Ye reapers, cast your eyes around the field,144 And view the scene its different beauties yield: Then look again with a more tender eye, To think how soon it must in ruin lie. For once set in, where-e’er our blows we deal, There’s no resisting of the well-whet steel: But here or there, where-e’er our course we bend, Sure desolation does our steps attend. Thus, when Arabia’s sons, in hopes of prey, To some more fertile country take their way; How beauteous all things in the morn appear, There villages, and pleasing cots are here;145 So many pleasing objects meet the sight, The ravished eye could willing gaze ’til night: But long e’er then, where-e’er their troops have past, Those pleasant prospects lie a gloomy waste. The morning past, we sweat beneath the sun, And but uneasily our work goes on. Before us we perplexing thistles find,146 And corn blown adverse with the ruffling wind:147 Behind our backs the female gleaners wait,148 Who sometimes stoop, and sometimes hold a chat. Each morn we early rise, go late to bed, And lab’ring hard, a painful life we lead: For toils, scarce ever ceasing, press us now, Rest never does, but on the sabbath show, And barely that, our master will allow.149 Nor, when asleep, are we secure from pain, We then perform our labours o’er again: Our mimic fancy always restless seems,150 And what we act awake, she acts in dreams. Hard fate! Our labours ev’n in sleep don’t cease, Scarce Hercules e’er felt such toils as these.151 At length in rows stand up the well-dried corn, A grateful scene, and ready for the barn. Our well-pleased master views the sight with joy, And we for carrying all our force employ. Confusion soon o’er all the field appears, And stunning clamours fill the workmen’s ears; The bells and clashing whips, alternate sound, And rattling wagons thunder o’er the ground. The wheat got in, the peas, and other grain,

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Share the same fate, and soon leave bare the plain: In noisy triumph the last load moves on, And loud huzza’s proclaim the harvest done. Our master joyful at the welcome sight, Invites us all to feast with him at night.152 A table plentifully spread we find, And jugs of humming beer to cheer the mind;153 Which he, too generous, pushes on so fast, We think no toils to come, nor mind the past. But the next morning soon reveals the cheat, When the same toils we must again repeat: To the same barns again must back return, To labour there for room for next year’s corn. Thus, as the year’s revolving course goes round, No respite from our labour can be found: Like Sysiphus, our work is never done,154 Continually rolls back the restless stone: Now growing labours still succeed the past,155 And growing always new, must always last.

Mary Collier, from The Woman’s Labour (1739) Little is know of Mary Collier (c.1690–c.1762) beyond the brief biographical information she provided about herself in her Poems (Winchester, 1762). She was born in Sussex and on the death of her father moved to Petersfield in Hampshire where, she writes, her ‘chief employment was, washing, brewing and such labour, still devoting what leisure time I had to books’. It was in Petersfield that she composed The Woman’s Labour as an answer to Stephen Duck’s The Thresher’s Labour (see above). Collier never married, but her poem takes the part of rural women who must work in the fields, in the houses of their social betters and at bringing up their own families. The poem aims to ‘vindicate the injured Sex’, but it also makes careful distinctions within both class and gender. Collier dwells not only on the disservice done by Duck in caricaturing working women’s lives as idle and full of chatter but carefully elaborates the divisions between women who work and the women for whom they do that work. While quoting and commenting on Duck in order to resist his jibes, Collier nevertheless shares with the Thresher Poet an attempt to reintroduce labour into polite society’s visions of an aestheticized rural landscape. Like Duck, she draws on those georgic conventions which stress the endless round of the seasons and of each day. Like Duck also, she puts herself at the centre of this georgic labour and rejects an account

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of rural work which makes georgic indistinguishable from the distanced pastoral amusements of the leisured. Recommended edition The Thresher’s Labour: Stephen Duck (1736) and The Woman’s Labour: Mary Collier (1739), intro. Moira Ferguson, Augustan Reprint Society (New York, 1985).

Suggested secondary reading Donna Landry, The Muses of Resistance: Laboring-Class Women’s Poetry in Britain, 1739–1796 (Cambridge, 1990), ch. 2. Michael Roberts, ‘Sickles and Scythes: Women’s Work and Men’s Work at Harvest Time’, History Workshop Journal, 7 (1979), pp. 3–28.

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Immortal Bard! thou fav’rite of the Nine!156 Enriched by peers, advanced by Caroline!157 Deign to look down on one that’s poor and low, Remembring you yourself was lately so; Accept these lines: Alas! what can you have From her, who ever was, and’s still a slave? No learning ever was bestowed on me; My life was always spent in drudgery: And not alone; alas! with grief I find, It is the portion of poor woman-kind.158 [. . .]

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And you, great Duck, upon whose happy brow The muses seem to fix the garland now, In your late poem boldly did declare Alcides’ labours can’t with yours compare;159 And of your annual task have much to say, Of threshing, reaping, mowing corn and hay; Boasting your daily toil, and nightly dream, But can’t conclude your never-dying theme, And let our hapless sex in silence lie Forgotten, and in dark oblivion die; But on our abject state you throw your scorn, And women wrong, your verses to adorn. You of hay-making speak a word or two, As if our sex but little work could do: This makes the honest farmer smiling say, He’ll seek for women still to make his hay; For if his back be turned, their work they mind As well as men, as far as he can find. For my own part, I many a Summer’s day Have spent in throwing, turning, making hay;

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But ne’er could see, what you have lately found, Our wages paid for sitting on the ground. ’Tis true, that when our morning’s work is done, And all our grass exposed unto the sun, While that his scorching beams do on it shine, As well as you, we have a time to dine: I hope, that since we freely toil and sweat To earn our bread, you’ll give us time to eat.160 That over, soon we must get up again, And nimbly turn our hay upon the plain; Nay, rake and prow it in, the case is clear;161 Or how should cocks in equal rows appear?162 But if you’d have what you have wrote believed, I find, that you to hear us talk are grieved: In this, I hope, you do not speak your mind, For none but Turks, that ever I could find,163 Have mutes to serve them, or did e’er deny Their slaves, at work, to chat it merrily. Since you have liberty to speak your mind, And are to talk, as well as we, inclined, Why should you thus repine, because that we,164 Like you, enjoy that pleasing liberty? What! would you lord it quite, and take away165 The only privilege our sex enjoy? ...

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When night comes on, unto our home we go, Our corn we carry, and our Infant too; Weary, alas! but ’tis not worth our while Once to complain, or rest at ev’ry stile;166 We must make haste, for when we home are come, Alas! we find our work but just begun; So many things for our attendance call, Had we ten hands, we could employ them all. Our children put to bed, with greatest care We all things for your coming home prepare: You sup, and go to bed without delay, And rest yourselves till the ensuing day; While we, alas! but little sleep can have, Because our froward children cry and rave;167 Yet, without fail, soon as day-light doth spring, We in the fields again our work begin, And there, with all our strength, our toil renew, Till Titan’s golden rays have dried the dew;168

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Then home we go unto our children dear, Dress, feed, and bring them to the field with care. Were this your case, you justly might complain That day nor night you are secure from pain; Those mighty troubles which perplex your mind, (Thistles before, and Females come behind)169 Would vanish soon, and quickly disappear, Were you, like us, encumbered thus with care. ...

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The harvest ended, respite none we find; The hardest of our toil is still behind: Hard labour we most cheerfully pursue, And out, abroad, a charring often go:170 Of which I now will briefly tell in part, What fully to declare is past my art; So many hardships daily we go through, I boldly say, the like you never knew. When bright Orion glitters in the skies171 In winter nights, then early must we rise; The weather ne’er so bad, wind, rain, or snow, Our work appointed, we must rise and go; While you on easy beds may lie and sleep, Till light does through your chamber-windows peep.172 When to the house we come where we should go,173 How to get in, alas! we do not know: The maid quite tired with work the day before, O’ercome with sleep; we standing at the door Oppressed with cold, and often call in vain, Ere to our work we can admittance gain: But when from wind and weather we get in, Briskly with courage we our work begin; Heaps of fine linen we before us view, Whereon to lay our strength and patience too;174 Cambricks and muslins, which our ladies wear,175 Laces and edgings, costly, fine, and rare, Which must be washed with utmost skill and care; With Holland shirts, ruffles and fringes too,176 Fashions which our fore-fathers never knew. For several hours here we work and slave, Before we can one glimpse of day-light have; We labour hard before the morning’s past, Because we fear the time runs on too fast.

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With heavy hearts we often view the sun,177 Fearing he’ll set before our work is done; For either in the morning, or at night, We piece the summer’s day with candle-light.178 Though we all day with care our work attend, Such is our fate, we know not when ’twill end: When ev’ning’s come, you homeward take your way, We, till our work is done, are forced to stay; And after all our toil and labour past, Six-pence or eight-pence pays us off at last;179 For all our pains, no prospect can we see Attend us, but old age and poverty. ...

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But to rehearse all labour is in vain, Of which we very justly might complain: For us, you see, but little rest is found; Our toil increases as the year runs round. While you to Sysiphus yourselves compare,180 With Danaus’ daughters we may claim a share;181 For while he labours hard against the hill, Bottomless tubs of water they must fill. So the industrious bees do hourly strive182 To bring their loads of honey to the hive; Their sordid owners always reap the gains,183 And poorly recompense their toil and pains.

Ann Yearsley, ‘Clifton Hill’ (1785) Ann Yearsley (1756–1806) was born at Clifton near Bristol and worked as a milkmaid in order to support her six children. In 1784 Yearsley gained the patronage of Hannah More with whose help she published Poems, on Several Occasions (1785). More wrote of Yearsley, ‘If her epithets are now and then bold and vehement, they are striking and original; and I should be sorry to see the wild vigour of her rustic muse polished into elegance, or laboured into correctness.’ Notwithstanding, More did ‘correct’ the poems, and ‘Clifton Hill’, which we reproduce from this edition, must be understood as a joint work. The poems were well received, but Yearsley later accused More of ruining her verse. Unlike Duck and Collier before her, Yearsley does not focus overtly on labour in ‘Clifton Hill’ and the result is a poem which at once draws on and distances itself from a masculine tradition of prospect or loco-descriptive poetry. As ‘Lactilla’, Yearsley moves in and out of the scene she describes and the result

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can be extremely unsettling: without the status of the gentleman prospect poet, Lactilla is not always safely distanced from a nature which can move rapidly from a source of inspiration to a physical threat. Rather than asserting her own domination of Clifton Hill as a ‘landscape’, Yearsley finally offers us the image of Louisa, the disorientated fugitive from a world of masculine injustice: rural retreat appears to offer no respite (cf. Millenium Hall in Chapter 3). Recommended edition Ann Yearsley, Poems on Various Subjects (1787) [reprint of first edition] with a new introduction by Jonathan Wordsworth (Oxford, 1994).

Suggested secondary reading Tim Burke, ‘Ann Yearsley and the Distribution of Genius in Early Romantic Culture’, in Early Romantics: Perspectives in British Poetry from Pope to Wordsworth, ed. Thomas Woodman (Houndmills, 1998), pp. 215–30. Moira Ferguson, ‘Resistance and Power in the Life and Writings of Ann Yearsley’, The Eighteenth Century: Theory and Interpretation (Fall, 1986), 27:3, pp. 247–68. Donna Landry, The Muses of Resistance: Laboring-Class Women’s Poetry in Britain, 1739–1796 (Cambridge, 1990), ch. 4. Mary Waldron, ed., Lactilla, Milkwoman of Clifton. The Life and Writings of Ann Yearsley, 1753–1806 (Athens, OH and London, 1996).

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In this lone hour, when angry storms descend, And the chilled soul deplores her distant friend;184 When all her sprightly fires inactive lie,185 And gloomy objects fill the mental eye; When hoary Winter strides the northern blast,186 And Flora’s beauties at his feet are cast;187 Earth by the grisly tyrant desert made,188 The feathered warblers quit the leafless shade; Quit those dear scenes where life and love began, And, cheerless, seek the savage haunt of man; How mourns each tenant of the silent grove!189 No soft sensation tunes the heart to love; No fluttering pulse awakes to rapture’s call; No strain responsive aids the water’s fall. The swain neglects his nymph, yet knows not why;190 The nymph, indifferent, mourns the freezing sky; Alike insensible to soft desire, She asks no warmth – but from the kitchen fire; Love seeks a milder zone; half sunk in snow, Lactilla, shiv’ring, tends her fav’rite cow; The bleating flocks now ask the bounteous hand, And crystal streams in frozen fetters stand.191 ...

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Though slow and pensive now the moments roll, Successive months shall from our torpid soul192 Hurry these scenes again; the laughing hours193 Advancing swift, shall strew spontaneous flowers; The early-peeping snowdrop, crocus mild, And modest violet, grace the secret wild;194 Pale primrose, daisy, maypole-decking sweet,195 And purple hyacinth together meet: All Nature’s sweets in joyous circle move,196 And wake the frozen soul again to love. ...

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As o’er the upland hills I take my way, My eyes in transport boundless scenes survey:197 Here the neat dome where sacred raptures rise,198 From whence the contrite groan shall pierce the skies;199 Where sin-struck souls bend low in humble prayer, And waft that sigh which ne’er is lost in air. Ah! sacred turf! here a fond parent lies, How my soul melts while dreadful scenes arise! The past! Ah! shield me, Mercy! from that thought, My aching brain now whirls, with horror fraught. Dead! can it be? ’twas here we frequent strayed, And these sad records mournfully surveyed.200 I marked the verse, the skulls her eye invite, Whilst my young bosom shuddered with affright! My heart recoiled, and shunned the loathsome view; ‘Start not, my child, each human thought subdue,201 She calmly said; this fate shall once be thine, My woes pronounce that it shall first be mine.’ Abashed, I caught the awful truths she sung, And on her firm resolves one moment hung; Vain boast – my bulwark tumbles to the deep,202 Amazed – alone I climb the craggy steep; My shrieking soul deserted, sullen views The depths below, and Hope’s fond strains refuse; I listened not – She louder struck the lyre, And love divine, and moral truths conspire. The proud Croesean crew, light, cruel, vain,203 Whose deeds have never swelled the Muse’s strain, Whose bosoms others sorrows ne’er assail, Who hear, unheeding, Misery’s bitter tale, Here call for satire, would the verse avail.204

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Rest, impious race! – The Muse pursues her flight, Breathes purer air on Vincent’s rugged height; Here nibbling flocks of scanty herbage gain A meal penurious from the barren plain;205 Crop the low niggard bush; and, patient, try206 The distant walk, and every hillock nigh: Some bask, some bound, nor terrors ever know, Save from the human form, their only foe. Ye bleating innocents! dispel your fears, My woe-struck soul in all your troubles shares; ’Tis but Lactilla – fly not from green: Long have I shared with you this guiltless scene. ’Tis mine to wander o’er the dewy lawn, And mark the pallid streak of early dawn; Lo! the grey dusk that filled the vacant space, Now fleets, and infant light pursues the chase; From the hill top it seeks the valley low; Inflamed, the cheeks of morn with blushes glow; Behold it ’whelmed in a bright flood of day,207 It strives no more, but to the god gives way.208 Ye silent, solemn, strong, stupendous heights,209 Whose terror-striking frown the school-boy frights From the young daw; whilst in your rugged breast210 The chattering brood, secured by horror, rest.211 Say, Muse, what arm the low’ring brothers cleft,212 And the calm stream in this low cradle left? Co’val with creation they look down,213 And, sundered, still retain their native frown. Beneath those heights, lo! balmy springs arise214 To which pale Beauty’s faded image flies; Their kindly powers life’s genial heat restore,215 The tardy pulse, whose throbs were almost o’er, Here beats a livelier tune. The breezy air, To the wild hills invites the languid fair: Fear not the western gale, thou tim’rous maid, Nor dread its blast shall thy soft form invade; Though cool and strong the quick’ning breezes blow, And meet thy panting breath, ’twill quickly grow More strong; then drink the odoriferous draught,216 With unseen particles of health ’tis fraught.217 Sit not within the threshold of Despair, Nor plead a weakness fatal to the fair;218 Soft term for Indolence, politely given,

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By which we win no joy from earth or heaven. Foul fiend! thou bane of health, fair Virtue’s bane, Death of true pleasure, source of real pain! Keen exercise shall brace the fainting soul, And bid her slackened powers more vigorous roll. Blame not my rustic lay, nor think me rude,219 If I avow conceit’s the grand prelude220 To dire disease and death. Your high-born maid, Whom fashion guides, in youth’s first bloom shall fade; She seeks the cause, th’effect would fain elude, By Death’s o’erstretching stride too close pursued, She faints within his icy grasp, yet stares, And wonders why the tyrant yet appears – Abrupt – so soon – thine, Fashion, is the crime, Fell Dissipation does the work of time. How thickly clothed, yon rock of scanty soil,221 Its lovely verdure scorns the hand of Toil. Here the deep green, and here the lively plays, The russet birch, and ever-blooming bays; The vengeful black-thorn, of wild beauties proud, Blooms beauteous in the gloomy-chequered crowd: The barren elm, the useful feeding oak,222 Whose hamadryad ne’er should feel the stroke223 Of axe relentless, ’til twice fifty years Have crowned her woodland joys, and fruitful cares. ...

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Various the tenants of this tangled wood, Who skulk all day, all night review the flood, Chew the washed weed driven by the beating wave, Or feast on dreadful food, which hoped a milder grave. Hail, useful channel! Commerce spreads her wings,224 From either pole her various treasure brings; Wafted by thee, the mariner long strayed, Clasps the fond parent, and the sighing maid; Joy tunes the cry; the rocks rebound the roar; The deep vibration quivers ’long the shore; The merchant hears, and hails the peeping mast, The wave-drenched sailor scorns all peril past; Now love and joy the noisy crew invite, And clumsy music crowns the rough delight. Yours be the vulgar dissonance, while I225

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Cross the low stream, and stretch the ardent eye O’er Nature’s wilds; ’tis peace, ’tis joy serene, The thought as pure as calm the vernal scene. Ah, lovely meads! my bosom lighter grows, Shakes off her huge oppressive weight of woes, And swells in guiltless rapture; ever hail, The tufted grove, and the low-winding vale! Low not, ye herds, your lusty masters bring The crop of summer; and the genial spring Feels for your wants, and softens winter’s rage, The hoarded hay-stack shall your woes assuage; Woes summed in one alone, ’tis Nature’s call, That secret voice which fills creation all. Beneath this stack Louisa’s dwelling rose,226 Here the fair maniac bore three winter’s snows. Here long she shivered, stiffening in the blast, The lightnings round their livid horrors cast; The thunders roar, while rushing torrents pour, And add new woes to bleak affliction’s hour; The heavens lour dismal while the storm descends, No mother’s bosom the soft maid befriends; But, frightened, o’er the wilds she swiftly flies, And drenched with rains, the roofless hay-stack tries. The morn was fair, and gentle – sought These lonely woodlands, friends to sober thought; With Solitude, the slow-paced maid is seen Tread the dark grove, and unfrequented green, Well – knew their lurkings; Phoebus shone,227 While, musing, she pursued the track alone. O, thou kind friend! whom here I dare not name,228 Who to Louisa’s shed of misery came, Lured by the tale, sighed o’er her beauteous form, And gently drew her from the beating storm, Stand forth – defend, for well thou canst, the cause Of heaven, and justify its rigid laws; Yet own that human laws are harshly given, When they extend beyond the will of heaven.229 Say, can thy pen for that hard duty plead, By which the meek and helpless maid’s decreed To dire seclusion? Snatched from guiltless joys, To where corroding grief the frame destroys; Monastic glooms, which active virtue cramp, Where horrid silence chills the vital lamp;

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Slowly and faint the languid pulses beat, And the chilled heart forgets its genial heat; The dim sunk eye, with hopeless glance, explores The solemn aisles, and death-denouncing doors, Ne’er to be past again. – Now heaves the sigh, Now unavailing sorrows fill the eye: Fancy once more brings back the long-lost youth To the fond soul, in all the charms of Truth; She welcomes the loved image; busy thought Portrays the past, with guiltless pleasures fraught; ’Tis momentary bliss, ’tis rapture high,230 The heart o’erflows, and all is ecstasy. Memory! I charge thee yet preserve the shade, Ah! let not yet the glittering colours fade! Forbear the cruel future yet to view, When the sad soul must bid a long adieu, E’en to its fancied bliss – Ah! turn not yet Thou wretched bankrupt, that must soon forget This farewell draught of joy: lo! Fancy dies, E’en the thin phantom of past pleasure flies. Thought sinks in real woe; too poor to give Her present bliss, she bids the future live; The spirit soon quits that fond clasp, for see, The future offers finished misery. Hope quite extinct, lo! frantic through the aisles She raves, while Superstition grimly smiles. Th’exhausted mourner mopes, then wildly stalks Round the drear dome, and seeks the darkest walks. The glance distracted each sad sister meets, The sorrow-speaking eye in silence greets Each death-devoted maid; Louisa here Runs through each various shape of sad despair; Now swells with gusts of hope, now sick’ning dies; Alternate thoughts of death and life arise Within her panting soul; the firm resolve, The new desire, in stronger fears dissolve. She starts – then seized the moment of her fate, Quits the lone cloister and the horrid grate, Whilst wilder horrors to receive her wait; Muffled, on Freedom’s happy plains they stand, And eager seize her not reluctant hand; Too late to these mild shores the mourner came, For now the guilt of flight o’erwhelms her frame: Her broken vows in wild disorder roll,

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And stick like serpents in her trembling soul; Thought, what art thou? of thee she boasts no more, O’erwhelmed, thou dy’st amid the wilder roar Of lawless anarchy, which sweeps the soul, Whilst her drowned faculties like pebbles roll, Unloosed, uptorn, by whirlwinds of despair, Each well-taught moral now dissolves in air; Dishevelled, lo! her beauteous tresses fly, And the wild glance now fills the staring eye; The balls, fierce glaring in their orbits move, Bright spheres, where beamed the sparkling fires of Love, Now roam for objects which once filled her mind, Ah! long-lost objects they must never find. Ill starred Louisa! Memory, ’tis a strain, Which fills my soul with sympathetic pain. Remembrance, hence, give thy vain struggles o’er, Nor swell the line with forms that live no more.

Letter from the Combined of Cheshunt to Oliver Cromwell Esq., of Cheshunt Park The eighteenth-century enclosure of common land by acts of Parliament was only a more obvious version of a process which had been going on for several centuries. This letter to Oliver Cromwell of Cheshunt Park is, as E. P. Thompson has noted, ‘an unusually articulate and determined’ response on the part of the rural poor to acts of enclosure. Notably, the letter is saturated with Biblical allusion and this highlights the way in which the marginalized poor could draw on religious belief to manoeuvre the debate in their favour, challenging the spiritual status of the rich and giving their own more violent threats the sanction of God’s word. Unlike many in their situation, the Combined of Cheshunt succeeded in maintaining some of their common rights when the act of enclosure was finally made. The manuscript letter is in the Home Office collection at the Public Record Office (HO 42.46) and we reproduce the version published in the London Gazette of 19–23 March 1799, a journal which offered rewards to those who would provide information on the authors of such anonymous threats. While the Combined of Cheshunt chose to write, and therefore leave an obvious trace of their protest, resistance to enclosure frequently took the more ephemeral form of riots, arson or fence breaking, the signs of which are now much more difficult to recover. For this letter, where spelling, punctuation, and grammar are all important indicators of the authors’ social and educational status, we have not modernized the text.

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Suggested secondary reading E. P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class (Harmondsworth, 1968), ch. 7. E. P. Thompson, ‘The Crime of Anonymity’, in Albion’s Fatal Tree: Crime and Society in Eighteenth-Century England, eds Douglas Hay, Peter Linebaugh, John G. Rule, E. P. Thompson and Cal Winslow (London, 1975). J. M. Neeson, Commoners: Common Right, Enclosure and Social Change in England, 1700–1820 (Cambridge, 1993). Pamela Horn, The Rural World 1780–1850: Social Change in the English Countryside (London, 1980). February, 1799

Sir, Whe right these lines to you who are the combind231 of the Parish of Cheshunt in the Defence of our Parrish rights which you unlawfully are about to disinherit us of the Same Resolutions is maid by the aforesaid combind that if you intend of incloseing Our Commond Commond fields Lammas Meads232 Marshes &c Whe Resolve before you shall say & the rest of the heads of that bloudy and unlawful Act it is finished to have your hearts bloud if you proceede in the aforesaid bloudy act Whe like horse-leaches well cry give give233 untill whe have spilt the bloud of every one that wishes to rob the Inosent unborn it shall not be in your power to say I am safe from the hands of the Enemy234 for Whe like birds of pray will prively235 liye in wait to spil the bloud236 of the aforesaid Charicters whose names and plaices of above are as prutrified sores237 in our Nostrils Whe declair that thou shalt not say I am safe when thou goest to they bead for beware that thou liftest not thine eyes up in the mist of flames238 and when thou goest out beshour if you can that thou returns in safety the bloud of every one that wishes the distruction of this parrish in the aforesaid bloudy act Whe are deturmined to have if at the expence of ours Whe cannot but say that there is plenty of room for alterations for Whe cannot see why thas Ruskins239 and a few more of them should run our Common over while there is no room for another to put any thing on thou hadst240 made an alteration in the rights of Commoning241 those instead of being contempabel whould thy name been as Odderriferous Ointment242 poured fourth to us the voice of Us and the maguor243 part of the parrish is for a regulation of commons rights is in the following manner that every one to turn out on the Commonds in proportion to what they hold244 which to be determined by our superiours so that every one may have his a lotment to do as he pleases to keep annerkey245 from our parrish so that if he dose not wish to keep any thing let him or hur let those proportions to whome they like so that it may be an easement246 to them in the poors rates247 if thou had took this step thou would then had our hearts and our all at they survise248 Whe leave it for thy consideration wheather thou would like

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to be sorted out from the land of the living249 or would like to have the poors hearts and these all if required for if thou proceeds to inclose our blood will boil like a pot if thou goist to regulate it then as aforesaid then will We come and give our hearts and voices to it and to you for ever but no inclosure will whe agree to Sir you may let Mr. George Prescott and Mr. Russell and the rest of Our Nobility know our Resolutions for as250 there was only thy Name in the papers251 Whe only right to you if agree to Our proposals from your well wishers the Combined in the defence of the rights of the parrish of Cheshunt

7 Gardens: Public and Private Pleasures

In earlier chapters of this anthology we have touched on the great estates and their landscapes. In our chapter on feudalism we saw how Oliver Goldsmith used the great estate to assert his own form of conservative political stance, while in Chapter 3 many of the works offer the estate around the house as a crucial part of moral economy. This chapter turns to the designed landscape of the pleasure garden and the ways in which it comes to represent both a unifying political image of English liberty and a site of social struggle in which the individual seeks to assert their status in the larger community. The mid-eighteenth century saw the establishment of a recognizably new style of gardening which became known as the English landscape garden: it was to be hailed (in England at least) as the country’s major original contribution to the fine arts and a form of rural landscaping which was only possible in a land of political liberty. The chapter begins with an extract from perhaps the most influential statement of this position, Horace Walpole’s ‘Essay on Modern Gardening’. For Walpole aesthetic history is also political history and the achievements of the English garden in the mid-eighteenth century at once reflect and are made possible by England’s slow but sure progression towards an ideal political state. While this suggests an aesthetic form behind which the British nation can unify, if one turns to other sources, this abstract narrative of political progress is undercut by much more complex social interactions. To demonstrate such interactions, the other passages in this section are all drawn from a group of acquaintances centred on two of the major gardens in the Midlands: Hagley and the Leasowes. Hagley was developed during the mideighteenth century by the wealthy and aristocratic Lyttelton family; it was praised for its beauty and variety by James Thomson in his famous poem, The Seasons but also became a site of mourning in George Lyttelton’s celebrated monody on the death of his wife. During the same period, and only a few miles down the road, the Leasowes was created by William Shenstone, a gentleman poet of far more limited means than his wealthy neighbours. While the Lytteltons were part of a formidable political clan and could 179

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claim to be at the centre both of British politics and high society, Shenstone’s limited income and more modest origins meant that, for all his influence, he remained at the edges of the fashionable world. Alongside his poetry, Shenstone’s garden was an important means of bringing himself to local and national attention, but it was also the occasion for others to make their mark, from James Woodhouse, the shoemaker poet who sought access to Shenstone’s estate to Richard Graves, who used the Leasowes as the occasion for an attack on Methodism. Thus, the range of works we bring together here aims to demonstrate that while the garden can be politicized at the level of national achievement it is also the site for conflict at the level of economic and educational status, a site in which individuals are only too aware of the need to demonstrate and articulate the cultural capital of taste. Suggested secondary reading Stephen Bending, ‘A Natural Revolution? Garden Politics in Eighteenth-Century England’, in Refiguring Revolutions: British Politics and Aesthetics, 1642–1789, eds Kevin Sharpe and Steven Zwicker (Berkeley, CA and Los Angeles, 1998). Douglas Chambers, The Planters of the English Landscape Garden: Botany, Trees, and The Georgics (New Haven, CT and London, 1993), ch. 12. David R. Coffin, The English Garden: Meditation and Memorial (Princeton, NJ, 1994). John Dixon Hunt, The Figure in the Landscape: Poetry, Painting, and Gardening during the Eighteenth Century (Baltimore, MD and London, 1976). New Arcadian Journal, Special Issue on Hagley and the Leasowes, 53:4 (2002). John Riely, ‘Shenstone’s Walks: the Genesis of the Leasowes’, Apollo, 110 (1979), pp. 202–9. Tom Williamson, Polite Landscapes: Gardens and Society in Eighteenth-Century England (Stroud, 1995).

Walpole, from ‘Essay on Modern Gardening’ (1780) Horace Walpole (1717–97) 4th Earl of Orford, was the youngest son of the prime minister Sir Robert Walpole. He was educated at Eton and Cambridge, travelled around Europe with the poet Thomas Gray, and conducted a prolific correspondence with many of the important figures of his day. Walpole was an MP from 1741 to 1768 but his real influence was in the arts: he set up his own high-quality printing press; his novel, The Castle of Otranto (1764), was an important early work of gothic fiction and the transformation of his house, Strawberry Hill, Twickenham, from a modest modern block into a gothic fantasy of papier-mâché fan-vaulting, old masters and antiquarian curiosities was highly influential. Walpole saw most of the great gardens of England and recorded his views in the ‘Essay on Modern Gardening’ (printed in 1771, but published as an addition to his Anecdotes of Painting in England in 1780). The Essay sketches out a history of garden design which moves from the ancients to modern France and Italy, and concludes with the English landscape garden as perfection achieved. For Walpole, this new style

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begins early in the eighteenth century and is perfected in such mid-century gardens as Stourhead, Woburn and Painshill. Claiming that such gardens are only possible because of Britain’s parliamentary system, Walpole’s Essay reiterates a Whig history of progress in which aesthetic liberty is the result of political liberty. In this light, Walpole’s rejection of French and Chinese styles should be recognized not simply as an attack on the foreign, but on the absolutist governments which produce such styles. Recommended edition I. W. U. Chase, Horace Walpole, Gardenist: An Edition of Walpole’s The History of the Modern Taste in Gardening with an estimate of Walpole’s contribution to landscape architecture (Princeton, NJ, 1943).

Suggested secondary reading Stephen Bending, ‘Horace Walpole and Eighteenth-Century Garden History’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 57 (1994), pp. 209–26. Richard E. Quaintance, ‘Walpole’s Whig Interpretation of Landscaping History’, Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture, 9 (1979), pp. 285–300.

The capital1 stroke, the leading step to all that has followed, was (I believe the first thought was Bridgeman’s)2 the destruction of walls for boundaries, and the invention of fosses – an attempt then deemed so astonishing, that the common people called them Ha! Ha’s! to express their surprise at finding a sudden and unperceived check to their walk.3. . . I call a sunk fence the leading step for these reasons. No sooner was this simple enchantment made, than levelling, mowing and rolling followed. The contiguous ground of the park without4 the sunk fence was to be harmonised with the lawn within; and the garden in its turn was to be set free from its prim regularity, that it might assort with the wilder country without. The sunk fence ascertained the specific garden,5 but that it might not draw too obvious a line of distinction between the neat and the rude,6 the contiguous outlying parts came to be included in a kind of general design: and when nature was taken into the plan, under improvements, every step that was made pointed out new beauties and inspired new ideas. At that moment appeared Kent,7 painter enough to taste the charms of landscape, bold and opinionative enough to dare and to dictate, and born with a genius to strike out a great system from the twilight of imperfect essays.8 He leaped the fence, and saw that all nature was a garden. He felt the delicious contrast of hill and valley changing imperceptibly into each other, tasted the beauty of the gentle swell, or concave scoop, and remarked how loose groves crowned an easy eminence with happy ornament, and while they called in the distant view between their graceful stems, removed and extended the perspective by delusive comparison.

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Thus the pencil of his imagination bestowed all the arts of landscape on the scenes he handled.9 The great principles on which he worked were perspective, and light and shade. Groups of trees broke too uniform or too extensive a lawn; evergreens and woods were opposed to the glare of the champaign,10 and where the view was less fortunate, or so much exposed as to be beheld at once, he blotted out some parts to thick shades, to divide it into variety, or to make the richest scene more enchanting by reserving it to a farther advance of the spectator’s step. Thus selecting favourite objects, and veiling deformities by screens11 of waste to add its foil to the richest theatre, he realised the compositions of the greatest masters12 in painting. Where objects were wanting to animate his horizon, his taste as an architect could bestow immediate termination. His buildings, his seats, his temples, were more the works of his pencil than of his compasses.13 We owe the restoration of Greece14 and the diffusion of architecture to his skill in landscape. But of all the beauties he added to the face of this beautiful country, none surpassed his management of water. Adieu to canals, circular basins, and cascades tumbling down marble steps, that last absurd magnificence of Italian and French villas. The forced elevation of cataracts was no more. The gentle stream was taught to serpentise15 seemingly at its pleasure, and where discontinued by different levels, its course appeared to be concealed by thickets properly interspersed, and glittered again at a distance where it might be supposed naturally to arrive. Its borders were smoothed, but preserved their waving irregularity. A few trees scattered here and there on its edges sprinkled the tame bank that accompanied its meanders; and when it disappeared among the hills, shades16 descending from the heights leaned towards its progress, and framed the distant point of light under which it was lost, as it turned aside to either hand of the blue horizon. Thus dealing in none but the colours of nature, and catching its most favourable features, men saw a new creation17 opening before their eyes. The living landscape was chastened or polished, not transformed.18 Freedom was given to the forms of trees;19 they extended their branches unrestricted, and where any eminent oak or master beech had escaped maiming and survived the forest, bush and bramble was removed, and all its honours were restored to distinguish and shade the plain. Where the united plumage of an ancient wood extended wide its undulating canopy, and stood venerable in its darkness, Kent thinned the foremost ranks, and left but20 so many detached and scattered trees as softened the approach of gloom and blended a chequered light with the thus lengthened shadows of the remaining columns . . . . . . it is not my business to lay down rules for gardens, but to give the history of them . . . In the historic light I distinguish them into the

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garden that connects itself with a park, into the ornamented farm, and into the forest or savage garden. Kent, as I have shown, invented or established the first sort. Mr Philip Southcote founded the second, or ferme ornée (at Woburn farm in Surrey)...The third [is] that kind of alpine scene, composed almost wholly of pines and firs, a few birch, and such trees as assimilate21 with a savage and mountainous country. Mr Charles Hamilton, at Painshill,22 in my opinion has given a perfect example of this mode in the utmost boundary of his garden. All is great and foreign and rude; the walks seem not designed, but cut through woods of pines; and the style of the whole is so grand, and conducted with so serious an air of wild and uncultivated extent, that when you look down on this seeming forest, you are amazed to find it contains a very few acres... Sir Henry Englefield23 was one of the first improvers on the new style, and selected with singular taste that chief beauty of all gardens, prospect and fortunate points of view: we tire of all the painter’s art when it wants these finishing touches. The fairest scenes, that depend on themselves alone, weary when often seen. The Doric portico, the Palladian bridge, the Gothic ruin, the Chinese pagoda,24 that surprise the stranger, soon lose their charms to their surfeited master. The lake that floats25 the valley is still more lifeless, and its lord seldom enjoys his expenses but26 when he shows it to a visitor. But the ornament whose merit soonest fades is the hermitage27 or scene adapted to contemplation. It is almost comic to set aside a quarter of one’s garden to be melancholy in.28 Prospect, animated prospect,29 is the theatre that will always be the most frequented. Prospects formerly were sacrificed to convenience and warmth. Thus Burghley30 stands behind a hill, from the top of which it would command Stamford. Our ancestors who resided the greatest part of the year at their seats, as others did two years together or more, had an eye to comfort first, before expense. Their vast mansions received and harboured all the younger branches, the dowagers31 and ancient maiden aunts of the families, and other families visited them for a month together. The method of living is now totally changed, and yet the same superb palaces are still created, becoming a pompous solitude to the owner, and a transient entertainment to a few travellers. If any incident abolishes or restrains the modern style of gardening, it will be this circumstance of solitariness. The greater the scene, the more distance it is probably from the capital; in the neighbourhood of which land is too dear to admit considerable extent of property. Men tire of expense that is obvious to few spectators. Still there is a more imminent danger that threatens the present, as it has ever done all taste. I mean the pursuit of variety. A modern French writer has in a very affected phrase given a just account of this, I will call it, distemper.

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He says, l’ennui du beau amene le gout du singulier.32 The noble simplicity of the Augustan age was driven out by false taste.33 The gigantic, the puerile, the quaint, and at last the barbarous and the monkish, had each their successive admirers. Music has been improved, till it is a science of tricks and sleight of hand: the sober greatness of Titian34 is lost, and painting since Carlo Maratti35 has little more relief36 than Indian paper.37 Borromini38 twisted and curled architecture (in particular, he inverted the volutes of the Ionic order39), as if it was subject to the change of fashions like a head of hair. If we once lose sight of the propriety40 of landscape in our gardens, we shall wander into all the fantastic Sharawadgis41 of the Chinese. We have discovered the point of perfection. We have given the true model of gardening to the world; let other countries mimic or corrupt our taste; but let it reign here on its verdant throne, original by its elegant simplicity, and proud of no other art than that of softening nature’s harshnesses and copying her graceful touch . . . In the meantime how rich, how gay, how picturesque the face of the country! The demolition of walls laying open each improvement, every journey is made through a succession of pictures; and even where taste is wanting in the spot improved, the general view is embellished by variety. If no relapse to barbarism, formality and seclusion is made, what landscapes will dignify every quarter of our island, when the daily plantations that are making have attained venerable maturity! . . . In general, it is probably true that the possessor, if he has any taste, must be the best designer of his own improvements.42 He sees his situation in all seasons of the year, at all times of the day. He knows where beauty will not clash with convenience, and observes in his silent walks or accidental rides a thousand hints that must escape a person who in a few days sketches out a pretty picture,43 but has not had leisure to examine the details and relations of every part. Truth, which after all opposition given to most revolutions, preponderates at last, will probably not carry our style of gardening into general use on the continent. The expense is only suited to the opulence of a free country,44 where emulation reigns among many independent particulars. The keeping45 of our grounds is an obstacle, as well as the cost of the first formation. A flat country, like Holland, is incapable of landscape. In France and Italy the nobility do not reside much, and make small expense, at their villas. I should think the little princes46 of Germany, who spare no profusion on their palaces and country houses, most likely to be our imitators; especially as their country and climate bears in many parts resemblance to ours. In France, and still less in Italy, they could with difficulty attain that verdure which the humidity of our clime bestows as the groundwork of our improvements. As great an obstacle in France is the embargo laid on the growth of their trees. As after a certain

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age, when they would rise to bulk, they are liable to be marked by the crown’s surveyors as royal timber, it is a curiosity to see an old tree. A landscape and a crown surveyor are incompatible . . .

James Thomson, from Spring (1746) James Thomson (1700–48) wrote The Seasons between 1726 and 1730, but continued to make revisions over the following two decades. Modelled on Virgil’s Georgics, and using the Latinate language of Miltonic blank verse, Thomson’s poem takes as it subject the multiplicity and wonder of nature, and his complex and lengthy sentences do much to suggest the inexhaustible range and interconnectedness of the natural world. In the first passage we reproduce, Thomson sets the garden in a wide landscape, repeatedly inviting us to ‘see’ the profusion all around. The ‘finished garden’ is a gathering together of so many sights and smells that one can only snatch at brief moments of experience before being overwhelmed by others, and all those experiences, for Thomson, lead inevitably also towards an experience of God the creator. Thomson continued to revise the poem until 1746 and the passage describing Hagley, the second of those we reproduce, appeared first in 1744. Here, Thomson celebrates Hagley as an idealized place of connubial retirement but also of activity for his patron, the politician and poet, George Lyttelton. With the far-reaching prospect bursting open before him, Lyttelton’s stance represents the landowner’s claim to an independent point of view, one which allows a clarity of vision, both aesthetic and political. In a well-know essay John Barrell has pointed to the contradictions in this stance: Thomson offers us Lyttelton as a figure at once retired from the corrupt public world and yet claiming to revive its political and artistic virtues, a figure whose independent view is also shown to be inevitably partial. The extracts we reproduce here (from the 1746 edition) begin to suggest the place of the garden as a site for some of the major concerns of Thomson’s poetry, but it is in the cycle of The Seasons as a whole that the tensions between retirement and activity, prospect and occlusion, country and city, trade and agriculture, can be most fully understood (see Chapter 5 for a further extract from The Seasons). Recommended edition James Thomson, The Seasons and The Castle of Indolence, ed. James Sambrook (Oxford, 1984).

Suggested secondary reading John Barrell, English Literature in History, 1730–80: An Equal Wide Survey (London, 1983). Ralph Cohen, The Unfolding of the Seasons (London, 1970). Richard Terry, ed., James Thomson: Essays for the Tercentenary (Liverpool, 2000). James Sambrook, James Thomson, 1700–1748: A Life (Oxford, 1991).

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At length the finished garden to the view Its vistas opens, and its alleys green. Snatched through the verdant maze, the hurried eye47 Distracted wanders; now the bowery walk48 Of covert close, where scarce a speck of day49 Falls on the lengthened gloom, protracted sweeps; Now meets the bending sky, the river now Dimpling along, the breezy-ruffled lake, The forest darkening round, the glittering spire, Th’etherial mountain, and the distant main. But why so far excursive? where at hand,50 Along these blushing borders, bright with dew,51 And in yon mingled wilderness of flowers,52 Fair-handed Spring unbosoms every grace: Throws out the Snow-drop, and the Crocus first; The daisy, primrose, violet darkly blue, And polyanthus of unnumbered dyes;53 The yellow wall-flower, stained with iron brown;54 And lavish stock that scents the garden round.55 From the soft wing of vernal breezes shed, Anemonies; auriculas, enriched56 With shining meal o’er all their velvet leaves; And full renunculas, of glowing red.57 Then comes the tulip-race, where beauty plays Her idle freaks: from family diffused58 To family, as flies the father dust,59 The varied colours run; and, while they break60 On the charmed eye, th’exulting florist marks, With secret pride the wonders of his hand. No gradual bloom is wanting; from the bud, First-born of Spring, to Summer’s musky tribes:61 Nor hyacinths, of purest virgin white, Low-bent, and blushing inwards; nor jonquils,62 Of potent fragrance; nor narcissus fair,63 As o’er the fabled fountain hanging still; Nor broad Carnations; nor gay-spotted pinks;64 Nor, showered from every bush, the damask-rose.65 Infinite numbers, delicacies, smells, With hues on hues expression cannot paint, The breath of Nature, and her endless bloom. Hail, source of beings! Universal soul66 Of Heaven and Earth! Essential presence, hail!67 To thee I bend the knee; to thee my thoughts, Continual, climb; who, with a master-hand,

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Hast the great whole into perfection touched.68 By thee the various vegetative tribes, Wrapped in a filmy net, and clad with leaves,69 Draw the live ether, and imbibe the dew.70 By thee disposed into congenial soils, Stands each attractive plant, and sucks, and swells The juicy tide; a twining mass of tubes. At thy command the vernal sun awakes The torpid sap, detruded to the root71 By wintry winds, that now in fluent dance, And lively fermentation, mounting, spreads All this innumerous-coloured scene of things... These are the sacred feelings of thy heart,72 Thy heart informed by Reason’s purer ray, O Lyttelton, the friend! Thy passions thus And Meditations vary, as at large, Courting the Muse, through Hagley-Park you stray,73 Thy British Tempe! There along the dale,74 With woods o’er-hung, and shagged with mossy rocks,75 Whence on each hand the gushing waters play, And down the rough cascade white-dashing fall, Or gleam in lengthened vista through the trees, Yon silent steal; or sit beneath the shade Of solemn oaks, that tuft the swelling mounts Thrown graceful round by Nature’s careless hand, And pensive listen to the various voice Of rural peace: the herds, the flocks, the birds, The hollow-whispering breeze, the plaint of rills,76 That, purling down amid the twisted roots Which creep around, their dewy murmurs shake On the soothed ear. From these abstracted oft,77 You wander through the philosophic world;78 Where in bright train continual wonders rise, Or to the curious or the pious eye.79 And oft, conducted by historic truth,80 You tread the long extent of backward Time: Planning, with warm benevolence of mind, And honest zeal unwarped by party-rage, Britannia’s weal; how from the venal Gulf81 To raise her virtue, and her arts revive. Or, turning thence thy view, these graver thoughts The muses charm: while, with sure taste refined, You draw th’inspiring breath of ancient song;

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Till nobly rises, emulous, thy own. Perhaps thy loved Lucinda shares thy walk,82 With soul to thine attuned. Then nature all Wears to the lover’s eye a look of love; And all the tumult of a guilty world, Tossed by ungenerous passions, sinks away. The tender heart is animated peace; And as it pours its copious treasures forth, In varied converse, softening every theme, You, frequent-pausing, turn, and from her eyes, Where meekened sense, and amiable grace,83 And lively sweetness dwell, enraptured, drink That nameless spirit of ethereal joy,84 Inimitable happiness! which love, Alone, bestows, and on a favoured few. Meantime you gain the height, from whose fair brow The bursting prospect spreads immense around; And snatched o’er hill and dale, and wood and lawn, And verdant field, and darkening heath between, And villages embosomed soft in trees, And spiry towns by surging columns marked Of household smoke, your eye excursive roams:85 Wide-stretching from the Hall, in whose kind haunt86 The hospitable Genius lingers still,87 To where the broken landscape, by degrees,88 Ascending, roughens into rigid hills; O’er which the Cambrian Mountains, like far clouds89 That skirt the blue Horizon, dusky, rise.

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George Lyttelton, from ‘To the Memory of a Lady lately deceased: a monody’ (1747) George, first Baron Lyttelton (1709–73), was the eldest son of Sir Thomas Lyttelton, Bart, of Hagley, and part of the powerful family grouping of the Grenvilles, Temples and Cobhams. His poetry was much admired by some of his contemporaries and his Persian Letters were highly influential. During the 1740s Lyttelton transformed Hagley into one of the major landscape gardens of the century. He was aided in this by the poet James Thomson and by the local amateur architect, Sanderson Miller, famed for his recreations of medieval ruins. Lyttelton married Lucy Fortescue in 1742 and it is she who is celebrated in the previous extract from Thomson’s Seasons and mourned after her early death (aged 29) in the following extract from Lyttelton’s famous monody. Like Thomson, Lyttelton takes an imaginative journey around Hagley, but whereas Thomson offers the

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garden as a site for political meditation and connubial delight, Lyttelton finds reminders of a lost past and of a bleak present. The garden is transformed by sentiment into a landscape of mourning. Like Thomson also, Lyttelton raises questions of retirement and meditation and their role in the public world. Thus while Thomson claims a form of manliness in Lyttelton’s political retirement, Lyttelton himself associates retirement here with the feminine, with Lucy’s female virtues as they are figured in the domestic and spiritual harmony of her life. Lucy has shunned the public eye to follow the ‘silent paths of wisdom’, but this championing of a silent retirement inevitably reflects on Lyttelton’s own withdrawal from public life. Thus the poem raises questions of how retirement is itself gendered and we might ask if the silence of meditation undermines Lyttelton’s own stance or feminizes his position as a politician in retirement, as a man who does not speak. Recommended edition The Works of Lord Lyttelton; formerly printed separately, and now first collected together: with some pieces, never before printed, ed. George Edward Ayscough (London, 1774).

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Ye tufted groves, ye gently-falling rills, Ye high o’ershadowing hills, Ye lawns gay-smiling with eternal greens, Oft have you my Lucy seen! But never shall you now behold her more: Nor will she now with fond delight And taste refined your rural charms explore. Closed are those beauteous eyes where beaming used to shine Reason’s pure light, and Virtue’s spark divine. Oft would the dryads of these woods rejoice90 To hear her heav’nly voice, For her despising, when she deigned to sing, The sweetest songsters of the spring:91 The woodlarks and the linnet pleased no more; The nightingale was mute, And every shepherd’s flute Was cast in silent scorn away, While all attended her sweeter lay.92 Ye larks and linnets, now resume your song; And thou, melodious Philomel, Again thy plaintive story tell,93 For Death has stopped that tuneful tongue, Whose music could alone your warbling notes exceed. In vain I look around

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O’er all the well-known ground, My Lucy’s wonted footsteps to descry; Where oft we used to walk, Where oft in tender talk We saw the summer sun go down the sky; Nor by yon fountain’s side, Nor where its waters glide Along the valley, can she now be found: In all the wide-stretched prospect’s ample bound No more my mournful eye Can aught of her espy, But the sad sacred earth where her dear relics lie.94 O shades of Hagley, where is now your boast?95 Your bright inhabitant is lost. You she preferred to all the gay resorts Where female vanity might wish to shine, The pomp of cities, and the pride of courts.96 Her modest beauties shunned the public eye: To your sequestered dales97 And flow’r-embroidered vales From an admiring world you chose to fly; With Nature there retired, and Nature’s God, The silent paths of wisdom trod,98 And banished every passion from her breast, But those, the gentlest and the best, Whose holy flames with energy divine The virtuous heart enliven and improve, The conjugal, and the maternal love. Sweet babes, who, like the little playful fawns,99 Were wont to trip along these verdant lawns100 By your delighted mother’s side, Who now your infant steps shall guide? Ah! where is now the hand whose tender care To every virtue would have formed your youth,101 And strewed with flow’rs the thorny ways of truth? O loss beyond repair! O wretched father! left alone, To weep their dire misfortune, and thy own! How shall thy weakened mind, oppressed with woe, And drooping o’er thy Lucy’s grave, Perform the duties that you doubly owe,102 Now she, alas! is gone, From folly and from vice, their helpless age to save?

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William Shenstone’s correspondence William Shenstone (1714–63) was born at the Leasowes, Halesowen, and inherited the estate in 1724. His mother’s family had been locally important in previous generations, but by the time Shenstone inherited, the family income was only just adequate to maintain a gentlemanly life. Shenstone studied at Pembroke College, Oxford, where he became friends with Richard Graves (see The Spiritual Quixote below), but he left without a degree and returned to a life of retirement. As a poet and as a gardener, Shenstone was drawn to pastoral, but he also wrote essays and was a careful literary critic. He counted his letters as one of his greatest achievements and as the best record of his mind (he was to remark to a friend, ‘I seriously approve of egotism in letters’). From 1745 he set about improving the Leasowes and created one of the most famous pleasure gardens of the century. Shenstone termed his creation a ferme ornée or ornamented farm and around it he created a circuit walk with carefully placed viewpoints, along with inscriptions and statues which highlighted the natural character of the place and invited the visitor’s meditative response. Shenstone struggled with the idea of retirement and his correspondence repeatedly returns to the social usefulness of his life. The Leasowes’ fame brought him into contact with fashionable society – something for which he always yearned – but Shenstone’s emphasis on making social and aesthetic rather than economic profit from the land left him anxious about money and in debt on his death. Recommended edition The Letters of William Shenstone, ed. Marjorie Williams (Oxford, 1939).

Suggested secondary reading Michel Baridon, ‘The Gentleman as Gardener: Pope, Shenstone, Mason’, in The Crisis of Courtesy: Studies in the Conduct Book in Britain, 1600–1900, ed. Jacques Carre (Leiden, 1994). Stephen Bending, ‘Uneasy Sensations: Shenstone, Retirement and Fame’, New Arcadian Journal, 53: 4 (2002).

‘Account of an Interview between Shenstone and Thomson’ (1746) (First published in the European Magazine, 37, March 1800, pp. 185–6.) August 30, 1746. Mr William Lyttelton103 and Mr Thomson, author of the Seasons, found me reading a pamphlet in one of my niches at the Leasowes.104 Mr Lyttelton introduced his friend by saying he had undertaken to show that gentleman all the beauties of the country, and thought he could not complete his promise without giving him a view of my situation. Thomson burst out in praise of it, and appeared particularly struck with the valley and brook by which he had passed, as they came the foot-way from Hales Owen. After some little stay in the house, we

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passed into the green behind the house. Thomson wished the garden to be extended, so as to include the valley on the left hand, not considering that I meant no regular garden,105 but to embellish my whole farm. The French, it appears, have their Parque ornée; and why is not Ferme ornée as good an expression?106 He was much pleased upon observing how finely the back landscape was bounded.107 I took him to a seat near my upper pool, where he immediately mentioned Farmer’s Hill as the principal beauty of the place. He seemed pleased also with the study on the bank of the water, since removed. As we were returning, Mr Lyttelton told me, ‘that I might not perhaps know that gentleman, though he was assured I was perfectly well acquainted with him in his writings. That it was Mr Thomson.’ My behaviour was a little awkward, and better calculated to express the satisfaction I took in the honour he did me, than to give him any idea either of my understanding or politeness.108 Being limited in point of time, and conscious of an hare upon the spit109 at Hagley, he could not stay to see my upper wood: ‘You have nothing to do’ (says he) ‘but to dress Nature. Her robe is ready made; you have only to caress her, love her, kiss her, and then – descend into the valley.’ Coming out into the court110 before the house, he mentioned Clent and Waw-ton Hill as the two bubbies111 of nature; then Mr Lyttelton observed the nipple, and then Thomson the fringe of Uphmore wood; till the double entendre was worked up to a point, and produced a laugh. Thomson observed the little stream running across my gate, and hinted that he should avail himself of112 that also. We now passed into Virgil’s Grove.113 What a delightful place, says he, is this for a person of a poetical genius. I don’t wonder you’re a devotee to the Muses.114 ‘This place’, says Mr Lyttelton ‘will improve a poetical genius’. ‘Aye’, replied Mr Thomson ‘and a poetical genius will improve this place. I should think of nothing farther. Your situation detains us beyond the time appointed. How very valuable were this stream at Hagley!’115 I told him my then intention of building a model of Virgil’s Tomb,116 which, with the obelisk and a number of mottoes selected from Virgil, together with the pensive idea belonging to the place,117 might vindicate, or at least countenance, the appellation I had given it. Thomson assented to my notion of taste in gardening118 (that of contracting nature’s beauties, although he somewhat misquoted me, and did not understand the drift of my expression. Collecting, or collecting into a smaller compass, and then disposing without crowding the several varieties of nature, were perhaps a better account of it, than either was expressed by his phrase or mine.) He denominated my Virgil’s Grove there Le Vallon occlus.119 ‘Sombre’, says Mr Lyttelton. ‘No, not sombre, occlus.120 This must evidently be the idea of Petrarch’s Valclusa’.121 He recommended a walk up that valley from Virgil’s Grove. Mr Pitt (the Secretary)122 had done the same before. He was wishing at my Upper Pond to turn the water into a running stream. I mentioned the

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inconvenience, to obviate which, he proposed a bridge. I went with him to Hale’s Mills. Thomson asked if I had seen many places laid out in the modern way? – No – Asked if I had seen Chiswick?123 – Yes – He mentioned it as a sublime thing in the true Venetian taste. He supposed me to come often to town and desired to wait on me at Richmond.124 Mr Lyttelton commending Richmond prospects, he said they were only too rich in villas.125 He begged a pinch of snuff and, on passing by the abetes,126 near the Mill Pool, mentioned that Pope had a scheme in his head of planting trees to resemble a Gothic cathedral.127 Hearing the dam there was made by the monks, ‘O!’ says he,’ this is God-dam’; the wit of which I could not see. I directed them to escape Hales town, and to go up the lane by the pool side, not without an eye to the pleasing figure my house makes across that pool; where Mr Lyttelton advised me to have a boat, and was much struck with the appearance it must have from my wood. Here Mr Thomson shaking hands with me, we all parted, omnes omnia bona dicentes, et laudentes fortunam meam.128 The year after I met Mr Thomson, as I returned from church, at Hales Mill, in a hired two-wheeled chaise, with a black horse and a white one length wise.129 We accosted each other with much cordiality, and he promised earnestly to come and see me (as he had done the year before,) when I expected a longer visit. But it was then, as I remember, that the park improvements there engrossed the family’s attention, and Mr Thomson could not be spared from any projects of that sort. August 27, 1748. – The very week he was again expected at Hagley appeared this paragraph in the Birmingham paper: ‘This morning, at four, died, of a violent fever, at his house in Kew lane, the celebrated Mr James Thomson, author of the Seasons, &c.’ I have heard he waited too long for the return of his friend Dr Armstrong,130 and did not choose to employ any other physician. He had nothing of the gentleman131 in his person or address. But he made amends for the deficiency by his refined sense and spirited expression; and, as I remember, a manner of speaking not unlike his friend Quin.132 He did not talk a great deal or fluently; but, after pauses of reflection, produced something or other that accounted for his delay. W.S.

Shenstone to Lady Luxborough, 2 June 1749 . . . I lead the unhappy life of seeing nothing in the creation so idle as myself. I am continually piddling133 in little matters about my farm. What do you think of my publishing verses once a week upon my screens, for the amusement of my good friends the vulgar? My verses for the present week are published in Virgil’s Grove, and run thus:

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Here in cool grot, and mossy cell, We fauns, and tripping fairies dwell,134 Though rarely seen by human eye; Yet, when the moon, ascended high, Darts through yon limes her quiv’ring beam, We frisk it near this crystal stream. Then fear to spoil these sacred bow’rs,135 Nor wound the shrubs, nor cross the flow’rs;136 So may your path with sweets abound, So may your couch with rest be crowned! But ill betide or nymph or swain137 Who dares these hallowed haunts profane! OBERON138

My method is a very cheap one; I paste some writing-paper to a piece of deal,139 then print with a pen. This serves in root-houses,140 and under cover. Your Ladyship has been so unkind as not to let me know how your pavilion proceeds; whether you are happy in planning, or in beholding the plans executed. May I hope to hear soon? Two hundred pounds expended in a rotunda141 at Hagley, on Ionic pillars! The dome of stone, with thin lead underneath, to keep out wet. While I propose, or fancy I propose to build a piece of gothic architecture, at sight of which, all modern castles near142 shall bow their heads abased, like the other sheaves to Joseph’s.143 I send you the plan: it is for a seat on the bank above my Hermitage, and will amount, on a moderate computation, to the sum of fifteen shillings.144 Shenstone to Lady Luxborough, 27 June 1750 ’Tis now Friday morning, seven o’clock; the sky dark and lowering, and the ground wet; so I suppose, no Lady Duchess,145 Lady Die,146 Lady Caroline,147 or Lord Feilding;148 no Colonels,149 Admirals,150 or fine ladies today, and tomorrow they all go away. What a loss is this to my ambition . . . Friday noon, one o’clock A sudden change! The day has cleared up, and here arrives in the first place, Madame La Duchesse and her elder daughter Lady Car, in the next place Lord Feilding and Miss Lyttelton151 on horseback, in the last place Monsieur le Colonel152 and Lady Die in a chair. They have all been round my walks (which proved dry enough) with much seeming satisfaction . . . Further particulars of this visit I reserve for the tete-a-tete153 discourse in which your Ladyship very kindly indulges me. I believe I must end, but not without a reflection. Visits of this kind are of real

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importance to one in my station; that is, they give one some weight amongst the people with whom one is to live – one’s parishioners – and here I can’t but acknowledge how much indebted I am to your Ladyship, it is easy enough it should seem for persons of rank to distinguish any unpresuming person whom they do not disesteem, but how few are there who do this with the spirit of your Ladyship? . . . Give me leave here, my good Lady! to mention what a change there is in my scheme since I first began to lay out my little farm in paths, etc. At first I meant them merely as melancholy amusements for a person whose circumstances required a solitary life. They were so; but I ever found the solitude too deep to be agreeable.154 Of late encouraged by your Ladyship and some others I begin to covet to have my place esteemed agreeable in its way; to have it frequented; to meet now and then an human face unawares; to enjoy even the gape and stare of the mob (which Miss Lyttelton tells me I mustn’t value of a rush), but above all possible contingencies to have it honoured with the company of your Ladyship and your acquaintance.

Joseph Spence and Robert Dodsley, ‘Plan and description of the estate of William Shenstone, called the Leasowes near Halesowen, Worcestershire’ This brief account of the Leasowes in the form of a numbered key to a map and a short description was written by Robert Dodsley and Joseph Spence. Dodsley (1703–64) was the son of a schoolteacher and worked for some time as a footman before gaining success as an author and publisher. He was close friends with Shenstone and his circle and published much of their work. Joseph Spence (1699–1768) is best known for his Observations, a work in which he recorded the thoughts and conversations of his friends, and which contains a vast amount of information about gardens. The ‘Description’ is of value because it represents a working document rather than a finished publication and contains two very different accounts of Shenstone’s garden. The brief description was written as an aide-memoire and suggests something of the excitement of visiting the Leasowes – a hurried account of an experience before it fades, combining immediacy of response with an awareness of the garden’s great variety. Dodsley’s list is something different: originally keyed to a map, it is a careful minuting of all the garden’s many features. Dodsley later produced a far more elaborate prose account, running to many pages; here, however, emphasis falls not on personal emotion but on a series of objects, not on social experience but on formal aesthetic organization. In Dodsley’s view this emphasis on specifics produces a ‘better understanding’ of a place. However, in making that claim he ran counter to the prevailing aesthetics of the liberal arts, which valued the general over the particular and the abstract over the detailed: later writers, including

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Arthur Young, were to satirize this by linking an ungentlemanly concern for detail with Dodsley’s lowly origins. This item is reproduced by permission of The Huntington Library, San Marino, California. Manuscript HM 30312. Suggested secondary reading Stephen Bending, ‘One Among the Many: Popular Aesthetics, Polite Culture, and the Country House Landscape’, in The Georgian Country House: Architecture, Landscape and Society, ed. Dana Arnold (Stroud, 1998), pp. 61–78. Peter deBolla, ‘The Charm’d Eye’, in Body and Text in the Eighteenth Century, eds. Veronica Kelly and Dorothea E. Von Mücke (Stanford, CA, 1994), pp. 89–111. Douglas Chambers, The Planters of the English Landscape Garden: Botany, Trees, and The Georgics (New Haven, CT, and London, 1993), ch. 12. John Riely, ‘Shenstone’s Walks: The Genesis of the Leasowes’, Apollo, 110 (September, 1979), pp. 202–9.

1 Turnpike road between Birmingham and Bewdley. 2 Road to the House 3 Beginning of the path descending down into the valley, and leading through the Farm. 4 Entrance into a dark narrow valley 5 A small gloomy piece of water x A small root house with the fairy verses x Seats with confined views to Hales Spire, Clent Hills etc cascade etc 6 Passage through a root and a stone arch cross the road to the House. 7 Winding walk through a deep narrow shady valley, beside a running water 8 The meeting of the two rivulets, from whence they proceed to a piece of water near 20 acres, at about 100 yards distance. 9 The Priory 10 A narrow Valley between two groves. 11 Root-house, with a view of the principal cascade. 12 A small piece of water 13 Dodsley’s Bower, with the statue of Faunus. 14 A small grove. 15 A seat & vistas 16 A view of the ruins of the Priory. 17 A seat where are the shepherd’s verses. 18 A seat on a hill amidst firs, to all friends round the Wrekin. 19 A slight gothic building, where are the old English verses. 20 A view of Hales Owen at full length, etc 21 Path cross the road to the House. 22 A small cascade of 16 foot, &a seat inscribed to the genius and learning of my friends beyond the Tweed. 23 A seat with a large lawn & distant western prospect.

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24 A near view of some very wild ground. 25 An agreeable picture. 26 Mr Spence’s Seat under the great beeches. 27 The Shepherd’s Assignation Seat. Motto, Nerina Galatea etc 27 [sic] Hence the Lover’s Walk. 28 An urn to a beautiful young lady 29 A steep winding ascent into the wood, with seats & views &c 30 An handsome gothic screen, with a pleasing view of Clent Hills etc held up to the eye like a picture. 40 through mistake A small building, with Pan’s reeds etc 41 Entrance on an high terrace. 42 A seat 43 Well-shaped ground, descending in a concave manner to A, and rising in a convex one to B. 44 An home landscape up to Beech-Water, with water falls, etc 45 Another, with a view of still water. 46 Entrance into Virgil’s Grove, not easy to be described. 47 A semicircular bridge. 48 A piece of water river-fashion; &the 3rd principal cascade. 49 Path up to the House & Shrubbery. 50 Shrubbery & grass-plat. 51 The 2nd rate cascade, 23 feet high. The Round of Mr Shenstone’s Paradise. Mr Shenstone’s resolution from the first of sticking to the idea of a farm, may have contributed together with his just and pastoral turn of thoughts, toward making the most natural and rural work of anything I have seen. When you take the whole Round you go, (from the back-Platform, &through a piece of Shrubbery), down an open hill, to a dark pond; pass the private road to the House, and then come at once into a beautiful rural line:155 with a water that falls very actively in, at first; and runs, murmuring and tinkling on, to the right of you: as the resting places are on the left. On the first, you catch a little view to the spire of Hales-Owen church; and farther, a larger to part of the Village of Hasbury, on a much more rising ground. This line opens on to the view of a large water mill, etc, and you turn (to the left) into an enlargement of the Vale, which is all to be covered with water: that water to turn to the right, and be managed so as to seem to be united with the mill-water. The Vale leads you up, very gently, to what has the appearance of a wood; and opens again on a little hill, with a small open oak grove on it. When you enter this opening, you turn on the left into a part, darkened very judiciously; go through an arch of root-work: and are

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struck, at once, with the surprising cascade. This falls in a great variety of pieces, down a broken stony descent of forty or fifty foot high in all: with the upper part (designedly) half embarrassed & concealed156 with trees; and so far hidden atop, that you can’t distinguish the end of it. The views to it don’t seem to have been designed, but given you by chance; and you have three of these views (through eight or nine scattered trees) from the same seat; on the right hand part of it, you see the upper part of the cascade;157 from the middle, the lower; &from the left, the whole. (It is quite a new pleasure again, to wander up a line that goes all by the side of it.)158 Hence you wind up through a walk of small oaks,159 to the little hill above mentioned with a grove of the same. There are two semicircular seats in it and above the innermost is the figure of a Fawn in a little opening: wooded; lighter on each side, and darker in the back.

James Woodhouse, ‘An Elegy to William Shenstone, Esq; Of the Lessowes’ (1764) James Woodhouse (1735–1820) came from an old yeoman family; he left school at eight and became a shoemaker, the trade in which he worked when he wrote the following poem to Shenstone, his near neighbour at the Leasowes. It was Shenstone who sent the elegy to friends in London and who first had it printed in his own collection of poems. With the aid of a collection, Woodhouse was able to publish his own Poems on several occasions in 1764 and he became a celebrated figure for a time. He was for some years the land agent for Edward Montagu and the house steward for Montagu’s wife, the famous bluestocking, Elizabeth Montagu. Woodhouse fell on hard times again by the 1780s but was supported by Robert Dodsley’s brother James, and went on to become a bookseller and stationer. The ‘Elegy’ was written in response to Shenstone closing the Leasowes to the general public in order to protect it from vandalism and it is marked heavily by the influence of Thomson (see Spring above). Woodhouse attempts to flatter Shenstone into giving him access (something in which he succeeded) but he is also keen to demonstrate his poetic worth and aesthetic appreciation. Indeed, the poem is notable for its subtle understanding of Shenstone’s landscape and its many changes of mood. At various moments Woodhouse asserts a common bond of humanity with the more famous poet; nevertheless, when he highlights his inability to read Latin he also recognizes that the limited education of a working man inevitably excludes him from a crucial part of the garden’s experience. Recommended edition The Life and Poetical Works of James Woodhouse (1735–1820), ed. Rev. R. I. Woodhouse (London, 1896).

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Suggested secondary reading William Christmas, The Lab’Ring Muses: Work, Writing and the Social Order in English Plebeian Poetry 1730–1830 (Newark, DE, 2001).

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Pardon, O Shenstone! An intruding strain,160 Nor blame the boldness of a village swain,161 Who feels ambition haunt the lowliest cell,162 And dares on thy distinguished name to dwell;163 Let no censorious frown deform thy face, But gladd’ning smiles maintain their wonted grace.164 Hence, vain surmise! My muse can ne’er offend One; who so good? To all mankind a friend. Though mine the notes of a poor oaten reed,165 And thine there’s few can equal; none exceed! What true respect inspires, let me believe The generous Shenstone will at least forgive; Shall he, benevolent as wise, disdain The muse’s suitor, though a sandaled swain?166 Though no auspicious rent-rolls grace my line,167 I boast the same original divine. Though niggard fate withheld her sordid ore,168 Yet liberal nature gave her better store;169 Whose influence early did my mind inspire To read her works, and seek her mighty Sire.170 Oft has she led me to thy fair domains,171 Where she, with art, in sweet assemblage reigns;172 Has led me to the dusky twilight cell,173 Where meagre melancholy loves to dwell:174 Oft has creative fancy seen her move,175 With pensive pace, along the mournful grove; Her haggard eye, and looks all downward bent, Slow, creeping on, with solemn steps she went; Where tow’ring trees assail the sapphire sky, While on their tops the panting breezes die, Whose deep-entwined branches all conspire To banish Sol, or damp his parching fire.176 In vain! Their efforts but endear the blaze, While through the shade his penetrating rays Between the quivering foliage all around In circled dances gild the chequered ground. See, through the centre, bursts a flood of light,177 And woods, hills, hamlets rush upon the sight. Again immerged, a-down the green abode,

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My joyful feet explored the mazy road;178 Whence not a sacrilegious footstep strays,179 Nor, lawless, seeks to tread forbidden ways. Here rich parterres; here shrubs and streams appear,180 Whose trilling murmurs strike the ravished ear. See, from their dark recess they slowly creep, The tear-hung flowers beside the margin weep.181 With gurgling moan the winding stream complains, And dyes its pebbly bed with sanguine stains;182 Yet, blest by heav’n, its gracious ends to serve, To cheer the languid eye, and brace the slackened nerve:183 Th’insatiate pond its boundless gifts receives,184 Absorbed and buried in its crystal waves; The bounding fish its silver surface spurn, And hail the Naiad as she stoops her urn;185 Thence with a sudden burst, and louder tone, The shining cataract rushes headlong down.186 Well pleased beheld the wide expanded stream Reflecting far an adamantine gleam.187 Its self-scooped reservoir, beneath, it laves188 In foaming eddies; then, in circling waves, Kisses in wanton sport the rocky sides, Till, sweetly smiling, smoothly on it glides. What flowers along its borders nature spreads, Which o’er the liquid mirror hang their heads! And there, self-loved, their painted charms survey, Until, Narcissus-like, they pine away.189 Here gloomy grottos spread a solemn shade;190 There bench’d alcoves afford their friendly aid:191 Here lucid streams in wild meanders stray,192 And deviate far, to share the smoothest way; Or, nobly bold, with unremitting pride, O’er stones and fragments pour th’impetuous tide; While on the margin, with Vertumnus, reigns193 The blooming Flora, chequ’ring all the plains;194 And painted kine the flow’ry herbage graze,195 Whose milky store their bill of fare repays;196 While, warbling round, the plumy choirists throng,197 And glad th’horizon with their rural song.198 Hail, blooming Eden! Hail, Arcadian shades!199 Where dwells Apollo; dwells th’Aonian maids: Immortal train! Who always thee attend,

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Their chosen fav’rite, and their constant friend: With heart-felt joy I’ve traced their various song, Expressed in fragments, all thy walks along:200 To read them all would be my humble pride; But only part is granted, part denied:201 I feel no Grecian, feel no Roman fire;202 I only share the British muse’s lyre; And that stern penury dares almost deny; For manual toils alone my wants supply: The awl and pen by turns possess my hand,203 And worldy cares, e’en now, the muse’s hour demand.204 Once fickle fortune’s gifts before me shone,205 But now that dazzling prospect’s lost and gone!206 What is, is best: And now that hope’s no more,207 Am I less happy than I was before,208 Who live resigned to my Creator’s will, And sweet contentment’s presence blesses still? Think not I write for hire! – My gen’rous muse209 Has no such mean, such mercenary views! I only wish to be thy serving friend,210 And on thy footsteps faithful to attend: I ask no pay; let all my wages be My mind’s improvement, while I wait on thee. To hear thy works, to read them o’er and o’er, Would be both Indies; Wisdom’s richest store!211 Aw’d by thy modest worth, I dare no more. Is this my prayer? It must acceptance find; My muse not venal; thine humane and kind.212 Once thy propitious gates no fears betray’d,213 But bid all welcome to the sacred shade; Till Belial’s sons (of gratitude the bane)214 With cursed riot dar’d thy groves profane: And now their fatal mischiefs I deplore, Condemned to dwell in Paradise no more!215 Thy just resentment, like Heaven’s flaming guard, With frowning bolts all entrance has bebarred, On that blest day, which with the great I share216 In luscious ease, retired from toil and care; That ease, which banishes the frown austere, And ranks the peasant equal with the peer.217 Then hear my humble claim; and smiling grant The fond petition of thy supplicant;218 That when before thy villa’s gate I stand,

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An offered key may grace thy servant’s hand:219 Nor shall the youthful votary of the muse,220 Nor friends select, her haunts and thine abuse; But share her influence; bless the live-long day; And when again she sings, resound a nobler lay.221 Enough; nor shall her tasteless, tuneless song,222 With scrannel pipe, thy gentle patience wrong.223

Richard Graves, from The Spiritual Quixote; or, The Summer’s Ramble of Mr Geoffry Wildgoose. A Comic Romance (1773) Richard Graves (1715–1804) met Shenstone at Pembroke College, Oxford, and studied there at the same time as the Methodist leader George Whitefield. He received a fellowship at All Souls College and was ordained in 1740. Preferment and teaching only gradually brought Graves wealth but in his later years he became a well-known figure in Bath. He was a prolific author and wrote about his friend Shenstone not only in the Spiritual Quixote but in his Recollections of William Shenstone (1788) and more obliquely in Columella (1779), a novel in which he champions an active, useful life over the passivity of retirement. Graves began writing The Spiritual Quixote in 1757, although it was not published until 1773. It is written in the picaresque tradition, and consists of the numerous incidents which befall its hero, Geoffry Wildgoose, as he travels around the country. It is also a sustained attack on the increasingly popular religion of Methodism. Graves’s account of Methodism adopts the familiar approach of equating social and geographical movement with false religion and anarchic disrespect for the established order. Wildgoose, the hero of the novel, is a lay preacher, an enthusiast and inevitably therefore a misguided soul. He speaks in the ‘spiritualized’ language of Methodism, but his ideas are consistently discredited by his later actions. While Graves has fun at Shenstone’s expense, what we also see in such moments is the recognition of a threat to the established order. Wildgoose literally tramples on the roots of landed power: thus Methodist principles hold up the spectre of a dangerously misguided and disruptive popular voice. The destruction of Shenstone’s garden plays out the fear that spiritualism, itinerancy and rejection of a settled parochial structure will ultimately destroy not only the aesthetic harmony of the garden but the social harmony of the nation as a whole. Recommended edition The Spiritual Quixote, or, The Summer’s Ramble of Mr Geoffry Wildgoose. A Comic Romance, ed. Clarence Tracy (London, 1967).

Suggested secondary reading Charles J. Hill, ‘Shenstone and Richard Graves’ Columella’, PMLA, 49 (1934), pp. 566–76. Clarence Tracy, A Portrait of Richard Graves (Cambridge, 1987).

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Book 9, Chapter 7. A Sketch of the Leasowes, and of the Character of the worthy Possessor of that Place The sun was now far upon the decline towards the west, when the two pilgrims had passed a little market town, on the Birmingham road, called Hales-Owen. As they walked on, they saw an object amidst the woods on the edge of the hill; which, upon enquiry, they were told was called, Shenstone’s Folly. This is a name, which, with some sort of propriety, the common people give to any work of taste, the utility of which exceeds the level of their comprehension. As they ascended the hill, through a shady lane, they observed a Gentleman, in his own hair,224 giving directions to some labourers, who were working beyond the usual hour, in order to finish a receptacle for a cataract of water, a glimpse of which appeared through the trees on the side of the road. As Wildgoose and his friend, partly out of curiosity, and partly to take breath, made a little pause, the Gentleman turned his face towards them; when Wildgoose immediately discovered him to be no other than his old acquaintance, the now celebrated Mr Shenstone, whose place began to be frequented by people of distinction from all parts of England, on account of its natural beauties, which, by the mere force of genius and good taste, Mr Shenstone had improved and exhibited to so much advantage. And this had discovered to the world his own fine poetical talents and polite learning, which, from his modesty, would otherwise probably have been buried in solitude and obscurity. Mr Shenstone soon recollected his old academical friend and associate; and, with that warmth of benevolence for which he is distinguished amongst those that know him, insisted upon his staying, that night at least, with him at the Leasowes; which invitation Mr Wildgoose was sufficiently inclined to accept of, though he had not been prompted to it by his fellow-traveller, who never was so cynical as to slight the least overture towards an hospitable reception. As they passed towards the house, Mr Shenstone pointed out to his friend many of the beauties of his place. He showed him his cascades, which are so deservedly admired, and the reservoirs that supplied them; the prospects of the country from various points of view; his grove, dedicated to Virgil; his urns, statues, and his admirable inscriptions. He mentioned several people of the first quality, and, what Mr Shenstone valued more, of the first taste, who had done him the honour to visit his place.225 And particularly he informed him, ‘that he expected Lord D—tm—th,226 and some other company, the very next day; on which account, he had been inspecting his reservoirs, got his walks cleaned out, and made the men work so late, in order to finish the cataract, where his friend had first seen him.’ As Wildgoose knew the elegance of Mr Shenstone’s taste, he could not but add his suffrage227 to those of the rest of the world, in admiring

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his place; and observed, ‘that, doubtless, the pleasures we receive from gardens, woods, and lawns, and other rural embellishments, were the most innocent of any amusements;228 but then we should consider them as amusements only, and not let them engross too much of our attention; that we ought to spiritualize our ideas229 as much as possible; and that it was worthwhile to enquire, how far too violent a fondness for these merely inanimate beauties might interfere with our love of God, and attach us too strongly to the things of this world’.230 This gave Mr Shenstone an opportunity in his turn, of combating his friend’s enthusiastic notions; who (he found by his own account) had deserted the station in which his own choice and his mother’s approbation had fixed him, to sally forth and preach the Gospel, without any other call to that office than what a warm imagination had suggested, and which a romantic view of converting sinners at large had prompted him to undertake.231 The two friends, however, supped together very amicably; and, after drinking a cool-tankard, and spending a pretty late evening in talking over the incidents of their youth, which they had spent together in the University,232 Mr Shenstone showed his friend into an elegant bedchamber, fitted up in a Gothic taste; to which the bed itself, the rest of the furniture, and the painted glass233 in the window, all corresponded. And contiguous to this, he lodged Tugwell, his trusty squire and fellow-traveller, and wished them a good night Chapter 8 A Practical Lecture against the Vanities of this World As soon as Mr Shenstone rose in the morning (which was not always at a very early hour), he went up to his friend’s apartment, to summon him to breakfast; when, to his surprise, he found both him and his companion departed, without taking leave of him; and upon Wildgoose’s table was left the following letter: ‘My good Friend, I am called hence by the Spirit:234 in the visions of the night, it was revealed unto me. I must own, that, like the good Publius you have received and lodged us courteously;235 and my bowels yearn236 for your salvation. But, my dear friend, I am afraid you have set up idols in your heart.237 You seem to pay a greater regard to Pan and Sylvanus,238 than to Paul or Silas.239 You have forsaken the fountains of the living Lord, and hewn you out cisterns, broken cisterns, that will hold no water.240 But my conscience beareth testimony against this idolatry. Bel boweth down; Nebo stoopeth.241 I have delivered my own soul;242 and will pray for your conversion. I am, Your brother in the Lord, Geoffry Wildgoose.’

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This extraordinary letter, and his friend’s abrupt departure, greatly alarmed Mr Shenstone: but, going out to view his principal cascade, he soon discovered the mystery; that his friend, imagining he was too much affected with the applause which were bestowed on his good taste in laying out his place, had forced open his sluices, and emptied his reservoirs, so that, in a literal sense, his cisterns could hold no water, nor his cascades make any great figure that day. And, what was more distressful, he had thrown down a leaden statue of the Piping Fawn243 from its pedestal; which was a damage that could not easily be repaired before the arrival of his illustrious guests. Mr Shenstone was a little provoked at the first discovery of this incident; but, upon reflection, could not forbear laughing at his old friend’s frantic proceedings; and thought the singularity of the adventure would afford his guests as much entertainment, as a greater flash from his cascades, or as viewing his place in more exact order.

Notes

Introduction 1 The Country and the City (London, 1973), pp. 1–2. 2 Penshurst: The Semiotics of Place and the Poetics of History (London, 1984). 3 E. A. Wrigley, People, Cities and Wealth: The Transformation of Traditional Society (Oxford, 1987), p. 170. 4 Joan Thirsk, ‘Industries in the Countryside’, in Essays in the Economic and Social History of Tudor and Stuart England, in Honour of R. H. Tawney, ed. F. J. Fisher (Cambridge, 1961), pp. 70–88. 5 Joan Thirsk, ‘The Farming Regions of England’, in Agrarian History of England and Wales (AHEW) IV, pp. 2–3. 6 Thirsk, ‘Farming Regions’, pp. 54–5; Thirsk, ‘The Isle of Axholme before Vermuyden’, in The Rural Economy of England: Collected Essays (London, 1984), pp. 149–62. 7 Alan Everitt, ‘The Marketing of Agricultural Produce’, in AHEW IV, p. 466. 8 The Illustrated Journeys of Celia Fiennes 1685–c.1712, ed. Christopher Morris (Phoenix Hill, 1995), p. 197. 9 C. G. A. Clay, Economic Expansion and Social Change: England 1500–1700, 2 vols (Cambridge, 1984), p. 58. 10 Keith Wrightson, Earthly Necessities: Economic Lives in Early Modern Britain (New Haven, CT and London, 2000), pp. 137–9. 11 See esp. Alan Everitt, ‘Farm Labourers’, in AHEW IV, pp. 396–465; and Ann Kussmaul, Servants in Husbandry in Early Modern England (Cambridge, 1981). 12 See Steve Hindle, The State and Social Change in Early Modern England, c.1550–1640 (Basingstoke, 2000), ch. 8. 13 John Norden, The Surveiors Dialogue (1610), p. 27, sig. *2v. 14 See Joan Thirsk, ‘The Common Fields’, in The Rural Economy of England, pp. 35–57. 15 Thirsk, ‘Farming Regions’, pp. 8–9. 16 A. L. Beier, The Problem of the Poor in Tudor and Early Stuart England (London and New York, 1983), p. 10. 17 Peter Bowden, ‘Agricultural Prices, Farm Profits, and Rents’, in AHEW IV, pp. 684–7; David Grigg, Population Growth and Agrarian Change: An Historical Perspective (Cambridge, 1990), pp. 86–7; Wrightson, Earthly Necessities, pp. 71–4; Mark Overton, Agricultural Revolution in England: The Transformation of the Agrarian Economy 1500–1850 (Cambridge, 1996), pp. 31–3. 18 A Prymmer or boke of private prayer . . . auctorysed and set fourth by the Kinges majestie (1553), sig. A5v; see further Andrew McRae, God Speed the Plough: The Representation of Agrarian England, 1500–1660 (Cambridge, 1996), ch. 1. 19 Thirsk, ‘Common Fields’, p. 45; E. P. Thompson, ‘The Grid of Inheritance: A Comment’, in Family and Inheritance: Rural Society in Western Europe, 1200–1800, eds. Jack Goody, Joan Thirsk and E. P. Thompson (Cambridge, 1976), p. 346. 20 Clay, Economic Expansion, pp. 146–7. 21 See Amy Erickson, Women and Property in Early Modern England (London and New York, 1993), esp. ch. 11. 206

Notes 207 22 First published in 1557, the book was incorporated with the ‘Points of Huswiferie’ in 1562, and ran through 23 editions, down to 1638. 23 Sara Mendelson and Patricia Crawford, Women in Early Modern England 1550–1720 (Oxford, 1998), chs 5–6. 24 E. A. Wrigley and R. S. Schofield, The Population History of England 1541–1871: A Reconstruction (London, 1981), pp. 208–9. 25 Clay, Economic Expansion, p. 26. 26 Grigg, Population Growth, p. 89. 27 Clay, Economic Expansion, p. 97. 28 John Walter and Roger Schofield, ‘Famine, Disease and Crisis Mortality in Early Modern Society’, in Famine, Disease and the Social Order in Early Modern Society, eds. J. Walter and R. Schofield (Cambridge, 1989), pp. 1–73. 29 Joan Thirsk, ‘Enclosing and Engrossing’, in AHEW IV, p. 200. 30 J. R. Wordie, ‘The Chronology of English Enclosure, 1500–1914’, Economic History Review, 2nd series, 36 (1983), p. 502. 31 Joan Thirsk, ‘Horn and Thorn in Staffordshire: the Economy of a Pastoral Country’, in The Rural Economy of England, pp. 163–4. 32 This is an issue of debate among historians. See especially Maurice Beresford, ‘Habitation versus Improvement: the Debate on Enclosure by Agreement’, in Essays in the Economic and Social History of Tudor and Stuart England, pp. 40–69; Roger B. Manning, Village Revolts: Social Protest and Popular Disturbances in England, 1509–1640 (Oxford, 1988), ch. 5; and John E. Martin, Feudalism to Capitalism: Peasant and Landlord in English Agrarian Development (London, 1983), pp. 138–9. 33 Thompson, ‘Grid’, p. 337. 34 Five Hundred Points of Good Husbandry, ed. Geoffrey Grigson (Oxford, 1984), p. 138. 35 Works (3 vols, 1564), vol. 2, fol. 15r; cf. Isaiah, 5:8. 36 Joan Thirsk, ‘Enclosure and Engrosing’, in AHEW IV, pp. 213–38. 37 See esp. R. H. Tawney, The Agrarian Problem in the Sixteenth Century (New York, 1912), pp. 287–310; and Eric Kerridge, Agrarian Problems in the Sixteenth Century and After (London, 1969), ch. 3. 38 Martin, Feudalism to Capitalism, p. 175. 39 Joan Thirsk, ‘Agrarian Problems and the English Revolution’, in Town and Countryside in the English Revolution, ed. R. C. Richardson (Manchester, 1992), p. 170; Thirsk, ‘Changing Attitudes to Enclosure in the Seventeenth Century’, in The Festschrift for Professor Ju-Hwan Oh (Taegu, Korea, 1991), p. 530. 40 Quoted in Roy Porter, English Society in the Eighteenth Century (London, 1990), p. 210; see further J. M. Neeson, Commoners: Common Right, Enclosure and Social Change in England, 1700–1820 (Cambridge, 1993), ch. 1. 41 Joyce Oldham Appleby, Economic Thought and Ideology in Seventeenth-Century England (Princeton, NJ, 1978), p. 141. 42 J. V. Beckett, The Agricultural Revolution (Oxford, 1990), p. 9. Mark Overton’s more recent study spans a longer period still, yet argues that 1750–1850 was the period of most rapid change (Agricultural Revolution in England: The Transformation of the Agrarian Economy 1500–1850 (Cambridge, 1996). See further G. E. Mingay (ed.), The Agricultural Revolution: Changes in Agriculture 1650–1880 (London, 1977); and Eric Kerridge, The Agricultural Revolution (London, 1967). 43 Joan Thirsk, ‘Seventeenth-Century Agriculture and Social Change’, in The Rural Economy of England, p. 205.

208 Notes 44 Kerridge, Agricultural Revolution, p. 181. 45 Lawrence Stone, ‘Social Mobility in England, 1500–1700’, Past and Present, 33 (1966), p. 23. 46 Tom Williamson and Liz Bellamy, Property and Landscape: A Social History of Land Ownership and the English Countryside (London, 1987), pp. 117–19. 47 Kim Lawes, Paternalism and Politics: The Revival of Paternalism in Early NineteenthCentury Britain (Basingstoke, 2000). 48 The Reformed Husbandman (1651), sig. A2v. 49 P. J. Cain and A. G. Hopkins, ‘Gentlemanly Capitalism and British Expansion Overseas: I. The Old Colonial System, 1688–1850’, Economic History Review, 2nd series, 39 (1986), p. 504. 50 Williamson and Bellamy, Property and Landscape, p. 128. 51 K. D. M. Snell, Annals of the Labouring Poor: Social Change and Agrarian England, 1660–1900 (Cambridge, 1985), ch. 2. 52 Everitt, ‘Farm Labourers’, p. 399. 53 See Malcolm Kitch, ‘Population Movement and Migration in Pre-Industrial Rural England’, in The English Rural Community: Image and Analysis, ed. Brian Short (Cambridge, 1992), pp. 62–84. 54 See A. L. Beier, Masterless Men: The Vagrancy Problem in England 1560–1640 (London, 1985). 55 On pastoral, georgic, and the question of genre, see Alastair Fowler, ‘Georgic and Pastoral: Laws of Genre in the Seventeenth Century’, in Culture and Cultivation in Early Modern England: Writing and the Land, eds. Michael Leslie and Timothy Raylor (Leicester, 1992), pp. 81–8. 56 Frank Kermode, English Pastoral Poetry from the Beginnings to Marvell: An Anthology (New York, 1972), p. xiv; quoted in Michael McKeon, ‘The Pastoral Revolution’, in Refiguring Revolutions: Aesthetics and Politics from the English Revolution to the Romantic Revolution, eds. Kevin Sharpe and Steven Zwicker (Berkeley, CA, 1998), pp. 267–89. 57 McKeon, ‘Pastoral Revolution’, p. 271. 58 But for an interpretation of pastoral which resists this broader reading, see Paul Alpers, What Is Pastoral? (Chicago, 1996). 59 See McRae, God Speed the Plough, pp. 265–7. 60 Williams, The Country and the City, p. 22. 61 L. Montrose, ‘Of Gentlemen and Shepherds: the Politics of Elizabethan Pastoral Form’, English Literary History, 50 (1983), pp. 415–59 (427). 62 For the famous clash between Pope and Ambrose over the nature of pastoral, see Annabel Patterson, Pastoral and Ideology: Virgil to Valéry (Berkeley, CA, 1987), pp. 206–14. 63 Samuel Johnson, Lives of the English Poets, ed. George Birkbeck Hill, 3 vols (Oxford, 1905), 1.163. 64 Johnson, Lives of the English Poets, 3.356. 65 See Dwight L. Durling, Georgic Tradition in English Poetry (New York, 1935); John Chalker, The English Georgic: A Study in the Development of a Form (London, 1969); Richard Feingold, Nature and Society: Later Eighteenth-Century Uses of the Pastoral and Georgic (Hassocks, Sussex, 1978), ch. 3; Andrew McRae, God Speed the Plough, ch. 7. 66 Anthony Low, The Georgic Revolution (Princeton, NJ, 1985), pp. 7–12; but see also Douglas Lane Patey, ‘Anne Finch, John Dyer, and the Georgic Syntax of Nature’, in Augustan Subjects: Essays in Honour of Martin C. Battestin, ed. Albert J. Rivero (Newark and London, 1997), pp. 29–46, who argues that Low’s definition of

Notes 209

67

68

69 70

71

72

73

74

75 76

77 78

georgic is based on a Renaissance model and fails to take into account historical change. John Barrell, English Literature in History 1730–80: An Equal Wide Survey (London, 1983), ch. 1; Karen O’Brien, ‘Imperial Georgic, 1660–1789’, in The Country and the City Revisited: England and the Politics of Culture, 1550–1850, eds. Gerald Maclean, Donna Landry and Joseph P. Ward (Cambridge, 1999), pp. 160–79. On the early development of literary landscape see James Turner, The Politics of Landscape: Rural Scenery and Society in English Poetry 1630–1660 (Oxford, 1979), ch. 1. On the emergence of ‘landscape’ as a recognizable visual category in Renaissance Europe, see Malcolm Andrews, Landscape and Western Art (Oxford, 1999). See Esther Moir, The Discovery of Britain: The English Tourists, 1540–1840 (London, 1964); Ian Ousby, The Englishman’s England: Taste, Travel and the Rise of Tourism (Cambridge, 1990). More specifically in the context of the picturesque, see Ann Bermingham’s essay, ‘The Picturesque and ready-to-wear femininity’, in Stephen Copley and Peter Garside, eds, The Politics of the Picturesque, Landscape and Aesthetics since 1770 (Cambridge, 1994), pp. 81–119, where she writes, ‘In aestheticising the natural and often commonplace scenery of Britain, the Picturesque awakened a large segment of the population to the realisation that aesthetic judgement was not the gift of the privileged few but could be learned by anyone and applied to just about anything’ (p. 87). See especially, Malcolm Andrews, The Search for the Picturesque: Landscape Aesthetics and Tourism in Britain, 1760–1800 (Aldershot and Stanford, CA, 1989); John Barrell, The Idea of Landscape and the Sense of Place 1730–1840: An Approach to the Poetry of John Clare (Cambridge, 1972); Ann Bermingham, Landscape and Ideology (Berkeley, CA, 1986); S. Copley and P. Garside (eds), Politics of the Picturesque; Kim Ian Michasiw, ‘Nine Revisionist Theses on the Picturesque’, Representations, 38 (1992), pp. 76–100. For the standard study of Gilpin’s concern with formal problems of composition, see Carl Paul Barbier, William Gilpin, his Drawings, Teachings, and Theory of the Picturesque (Oxford, 1963). On the gendered language of aesthetics, see especially John Barrell, ‘The Dangerous Goddess: Masculinity, Prestige and the Aesthetic in Early EighteenthCentury Britain’, in his The Birth of Pandora and the Division of Knowledge (London, 1992); Elizabeth A. Bohls, in her Women Travel Writers and the Language of Aesthetics, 1716–1818 (Cambridge, 1995); and Ann Bermingham, ‘Elegant Females and Gentleman Connoisseurs’, in The Consumption of Culture 1600–1800: Image, Object, Text, eds. Ann Bermingham and John Brewer (London, 1995), pp. 489–513. Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey, ed. John Davie (Oxford, 1971), p. 87. See also Tim Fulford, Landscape, Liberty and Authority: Poetry, Criticism and Politics from Thomson to Wordsworth (Cambridge, 1996), who argues that Gilpin’s mode of picturesque description is ‘energized by the disorder of the scenery and its people, even whilst he defends the political status quo and the aesthetic rule of gentlemanly propriety’ (p. 156). John Dixon Hunt, Garden and Grove: The Italian Renaissance Garden and the English Imagination 1600–1750 (London, 1986). Tom Williamson, Polite Landscapes: Gardens and Society in Eighteenth-Century England (Stroud and Baltimore, MD, 1995).

210 Notes 79 Douglas Chambers, The Planters of the English Landscape Garden: Botany, Trees, and The Georgics (New Haven, CT and London, 1993). 80 See Edward Harwood, ‘Personal Identity and the Eighteenth-Century Garden’, Journal of Garden History, 13:1 and 2 (1993), pp. 36–48; and Williamson, Polite Landscapes, passim. 81 It was a claim which had already been made by Joseph Addison in his series of essays entitled ‘The Pleasures of the Imagination’, in The Spectator, 1712. 82 See John Barrell, ‘The Public Prospect and the Private View: the Politics of Taste in Eighteenth-Century Britain’, in Reading Landscape: Country – City – Capital, ed. Simon Pugh (Manchester, 1990), pp. 19–40 (pp. 28–9). 83 For Hagley and the Leasowes, see New Arcadian Journal, 53:4 (2002). For the Leasowes, see also Chambers, Planters of the English Landscape Garden, ch. 12; and Christopher Gallagher, ‘The Leasowes: A History of the Landscape’, Garden History, 24:2 (1996), pp. 201–20. 84 Peter deBolla, ‘The charm’d eye’, in Body and Text in the Eighteenth Century, eds. Veronica Kelly and Dorothea E. Von Mücke (Stanford, CT, 1994), pp. 89–111. 85 David Norbrook, Poetry and Politics in the English Renaissance (London, 1984), pp. 30–2. 86 Cf. Donna Landry’s study of eighteenth-century female labouring poets, The Muses of Resistance: Laboring-Class Women’s Poetry in Britain, 1739–1796 (Cambridge, 1990). 87 Linda Levy Peck, Court Patronage and Corruption in Early Stuart England (London, 1990), p. 3. 88 See Christopher Hill, The World Turned Upside Down: Radical Ideas During the English Revolution (London, 1972). 89 Cf. Christopher Hill, ‘From Lollards to Levellers’, in The Collected Essays of Christopher Hill, Volume Two (Brighton, 1986), pp. 89–116. 90 Tessa Watt, Cheap Print and Popular Piety 1550–1640 (Cambridge, 1991), p. 194.

Chapter 1 1 2 3 4

5 6 7 8 9

10

Feudalism and Beyond: the Anxiety of Change

not . . . stealing: not the only cause which will necessarily lead to stealing. forsooth: truly. wont: accustomed. become . . . themselves: the image of sheep devouring people, based on a traditional satiric strategy of inversion, became after More a conventional motif of antienclosure complaint. They . . . cities: reference to the depopulating effect of enclosure when it involves conversion of land from cultivation of crops to production of wool. certain abbots: before the Reformation, monasteries were major landowners in Britain. God wot: God knows. weal public: commonwealth. forests . . . parks: all types of land ‘lost’ to cultivation, and thus useless in the project of feeding the population. More specifically, this comment directs attention to the elite pursuit of hunting, which became increasingly controversial as pressure for land increased in line with population growth. lands. a specific and obsolute usage, meaning plains among trees. glebe land: land assigned to a clergyman as part of his benefice.

Notes 211 11 wilderness: uncultivated land. 12 cormorant: a large, reputedly voracious sea-bird; hence an insatiably greedy person. 13 compass about: encompass. 14 pale: fence. 15 covin: fraudulent action; secret contrivance or device. 16 silly: weak, feeble; deserving of pity. 17 though . . . sale: probably ‘though it would bear keeping’; however, the sense of More’s Latin is rather ‘though it would not command a great price if they could afford to wait for a buyer’. 18 a thing of nought: next to nothing. 19 God wot: God knows (here, ironic). 20 For . . . requisite: claims that sheep-farming required less labour than tillage are conventional in anti-enclosure complaint; however, a number of historians, as well as some commentators at the time, have disputed this assertion, and directed attention to the labour-intensive work involved in cloth manufacture, including shearing, spinning, dyeing and weaving. 21 victuals: food; basic provisions. 22 Yea . . . all: the claim that the price of wool rose along with supply seems paradoxical; however historical research into the years 1514–17 supports More’s point. The rise may be attributable to a pestilence – mentioned in the following lines – which affected the number of sheep in the country. 23 fain: obliged. 24 the rot: virulent disease affecting the liver of sheep. 25 murrain: plague. 26 lust: wish, desire. 27 2. by no means a considerable income; situates the man well below the minimum level of around £20 required for gentry status. The poem is therefore focusing on those of mediocre status who are seeking to rise through exploitative strategies of improvement. 28 3. the landowner’s employment of a surveyor draws attention to a relatively new occupation. Like many other social commentators, Crowley suggests that land surveys encourage a landlord to disregard his moral duties to his tenants. 29 8. than he ever did before. 30 12. pass: care. 31 14. wist: knew, was informed. 32 16. list: chooses, wishes. 33 17. trow: believe; accept as true or trustworthy. 34 19. the voice is God’s, and is loaded with the threat of hellfire. of: as a result of. 35 20. a marginal citation at this point of Luke 16 (the parable of the unjust steward), reinforces the biblical morality of the doctrine of stewardship. bailiwick: literally, a place under the jurisdiction of a bailiff; here used loosely to denote the rent raiser’s manor. 36 7. share my grief; but also a pun on ‘part’, thus encouraging participation in the song. 37 9. the refrain is never given in full; nor is there any indication whether it is to be sung just once, or regularly throughout the ballad. 38 10. in Lincoln dwelt: possibly refers to the town Lincoln, but more likely means the county Lincolnshire. 39 12. labouring man: man of low degree, most likely employed for casual labouring.

212 Notes 40 13. Ireland: there were no major English campaigns against Ireland between the accession of James I in 1603 and this ballad’s probable date of publication; consequently, the reference to Irish wars may either relate back to the final years of the reign of Elizabeth, or suggest an involvement with an ongoing military presence. 41 15. that country: perhaps Ireland; but more likely the ‘country’, or region, in which the man had lived. 42 21. brought to bed: brought to childbirth; gave birth. 43 27. vile conceit: immoral reasoning. 44 28. should: would be obliged to. 45 29. the other: the children. 46 34–5. strained: distrained (i.e. seized for sale in lieu of rent). 47 37. bent: disposed. 48 42. your cause: since the landlord in theory held his land under the king and in practice might be responsible for raising military contingents, the war might well be described as ‘his’ cause. 49 53. to get enough food to maintain herself and her children. 50 55. whipping post: whipping was a common punishment for vagrancy. 51 57. roast: harsh treatment. 52 61. seat: estate. 53 63. caitiff: wretch, villain. 54 67. unfortunate: unlucky, inauspicious. 55 71. a year and a day was a standard period for a lease. 56 77. red . . . corn: red wheat is a variety of common wheat; ‘corn’ was used generically, to denote a cereal or grain crop. 57 78–81. hoarding grain for times of famine, when basic foodstuffs (‘victuals’) would command a greater price, was outlawed by government regulations. 58 88. scourge: literally a blow with a whip; applied figuratively to divine punishment. 59 90–1. his wife was tried and burned at the stake for witchcraft. 60 92–3. his daughter is living in disgrace in London as a whore. 61 94. ’sizes last: the most recent sitting of the local criminal court (the ‘assizes’). 62 99. enemy: who this particular ‘enemy’ might be is not clear. 63 104–5. for he copulated with a female dog, contrary to natural law. 64 108. sodomite: sodomy was defined loosely at this time as any sexual act considered unnatural. 65 118. Whereas water: the water of which. 66 121. house: household. 67 125. she was deprived of through misfortune. 68 3. portion: dowry. 69 11. seat: estate; he is referring to the property of their hostess, Lady Alworth. 70 14. summer progress: tour of country houses. 71 16. pile: large, stately building. 72 17. revenue: income derived from the estate. 73 22. engines: schemes, machinations. 74 30. credit: good name. 75 37. contemn report: scorn popular opinion. 76 45. her marriage to Lord Lovell would earn Margaret Overreach the right to be addressed as ‘right honourable’. 77 48. nil ultra: no more to be wished. 78 50. equivalent: sufficient. port: manner of living. 79 55. ‘want’ is here personified as the persecutor of the prodigal.

Notes 213 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91

92 93 94 95 96

97 98

99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111

56. frighted: frightened. 60–1. or . . . brightness: proverbial. 62. temper: constitution, character. 68. cormorant: see note 12 to More, above. 69–70. grand . . . common: encloser of common fields. 72. the image is of orphans weeping outside his door. vicinage: proximity. tenements: unclear; could mean either land held by tenants, land held as freehold property, or a dwelling-place. cottages: small, often temporary houses, erected by labourers. later . . . Car. I: towards the end of the English Civil War (in the time of Charles I). Oswaldstree: the old form of Oswestry (Hey). had . . . opposition: in the Commonwealth period (1649–60), many radicals who opposed a state Church sought to abolish the compulsory payment of tithes; this rector was more fortunate than many clergymen elsewhere in the country. One . . . Myddle: Sturdy enclosed part of the lane for his own use, and was subsequently forced by the manorial court to pay a fine for the crime of encroachment. but . . . common: they may use the common only as a right of way (driftways onto commons were known in Shropshire as straker routes (Hey)). controverted: debated. liberties of Salop: liberties were areas beyond the boundaries of a city or town, which were nonetheless subject to the control of municipal authorities. walk their boundaries: Rogationtide ceremonies, or beating the bounds, were annual processions conceived in Catholic ritual for the purpose of blessing the fields, but subsequently embraced as much for their practical function of confirming property and parish boundaries. croft: piece of enclosed ground. 1. Auburn: there has been much debate about the location of Auburn, with suggestions ranging from Goldsmith’s home village of Lissoy in Ireland, to Nuneham in Oxfordshire and Albourne in Wiltshire. It is more useful, however, to recognize Auburn not as a specific place but as an imaginative site for Goldsmith’s concerns. 2. swain: Goldsmith adopts pastoral conventions to describe a country labourer or shepherd. 10. cot: cottage. 14. talking age: the conversation of the aged. 15. coming day: Sunday, or perhaps a holiday. 18. Led up: began. 22. sleights of art: tricks. 27. mistrustless . . . smutted face: i.e. he is the victim of a game in which he is fooled into covering his face with dirt. 30. matron: mother. 40. half a tillage: i.e. only half of the land previously tilled or ploughed is now in use. 42. sedges: coarse grasses which grow in wet areas 44. bittern: a marsh-bird with a loud call, often thought of as foreboding. 45. lapwing: brightly crested bird with a striking call. 47. bowers: abodes, cottages, but Goldsmith perhaps plays on the literary associations of the word which link it with the idealized but vaguely defined country dwellings of pastoral.

214 Notes 112 48. mouldering: decaying, crumbling. 113 49. the spoiler’s hand: the new landowner who sees country estates as a form of commercial property rather than as a community. 114 50. children . . . land: here and in ll. 397ff. Goldsmith refers to the forced emigration of rural labourers resulting from changes in landownership and notably the new patterns of enclosure which largely changed the rural poor from a subsistence economy to day labour. 115 52. wealth . . . decay: central to Goldsmith’s polemic is the perceived evil of capital which converts the land into a commodity and its inhabitants into labourers dependent on market forces. 116 55–6 Goldsmith makes this claim repeatedly in his writings, see The Citizen of the World (1762), Letter 17, and ‘Revolution in Low Life’. 117 57. England’s griefs began: i.e. before the rise of the economic system Goldsmith is attacking. 118 58. rood: a self-conscious archaism for a quarter of an acre. 119 63. trade’s unfeeling train: city traders who see land only as a commodity. 120 66. cumbrous pomp: ostentatious display at the expense of convenience or true happiness, a theme Goldsmith develops in his account of luxury. 121 68. pang . . . pride: i.e. foolish desires arising from pride. 122 74. manners: customs. 123 77ff. here the narrator enters the landscape he describes and situates himself as a one-time inhabitant of the village. 124 78. tangling walks: overgrown pathways once used by the villagers. 125 87. latest hours: final years of life. 126 89. husband: make the most of. 127 99. O blessed retirement: a common trope in rural poetry, frequently positioning the speaker as metropolitan and nostalgic for a simpler life. 128 101–14. cf. Virgil’s celebration of rural life, Georgics 2. 458ff. (Lonsdale). 129 106. tempt: venture on. 130 117. careless . . . slow: echoes final lines of Milton’s Paradise Lost, 12. 648–9, ‘with wand’ring steps and slow, / Through Eden took their solitary way’. 131 124. vacant: empty or free from cares. 132 131. yon widowed: sometimes thought to be a reference to the widow at Nuneham, Oxfordshire, who was allowed to live in her house until her death while the rest of the village was removed to make way for a new landscape garden. 133 132. plashy: marshy. 134 134. mantling: spreading, covering. 135 135. faggot: firewood. 136 137. train: group of people, but here with a sense of hierarchy or order. 137 138. pensive: thoughtful, but here also melancholy or foreboding. 138 144. passing rich . . . year: £40 would put the rural parson above want but well below the status of the leisured country gentleman. passing: extremely (in relation to his neighbours). 139 146. place: both physical location and appointment, place in society. 140 147. seek for power: attempt to gain patronage from either the higher clergy or landowners with control over the clerical positions in their estates. 141 150. bent: concerned. 142 151. vagrant train: beggars and itinerants. 143 152. chid: scolded, showed displeasure at. 144 160. fields: i.e. fields of battle.

Notes 215 145 164. pity . . . charity began: i.e. he responded with sympathy rather than with mere charity. 146 175. champion: one who defends the cause of another, here both socially and spiritually. 147 191. awful: awe-inspiring. 148 196. furze: gorse, with its bright yellow flowers. unprofitably gay: i.e. the beauty of the flower serves no economic purpose; thus Goldsmith aligns beauty and happiness with the inhabitants of the village rather than with an economic vision of the land. 149 201. boding tremblers: fearful school-children. 150 210. cipher: practise mathematics. 151 211. terms: dates on which rents and wages were to be paid or tenancies started or completed. tides: holidays or festivals which fall on different days each year. presage: predict. 152 212. gauge: use a ‘gauging rod’ to calculate the capacity of barrels etc. 153 213. owned: acknowledged. 154 223. that house: ale house. nut-brown draughts: ale. 155 231. double . . . pay: i.e. serves two purposes. 156 234. twelve good rules: popular in many inns and houses: urge no healths; profane no divine ordinances; touch no state matters; reveal no secrets; pick no quarrels; make no comparisons; maintain no ill opinions; keep no bad company; encourage no vice; make no long meals; repeat no grievances; lay no wagers. royal game of goose: a board game with counters and dice. 157 240. tottering mansion: the ale house, presumably in a state of disrepair even before its demolition, and perhaps a pun on the effects on its inhabitants. 158 250. mantling: frothing, foaming. 159 259. vacant: carefree, untroubled. 160 261. long pomp: elaborate, and implicitly unnatural, entertainments. 161 262. freaks of . . . wealth: frivolous luxuries. 162 271–6. G rehearses here the position of those who support land rather than trade in the luxury debate. 163 280. equipage: carriage and servants. 164 277–84. i.e. an explanation for the deserted village Goldsmith has just described. 165 285. needful: here ironic in that luxury is defined in terms of whatever is more than needful or necessary. 166 287. adorned for pleasure: i.e. land treated as a luxury item rather than a moral economy with social responsibilities. 167 288. the fall: recalls the fall of man with Adam and Eve’s ejection from the garden of Eden. 168 300. vistas: views (a fashionable usage). 169 306. contiguous: neighbouring. 170 307–10. referring to the increasing enclosure of common land at the expense of the rural peasantry. 171 314. thin: i.e. thin out, reduce the number of. 172 318. artist: i.e. the artisan who must make the courtier’s finery. 173 320. gibbet: gallows. 174 321. dome: grand building. 175 328. poor . . . female: Goldsmith here personifies the fate of the country life and develops it as a form of prostitution in the following lines. See also his Citizen of the World, Letter no. 117.

216 Notes 176 338. wheel: spinning wheel. 177 340. participate her pain: i.e. participate in her pain. 178 343. distant climes: Goldsmith turns his attention to the fate of those forced to emigrate. 179 346. wild Altama: The Altamaha river in Georgia. The Georgia colony enticed poor emigrants to the area with wildly inaccurate accounts of fertile soil and temperate climate. 180 357. tigers: Goldsmith follows current usage in referring to cougars as tigers. 181 365. gloomed: made gloomy. 182 370. seats: dwellings. western main: Atlantic Ocean. 183 389. insidious: deceitful. 184 391–6. Goldsmith rehearses the common view that the history of civilization is cyclical and that great empires are undone as they move from a vigorous youth to a decadent and luxurious old age. 185 405–8. Goldsmith lists the rural virtues which are lost with rural depopulation. 186 406. connubial: married. 187 409–11. Goldsmith rehearses the common view that poetry reaches its heights in a morally healthy nation and decays in a state of decadence and luxury. 188 420. Torno’s . . . Pambamarca’s: The Torne or Tornea river and lake in Sweden and the mountain of Pambamarca in Ecuador, i.e. extremes of cold and heat from northern Europe to the Equator. 189 421. equinoctial fervours: extreme heat at the Equator. 190 429–32. the final four lines were written by Samuel Johnson and mark a striking change in tone from Goldsmith’s both elegiac and threatening landscapes. 191 430. mole: breakwater. 192 2. swains: conventional pastoral term for rural labourers. 193 4. languor: mental suffering. 194 9. alternate verse: pastoral convention, deriving from Virgil’s Eclogues, of two shepherds taking turns to sing verses. 195 10. country: locality. 196 11. frame: compose. 197 12. lays: songs, poems. Corydon: conventional pastoral name for a shepherd deriving from the Eclogues. 198 15–20. lines revised by Samuel Johnson. 15. Mincio’s banks: Italian river which passes through Virgil’s birthplace of Mantua. 199 16. Tityrus: the shepherd in Virgil’s Eclogues, often interpreted as the poet himself. 200 20. fancy: the revision makes the interpretation unclear but as DalrympleChampneys and Pollard note, two different definitions of ‘fancy’ are possible here, the one a positive sense of ‘imagination’ rather than mechanical imitation, the other a form of trivial fantasy. Presumably the line warns against slavishy following conventions. 201 27. Duck: Stephen Duck, author of ‘The Thresher’s Labour’ (see Chapter 6). 202 30. poorer trade: i.e. poetry. 203 34. liquefy: i.e. make the verses flow. 204 53. cot: cottage. 205 54. bards: poets. 206 60. myrtles: a crown of myrtle traditionally signifies the poet, as in the opening lines of Milton’s ‘Lycidas’. 207 62. glad: i.e make glad.

Notes 217 208 66. quoit: heavy iron ring, thrown as a test of strength and skill, its concave underside cuts into the earth if thrown at the correct angle. 209 67. Ajax: muscular hero of Greek legend who wrestles with the smaller but more cunning Ulysses (Iliad, 23). 210 72. pinnace: small ship. 211 78. gain . . . passport: i.e. bribe the customs officers. 212 79ff. as in The Deserted Village, the poet introduces himself into the scene he describes, but here in order to reject a rural idyll. 213 81. Rapine: pillage, robbery. 214 83. finny tribe: fish. 215 84. yearly dinner: a dinner given after the election of parish officers each year. septennial bribe: bribes and other incentives were a common practice at general elections which had to be held every seven years. 216 85. Wait . . . shore: i.e. as wreckers or as scavengers of shipwrecks. 217 92. So waited I: autobiographical reference to Crabbe’s own departure for London in 1780. 218 96. greedy . . . shore: Aldeburgh lost an entire street to the encroaching sea in January 1779. 219 101. niggard: sparing, miserly. 220 102. spare: sparing, slight. 221 114. him: the sun. 222 116. dog-star: Sirius, the star associated with excessive summer heat. 223 125. luxury: cf. Goldsmith’s response to luxury in The Deserted Village. 224 126. too oft . . . pride: cf. Duck, ‘Thresher’s Labour’, ll. 115–20 225 138. homely, plenteous fare: coarse food. 226 141. stinted: sparse. 227 145. smooth . . . please: Crabbe mocks not only pastoral poetry but those who mistake its conventions for reality. 228 151. brand: firewood. 229 153. latest: final. 230 154. hoary: grey-haired. 231 168. Alternate masters: ‘A pauper who, being nearly past his labour, is employed by different masters, for a length of time proportioned to their occupations.’ Crabbe’s note to the 1807 edn. 232 174. yon house: i.e. the parish poorhouse. Crabbe had first-hand experience of the Aldeburgh poorhouse when he worked as an apothecary. 233 192. laws: i.e. the poor law. 234 196. fantastic: imaginary. 235 211. lath and mud: sticks and clay used in the construction of shoddy buildings. 236 214. matted flock: a mattress of rags. 237 222. quaintly: daintily, elaborately. 238 227. physic: medicine. 239 228. quack: one who pretends to medical knowledge, a charlatan. 240 230. drowsy bench: i.e. the local magistrates. 241 233. sapient: look of would-be wisdom. 242 243. ‘bold bad’: an expression made popular by Spenser and Shakespeare. 243 249. ‘passing rich . . . year?’: Crabbe quotes The Deserted Village, l. 144, and offers an alternative to the idealized image of the village parson in Goldsmith’s poem. 244 255. fields: i.e. hunting and other field sports.

218 Notes 245 266. man of . . . sorrows: Isaiah, 53: 3 ‘He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows’. 246 268. bier: the wheeled frame for carrying dead bodies to the grave. 247 270. the glad parish: i.e. the parish is glad to pay for the burial because the dead man will no longer be an expense.

Chapter 2 1 2

3

4 5 6 7

8 9 10 11

12 13 14 15 16

The Discovery of Landscape

George Puttenham, The Arte of English Poesie [1589], eds Gladys Doidge Willcock and Alice Walker (Cambridge, 1936), p. 38. 5. eke: also. virgins . . . dwell: ‘the nine muses, daughters of Apollo and Memory, whose abode the poets feign to be on Parnassus, a hill in Greece, for that in that country specially flourished the honour of all excellent studies’ (E. K.). 6. Helicon . . . well: Spenser appears to be following medieval tradition rather than classical authority in identifying Helicon as a well rather than a mountain; E. K. explains, ‘Helicon is both the name of a fountain at the foot of Parnassus, and also of a mountain in Baeotia, out of which floweth the famous Spring Castalius, dedicate also to the Muses’. 7. blaze: proclaim. 11. wight: creature; particularly applicable to supernatural beings. 13. plight: condition. 14–15. ‘Syrinx is the name of a nymph of Arcadie, whom when Pan being in love pursued, she flying from him, of the gods was turned into a reed. So that Pan catching at the reeds instead of the damsel, and puffing hard . . . made the reeds to pipe: which he seeing, took of them, and in remembrance of his lost love, made him a pipe thereof. But here by Pan and Syrinx is not to be thought, that the shepherd simply meant those poetical gods: but rather supposing (as seemeth) her grace’s progeny to be divine and immortal . . . [he] could devise no parents in his judgement so worthy for her, as Pan the shepherds’ God, and his best beloved Syrinx. So that by Pan is here meant the most famous and victorious . . . K[ing] Henry the Eighth. And by that name, oft-times (as hereafter appeareth) be noted kings and mighty potentates: and in some place Christ himself, who is the very Pan and god of shepherds’ (E. K.). 20. seemly: pleasant, beautiful. 21. scarlot: rich cloth not necessarily of scarlet colour. 22. ermines: furs of ermine (often depicted as emblematic of purity). 23. crimson coronet: ‘he deviseth her crown to be of the finest and most delicate flowers, instead of pearls and precious stones, wherewith princes’ diadems use to be adorned and embossed’ (E. K.). 24. damask roses: red or deep-pink semi-double flowers (Brooks-Davies). daffadillies: possibly a rural variant of ‘daffodils’ (self-consciously rustic diction). 25–7. the bay signifies virginity, while the sweet violet symbolizes virginal modesty and Venus (Brooks-Davies). 29. Phoebe: ‘the moon, whom the poets feign to be sister unto Phoebus, that is the sun’ (E. K.). 30. haviour: deportment, bearing. 32. ‘by the mingling of the red rose and the white, is meant the uniting of the two principal houses of Lancaster and of York: by whose long discord and deadly debate, this realm many years was sore travailed [i.e. troubled], and almost clean

Notes 219

17 18 19 20 21 22

23 24 25 26 27 28 29

30 31 32 33

34

35

36 37 38 39 40 41

decayed. Til the famous Henry the Seventh, of the line of Lancaster, taking to wife the most virtuous Princess Elizabeth, daughter to the fourth Edward of the house of York, begat the most royal Henry the Eighth aforesaid, in whom was the first union of the white rose and the red’ (E. K.). meddled. ‘mingled’ (E. K.). yfere. ‘together’ (E. K.). 33. depincten: depict. 37. Phoebus: the sun. 42. Ne durst: dared not. 45. have the overthrow: be defeated. 46. Cynthia: the moon. 50–1. Latona’s . . . breed: the Titaness Latona was the mother of Apollo and Diana (i.e. Phoebus and Phoebe). When Niobe, the mother of 14 children, scorned the small number of Latona’s offspring, Apollo and Diana killed all of them and Zeus turned her into a stone. 56. bellibone: ‘or a bonnibel; homely spoken for a fair maid or bonny lass’ (E. K.). 61. plain: absolute. 62. swain: follower, attendant. 63. Albe: although. forswonk and forswat: ‘overlaboured and sunburnt’ (E. K.). 64. Calliope: ‘one of the nine muses: to whom they assign the honour of all poetical invention, and the first glory of the heroical verse’ (E. K.). 68. bay branches: ‘be the sign of honour and victory, and therefore of mighty conquerors worn in their triumphs, and eke [i.e. also] of famous poets’ (E. K.). 73. the Graces: ‘three sisters, the daughters of Jupiter, whose names are Aglaia, Thalia, Euphrosyne . . . whom the poets feigned to be the goddesses of all bounty and comeliness’ (E. K.). 75. soot: ‘sweet’ (E. K.); melodiously. 77. Wants not: does the scene not lack? 78. yeven: given (medievalism). 82. rens: runs. bevy of ladies: ‘spoken figuratively for a company or troupe. The term is taken of larks. For they say a bevy of larks, even as a covey of partridge, or an eye of pheasants’ (E. K.). 84. ladies . . . lake: ‘ladies of the lake be nymphs. For it was an old opinion amongst the ancient heathen, that of every spring and fountain was a goddess the sovereign. Which opinion stuck in the minds of men not many years sithence, by means of certain fine fablers and loud liars, such as were the authors of King Arthur the great and such like [i.e. those who have fabricated the histories of such mythical figures as King Arthur], who tell many an unlawful leasing [i.e. lie] of the ladies of the lake, that is, the nymphs. For the word nymph in Greek signifieth well-water, or otherwise a spouse or bride’ (E. K.). behight. ‘called or named’ (E. K.). 86. Chloris: ‘the name of a nymph, and signifieth greenness, of whom is said, that Zephyrus the western wind being in love with her, and coveting her to wife, gave her for a dowry, the chiefdom and sovereignty of all flowers and green herbs, growing on earth’ (E. K.). 87. coronal: wreath or coronet. 88. ‘the olive was wont to be the ensign of peace and quietness’ (E. K.). 89. surcease: cease. 90. principal: of greatest value. 92. hie: hurry. apace: quickly. 93. but . . . bene: except they who are virgins.

220 Notes 42 97. fillets: hair-ribbons. 43 99. finesse: delicacy; refinement. tawdry lace: silk necktie; the phrase is derived from St Audrey, possibly suggesting purchase of the item at the fair of St Audrey (17 October). 44 101. gillyflowers: clove-scented pinks. 45 102. coronations: carnations; however, Spenser also intends a pun on the Latin ‘corona’, source of the English nouns crown and coronation. sops in wine: ‘a flower in colour much like to a coronation, but differing in smell and quantity’ (E. K.). 46 103. paramours: lovers. 47 105. kingcups: common buttercups; again, though, Spenser has chosen the name in part for its monarchical undertones. 48 106. paunce: pansy. 49 107. chevisance: unidentified species; however, a word Spenser uses elsewhere to mean a chivalrous enterprise or achievement. 50 108. flower de lis: ‘that which they use to misterm, flower de luce, being in Latin called flos delitiarum’ (E. K.); the fleur de lis, or iris, was the French royal emblem. 51 116. damsons: small plums; ‘a base reward of a clownish giver’ (E. K.). 52 against . . . sun: in preparation for the sunrise. 53 striving . . . sorrow: allusion to the myth of Philomel (see Ovid, Metamorphoses, 6.424ff.). Her sister’s husband, Tereus, raped her, then cut out her tongue to prevent her telling others of the crime; after she and her sister revenged the rape by killing Tereus’ son and serving his flesh to Tereus, she was transformed into a nightingale. 54 Laconia: region on the southernmost tip of the Greek mainland. (The reason for its ‘wasted soil’ – ruined or devastated land – is provided by Claius below.) 55 prospects: views. 56 were . . . to: were attested to being so (Skretkowicz). 57 accompanable . . . wildness: sociable isolation and civilized wilderness. 58 wanting no store: lacking nothing necessary for life. 59 no . . . want: nothing in abundance but a lack of provisions. 60 passing: especially. 61 bowels . . . estate: interior of that country. 62 Helots: in the Greek states they stood between free men and slaves (Skretkowicz); Sidney’s description of the Helots as ‘peasants’, however, aligns them more closely with lowly rural workers in northern Europe in his own time. 63 unhospital: inhospitable. 64 Arcadia: mountainous region north of Laconia. In ancient Greece, Arcadia was regarded as primitive and barbarous; Sidney, however, perpetuates a mythology developed in the subsequent centuries, mainly by writers who had no first-hand knowledge of the real Arcadia. 65 house of Kalander: Kalander’s house, represented in the book as an ideal site because of its hospitality and its solid and welcoming design, is often linked with Sidney’s native Penshurst Place (celebrated in Ben Jonson’s ‘To Penshurst’, printed in Chapter 3, below). 66 shepherds: in Sidney’s romance, as in other works of Renaissance pastoral, a shepherd is not necessarily a lowly agricultural employee; he may rather be the owner of sheep, and possibly a substantial landowner. 67 Fowey Haven: at the mouth of the Fowey River, southern Cornwall. 68 Hall: an estate on the east side of the Fowey, near its mouth.

Notes 221 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83

84 85 86 87

88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96

97 98 99 100 101

102 103 104

in . . . moor: which word (Hall) translated means a moor in the Cornish language. reduced . . . fruitfulness: transformed it into its presently fertile state. commodities: advantages, qualities. appurtenanced with: furnished with. trace . . . thereof: present you with an inadequate image of. serve for bowling: provide a suitable surface for lawn bowls. London mile: the actual length of a mile at this time differed across the country; Carew adopts the London mile as a recognizable distance. forthright: straight. over-busy: troublingly intricate. ground’s opportunity affords: topography of the land allows. ordinance: military equipment (for defence of the harbour). kenning: range of sight. cocks: small boats. lights: alights. 1. Rother’s happy match: the love of the Rother River, in Kent, for the Isle of Oxney (a tract of land in southern Kent almost completely encircled by rivers), described in the preceding lines of the poem. Romney Marsh: marshland on the east coast of Kent. 3. Rye: harbour settlement at the mouth of the Rother. 13. neat: cattle. 14. batten: feed, thrive. 16. powdered: possibly used in accordance with terminology of heraldic and decorative art, to indicate an ornamentation with spots or small devices scattered over a surface. 17. landskip: ‘the natural expressing of the surface of a country in painting’ (Drayton’s note). 18. fords: shallow places in waterways, where a man or beast may cross by wading. 19. gadding neat: wandering cattle. 20. brakes: thickets. 1. Westwell Downs: the site is near Burford, in Oxfordshire. 2. cleanly: fastidiously clean. 6. wave–swol’n earth: the ‘face’ of the earth ‘swollen’ with the ‘waves’ of undulating land. 7. like the artful positioning of shadows in pictures. 12. fairy ring: a circular band of grass, differing in colour from the grass around it; popularly supposed to be produced by fairies when dancing. Strode’s explanation is unusual, and perhaps intended as light satire on folk beliefs, as he substitutes the quotidian paths of sheep for the dance of fairies. 14. trimly: neatly. 18. bare: poor in quality, paltry. 20. can to any extent improve or damage. 28. close: enclose. 32. positions the speaker as someone removed from the daily life of the downs, and thus experiencing the landscape as a holiday world, in a manner coloured by the pastoral tradition. 1. Apelles: Greek painter of the time of Alexander the Great. 2. Elysium: in Greek mythology, the supposed abode of the blessed after death. 3–4. He . . . show: he might portray the view from this hill.

222 Notes 105 7. gilded . . . gold: overlaid with ripe crops (Ceres was the Roman goddess of earth and patroness of agriculture). 106 12. oblivion’s Lethe Lake: Lethe was the river of forgetfulness in the classical underworld. 107 15. Philomelan lays: nightingale’s songs. 108 17. Flora: goddess of flowers. or and azure: the heraldic colours gold and blue. 109 19. Zephyrus: (god of) the west wind. 110 24. a pastoral commonplace; encomia on the countryside are often offset by satiric representations of the city (cf. Denham, below, ll. 25–38). 111 28. envious . . . fair: dangerous to those of unblemished complexion. 112 31. Will his verse: appears to indicate a quotation; however, the lines have proved impossible to trace. 113 33–4. perhaps alludes to an enforced dispossession of land for political reasons; hence Kemp’s heart may remain ‘loyal’ to a cause (most likely that of the royalists) as well as to a site. 114 2. Parnassus: a Greek mountain, a favourite place of both Apollo and the Muses; hence associated with poetry. 115 3. Helicon: another mountain associated with the Muses. 116 12. i.e. signalling an intention not to be bound by the physical prospect, but to operate more significantly through the operation of imagination (‘fancy’). 117 14–15. place . . . pile: identifies St Paul’s Cathedral (specified in l. 19) as the first locus of the poet’s meditation. 118 19–20. allusion to Edmund Waller’s poem, Upon His Majesties repairing of Paul’s (published in 1645, but written before the first edition of Cooper’s Hill in 1642). 119 22. zeal . . . they: allusion to puritan objections to church buildings and religious imagery. 120 23. best of poets: Waller. 121 24. best of kings: in the first versions of the poem, this is a clear reference to Charles I; by the 1650s, after the execution of Charles, the unchanged line was anachronistic; by 1668, however, it might have been applied by a reader to Charles II. 122 35–6. following the popular contemporary explanation for the circulation of water: from rivers to seas, and back to the rivers through subterranean channels. 123 44. horror: roughness, ruggedness. 124 50. pompous load: the king; and, by extension, his court. pompous. characterized by pomp or stately show. 125 52. in classical mythology, Atlas was a half-divine giant who upheld the sky, keeping it separate from the earth. 126 53. advance: raise (as a hill). 127 56. his choice prevent: i.e. the perfection of the site makes the builder’s human judgement redundant. 128 60. gods’ great mother: Cybele (identified by name in the 1642 edition), often referred to as Mother of the Gods; commonly represented in art wearing a crown shaped like a turreted city wall. 129 65–6. to whom . . . pile: who the nation might thank for the foundation of the glorious building. (The origin of Windsor Castle – built by William the Conqueror in the eleventh century – was in fact a point of conjecture among Denham’s contemporaries, and had been attributed to the legendary King Arthur.) brave. grand.

Notes 223 130 67. Caesar: Julius Caesar led the Roman invasion of Britain in the first century BC. Albanact, or Brute: according to a traditional narrative of British history, Brut(e) was the grandson of the Trojan Aeneas; expelled from Italy for accidentally killing his father, Brute travelled to Britain, where he founded London (called Troynovant, the ‘new Troy’), and became ruler of the country. Albanact(us), Brute’s youngest son, succeeded to the Scottish throne after his father’s death. (This narrative had largely been debunked as serious history by Denham’s time.) 131 68. Arthur: the legend of Arthur was probably based on a chieftain or general of the fifth or sixth century. Knute: the Dane Canute ruled England from 1017 to 1035. 132 70. than when seven cities claimed the honour of being Homer’s birthplace. 133 71–2. i.e. if I had the genius (‘flame’) of Homer, I would give you (Windsor) fame equal to that of Homer, who you resemble due to the contestations over your respective origins. 134 77. identified in a marginal note as Edward III (reigned 1327–77) and Edward, the Black Prince, who died a year before his father, but whose son succeeded to the throne as Richard II. 135 78. reference to the Black Prince’s successful campaigns against the French, whose royal symbol, the fleurs-de-lis, Edward III incorporated into his own coat of arms. 136 79. thy Bellona: identified in a marginal note as Edward’s queen, Philippa of Hainault. Bellona. Roman goddess of war; hence a woman of commanding presence. 137 81. one captive king: David II of Scotland, captured by the English in 1346, and popularly believed to have been taken by Philippa herself. 138 82. the second bring: the king of France, Jean le Bon, captured at Poitiers in 1356. 139 83. that order: Order of the Garter, probably instituted by Edward III around 1344. The reasons behind the foundation of the Order, as the following lines suggest, were a matter of conjecture among seventeenth-century historians. 140 88. i.e. second only to the honour of their own crowns. 141 92. royal pair: Charles I, of the Scottish royal house, and his queen, Henrietta Maria, of the house of Bourbon. (Denham’s claims of direct lines of descent, however, are inaccurate in both cases.) 142 97. Edward III’s great grandfather, Henry III (reigned 1216–72), fought the French but was generally ineffective as a military leader; the line is proabably better interpreted as a reference to the campaigns of Edward III’s grandfather, Edward I (reigned 1272–1307), against both the Scots and the French (O Hehir). 143 101. patron: St George. 144 102–3. arms . . . circle: describes the badge of the Garter: the ‘arms’ of St George (a red cross on a white shield), surrounded by a blue garter (O Hehir). 145 104. him: Charles I (though the prophecy may better be applied to James I). 146 105–6. i.e. who has joined the two kingdoms (England and Scotland), which were already bound by nature, surrounded by the bright blue sea. 147 110. soldier . . . saint: the 1642 edition, published before Charles’s death, has instead the prophetic phrase ‘soldier and martyr’. 148 113. neighbouring hill: St Anne’s Hill, in Chertsey, Surrey. 149 114. common fate: allusion to the Reformation, which brought about the dissolution of the monasteries. 150 115. adjoining abbey: Chertsey Abbey.

224 Notes 151 118. Christian king: Henry VIII, who presided over the English Reformation. 152 128. seeming good: a good thing in appearance (only); implies deception or illusion. 153 129. name: reputation (of ill-doing). 154 130. fame: popular opinion; the character attributed to him. 155 132. styles: pens (thus inverting a proverb); but also affords a pun, since a prince’s ‘style’ is his ceremonial designation. 156 134. undermines Henry VIII’s style, fidei defensor (‘defender of the faith’), by pointing to the destruction of Catholic charitable institutions brought about by the Reformation. 157 135. lazy cell: allusion to the monastic life. 158 137–8. allusion to Aesop’s fable ‘Of Jupiter and the Frogs’, in which Jupiter first gives a group of frogs a block of wood as their ruler, and when they protest that the block is inappropriate he gives them a stork, which immediately eats them. The fable, Aesop concludes, demonstrates ‘that man does not appreciate the good until he has tasted the bad’ (Aesop’s Fables, trans. John E. Keller and L. Clark Keating (Lexington, Ky, 1993), p. 72). ours: the prevailing puritanism of the mid-seventeenth century. 159 139–40. geographical metaphor; is there no more temperate alternative to the frigid polar circles and the torrid tropical zone? 160 144. calenture: tropical disease experienced by sailors, characterized by delirium. 161 149. heaps: decayed monasteries. 162 158. what’s too near: another reference to the religious radicalism of the midseventeenth century; this is the cause for ‘fear’, whereas the excesses of the past provoke rather ‘anger’ and ‘shame’. 163 163. tribute: gift or payment rendered to a superior. 164 166. the 1642 edition is more specific, citing the Tagus and the Pactolus, respectively in Lusitania and Lydia, as rivers reputed from classical antiquity for their golden sands. Neither of these rivers, however, was known for its amber; this reference is explained rather in the 1655 Latin translation of Cooper’s Hill, which cites the Eridanus (often associated with Rome’s river Po). The mourning sisters of Phaeton, according to Ovid (Metamorphoses, 2.340–66), were transformed into trees by this river, and wept tears of amber which were washed downstream for Roman brides. 165 167. less guilty wealth: guilt was commonly associated with gold. 166 172. overlay: suggestive of a suffocating effect; extends the metaphor of ll. 169–70. 167 174. profuse: extravagant, wasteful. resumes: takes back. 168 181–2. whenever the Thames wishes proudly to display or distribute the produce of its shores. 169 183. flying towers: ships. 170 184. both Indies: the East and West Indies, important trading destinations for English ships. 171 188. the world’s exchange: a metaphor which alludes to the physical building of the Royal Exchange, situated in London not far from where trading ships would dock on the Thames, and which had been a major international centre for merchants since its opening in the reign of Elizabeth. 172 189–92. the ‘Thames couplets’, added by Denham in the 1650s, which became the most admired and imitated lines in the poem, particularly for eighteenthcentury readers.

Notes 225 173 193. Eridanus: See note to l. 166, above. The Eridanus also had a mythical form, flowing in the sky as the Milky Way; Denham recalls this, and correspondingly lifts the Thames into the heavens. 174 203–4. the closest Denham comes to a theory of landscape; as in music, he argues, the apparently discordant placement of natural features may create an harmonious effect. 175 205. first disperse: i.e. at the creation. 176 207. the four roots of all things, according to Empedocles. The elements of medieval science are formed of linked pairs of these qualities, e.g. heat and dryness make fire; coldness and moisture make water (O Hehir). 177 213–16. reference to the myth of Narcissus, who fell in love with his own reflection, and wasted away into death by the pool in which he saw it. 178 223. spacious plain: Egham Mead. 179 229. British bard: ancient Celtic poet. 180 231. satyrs: woodland gods. 181 235. Faunus and Sylvanus: rural gods, akin to Pan; gods of fauns and satyrs. 182 236. horned host: deer. 183 237. ranker mead: more fertile meadow. 184 239–40. probably alluding to connections between the stag (and its antlers) and monarchy. The stag was called ‘royal’ when its antlers were fully developed, at around the age of seven years. 185 241. the king: in the 1642 edition, more specifically, ‘our Charles’. 186 242. allow him time to relax and set aside concerns of state. 187 244. whose . . . devour: whose aspirations are towards a goal nobler than the hunt. 188 246. i.e. and wish for a foe that will do more than flee (the suggestion is military). 189 247. fatal growth: the mature male’s antlers, which attract the hunters. 190 250. nor . . . heaven’s: neither the eye of man nor the sun. 191 258. i.e. all the weapons and arts of the hunt combined. 192 263. reviewing eye: backwards glance. 193 265–6. their nobler . . . recompense: i.e. their intelligence compensates for the deer’s disproportionate speed. 194 269–76. these lines famously turn the death of the stag, the noblest beast of the field, into an allegory of the death of a great man of state. In 1642, the lines were interpreted as an allegory of the fall of Thomas Wentworth, Earl of Strafford, who was executed in 1641 on the initiative of Parliament. After the execution of Charles himself in 1649, however, the lines might more readily have been applied to him. The couplet later added to the passage (ll. 275–6) links the two events; Charles, like Denham’s stag, cited his shameful failure to save Strafford as a reason why his own execution had not been prevented by God. 272. Or . . . flies: either chases him away or flees from him 195 277–8. O Hehir suggests an allusion to the site of Charles’s execution, immediately outside the banqueting hall at Whitehall. conscious groves: groves witnessing, as with human perception, the events. 196 281–2. Charles had been painted by Rubens as St George, rescuing his queen, Henrietta Maria, from a dragon, in a landscape recognizable as the Thames Valley (O Hehir). 197 284. beam: main trunk of a stag’s horn; also, figuratively, the knight’s weapon. 198 297–300. ‘perhaps alluding to Charles’s irresolution and contradictory policies throughout the Civil War and especially afterwards, from 1646 until his execution’ (O Hehir).

226 Notes 199 303. t’assay: to attempt, try the strength of. 200 304. element: the water. 201 307. So: as (introducing a simile). oar-finned galleys. galleys (low flat-built seagoing vessels) propelled through the water by oars. 202 313. baser: of inferior degree. 203 315. prodigal of life: careless of his life. 204 319. shaft: spear or arrow. 205 324. self-same place: ‘Runny Mead [Runnymede] where that great Charter was first sealed’ (Denham’s note). The Magna Carta, England’s first definite statement on the rights and duties of the monarch and the liberties of the subject, was signed in 1215 by King John. 206 325–6. inverts the language commonly employed to describe the settlement of the Magna Carta, representing the king as ‘fair liberty’ and the pressing subjects as ‘lawless power’. 207 328. the last: the final statement on the respective rights of monarch and subject. 208 336. i.e. lacking the seal of the subjects’ love, it led rather to bloodshed. 209 338. i.e. all the subjects took from any concessions was a craving for more. 210 341–2. if this is a real quote, it has not been identified; however, it accurately represents Charles’s view of the political demands made of him (O Hehir). 341. he who gives under constraint only abuses his own sense of fear. 211 345. popular sway: the force of the people. 212 shire . . . assizes: i.e. the county’s centre of local legal administration, including the court of Quarter Sessions which dealt with crimes more serious than those tried in the magistrates’ courts, and the Assize Court which sat at intervals with visiting judges from the High Court in London. 213 attained . . . middle: i.e. Fiennes has reached the half-way point up the side of the mountains skirting the lake, although she claims shortly after that she was ‘not half way up’. 214 fructify: make fruitful. 215 shelves: projecting ledges. 216 hills . . . terrible: a brief suggestion of Fiennes’s appreciation of the sublime; cf. Gilpin, below. 217 clap bread: a mixture of flour and water rolled to the thinness of paper and cooked crisp on a metal plate over coals; Fiennes describes the process earlier in the tour. 218 length of . . . miles: the length of the mile was defined by statute in 1593, but there were many local variations at different times. In the north of England in particular the old British mile still in use could be up to one-third longer than the statute mile. 219 entered . . . Cumberlandshire: Fiennes has travelled north over the high Kirkstone Pass and down into Bridgend and Patterdale. 220 Ambleside . . . sea: a confusing comment. The southern tip of Windermere is five miles from the sea, although the river Leven which flows from it reaches the coast at Morecambe Bay. 221 flats: horizontal strata of rock; the term is used in mining, of which Fiennes had experience as the owner of a mine. 222 course: hunting; Fiennes here flouts the game laws and thus demonstrates her confidence in her social position. 223 furze: gorse.

Notes 227 224 225 226 227 228 229 230 231 232 233 234

235

236 237

238 239

240 241 242 243 244 245 246 247 248 249

agreeable jaunt: i.e. the subject of this letter. favour: letter. peregrinations: travels. Mr. Hull: Thomas Hull (1728–1808), actor and dramatist, who went on to publish many of the letters of this circle of friends. unworthy your judgement: i.e. whatever in your judgement is unworthy. Bristol: the party is presumably travelling from Bath, just over ten miles away. Hot-well: the hot springs at St Vincent’s Rocks, on the edge of Bristol, were a popular spa resort. all . . . spinning: an alternative form of ‘spun from the same cloth’, i.e. all like each other. Aust: a small village on the English bank of the river Severn. three kingdoms: England and Wales, Scotland, and Ireland. Persfield: now Piercefield, a landscape garden on the edge of Chepstow. The landscape was developed during the 1750s and 1760s as a series of sublime views out across the river Wye; much of the park is now used as Chepstow racecourse, but the river walk Miss M—describes still remains. Mr. Morris: Valentine Morris (1727–89) had gained enormous wealth from his West Indies plantations. For a retrospective judgement on his life and the gardens at Piercefield, see William Coxe, An Historical Tour in Monmouthshire (London, 1801), vol. 2, ch. 40. In particular, Coxe writes, ‘He [Morris] lived in a style of princely rather than private magnificence, and treated those whom curiosity drew to the scenes of Piercefield, with a liberal but ostentatious profusion: servants out of livery constantly attended without being permitted to receive any gratuity; collations were indiscriminately offered to the numerous visitors; and even his hot-house, cellar, and larder, were open to the innkeeper of Chepstow for the accommodation of travellers.’ poor old lady: identity uncertain, but another member of the party. Balbecks or Palmyras: the ancient Roman towns of Baalbek in eastern Lebanon and Palmyra in Syria, the striking ruins of which had only very recently become known in Britain with the publication of Robert Wood’s Ruins of Palmyra (1753) and Ruins of Balbec (1757); thus Miss M—demonstrates a topical knowledge of architecture. wood strawberries: wild strawberries. Earl . . . Strong-Bow: Richard de Clare, or Richard Strongbow, 2nd Earl of Pembroke (d.1176); Strongbow had lost his English estates by 1168 but through almost constant military activity held control of much of eastern Ireland until his death. Ross: Ross-on-Wye, upstream from Monmouth. limits of property: i.e. boundary hedges and fences. shelving: like shelves or terraces. vallem, amnemq; tenebant: abbreviated reference to Virgil’s ‘vallemque boves amnemque tenebant’ (‘oxen filled vale and riverside’; Aeneid, 8.204). Ah . . . wall: William Mason, The English Garden (1771), 11.380–5; Gilpin misquotes slightly. monkish times: i.e. before the English Reformation of the sixteenth century. pile: building. gable-ends: triangular upper part of walls which support a pitched roof. cross-aisles: transept. rule: ruler.

228 Notes 250 251 252 253 254 255

west-window . . . left: composed of twin trefoil-headed openings. maidenhair: fern with thin, hair-like stalks and fronds. penny-leaf: perhaps the round-leaved wall pennywort which grows in crevices. abutments: supports between walls or pillars and the roof. elevation . . . choir: raised area in the nave used by the abbey’s choir. indolence: Gilpin articulates a common Protestant bias in his characterization of monastic life. 256 palsied: paralysed, perhaps with an involuntary tremor. 257 poor woman . . . limbs: in the earlier MS account Gilpin writes after this description, ‘These scenes of desolation and misery all belong to his grace the Duke of Beaufort’ (‘The Banks of the Wye’, Bodleian Library, MS.Eng.misc.e.486, notebook 3).

Chapter 3 1

2 3 4

5 6 7 8 9 10 11

12 13 14 15

The Country House

1. Cookham: estate in Berkshire, by the Thames. It was owned by the Crown and annexed to Windsor Castle, but leased by the family of Margaret Clifford, Countess of Cumberland, and occupied by her ‘at some periods during her estrangement from her husband in the years before his death in 1605, and perhaps just after’, before she and her daughter took up residence at Austin Friars (Lewalski, p. 396). 3. muses: the nine sister-goddesses regarded in Greek mythology as the inspirers of learning and the arts. 5. Pallas: goddess of wisdom. indite: compose, write. 6. possibly an allusion to Lanyer’s 1,800-line religious poem ‘Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum’, published in her eponymous volume of poetry, immediately preceding ‘The Description of Cookham’. 11. great lady: Countess of Cumberland. 12. work of grace: the present poem; the use of ‘grace’ suggests at once the religious nature of Lanyer’s work and the patronage of the Countess. 13. Vouchsafe: deign or condescend; the poem is urging the Countess towards Christian resignation. 15. dim . . . pleasures: mere reflections or images of the pleasures of heaven. 17. against . . . came: in preparation for your arrival there. 21. liveries: uniforms worn by servants, by which their employer might be identified. 22. hold: remain, maintain themselves. similies: comparisons of one thing with another; reinforces the image of an entire landscape flourishing, as though in response to the Countess’s presence and in sympathy with the mood of the speaker. 31. Philomela: the nightingale. lays: songs. 43. banks: raised ridges of ground. pride: splendour, ornamentation; image of luxuriant growth. 44. Phoenix: mythical bird of gorgeous plumage and eternal life; figuratively, a person of unique excellence or matchless beauty. 51–2. women occasionally participated in hunting; however, the image is more importantly symbolic, figuring the Countess as the goddess Diana, patroness of hunting and of wild things. make a stand: prepare to shoot (hunting term).

Notes 229 16 53. that stately tree: the tree, recalled in ll. 157–78, serves as a focal point in the landscape. 17 54. prospects: views. 18 57. cedar: the cedar may be interpreted biblically as the building material for the temple of God, while patristic commentary claimed both the cedar and the palm (see l. 61, below) as the Church and Christ’s disciples. 19 61. palm tree: symbol of spiritual victory; see note to l. 57, above. 20 63. comely: beautiful, decorous. 21 64. Defended Phoebus: protected (the Countess) from the sun. 22 66. Joying: rejoicing, exulting (in). 23 70. prefer: present, put forward. suit: request or petition. 24 73. shires: probably counties (which would imply a degree of rhetorical inflation); possibly districts or regions. 25 83–4. this curious image situates the Bible within the pastoral locus amoenus, and shifts the poem from contemplation of sensuous delights to religious concerns. 26 85–6. Moses spoke with God and received the Ten Commandments on Mount Sinai (Exodus 24–34). 27 87. David: biblical king and psalmist. 28 88. His holy hymns: the Psalms. 29 91–2. Joseph, son of Israel, was sold into slavery in Egypt, but rose to a position of great power, and provided for his family during the great famine. 92. pined: exhausted by hunger. 30 93–4. introduces Anne, Countess of Dorset, the Countess of Cumberland’s daughter. She was connected with the Cliffords through her mother and the Bedfords through her father, Francis Russell, Earl of Bedford. (Since the original text does not use apostrophes here, ‘Cliffords’ and ‘Bedfords’ might be read either as singular or plural possessives: referring either to the parents or their families.) 31 95. Anne Clifford married Richard Sackville, Lord Buckhurst, third Earl of Dorset, in February 1609. 32 98. parts: qualities. 33 102. enforce: compel. 34 104. frame: condition. 35 107. orbs of state: circles of power; the court. 36 108. Parters: probably sharers or ‘partakers’. 37 111. conceit: thought. 38 112. conster: construe, interpret. 39 116. vouchsafe . . . love: grant us a state of perfect love (i.e. heaven). 40 118. turn: return. 41 122. reverend: deeply respectful. 42 126. careless to relieve: which does not care to relieve me. 43 131. inkling: hint, suggestion. 44 132. frame: conform, present (itself). 45 138. pray you: entreat you (to stay). 46 143. hoary: white (image of frost). 47 145. swarthy rivelled ryne: ‘ryne’ (‘rine’, ‘rind’) can mean both the bark of a tree and a frost. 48 147. occasions: circumstances, requirements. 49 158. vouchsafe: condescend, as an act of grace. 50 159. In which: i.e. in (or under?) the tree. 51 160. with Anne Clifford, before her marriage.

230 Notes 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59

60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67

68 69 70

71 72 73 74

75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82

161. scanned: analysed. 166. i.e. which kiss I stole from the saddened tree (by kissing it herself). 167. senseless: inanimate. 178. consort: company, accord; also a group of musicians, or ‘concert’. 181. chide: quarrel. 185. wonted: accustomed. 187. spray: slender twigs of a tree or shrub. 189. at l. 31, above, Lanyer used ‘Philomela’ simply as a synonym for the nightingale; here, however, the reference draws more substantially upon classical mythology. Philomela’s sister’s husband, Tereus, raped her, then cut out her tongue to prevent her telling others of the crime; after she and her sister revenged the rape by killing Tereus’ son and serving his flesh to Tereus, she was transformed into a nightingale. 193. tresses: locks of hair; figuratively, leaves (which the trees shed for winter). 197. brier . . . bramble: prickly brier and bramble bushes. 199–200. alludes to the myth of Echo, a wood nymph who faded away in unrequited love for Narcissus, until only her haunting voice remained. 207. her noble hest: the Countess’s behest, command. 1. envious show: ostentatious display of wealth. 2. touch: black marble. 4. lantern: glazed turret erected on a building to admit light; fashionable in contemporary architecture. 5. ancient pile: underlines the distinction between fashionable new architecture and the traditional solidity of Penshurst; ‘pile’ may mean a castle or a lofty mass of buildings. 6. i.e. while the new houses inspire discontent, Penshurst is treated with reverence. 11. Pan: Arcadian shepherd god; associated with music and pastoral poetry. Bacchus: god of wine. 13–14. an oak, which still stands at Penshurst, is said to have been planted on the day of the ‘great birth’ of Sir Robert Sidney’s brother, the poet Sir Philip Sidney (30 November 1554), who is associated here with the Muses. 15. writhed: twisted, contorted. 16. sylvan: rustic person or rural lover. his flames: the passion of love; associated with Sidney. 17. satyrs: woodland gods, partly human and partly bestial in features. 18. lighter fauns: woodland gods, similar to satyrs; the suggestion here is that they are more frivolous or lustful than the satyrs. thy lady’s oak: Donaldson cites a legend that Barbara Gamage, the wife of Sir Robert Sidney, ‘was taken in travail (labour) under an oak in Penshurst Place, which was afterwards was called My Lady’s Oak’. 19. a thicket named after Barbara Gamage. 20. seasoned: matured, fitted for use. 23. kine: cattle 25. coneys: rabbits. the tops: the uppermost grounds. 26. Ashore . . . copse: two thickets that still stand. 29. painted partridge: cf. ‘picta perdix’ in one of Jonson’s source texts, Martial’s description of Faustinus’ farm (Epigrams, 3.58.15). 31. Medway: one of the principal rivers in Kent; borders the Penshurst estate. 32. tribute: offering paid by a subordinate to a superior, as an acknowledgement of affection or esteem.

Notes 231 83 34. pikes were believed to eat their own species. 84 35. i.e. unwilling to wait for the second drawing of the net or cast of the fishing-line. 85 38. ‘an eel in a man’s hand was a common emblem, sometimes of the magistrate’s control of slippery wrongdoers’ (Fowler, Country House Poem). 86 40. hours: ‘the Horae, the three female divinities which presided over the three seasons of the ancient year; hence, the seasons themselves’ (Donaldson). 87 45–6. the oblique reference to rural exploitation in these lines extends the contrast between Penshurst and other estates, in a manner that gestures towards the tradition of social criticism observed in Chapter 1, above. While the excessive expenditure of other landlords is linked to the ‘ruin’ of their tenants, Penshurst rather adheres to traditional values of moral economy. 88 48. clown: countryman, rustic. 89 50. suit: request or petition. 90 51. capon: castrated cock. 91 58. free: unbought. 92 65–6. continuing the argument of ll. 61–2, i.e. I will not be treated as I am at some rich men’s tables, at which I am served so poorly that I am forced to eat more elsewhere. 65. fain: obliged. 93 67. tells: counts. 94 70. below: in the kitchen or servants’ hall. 95 73. livery: food, provisions. 96 75. stay: wait. 97 77. prince: Prince Henry, heir to the throne, who died in November 1612. 98 78. as: as though. 99 79. Penates: Roman household gods. 100 82. sudden: prompt, expeditious. 101 85. housewifery: household management. 102 86. plate: (silver) table utensils. 103 87. dressed: prepared. 104 90. fruitful: Barbara Gamage, Lady Sidney, gave birth to at least ten children. 105 98. mysteries: crafts, arts. 106 99. proportion: compare. 107 5. Saxham: Little Saxham, near Bury, was built by Sir Thomas Lucas in the reign of Henry VII (1485–1509), and was owned in Carew’s time by the Crofts family. 108 6. delicate: delightful, luxurious. 109 7. native sweets: pleasing local commodities. 110 9–10. i.e. as though your plentiful store of provisions neither contracts during winter nor increases during spring. 111 11. sterved: probably ‘starved’; however, Dunlap cites a more specific contemporary definition, that ‘sterve . . . in Dutch is to die, though we commonly use it for a thing dead, either by hunger or cold’. 112 12. Much poor: many poor people. 113 13–14. according to Catholic tradition, the poor were holy, and thus special benefits might be attached to charity. above the rest: beyond that of other estates. 114 15–16. i.e. the season (winter) meanly provided only rough provisions for your neighbour’s table. 115 17. dainties: delicacies. 116 17–18. as the sky . . . volary: as though the sky had been your private aviary.

232 Notes 117 19–30. the sponte sua motif, developed from Jonson, above, ll. 25–38; Carew, however, notably infuses his lines with religious imagery and sacrificial suggestions. 118 20. deluge: flood; prepares for l. 22. 119 22. ark: Noah’s Ark. 120 26. offering: tribute of honour or esteem; also carries religious connotations, of a sacrifice to a deity. 121 27. scaly herd: fish. 122 29–30. cf. Jonson, above, ll. 7–8: both poets allude to the four elements, but Carew is more meticulous in his inclusion of fire (rather than Jonson’s ‘wood’). 123 31. cherishing: cheering, nurturing. 124 32. deride: mock. 125 37. aloof: afar. 126 38. pilgrim: traveller; the more specific meaning, one who journeys to a sacred place, extends the poem’s religious undertones. 127 40. fairly welcome: welcomed courteously. if stay: if he stays. 128 42. hind: servant. 129 43–4. all members of the household wear a welcoming countenance, (as though) stamped on their brows. 130 45. cheer: reception, entertainment. 131 47. repines: complains, is discontented. 132 48. sups: sips, consumes. 133 51. bin: been. 134 55. Careless: not caring. 135 embarras: embarrassment or troubles. 136 nobleman: here and in the following paragraph Nourse explicitly aligns the country house with the traditional image of the aristocrat, which assumes a link between wealth and virtue. 137 seraglio: palace for pleasure, associated with ‘eastern’ sensuality. 138 Sardanapalas: in legend, last king of Assyria, notorious for his decadence and effeminacy. According to the legend he burned himself and his concubines to death when besieged in the city of Ninus. Tiberius: emperor of Rome (42 BC – 37 AD) renowned for his debauchery and cruelty while living on the island of Capri. 139 bent: inclination. 140 lost station: i.e. a return to the garden of Eden and to the state of Adam and Eve before the Fall. 141 drudge . . . life: a paraphrase of God’s injunction after the Fall in Genesis 3:17–19, and one of the source texts for much georgic poetry: ‘cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life; Thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee; and thou shalt eat the herb of the fields; In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread.’ 142 Solomon: king of Israel (961–922 BC) renowned for his wisdom, author of Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon and other biblical texts. 143 Eccles. 2: a paraphrase of Ecclesiastes 2:4–9, ‘I made me great works; I builded me houses; I planted me vineyards: I made me gardens and orchards, and I planted trees in them with all kind of fruits: I made me pools of water, to water therewith the wood that bringeth forth trees: I got me servants and maidens, and had servants born in my house; also I had great possessions of great and small cattle above all that were in Jerusalem before me: . . . So I was great, and increased more than all that were before me in Jerusalem: also my wisdom remained with

Notes 233

144 145 146 147

148 149 150

151 152 153 154

155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 163

164 165 166

167 168 169 170

me.’ The final reference to wisdom is important here. While the passage appears to justify wealth and the creation of great houses, the larger context Nourse has in mind is Solomon’s refrain throughout Ecclesiastes that ‘Vanity of vanities; all is vanity’: the good things of the earth are to be enjoyed but they are ephemeral and man’s task is to seek spiritual wisdom. Thus, Nourse uses Ecclesiastes as a justification for retirement and meditation. insinuating address: subtle or artful mode of speech. state-interest: position at court. travels: literally journeying, but also ‘travail’, i.e. troubles, wearisome labour. fair post: i.e. is likely to waste it. Post here suggests both social position and a continuation of Nourse’s metaphor of travel, as in a post-road where horses are kept at different stages or ‘posts’ for the speedy carriage of people or letters. fallacious: false, misguided. courtesy: goodwill. expensive . . . obnoxious: i.e. the traditional vices of city life, such as conspicuous consumption and gambling. Nourse thus articulates a common distinction between country and city in terms of the uses of wealth. laudable: praiseworthy. frame . . . himself: a central conceit in country-house writing from Lanyer and Jonson to Pope and Richardson. seat . . . house: i.e. the estate around the house. manlike: Nourse adopts the traditional association between manliness and rationality and thus distinguishes the proper uses of wealth from ‘effeminate’ city desires. lasting mansion: heaven. flowers . . . place: the repeated cycle of growth and decay as an image of man is a commonplace moralization of the natural world. rivulet: small stream. mind: remind, put him in mind. fastidiousness: disgust. divertisements: entertainments. Middle Age: i.e. the medieval period or ‘Dark Ages’, associated in Protestant Britain with Catholicism and its perceived faults of superstition and bigotry. caulk: literally, the material for stopping up gaps, thus a diversion or interval. little . . . cell: the Carthusian monastic order led a hermit-like existence, each monk living in a separate room, sparsely furnished and arranged in order to encourage meditation. Louvre: royal palace in Paris, of enormous size, and famous for its art collection. Escurial: vast royal palace outside Madrid. order: uniformity, adherence to the rules of architecture. wren . . . clouds: a sense of proportion between a structure and its owner is a frequent subject of country-house writing, see note 136 above; less common is Nourse’s championing of littleness which allows him then to elaborate in the following lines on the small-scale houses of those who are in that ‘middle region of happiness which lies above oppression and necessity, and below the menaces and storms to which higher fortunes are exposed’. Girandola: Italian for pinwheel. trains: retinues of servants. raiment: clothing. sneaking attendance: i.e. servile attendance at court or on a patron.

234 Notes 171 under spacious valley: the valley below, or more generally the wider landscape beyond his own estate. 172 6–10. the list of collectors and collections marks Pope’s distinction between men of true taste and intellect and those who indulge in fashionable display by treating collections as mere commodities. The division between taste and show continues throughout the poem, thus Visto l. 16 who confuses one with the other. 173 7. Topham: ‘A gentleman famous for a judicious collection of drawings’ (Pope’s note). Richard Topham (d.1735). 174 8. Pembroke: Thomas Herbert (1656–1733), eighth Earl of Pembroke, who amassed a famous collection of statues. 175 9. Hearne: Thomas Hearne (1678–1735), the famous Oxford antiquarian. 176 10. Mead . . . Sloane: ‘Two eminent Physicians; the one had an excellent Library, the other the finest collection in Europe of natural curiosities; both men of great learning and humanity’ (Pope’s note). Richard Mead (1673–1754) was a friend of Pope’s and Physician in Ordinary to George II; Hans Sloane (1660–1753) was President of the Royal College of Physicians, and on his death his collections went to form a substantial part of the newly established British Museum. 177 18. Ripley: ‘This man was a carpenter, employed by a first minister, who raised him to an Architect, without any genius in the art; and after some wretched proofs of his insufficiency in public Buildings, made him Comptroller of the Board of works’ (Pope’s note). Thomas Ripley (d.1758) was used by Robert Walpole as the architect for his great house at Houghton, Norfolk. 178 20. Bubo: George Bubb Dodington (1691–1762), later Baron Melcombe, the butt of several of Pope’s satires. 179 25. (my Lord): Burlington. 180 30. arcs of triumph: triumphal arches, built originally in ancient Rome to celebrate the victories of military leaders. They appeared again as part of the classical revival and, as Pope suggests, were used at times incongruously as features in English gardens. 181 32. dog-hole: rough, lowly dwelling. ek’d with: added to. 182 33. pilaster: a square column; properly this should be a column set into a wall, but as Pope suggests here it could be a thin section (thus ‘slices’) added to an existing wall to produce a ‘classical’ appearance. 183 34. rustic: roughened stonework. front: facade. 184 36. Venetian door: ‘A door . . . much practised at Venice, by Palladio and others’ (Pope’s note), i.e. another example of fashion which ignores use or sense. 185 39. brother peer: i.e. other members of the aristocracy. 186 44. the seven: i.e. the seven branches of the Medieval liberal arts. 187 46. Jones: the architect, Inigo Jones (1573–1652). Le Nôtre: André Le Nôtre (1613–1700), the most famous French gardener of the seventeenth century. 188 49. swell . . . grot: i.e. to expand the terrace around the house, or to create a grotto underground. 189 51–4. this eroticized language of nature is a characteristic element of garden writing in the period (see, for example, Shenstone’s account of his meeting with Thomson, Chapter 7). 190 57–69. despite, perhaps also because of, their generality, these lines were to be hugely influential as a touchstone for taste in creation of the English landscape garden (see Chapter 7). 191 58. or . . . or: i.e. ‘whether to . . . or to’.

Notes 235 192 63. th’intending lines: the sight lines the eye would follow. 193 70. Stowe: Stowe gardens, Buckinghamshire, perhaps the most famous showgarden of the period. 194 71. Versailles: the great formal gardens of Louis XIV of France, designed by Le Nôtre. 195 72. Nero’s Terraces: perhaps referring to the Golden House of Nero (Butt). 196 73. parterres: a flat area of ground with elaborate designs in flowers and shrubs, associated with French garden design. 197 74. Cobham: Richard Temple (1675–1749), 1st Viscount Cobham of Stowe, who transformed Stowe’s formal landscaping into a more naturalistic design while also developing an elaborate emblematic programme supporting opposition Whig politics and attacking the prime minister, Robert Walpole. floats: floods. 198 78. hermitage . . . Dr. Clarke: early in the eighteenth century the architect and garden designer William Kent created a ‘hermitage’ at Kew with waxworks and busts of famous natural philosophers including Newton, Boyle and Locke. The scientist and theologian Samuel Clarke (1675–1729) was also included in the group by his patron, Queen Charlotte, who took a keen interest in the gardens, but it was widely recognized as a peculiar choice alongside these more established figures. 199 80. quincunx: five trees planted in the form of a square with one at the centre. espaliers: fruit trees trained to grow flat along a lattice. 200 94. dryads: wood nymphs. 201 99. ‘This description is intended to comprise the principles of a false taste of magnificence, and to exemplify what was said before, that nothing but good sense can attain it’ (Pope’s note). 202 104. Brobdignag: the land of giants in Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels. 203 123. Amphitrite: sea goddess, mother of Triton. Here, and following, Pope satirizes the taste for topiary and over-elaborate designs. Pope had already explored this theme in his well-known essay in The Guardian, no. 173 (1713). 204 127. mien: bearing, appearance. 205 128. Smit: smitten, struck by. 206 136. Aldus: Aldo Manutio, famous Italian printer. Du Suëil: Abbé Du Suëil, famous French book binder. 207 137. vellum: fine parchment made from the skin of calves and used for book binding. 208 138. but . . . wood: i.e. they may as well be made of wood, as, for example, when library doors were disguised as bookshelves. 209 139. Locke or Milton: John Locke (1632–1704), and John Milton (1608–74), two of the major figures of English philosophy and poetry in the seventeenth century, and thus for Pope two figures fundamental to any library which claims to represent the learning of its owner. 210 142. pride of prayer: i.e. the distinctly unspiritual display of opulence rather than true devotion. 211 146. Verrio . . . Laguerre: ‘[Antonio] Verrio [?1639–1707] painted many ceilings, etc. at Windsor, Hampton-court, etc. and [Louis] Laguerre [1663–1721] at Blenheim-castle, and other places’ (Pope’s note). 212 149–50. soft Dean . . . ears polite: ‘This is a fact; a reverend Dean [Knightly Chetwood, Dean of Gloucester] preaching at Court, threatened the sinner with a punishment in “a place which he thought it not decent to name in so polite an assembly” ’ (Pope’s note).

236 Notes 213 154. Tritons: i.e. fountain statues of the sea god Triton or of sea-monsters. 214 156. hecatomb: large-scale public religious sacrifice. 215 160. Sancho’s . . . wand: alludes to a scene in Cervantes’s Don Quixote, 2.47, where the Don’s servant, Sancho, finds his food mysteriously disappearing. 216 161. trembling salvers: trays, trembling in the hands of the servants under the weight of their contents. 217 174. Imbrown: i.e. the growing ears of corn will turn the hillside brown. 218 176. Ceres: goddess of agriculture, harvest and the fields. 219 178. Bathurst: Allen (1685–1775), Earl Bathurst, who created an enormous woodland garden at his Cirencester estate; Pope first visited in 1718 when Bathurst was undertaking a huge programme of planting. Boyle: Earl of Burlington. 220 189. down: open upland used for pasturage. 221 193. Palladio: Italian architect Andrea Palladio (1508–80) whose study of classical architecture became a model for later architects. In England Inigo Jones was an early exponent of the Palladian style and it was popularized by Burlington in the early eighteenth century. 222 194. Vitruvius: the Roman architect, Vitruvius Pollio (fl. 90–20 BC), author of the influential De Architectura, a work which stressed the importance in architecture of utility, sound construction and delight. His ideas were drawn on by Palladio and Inigo Jones among others and gained wide circulation in England on the translation of De Architectura in 1715. 223 200. mole: breakwater. main: sea. 224 202. obedient rivers: canals. 225 204. echoes Dryden’s translation of Aeneid, 6.852, ‘These are imperial Arts, and worthy thee’. 226 1. lay: poetry. 227 2. gloomy vapours: mist or fog. lamp of day: the sun. 228 3. low’ring: gloomy. 229 4. eternal whims: endless desires. 230 5. darling crime: i.e. reading and writing poetry. 231 7. Armida’s wiles: i.e. the sun is more enticing than Armida, the enchantress in Torquato Tasso’s Gerusalemme Liberata (1581), who waylays Christian knights in her garden. 232 8. Artemisia: the name Leapor uses for her friend and patron Bridget Freemantle. 233 17. powdered: salted. warden-pies: made from Warden pears. 234 20. tainted: putrifying, or ‘high’. 235 21. humming: strong. 236 22. nectar: sweet wine. 237 23. wights: people; one of Leapor’s characteristic archaisms. 238 24. sable friar: i.e. a friar dressed in black. russet clown: peasant or labourer, dressed in brown. 239 26. simp’ring: simmering. 240 27. ravaged: ate hungrily. 241 33. grisled: grey. 242 35–8. Leapor describes the elaborately carved interior of the house. 243 40. some that spew: cf. Pope’s Burlington, l. 154. 244 43. cyclops: race of one-eyed giants in Greek myth, including Polyphemus who imprisons Ulysses in Homer’s Odyssey, Book 9. 245 46. peaceful loom: spider web. 246 49. herald’s mystic compliments: family coat of arms.

Notes 237 247 50. Honi Soit: Edward III founded the Order of the garter, the highest order of English knighthood, with the motto: ‘Honi soit qui mal y pense’ (‘Evil be to him who evil thinks’). 248 57. Westphalia: region in Western Germany known for its ham. 249 58. greasy pavements: either the flat surfaces of the ovens or the floor around them. 250 67. Quadrus: a mathematician. 251 70. tapestry be sung: a frequent subject of romance. 252 74. George: St George, the patron saint of England, reputed to have slain a dragon. 253 77. Nymph . . . Ptolemy: Cleopatra, queen of Egypt, and Ptolemy (c.100–170 AD), mathematician and astronomer who lived in Alexandria, Egypt. 254 82. eke: also; an echo of Pope’s Burlington, l. 149. 255 86. drag your toes: an echo of Pope’s Burlington, l. 131. 256 89. Sir Wary: a cautious, perhaps miserly, former owner of the estate. 257 100. gears . . . drenching-horns: harness, and device for giving medicine to horses. 258 104. leads: roof covering. 259 107. precipitant: falling headlong. 260 108. nether world: literally the servants’ world ‘downstairs’, but figuratively also the classical underworld. 261 110. menial train: household servants. 262 113. Sophronia: Leapor stresses the mock-heroic nature of the poem by extending the use of classical names from the gentry owners to the household servants. 263 118. Ambrosial: like the food of the gods. tempered: matured. 264 120. baneful: damaging. 265 129. fierce crew: the hungry servants waiting for a drink. 266 145. pottage: a thick soup. 267 146. whirling jack: mechanism to turn meat on a spit. 268 151. blubber: bubble, foam. bran: husk of various grains, here used for cleaning; hence purging bath, l. 154. 269 153. clout: piece of cloth. 270 156. meads: meadows. 271 161. flags: reeds, rushes. 272 164. Orion . . . day: constellation including the dog star, associated with excessive heat. 273 166. dryads: wood nymphs. 274 168. with poet’s eyes: echo of Pope’s Rape of the Lock, 5.124. 275 169. Philomeda’s strain: nightingale’s song. 276 171. turtles: turtle doves. 277 173–6. Leapor refers to the fashionable landscape ‘improvement’ which took place at the estate shortly after she left and to the demolition of the medieval house she has described to make way for a modern building; hence also the reference to ‘Diracto’, the designer or director of these changes, ll. 185–6. 278 175. car: cart or wagon. 279 Primum Mobile: original cause. 280 genius: guiding spirit. 281 made some difficulties: i.e. resisted out of politeness. 282 enchanted ground: a reference to the many enchanted gardens of the magicians and witches who people the stories of romance narrative; in England the tradition

238 Notes

283 284

285 286 287 288 289 290 291 292 293 294 295

continued notably in such works as Edmund Spenser’s Faerie Queene and, nearer Scott’s own time, Thomson’s Castle of Indolence. Attick school: fourth century BC school of philosophers in Athens led by Plato and Aristotle. bow: with its rounded bow window and sense of proportion, the room Scott describes appears to be in the modern taste; however, the communal activities of the ladies also implies the central ‘hall’ of an old-fashioned country house. orrery: clockwork machine designed to represent the movement of the planets. turning in wood: i.e. carving wood on a lathe. tent: frame for embroidery. fancied: imagined. accosted: addressed, greeted. caudles: drinks for the sick, made of thin gruel, wine or beer, and spices. fixed upon: chosen. a power of: many. came broke: bankrupt. saint’s day: day in the Church calendar when an individual saint is celebrated. condescended: willingly departed from social superiority (not pejorative).

Chapter 4 Merry England: Property, Pastoral and Rural Pleasures 1 2

3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22

straw . . . about: cover with straw. wakes: annual festivals observed in individual parishes, originally on the feast of the patron saint of the church, and involving sometimes several days of festivities. ordinance: planning. saturity: fullness, repletion. impletion: the action of filling; the condition of being filled. thripple: to exercise small and desperate measures of household economy. determinate: predetermined. congratulate: celebrate. drabs: sluttish women. varlets: rogues, rascals. exordium: origin. God forfend: protect us from. 2. compass: circuit. 5. waxed: grew. 10. start-ups: rustic shoes. 11. wold: hill country, or plain. 12. russets: garments made of coarse woollen cloth. 14. baldric-wise: draped across the body, over one shoulder and under the other arm. 23. July-flower: the gillyflower; probably the modern carnation. 24. heart’s-ease: pansies were commonly known as heart’s-ease. 25. cotes: light buildings for sheltering animals. simples: herbs. 26. scorn to mell: scorn to associate; i.e. courtiers look scornfully on the use of rural herbs for medicinal use.

Notes 239 23 32. brave: fine, handsome. bell-wether: the leading sheep of a flock, on whose neck a bell is hung. 24 33. lusty rout: a boistrous, disorderly group. 25 34. bagpipes: though now associated solely with Scotland, different forms of bagpipes were common in early modern England. 26 37. statutes: used figuratively, and perhaps a little disingenuously, to add a certain gravity to a rural custom. 27 39. i.e. one of Rowland’s ewes gave birth to the earliest lamb this year. (Drayton employed Rowland as his own pastoral persona, though the identity is never pursued as specifically as that between the author and Colin Clout in Edmund Spenser’s poetry.) 28 41. board: food, provisions. 29 42. green . . . squared: a green ingeniously prepared for the feast. 30 43. cates: delicacies. 31 45. whig: a rural drink, made from cream, whey or buttermilk. 32 46. wildings: probably fruits growing wildly. 33 47. dowsets: meaning unclear. 34 48. syllabubs: a dish made of milk or cream, curdled by wine or cider. 35 52. neighbouring . . . flowers: i.e. the vale has been stripped of its flowers, which now decorate the shepherds’ festive setting. 36 55. i.e. the strength of the sun eased as it moved towards the west. 37 59. ween: think. 38 62. scarcely brooked compare: scarcely admitted of comparison. 39 65. peats: term of endearment; roughly equivalent to ‘pets’. 40 67. teats: in Drayton’s time, as nowadays, this word was most commonly used to refer to the anatomy of female animals (as in l. 6, above) rather than to women. This usage is almost inevitably belittling and comic, as it combines Petrarchan terms of praise with a coarsely rustic voice. 41 70. battening: feeding, thriving. leas: meadows. 42 71. scathe: harm, injury. 43 76. roundelay . . . bear: a roundelay is a simple form of song; while some here sing the verses, the rest pick up the ‘under-song’ or refrain. 44 77. first . . . bequeath: i.e. Batte is appointed to lead the first roundelay. 45 96. Tho Phoebus paramours: archaic diction, in the spirit of Spenser’s Shepheardes Calender. The line depicts the forementioned flowers as beloved by Phoebus (the sun), or as lovers of the sun. 46 109. delud’st: mock, beguile. 47 119. smirking: smiling. 48 137. pay their debt: their debt to the company is a song. 49 147–8. i.e. Sylvia’s sweetness makes the flowers seem blemished and tainted. 50 151. strooken: struck. 51 162. roe: small species of deer. 52 179. Idea: the shepherdess whose ‘sober pace’ sets her apart from the rest of the shepherds introduces a self-reflexive element to the poem. Drayton had developed in earlier pastorals and sonnets a loose connection between Rowland (his own pastoral persona) and Idea (Rowland’s beloved). 53 181. drave: archaic form of ‘drove’. their careful keep: animals left in their charge. 54 183. learnt: taught. 55 188. Only like me: she alone is like me. gall: bitterness, unpleasantness. 56 191. underpart: undersong, refrain.

240 Notes 57 201. i.e. her eyes are clearer than the sun. 58 205. That: presumably referring still to her eyes. 59 211–16. the conceit represents Idea’s breast as the Milky Way, which was conceived as the main highway to Jupiter’s palace. 60 219. Ariadne’s crown: the constellation Corona Borealis: the crown Dionysus presented to Ariadne at their wedding. 61 222. Berenice’s hair: the hair of Berenice, wife of a king of Egypt, was vowed by her to Venus; however, it was stolen from the temple of the goddess and set in the heavens as a constellation. 62 225. Cynthia’s: the moon’s. 63 James’s visit to Lancashire brought to his attention the divisions in his realm over the issue of sports. Lancashire was known for its pursuit of traditional pastimes, though it was also the site of Puritan attempts to combat custom in the name of godliness. When a group of revellers disrupted a service for the king with an appeal for royal recognition of the festivities, James was forced to punish them for their excess. The ‘Book of Sports’ thus defends a regulated middle way in the observance of holiday pastimes. 64 precise people: Puritans. 65 carriage: manner of social conduct; referring here to the Puritans’ attempts to suppress rural recreations. 66 country: county. 67 recusants: Catholics who risked prosecution by refusing to attend services of the Protestant Church. 68 turning: changing allegiances from one Church to the other. Here James is concerned that the strictures of the Puritans will drive people away from Protestantism. 69 meaner: of lower rank. 70 canons . . . Church: rules (or ‘canon law’) laid down by the Protestant Church. 71 presenting . . . themselves: the ‘presentment’ was a standard form of legal discipline applied against those who did not attend church services. 72 straight order: strict control. 73 letted: hindered; impeded. 74 May-Games: festivities associated with May Day and the coming of spring. 75 Whitsun Ales: church ‘ales’, of which that held at Whitsuntide (the days around Whitsunday, the seventh Sunday after Easter) was perhaps the most prominent, brought a community together for a day of festivity and also raised money for the parish. 76 Morris dances: the origins of morris dancing are unclear, though by the seventeenth century the practice was widely embraced as a native form, and was a central component of almost any local festivity. 77 Maypoles: a Maypole would generally be erected in a village immediately before May Day. It would be decked with flowers, and would provide a focus for parish festivities. (See Stubbes’s description, p. 96 above.) 78 decoring: decorating. 79 women . . . custom: covering the floors of churches and other buildings with rushes was not uncommon. 80 bull-baitings: bull-baiting, and more notably bear-baiting, had long been popular throughout the social order. 81 interludes: dramatic entertainments. 82 bowling: like many of his contemporaries, James was concerned by the growing numbers of bowling alleys in the city, and their use by the lower social orders.

Notes 241 83 judges . . . circuit: judges who travelled throughout the country, presiding over courts in various towns. 84 3. Stygian cave: Cerberus’s cave on the Styx, the chief river in Hades, is drawn from Virgil’s Aeneid. Milton’s genealogy of Melancholy is his own. 85 5. uncouth: desolate, wild. 86 6. brooding . . . wings: the metaphor is of Darkness as a huge bird; however, the meaning of brooding as moody meditation is also valid. 87 7. night-raven: a bird, of no specific species, heard to cry out in the night; traditionally taken as an evil omen. 88 10. dark . . . dwell: the Cimmerians live on the edge of the world, in perpetual darkness. desert: uncultivated wilderness. 89 12. yclept: called. 90 10–16: Milton selectively adapts the mythological genealogy of Euphrosyne, or Mirth, one of the three Graces. Although the Graces were more commonly considered to be the daughters of Zeus and Hera or Eurynome, it suits Milton’s purposes in this poem to link them with Venus and Bacchus. 91 18. frolic: joyous, sportive. 92 19. Zephyr with Aurora: the west wind and the goddess of dawn. 93 24. buxom: compliant; indulgent, favourable. debonair: courteous, affable. 94 27. Quips: sharp remarks; clever sayings. cranks: fanciful turns of speech. wanton wiles: sportive tricks. 95 28. becks: gestures expressive of salutation or respect. wreathed smiles: smiles formed by wreathing (twisting, wrinkling) the countenance. 96 29. Hebe: goddess of youth. 97 33. trip . . . go: step lightly or nimbly. 98 40. unreproved: blameless. 99 46. at . . . morrow: unclear: either L’Allegro rises and comes to his window, or the lark comes to the window and bids good morning to L’Allegro. 100 50. Scatters . . . thin: the image is military, suggesting a retreating army, scattered by the victorious forces. 101 51. stack: hay-stack. 102 55. hoar hill: ‘hoar’ may not necessarily suggest frost, but rather a misty summer morning, consistent with the rest of the poem. 103 60. state: stately progress (as of a king). 104 62. expands upon the representation of the sun as a monarch, presenting the clouds as dressed in a uniform (‘livery’) identifying them as his servants. 105 65. blithe: cheerfully. 106 71. Russet: reddish-brown. fallows: ploughed lands; or lands lying fallow, untilled. 107 80. cynosure: centre of attention. 108 83. Corydon and Thyrsis: Milton’s selection of rustic names draws upon classical and native pastoral traditions, though very little upon English rural practice. 109 85. messes: dishes of food. 110 87. bower: dwelling. 111 92. upland hamlets: villages among the hills. 112 94. rebecks: rudimentary fiddles. 113 102. Faery Mab: a figure from native folklore. 114 104. he . . . led: probably a reference to the Will o’ the Wisp, or Jack o’ the Lantern, a spirit which leads people astray in the night. 115 105. drudging goblin: the native spirit Robin Goodfellow, generally known as a benevolent practical joker and helper of farmers.

242 Notes 116 110. lubber: big, clumsy. fiend: as a sort of devil, the word ‘fiend’ is literally accurate, and need not carry any negative connotations. 117 113. crop-full: with a full stomach. 118 114. matin: a morning song; though with suggestive religious undertones. 119 120. weeds: clothes. triumphs: spectacles or pageants. 120 125. Hymen: goddess of marriage. 121 132. sock: a light shoe worn by comic actors on the Greek and Roman stage; hence a symbol of dramatic comedy. The poem therefore distinguishes between Ben Jonson’s comedies and tragedies, indicating that only the former suit the mood of this poem. 122 136. Lap: enfold. Lydian airs: a mode of ancient Greek music, commonly characterized as weak and effeminate (though Milton modifies this sense with the following line). 123 138. meeting soul: the image is of the soul coming forward in response to the music and verse. 124 139. winding bout: circuit. 125 141. wanton . . . cunning: two paradoxes: spontaneous care; and inattentive, giddy skill. 126 148–50. Milton plays upon the myth of Orpheus, the musician with supernatural powers, who lost his wife when he looked back while leading her out of the underworld. 127 2. the god unshorn: i.e. Apollo, god of the sun. 128 3. Aurora: goddess of the dawn. 129 6. dew: in English folklore, the May dew was believed to have curative and restorative powers. 130 12. profanation . . . in: Herrick confronts Puritan arguments that the Maying customs are sinful, claiming instead that it is sinful to stay inside and refuse to participate in the communal festivity. 131 14. fetch in May: ‘Maying’ involved gathering boughs of white hawthorn and bringing them back to the village in order to decorate the doorways of houses. 132 17. Flora: goddess of flowering plants. 133 22. Against you come: awaiting your arrival. 134 25. Titan: the sun. 135 28. beads: i.e. prayers. 136 34. invokes Jewish customs, as related in the Old Testament. An ark is a wooden coffer containing the tables of the law, which is kept in the holiest part of the temple (the tabernacle). 137 40. proclamation . . . May: reference to the Book of Sports, reissued by Charles I in 1633. 138 46. white-thorn: the common hawthorn. 139 48. before we have abandoned our dreams, awakened. 140 51. green-gown: sexual allusion. 141 57. in our prime: the use of ‘prime’ draws on its temporal meanings, of springtime, or the first hour of the day. 142 65. or you or: either you or. 143 2. lords . . . oil: wine and oil, hardly typical produce of the native countryside, link the English landlords to those of classical times. 144 1–4. from the opening lines of the poem, Herrick manipulates personal pronouns in order to distinguish between the ‘toil’ of the labourers and the vicarious work of the landowners.

Notes 243 145 7–8. cart . . . art: the hock-cart brings in from the fields the last of the harvest. It was often decorated. 146 9. Malkin: female name commonly associated with the lower social orders. 147 15. rout: company, group. 148 20. prank: adorn, decorate. 149 21. cross the fill-horse: get astride the shaft-horse (i.e. the horse which goes in the shafts of a cart, harnessing it to the vehicle); though perhaps also make the sign of the cross over. 150 34. frumenty: a dish made of hulled wheat boiled in milk and seasoned with sugar and cinnamon. 151 36. smirking: sparkling. 152 40. flail: instrument for threshing corn. fane: (or fan) instrument for winnowing grain. fatt: (or fat) cask or barrel to contain dry things. 153 42. crookt: crooked. 154 45. neat: cattle. 155 6. Brave: handsome; fine. 156 7. Hodge: abbreviation of ‘Roger’; used as a typical labourer’s name. 157 8. amend: improve on; hence surpass, better. 158 9–10: the May lord was the young man chosen to preside over the festivities of May Day. 159 14. list: wish. 160 15. Kit crowd: probably musical, in line with the following directions. A ‘kit’ was a small fiddle; a ‘crowd’ was also an early form of fiddle. 161 16. sexual innuendo is mixed with musical direction: ‘tickle’ suggests amorous or sexual tickling; ‘pipe’ was an established euphemism for penis. tabor: (small kind of) drum. 162 22. lofty: unclear; perhaps claiming a substantial dignity to rival the court masque. 163 24. knack: an ingenious contrivance; a toy, trinket, trifle. 164 27. doxies: wenches; sweethearts. 165 28. out: out of the dance; or out of step. 166 41: the switch to a broad regional accent is abrupt, though not an uncommon literary device. 167 44. gown of green: sexual allusion. 168 45. Pigsnies: darling, pet. 169 Lobbin Clout: ‘Lobbin’ is derived from the adjective ‘lob’, meaning rustic, clownish, loutish, clumsy. ‘Clout’ also has rural associations, meaning a clod of earth or a rough patch on clothing; however, Gay’s use is principally indebted to literary traditions, as Colin Clout was a plain-speaking countryman in the early sixteenth-century poetry of John Skelton, and was later fixed in native pastoral traditions by Spenser’s Shepheardes Calender. But while Skelton and Spenser had used their shepherds as incisive critics on social and religious issues, Gay is typical of his time in offering instead comic rural figures. 170 1. Blouzelinda: the name plays upon Philips’s Rosalind. ‘Blowze’ was by the eighteenth century a derogatory term used to describe women; it suggests fatness, ruddy complexion and loose sexuality. 171 6. marigold . . . meet: marigolds might be used to flavour pottage (a thick soup). 172 Cuddy: this name is used in Spenser’s Shepheardes Calender; however, in a similar way to the transformation of Spenser’s Colin Clout into Lobbin Clout, Gay shapes Cuddy as a simple bumpkin. In Gay’s time a ‘cuddy’ was a donkey.

244 Notes 173 9. Buxoma: derived from ‘buxom’, meaning compliant, submissive, morally tractable. featest: neatest, nicest, most elegant. 174 10. wake: annual festival observed in a parish. 175 16. deftest: ‘Deft, an old word signifying brisk or nimble’ [Gay’s footnote]. 176 29. Eftsoons: ‘Eftsoons, from eft an ancient British word signifying soon. So that eftsoons is a doubling of the word soon, which is, as it were, to say twice soon, or very soon.’ [Gay’s footnote; though this is a fabricated etymology.] 177 38. Buxoma presumably works as a milk-maid. 178 39. quaintly: ‘Quaint has various significations in the ancient English authors. I have used it in this place in the same sense as Chaucer hath done in his Miller’s Tale. “As clerkes been full subtil and queint” (by which he means arch or waggish) and not in that obscene sense wherein he useth it in the line immediately following.’ [Gay’s footnote, referring to The Canterbury Tales A.3275–6.] 179 43. in a footnote, Gay quotes Virgil, ‘Eclogue VII’, ll. 61–4: ‘The poplar is most dear to Alcides, the vice to Bacchus, the myrtle to lovely Venus, and his own laurel to Phoebus. Phyllis loves hazels, and while Phyllis loves them, neither the myrtle nor laurel of Phoebus shall outvie the hazels’ (Virgil, trans. H. Rushton Fairclough (Loeb Classical Library, Cambridge, MA, 1935)). 180 50. capon: castrated cock. 181 51. Pudding: possibly ‘sausage’. 182 52. white-pot: a dish made of milk or cream, boiled with various ingredients. 183 59. hot-cockles: a game in which one player lies face down, is struck on the back by the others in turn, and guesses who has delivered each blow. 184 60. clown: countryman, rustic. 185 74. ‘marigold’ [Gay’s footnote]. 186 75. carl: churl. 187 77. in a footnote, Gay quotes Virgil, ‘Eclogue III’, ll. 106–7: ‘Tell me in what land spring up flowers with royal names written thereon’ (trans. Fairclough). 188 78. ‘rosemary’ [Gay’s footnote]. 189 79. strains: songs. 190 80. in a footnote, Gay quotes here Virgil, ‘Eclogue III’, l. 109: ‘You deserve the heifer, and he also’ (trans. Fairclough). 191 82. goodman: term applied to independent farmers below the level of gentleman.

Chapter 5 The Georgic Imperative: Labour, Thrift, Improvement 1

2 3 4 5 6 7

8 9

1–2. the poem is based on one of the source texts of Christian georgic, Luke, 9:62, in which Jesus declares that, ‘No man, having put his hand to the plough, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God’. 3. business: labour. 4. fee: reward. 6. hest: behest, command. 7. hire: wages, reward. 8. to his rest: i.e. into the eternal rest of heaven. 1. Michaelmas: the feast of St Michael, 29 September; one of the four quarterdays of the English business year, and therefore a day on which land would commonly change hands. 3. time . . . given: i.e. granted by custom, or by the terms of his lease. 4. makes the labours and benefits of August last until the evening of Michaelmas.

Notes 245 10 5–8. ‘The off-going tenant of champion or open-field allows the incoming to summer fallow that portion of the ground destined for wheat. But the occupier of woodland or enclosures holds the whole till the expiration of his term, unless particular stipulations are made by lease’ (Five Hundred Points of Good Husbandry, ed. W. Mavor (London, 1812)). 5. champions: inhabitants of countries where farmlands are open and unenclosed. 11 6. fallow: uncultivated. Lent Lady Day: 25 March, the feast of the Annunciation. 12 8. woodland: regions largely devoted to pastoral farming. 13 9–12. ‘Farm take or give over’ (Tusser’s marginal note). 9. Provide against: prepare for. bargain: contract; agreement on landholding terms. 14 11. let . . . stroke: apply your intelligence diligently. 15 12. proverbial: in case of buying or selling anything without seeing it or knowing its value. 16 13–16. ‘Twelve good properties’ (Tusser’s note). 17 15. till-man: man employed to till the soil, ploughman. Jack . . . Jill: i.e. good servants (in husbandry). 18 16. husband: farmer, husbandman. 19 17–20. ‘Have ever a good fence’ (Tusser’s note). Tusser argues that a farmer should look first to the state of his flocks and crops before spending money on items of pleasure (‘fancy’) in the house. 20 21–4. ‘Best cattle most profit’ (Tusser’s note). 21. baggedglie tit: worthless (small) horse, nag. 21 22. evil athit: ill-conditioned, in the extreme (Grigson). 22 23. carren and barren: beasts that are either decrepit to the state of being mere carcases (‘carrion’), or incapable of reproduction. 23 25–8. ‘Strong and light’ (Tusser’s note). 25. tumbrel: a cart so constructed that the body tilts backwards to empty out the load. wain: large open vehicle, for heavy loads. 24 29–32. ‘Hate borrowing’ (Tusser’s note). 25 30. noyance: nuisance, source of annoyance. 26 31. without lending unspilt: not wasted by lending. 27 32. what followeth needful: that which follows (in Tusser’s book) is indispensable. 28 3. at years sixteen: when we were (both?) sixteen. 29 14. compted: accompted (archaic form of ‘accounted’). 30 15–16. Our . . . year: our freehold estate was worth only twenty marks per year. Since a mark was a monetary unit equivalent to 160 pennies, or two-thirds of the value of a pound, this indicates a modest family income in Kay’s father’s time. In contemporary terminology, he began as a husbandman, rather than a yeoman or gentleman. 31 19. The . . . Lyngerthes: two parts of Kay’s present estate; perhaps originally independent farms. 32 20. oxgangs: traditional land measurement, equivalent to between 10 and 18 acres. in Farnley town: presumably not in the small Yorkshire town itself, but on its outskirts. 33 21. room: Kay’s original spelling, ‘rowme’, produces a clumsy ryhme with the preceding line. 34 22. presumably ‘in addition to my continuing to meet these costs (associated with the expansion of the family’s landholdings)’. 35 24. Marling: fertilizing; probably, though not necessarily, with ‘marl’, a soil rich in lime.

246 Notes 36 37 38 39 40

41 42 43 44 45

46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59

60 61 62 63 64 65 66

25. defrayed: discharged, covered. 27. eke: also, moreover. 28. penny rent: (annual) cash income. 2. mended: amended. 6. mills: watermills, which diverted water from the river’s channel. hills: uncleared mounds in the river. gravel beds: probably gravel naturally occurring in the river; however, gravel was commonly used as ballast, and the practice of dumping it in the Thames, especially near the London docks, caused inevitable problems for rivermen. 7. weirs: dams, often used to divert water to drive mills. forced islands made: islands in the river created artificially. 8. i.e. to damage the public movement of trade in the interests of personal business. 9. fall: befall. 11. Flanders: an independent territory in Taylor’s time, but now divided between Belgium, France and Holland. 17. vagabonds: vagrants were the subject of much debate in early modern England; Taylor saw them as a source of cheap labour. wandering . . . Cain: common representation of vagrants, on the basis of God’s judgement of Cain in Genesis, 4:12: ‘When thou tillest the ground, it shall not henceforth yield unto thee her strength; a fugitive and a vagabond shalt thou be in the earth’. 18. runagates: vagabonds, wanderers. 20. i.e. the vagrants’ labour saves them from lives of crime. 24. wains: large open vehicles, used for heavy loads. 36. expedition: speedy performance. 41. external, and internal: in their external and internal lives; materially and spiritually. 5. harrows in: covers, by using a harrow (a heavy frame set with iron teeth). 6. i.e. beside a neat furrow, he lays the harrow down to dry. 10. annoy: harm, frustrate. 11. blasting-winds: winds not only strong, but believed to carry an infection (‘blast’) destructive to crops. 12. mildews: destructive growths on plants. 17. Hope’s emblem: the emblem of Hope at a plough, on which the poem is based. 22. i.e. to all necessary tasks. 24. i.e. you will find that your labours are likely to be unproductive. Theocritus: Greek poet (c.310–c.250 BC) who wrote the earliest examples of Greek pastoral. His Idylls include descriptions of rustic life and were later to be imitated by Virgil. Homer: Greek poet (ninth century BC), author of the Iliad and Odyssey. Heroics: poetry describing the deeds of heroes, epic poetry. Hesiod: Greek poet (eighth century BC), author of Works and Days, the earliest of didactic poems, with directions for everyday life and husbandry. Doric: Doris or Doria was one of the divisions of ancient Greece; Doric dialect is rustic, unrefined. Ionians: Ionia was the most important division of ancient Greece; Ionian pronunciation was often held to be light, effeminate. Middle style: in traditional theories of rhetoric, the style of speech adopting a position between the high and the low, the austere and the plain. Pastorals: the Eclogues (37 BC), modelled on the Idylls of Theocritus. Georgics: subtitled Art of Husbandry, the Georgics (36–29 BC) consist of four books on the life of the farmer.

Notes 247 67 Husbandman: farmer, one who tills the earth. 68 Theognis: Greek poet (c.570–c.490 BC) known for his didactic writing, notably the elegies to Crynus which counsel moderation. 69 Pythagoras: Greek philosopher and mathematician (c.582–500 BC) whose work is known only from later writers including Aristotle; he believed in the transmigration of souls and developed a mathematical account of the universe. 70 Aratus: Greek stoic and poet (315–245 BC) best known for his speculative poem on the heavens, ‘Phaenomena’. 71 Lucretius: the Roman poet Titus Lucretius Carus (c.99–55 BC) whose De Rerum Natura (On the Nature of Things) includes a famous description of primitive life and early civilization. 72 Natural philosophy: physical sciences. 73 wrought: created, fashioned. 74 Varro: Marcus Terentius Varro (116–27 BC); his vast number of publications include a work on husbandry, Rerum Rusticarum (37 BC). 75 by-way: side road. 76 numbers: rhythm in poetry. 77 terms of art: technical expressions. 78 tempore but sidere: the Georgics open with a discussion of the poem’s subject (‘What makes the crops joyous, beneath what star . . . it is well to turn the soil’); i.e. Virgil chooses to use the poetic language of ‘beneath what star’ (sidere) instead of ‘at what moment’ (tempore). 79 Grecisms: words from Greek. 80 circumlocutions: using several words instead of one. 81 plebeian style: common form of speech. 82 Miscellany Poems: Dryden’s preface to the second volume of the Dryden-Tonson Miscellany Poems, which came out with the title ‘Sylvae’ (1685); there is no direct comparison, but when moving from Virgil to Lucretius the observation is made that the ‘method’ of the Georgics derives from the latter’s De Rerum Natura, and some similarities and differences are then noted. We are indebted to Paul Hammond and Stuart Gillespie for this reference. 83 nobler: more elevated, lofty. 84 10. share: ploughshare. 85 12. Winds . . . glebe: i.e. turns the plough and cuts a furrow through the earth. 86 13. White: uncertain; perhaps, as Sambrook suggests, because of the powdered lime used to protect seeds from pests, or because the sower uses a bed-sheet to carry the grain. 87 16. harrow: a heavy timber frame with iron teeth, dragged over the earth to cover the seeds. 88 22. pomp: a problematic term in Thomson’s poem, here suggesting the corruptions of luxury, but at l. 42 (below) appearing to celebrate the wealth of empire. 89 23. lost themes: i.e. ‘lost’ both because georgic is conventionally less important than higher genres such as epic, and because the great may consider its subject unworthy of them. 90 24. rural Maro: Virgil, author of the Georgics. 91 29–35: a reference to Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus (c. 519–430 BC), the general twice made dictator of the Roman republic by the Senate in moments of national crisis, but who resigned his position and returned to his farm after his victories. 92 43. boon: blessing.

248 Notes 93 44–5. wool had been a major export for several centuries but Britain also exported grain in the early part of the eighteenth century. 94 1. the poem begins as a direct translation from Georgics, 2.458–74. 95 3–4. cringing . . . nod: i.e. abasing oneself in the futile hope of gaining patronage from a powerful aristocrat. 96 5. laced beggar: a courtier. 97 8. commerce: dealings, interaction; also with the sense of trading, buying and selling. 98 20. sweet prospects: beautiful views, i.e. land is recognized here as the aesthetic category of ‘landscape’; see also Chapters 2 and 7. 99 22. embowered: literally surrounded by trees, but perhaps also decorated with climbing plants. 100 3. in late September a full moon appears very shortly after sunset, providing light by which to continue gathering the harvest, hence ‘harvest moon’. 101 6–7. artists. i.e. artisans collecting wool for the large manufacturers. Leeds, Norwich . . . Frome: centres of woollen production in Yorkshire, East Anglia and the West Country respectively. 102 9. season’s price: the market price of wool would vary from year to year depending on levels of production. 103 10. wain: wagon. 104 11. bark: boat. 105 12. cerule: poetic form of cerulean, or deep blue. 106 13. downy: like soft feathers. 107 14. copsy: within a small wood. 108 17. Briareus: in Greek myth, a hundred-handed giant who aided the gods in their battle with the Titans. 109 20. curious: careful, particular. 110 22. industrious Belgians: since the Middle Ages, Flanders and the surrounding regions prospered from its highly organized weaving industry; while the British woollen industry was a major threat by the eighteenth century, towns such as Ghent and Bruges continued to maintain their reputations for both high quality and everyday cloth. 111 23. spacious domes: poeticism for factories. 112 25. tender: compassionate. 113 32. dusk hatter: uncertain. 114 33. hosier: supplier of stockings and socks. 115 34. airy stuffs: light or delicate fabrics. 116 36. steely comb: the comb used to separate the fibres of wool in the worsted system before they are made into long strands and spun into yarn. 117 37–42. i.e. although the hair is long, the new growth of the wool in the spring is only weakly attached to the growth of the previous autumn and thus breaks under the comb. 118 44. whelming: overwhelming. 119 48. clothed Apulian: ‘the shepherds of Apulia, Terentium, and Attica, used to clothe their sheep with skins, to preserve and improve their fleeces’ (Dyer’s note). 120 50. cole or turnip: cabbage (cole) and turnip were an important part of improved farming techniques, which relied on fodder crops to feed larger numbers of livestock and which in turned produced larger quantities of manure, the major source of fertiliser at the time. 121 53. lightest: i.e. most fragile and least valuable.

Notes 249 122 54–5. unimproving farms . . . enclose: the rhetoric of improvement adopted by Dyer characteristically insists on the inefficiency of open-field farming and the advantages of enclosure; the open-field system was, however, far more flexible to change than older histories of the ‘Agricultural Revolution’ would suggest. 123 56. pitch: resinous black substance distilled from tar, used by sheep farmers to mark their ownership of individual animals. 124 58–60. i.e. the dark pitch enters the locks of wool, makes them unsuitable for dying, and thus destroys their value. 125 61. promiscuous: indiscriminately, without rational order. culture: cultivation. 126 62. i.e. the soil is exhausted of essential nutrients which are not replaced by adequate manure or other fertilisers. 127 63–4. Dull waters . . . furrows: i.e. stagnant water collects and makes the land unfit for cultivation. 128 68. Devours . . . sward: i.e. villagers burn turf in the absence of wood. 129 70. turn . . . grain: i.e. soil turned over by the plough, broken apart by the frost, and thus made ready for planting corn. 130 73. there: i.e. in open fields. 131 80. spongy stores: wool. 132 83. card, nor comb: in the woollen system fibres of mixed lengths are straightened with ‘cards’ and then spun into thick yarns; in the worsted system the longer fibres are separated from the short with combs and then spun into finer smoother yarns. 133 90–1. grain . . . Imbibes: i.e. no wool takes up dye better than that produced in France. 134 91. Gobelins: the royal textile factory in France known for its luxurious and extremely expensive tapestries. 135 93–6: i.e. the fleece of the living sheep will not be dyed by environmental factors, such as food or soil, but it is as well to be aware of their dyeing properties. 136 98. azure marl: i.e. blue marl, soil consisting predominantly of clay and lime. 137 101. miry: boggy 138 102. Yare . . . Stroud: rivers in Norfolk and Gloucestershire; the towns of Norwich (close to the Yare) and Stroud were the major markets for wool from East Anglia and the West Country. 139 111. Bedford Level: areas of Cambridgeshire fenland drained and reclaimed in the seventeenth century under the direction of Francis Russell, 4th Earl of Bedford. 140 113. hairy fleeces: fleeces producing mostly tough outer hair rather than wool. 141 116–17. high-honoured . . . Russell: William, Lord Russell (1639–83), the Whig politician executed for his alleged involvement in the Rye House Plot (1683) but much admired by later Whigs as a symbol of resistance to tyranny. 142 119–20. Ouse . . . Camus: the river Cam joins the Ouse as they flow northwards through East Anglia to the Wash. 143 123. Ierne: archaism for Ireland; a Latin form of ‘Iverna’ (from the old Celtic), thus also ‘Hibernia’ and ‘Erin’. hideous bogs: the central lowland area of Ireland contains large numbers of bogs and lakes. 144 125. mazy: bewildered, confused. 145 128–9. Deeping fens . . . Bourne: the fenlands around Deeping and Bourne were the earliest of the Lincolnshire fens to be drained (in a scheme organized by the Earl of Manchester in 1666). Land reclamation usually also led to enclosure which in turn could be met by strong opposition by the commoners of the fens.

250 Notes 146 134. foodful pulse: peas and beans. 147 139. weld: reseda luteola, a plant from which a yellow dye can be obtained. 148 140. madder . . . woad: the former, rubia tinctorum, a climbing shrub from the roots of which a dark red dye can be obtained, the latter a perennial herb of the cabbage family, from the leaves of which a blue dye can be produced. Both were cultivated in Britain for this purpose. 149 141. naked ancestors: ancient Britons who inhabited Britain before the AngloSaxon invasions of the fifth and sixth centuries; they were said to colour their bodies with woad as a form of war paint. 150 144. gaudy pencil: i.e. bright colours. 151 158. weal: common good, happiness. 152 161. contrarious bents: conflicting motives. 153 165. Humiliating . . . enlarged: i.e. the mind is enlarged even as it is made to feel small by the vastness and wonders of the creation. 154 167. prospect: cf. the use of this word throughout this volume; Dyer is distinct in aligning ‘prospect’ here with the vision of the merchant. 155 173. Etna: active volcano on the eastern coast of Sicily; a major eruption in 1669 caused the deaths of 20,000 people. 156 174. Carthage: major north African city-colony founded by the Phoenicians but destroyed by the Romans during the 3rd Punic War (149–146 BC). Nile: river renowned for the fertility it brings to the otherwise desert regions of Egypt before emptying into the Mediterranean Sea. 157 175. Tyre: the Phoenician empire’s major city, originally on an island just off the coast of the modern city in south Lebanon; after a series of wars it was besieged by Alexander the Great in 332 BC and its loss marked the end of Phoenician independence. 158 176. merchants: the Phoenicians were renowned in the ancient world for their skill as sailors and were the greatest traders of their time; in British legend, the inhabitants of Cornwall were thought to be among their descendents. 159 177. marts: markets. 160 178. Arabia: peninsula in south-west Asia, now comprising Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Oman and Yemen. Kedar: region of northern Arabia and the name of a nomadic tribe who, in the Bible, are the descendants of the second son of Ishmael; Dyer may have in mind Ezekiel, 27: 21, ‘Arabia, and all the princes of Kedar, they occupied with thee in lambs, and rams, and goats: in these were they thy merchants’. 161 180. Damascus: major city in the south of what is now modern Syria, it became one of the wealthiest cities of the Roman empire and was renowned for its trade. 162 181. double tint: wool could be dyed twice to create richer colours. According to Claude Louis, Comte Berthollet’s Elements of the Art of Dyeing, trans. William Hamilton MD, 2 vols (London, 1791), ‘Sometimes they give a first colour with an intention of applying another upon it; and thus making a compound colour, and then they are said to give a ground’ (pp. 161–2). 163 192–3. solitary . . . site: see line 175 (above). 164 Shoreham to Sevenoaks: both just south-west of London, in Kent. 165 ‘Oh happy husbandmen! too happy, should they come to know their blessings’ (Georgics, 2.458–9). 166 Delicate repast: Wesley introduces Horace’s celebration of simple food with heavy irony.

Notes 251 167 ‘Oh when shall beans, brethren of Pythagoras, be served me, and with them greens well larded with fat bacon’ (Horace, Satires, 2.6.63–4). 168 fortunes . . . occupiers: i.e. those who pay a higher rent must make the land more productive and in doing so they make their fortunes.

Chapter 6 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13

14 15

16 17

18

19

20 21 22

Property and Oppression: Voices from the Margins

prince: i.e. King James I. commonalty: the people of a nation; community, commonwealth. encroaching tyrants: landlords involved in seizing common land or waste land for their exclusive use. whetstone: stone used for sharpening blades. wethers: male sheep; castrated rams. for . . . wants: i.e. since none of them do not enjoy the things that the labourers live without. depopulated . . . towns: reference to depopulating enclosure; cf. More, Utopia (above, pp. 3–4). profitable: beneficial. commodity: produce; benefit. corn: grain. But . . . year: i.e. if the harvests should fail (at the will of God) for even one year. dearth: time in which food is scarce and dear; famine. than . . . children: cf. Raphael Holinshed’s account of the 1317 dearth: ‘In this season vittels were so scant and dear, and wheat and other grain brought to so high a price, that the poor people were constrained through famine to eat the flesh of horses, dogs, and other vile beasts’ (The First and Second Volumes of Chronicles, 2 vols (1587), 1. 323). open . . . plainer: i.e. reveal the matter any more plainly. But . . . us: although the text proclaims in its title that it is written to other ‘diggers’, it clearly also serves a purpose as a statement of defiance addressed to social superiors. Hence it might refer here either to other poor people coerced into fighting against them, or to the judicial and military forces of the government. withal: with. Hampton-field: according to Manning (Village Revolts, Oxford, 1988, p. 230), the text originates from Hillmorton, in eastern Warwickshire; Martin (Feudalism to Capitalism, London, 1983) documents the aggressive policy of ‘improvement’ pursued on this estate from the late sixteenth century by its landlord, Mary Astley (pp. 188–9). delvers: tillers of the ground. day labourers: labourers hired at a certain rate of wages per day; generally the poorest and most vulnerable workers in rural society. A. B. C. D. etc.: the only known text of this document is almost certainly a midseventeenth-century copy of the original; hence it is impossible to determine whether the text was in fact signed, or rather distributed in this anonymous form. take: accept; forgive. catch: take, snatch. sell . . . them: i.e. sell a hundred sheep to Henry Hopkins, only after separating out those of the best quality.

252 Notes 23 sell . . . twice: i.e. accept payment from two people for the same beasts. 24 deny . . . hand: i.e. not acknowledge your own signature (thus avoiding legally binding agreements). 25 manure: a resonant word in Winstanley’s writings, linked to the quiet improvement of both land and poverty (Hill, World Turned Upside Down, p. 104). 26 corn: grain crops. 27 George Hill in Surrey: the site of the Digger settlement, St George’s Hill, in the parish of Walton-on-Thames. 28 those . . . subscribed: the text concludes with a list of 15 men (many of whom would have been signing also on behalf of their wives and children) involved in the settlement. 29 Creator Reason: Winstanley uses ‘Creator Reason’ or, more commonly, ‘Spirit Reason’ as terms for God the Father, and contrasts this force to the inadequate and potentially delusory powers of ‘man’s reason’ (see Works, pp. 104–5). Given the significance of these words, we have retained Winstanley’s capitalization of ‘Spirit’ and ‘Reason’. 30 hath . . . him: the perception that God resided within each Christian was common in radical religious discourse of the mid-seventeenth century; here, as in the work of other writers of the period, it is linked to a fundamental rejection of institutions (of Church and state), in favour of the individual’s conscience. 31 human . . . beasts: Winstanley typically internalizes, within each individual, the confrontation between God and Satan, good and evil. 32 and so . . . another: for Winstanley, imagination is opposed to Reason as covetousness is to community; it is a force identified with the senses and with competitive individualism. 33 hedged into enclosures: hedges and enclosures are emblematic, throughout Winstanley’s works, of the institution of private property. 34 his own covetousness: the referent of ‘his’ is unclear; it might refer to Adam, an archetypal figure of man, any corrupt man, or any man at all (since Winstanley perceives these struggles as ongoing and omnipresent). 35 sleighted: cheated, deceived; or perhaps ‘slighted’ (treated with disdain). 36 Saul: first king of Israel; Winstanley’s objection to him is based on his status as a ruler, rather than on any personal characteristics. 37 Jeremiah 23.5–6: this prophecy, that God will raise a king who ‘shall execute judgement and justice in the earth’ is significant to an understanding of Winstanley’s thought, particularly given the emphasis he places in this text on the word ‘righteousness’. According to Jeremiah: ‘In his days Judah shall be saved, and Israel shall dwell safely: and this is his name whereby he shall be called, THE LORD OUR RIGHTEOUSNESS’. 38 which . . . serpent: the serpent is an important symbol for Winstanley; he associates it variously with Satan, covetousness, flesh, imagination and sin. 39 Esau . . . him: the biblical narrative of Jacob and Esau, twin sons of Isaac and Rebekah, provided a popular metaphor for repression and revolution, and it became for Winstanley paradigmatic of the injustice inherent in structures of property. The facts were not as straightforward as Winstanley suggests: Jacob tricked his elder brother out of his birthright and his father’s blessing, and as a result Esau’s kingdom of Edom was dominated by Jacob’s Israel (see esp. Genesis, 25:19–34; 27). Yet by Winstanley’s time there was an established tradition, particularly strong in radical Puritan circles, which represented Esau as reprobate and Jacob as one of the elect; the conflict between the two might then be linked

Notes 253

40

41

42 43 44

45

46 47 48 49 50 51

52 53

54 55

56 57 58 59

to a revolutionary or millenarian vision, largely on the authority of the prophetical book of Obadiah (which Winstanley cites below, p. 154). It is within this context that Winstanley represents Jacob subsequently as the ‘universal spreading power of righteousness that gives liberty to the whole creation’. The seed . . . nations: this speech accords with a tradition of mystical biblical interpretation based on the promise of Romans, 16:20, that ‘the God of peace shall bruise Satan under your feet shortly’ (cf. Milton, Paradise Lost, 10.182–92). king of righteousness: ‘Behold, a king shall reign in righteousness, and princes shall rule in judgement’ (Isaiah, 32:1). civil . . . deliverance: Winstanley situates the ‘propriety’ (individual ownership; property) of both riches and power at the heart of God’s curse on fallen humanity, rather than perceiving these distinctions more conventionally as products of the fall. self-seeking humour: an inclination towards selfishness, working within the psysiological notion that four humours control human behaviour. liberty . . . place: for Winstanley, an oxymoron, since true liberty cannot exist in a society founded on the hierarchical principle of setting ‘every man in his place’. Thou . . . laws: probably a reference to the actions of the Council of State, established in February 1649 as the executive body of a one-chamber parliament. ordinances: decrees, commands. episcopal: pertaining to the control of bishops over the Church. prerogative: i.e. of the king. prerogative power: this usage perhaps broadens the concept of royal prerogative, suggesting that any individual assertion of will over others is comparable to the assertion of monarchical authority. standing law: law permanently in effect. sizes: assizes (court sittings held periodically in each county, presided over by judges on circuit). sessions: periodical sittings of justices of the peace. bailiffs: petty legal officers, or officers of the lord of a manor. committees: probably referring to individuals to whom a legal matter might be ‘committed’ for decision. and which . . . bloodshed: reference to the sacrifices made by the common people in the civil wars. free-quarter: provision by civilians of free board and lodging for troops. our bargain: the agreed benefit in exchange for our commitment. The blessing . . . ashamed: cf. biblical statements about God’s power to ‘raiseth up the poor out of the dust . . . to make them inherit the throne of glory’ (1 Samuel, 2:8). not . . . blood: ‘read “not spare to shed our blood”?’ (Christopher Hill, (ed.), The Law of Freedom and Other Writings (Cambridge, 1973), p. 83). work . . . another: the Midianites were a group of nomadic tribes, known as merchants and bandits, and related to the Israelites; for seven years they subjugated and persecuted Israel, until Gideon conquered them and freed his nation ( Judges, 6–7). to eat . . . brows: ‘In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, ’til thou return unto the ground’ (Genesis, 3:19). We . . . England: identifies the two most powerful institutions in 1649: the Council of State and the New Model Army. waste ground: uncultivated land. serpent . . . covetousness: see above, n. 38.

254 Notes 60 death . . . from: cf. ‘And that great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world: he was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him’ (Revelation, 12:9). 61 peculiar interest: property. 62 into us: perhaps read ‘unto us’. 63 flesh man: fleshly man or principle of the flesh within man. 64 seventh . . . kill: in fact the eighth and sixth commandments (Deuteronomy, 5:19, 17). 65 Take . . . enclosures: Winstanley was equivocal on the issue of whether the Diggers should aim to institute their vision on all land, thus abolishing the concept of private property, or merely to occupy common land and waste land. Here he clearly states the latter position; however, it must be acknowledged (as Winstanley does not always do) that commons and wastes were by no means lands without ownership, but were rather parts of manorial estates, often governed by complex local laws (cf. Richard Gough, above, pp. 12–13). 66 Norman power: numerous English radicals in the seventeenth century, including the influential Levellers, traced structures of political and social inequality back to the eleventh-century Norman invasion, and perceived the execution of Charles I as an opportunity to overthrow those structures (see Christopher Hill, ‘The Norman Yoke’, in Puritanism and Revolution: Studies in the Interpretation of the English Revolution and the Seventeenth Century (London, 1958), pp. 50–87). 67 own: acknowledge, approve of. 68 though . . . barren: i.e. although, in the perspective of those solely concerned with material realities, the land is barren. 69 Ezekiel . . . Zechariah 14.9: Winstanley’s use of the bible in his works is notoriously loose and impressionistic, and it is characteristic of him to present the reader with a list of texts, some of which may appear to bear little relation to his argument. His use of ‘etc.’ is unclear; ‘to the end’ presumably means ‘to the end of the chapter’. Zechariah 8.4–12: this prophecy of God’s return to Israel arguably carries the promise of a return to ‘days [when] there was no hire for man, nor any hire for beast’ (8:10). 70 And when . . . Acts 4.32: the apostles’ commitment to communal property is stated at Acts, 2:44–5 as well as in the text Winstanley cites, Acts 4:32 (‘And the multitude of them that believed were of one heart and one soul: neither said any of them that ought of the things which he possessed was his own; but they had all things common’). 71 time . . . time: cf. Daniel’s prophecy of a man who ‘shall speak great words against the most High, and shall wear out the saints of the most High, and think to change times and laws: and they shall be given into his hand until a time and times and the dividing of time’ (Daniel, 7:25). 72 forty-two . . . time: allusions to the prophecies of the seventh angel of the book of Revelation, the periods identical to the extent that each represents a time in which forces of evil will overcome those of God: two ‘witnesses’ will be killed but will be revived by God after three-and-a-half days (Revelation, 11:3–12); the gentiles will ‘tread under foot’ the ‘holy city’ for ‘forty and two months’ (Revelation, 11:2). 73 the world . . . day: the statement is millenarian in its prediction of the imminent return of Christ, in accord with the prophecy of Revelation, 20:1–5. 74 Shiloh: home of the Tabernacle and the Ark of the Covenant, from the Israelite conquest of Canaan until the Ark was captured by the Philistines (c.1050 BC);

Notes 255

75 76 77 78

79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86

87 88 89 90 91

92

93 94 95 96

97 98 99

100

cf. God’s punishment of Israel, ‘Forasmuch as this people refuseth the waters of Shiloah that go softly’ (Isaiah, 8:6). Lord’s man: ‘read “Lord man’s”?’ (Hill, Law of Freedom, p. 89). counsellors: perhaps read ‘councillors’, referring again to England’s Great Council. roots: root-crops. we know . . . field: cf. ‘the kingdom of heaven is like unto a merchant man, seeking goodly pearls: Who, when he had found one pearl of great price, went and sold all that he had, and bought it’ (Matthew, 13:45–6). antitype: that which is represented by the ‘type’; or perhaps ‘antetype’ (a preceding type, earlier example). professors: those who openly claim to be religious. bailiffs of hundreds: judicial officers of hundreds (subdivisions of counties or shires). committees: see above, n. 50. impropriators: laymen in possession of clerical livings or their revenues. clerks of peace: officers who prepare indictments and keep records of proceedings at sessions of the peace (the periodical sittings of justices of the peace). ordinances: see above, n. 44. but . . . side: cf. ‘But if ye will not drive out the inhabitants of the land from before you; then it shall come to pass, that those which ye let remain of them shall be pricks in your eyes, and thorns in your sides, and shall vex you in the land wherein ye dwell’ (God speaking to Moses about the land of Canaan: Numbers, 33:55). standing: continually present. free-quartering: see above, n. 51. quarter-sessions: courts held before two or more justices of the peace at least four times a year. house-keepers: householders. in voce: in a voice. Surely . . . out: ‘Now the sojourning of the children of Israel, who dwelt in Egypt, was four hundred and thirty years. And it came to pass at the end of the four hundred and thirty years, even the selfsame day it came to pass, that all the hosts of the Lord went out from the land of Egypt’ (Exodus, 12:40–1). even . . . already: the significance of 1,290 years is not clear; nor is it clear whether ‘Israel’ is here intended to refer to England, or rather to a universal Christian community. antitype: see above, n. 79. king of righteousness: see above, n. 40. pharaoh-like . . . him: ‘And Pharaoh said, Who is the Lord, that I should obey his voice to let Israel go?’ (Exodus, 5:2). not . . . Hosts: cf. ‘But I will have mercy upon the house of Judah, and will save them by the Lord their God, and will not save them by bow, nor by sword, nor by battle, by horses, nor by horsemen’ (Hosea, 1:7). 1. lays: verses. 2. patron: Duck’s own patron, Reverend Stanley. 1–12. Duck adopts the conventional (and here Miltonic) posture of the inspired poet; the position allows Duck not only to pay a polite compliment to his patron but to establish a distance between the poet and the labourer. 13–19. Duck stresses the hierarchical power relations in the rural community. The farmer has power over the labourer but is beholden to the landowner to

256 Notes

101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109

110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134

whom he must pay rent; however, both landlord and tenant farmer are in turn reliant on the labourer to produce profit from the land. 29. day’s works: i.e. the threshers are paid by the day. 31. flail: tool used for threshing. 32. just . . . front: i.e. the threshers face each other at a distance which allows them both to swing their flails. 33. threshall: flail. 33–4. prove . . . move: i.e. discover if the flail swings freely as it should; however, Duck’s phrasing also implies the skill of the thresher. 36. crab-tree staves: i.e. the flail is made from the knotted branches of the crab apple tree; hence ‘knotty’ (l. 38). 41. Cyclops: the one-eyed giants of Greek legend who worked in the underground forge of Hephaestus (in Roman myth, the god Vulcan; thus l. 43). 42. Aetna: active volcano in Sicily, and the supposed location of Vulcan’s forge. 43. Thetis’ son: Achilles, the Greek hero, son of Thetis the sea-nymph and King Peleus; Hephaestus forged his famous shield. 41–3. an imitation of Dryden’s translation of Virgil’s Georgics, 4.245–6, 251–3 (Fairer and Gerard). 48–9. i.e. while other labourers can stop work when the farmer is out of sight, the threshers cannot because the silence would give them away. 52. like shepherds: Duck stresses the georgic aspect of labour as distinct from the easy life of the shepherd in pastoral poetry which he outlines in ll. 60–1. 55. fancy: imagination. 60. lambkins: young lambs. 63. spleen: irritation, or possibly melancholy. 64. sooty peas: when threshed, dried peas produce a sooty black dust. 69. bug-bear: bogeyman. 71. winnowing: separating grain from chaff. 74. bushel: a measure for corn and other produce. 84. hoary: grey-haired, with implication of hoar-frost or frozen dew. 89. Sol: the sun. 90. welcome master: Duck stresses the insecure life of the day-labourer who must rely on the farmer and the weather for employment; cf. ll. 27–30. 91. ripe . . . hands: i.e. that it is time for haymaking. 92. intelligence: information. 96. ease: Duck appropriates a term more usually associated with the leisured classes, and leisure here only extends to the variety of labour. 107. steeled: sharpened. 109. whetstone: stone for sharpening blades. scrip: a small bag. 115–16. in the background to this are the scenes of epic competition in Virgil and Homer. 119–20. i.e. the hardest worker only gains the distinction of being most exhausted. 125. sportive labour: Duck characteristically offers a confusion between georgic and pastoral, labour and leisure. 127. courser: fast horse. 128. scour . . . green: i.e. run energetically across flat grassland. 131. meridian: at its highest point, noontime. 142. too small: punning on ‘small’ or weak beer. 148. the length of the working day for the agricultural labourer was determined not by the clock but by daylight.

Notes 257 135 163–90. After the men have cut the grass the women follow behind and spread it out to dry in the sun; it is then turned until it is completely dry, gathered into conical heaps, or haycocks, and finally stored in a rick or large stack, which was often thatched to keep out the rain. For the gendered division of agricultural labour see Michael Roberts, ‘Sickles and Scythes: Women’s Work and Men’s Work at Harvest Time’, History Workshop Journal, 7 (Spring, 1979), pp. 3–28. Duck’s attack on women is offered as a light-hearted interlude but the denigration of women’s labour also serves to highlight the hard physical labour of the men; moreover, if it represents a prevalent male viewpoint it may also be a frustrated attack on those he cannot criticize directly, the landowners and farmers who demand this labour. 136 164. prong: fork. 137 185. low’ring: gloomy, threatening. 138 192. brake: clump of bushes. 139 203. cocks: haycocks, the sheaves of hay gathered together. Collier characteristically takes issue with this line because it ignores the labour of the women who produce the haycocks (see The Woman’s Labour, ll. 40–2); such moments align Duck with the pastoral vision of landscape as free from labour which much of the poem resists. 140 204. reeks: hayricks or haystacks, covered with thatch in order to protect the hay from the weather. 141 205. range: ambiguous in that the term suggests both labour (traversing in all directions) and leisure (roving or wandering). 142 208. pensive: thoughtful. 143 217. scarce. . . appears: the appearance of the master with the dawn holds the uncomfortable suggestion that his commands are part of the natural order; cf. Collier, The Woman’s Labour, ll. 135–8. 144 223–8. celebrating the beauty of cornfields and lamenting ruination are both common tropes; far less usual is Duck’s position as both celebrant and destroyer. This offers perhaps a genuinely new aesthetic stance: while Duck likens his labour to the destructiveness of an army laying waste to the land, he also claims poignancy for a distinct moment of aesthetic appreciation which only the labourer can know. 145 234. cots: cottages. 146 241. perplexing: troublesome. 147 242. i.e. corn blown to the ground and therefore difficult to cut with a scythe. 148 243. gleaners: those who collect the ears of corn left by the reapers; this would not normally happen until after the harvest was completed (Duck corrects this in later editions). 149 248–9. working on Sunday was generally frowned upon but there was inevitable pressure during good weather to complete the harvest. 150 252. mimic fancy: imagination. 151 255. Hercules: the Greek hero who had to complete twelve superhuman tasks. 152 268–9. i.e. the custom of harvest-home in which the completion of the harvest was celebrated by a meal for all the labourers at the farmer’s house. Cf. Herrick, ‘The Hock-Cart’ (Chapter 4). 153 271. humming: frothing. 154 280. Sysiphus: figure in Greek legend who was forced by the gods to push a rock to the summit of a hill only to have it roll down again: Sysiphus thus endlessly repeated the same backbreaking task.

258 Notes 155 282–3. Duck encapsulates the tension throughout the poem between pastoral and labour by applying the pastoral image of natural growth to human labour. 156 1. Nine: the nine Muses. 157 2. Duck had gained important patronage early in his career, including that of Queen Caroline; see headnote to Duck. 158 10. portion: destiny or lot. 159 14. Alcides: Hercules (see Duck, l. 255). 160 37–8. sweat . . . Bread: ‘In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread’ (Genesis, 3:19); also a classic motif of georgic poetry. 161 41. prow: uncertain. Fairer and Gerard suggest a misprint for ‘prong’, as in fork: David Fairer and Christine Gerard, eds, Eighteenth Century Poetry: An Annotated Anthology (Oxford, 2001). 162 42. cocks: haycocks, the sheaves of hay gathered together by the women; a riposte to Duck, l. 203. 163 46–8. Collier rehearses a common western stereotype of the Turks as tyrannical oppressors. 164 51. repine: be discontented. 165 53. lord it: the knowing conflation of class and gender discourses in this phrase encapsulates the terms of Collier’s disagreement with Duck, whom she sees as perpetuating the oppression of women in his misogynist gibes and thus aligning himself with the class oppression he challenges. 166 58. rest at ev’ry stile: cf. Duck, l. 152. 167 68. froward: naughty, difficult to deal with. 168 72. Titan: the sun; in Greek myth Hyperion, one of the Titans, is father of Helios, the sun. 169 78. Thistles . . . behind: cf. Duck, ll. 241–3. 170 85. charring: doing household chores for a daily wage. 171 90. Orion: constellation which seems to disappear below the horizon in November and was associated with storms and bad weather. 172 94–5. sleep . . . peep: cf. Duck, l. 99. 173 96–103. Collier distinguishes between the status of the day-labourer, the slightly greater power of the household servant upon whom they rely for entrance to work, and the much greater power over both of the mistress. 174 105. the need for both strength and patience emphasizes the drudgery of much female manual labour. 175 106. Cambricks: fine linens. muslin: light cotton. 176 109. Holland: a kind of linen. ruffles: frills. 177 115–23. cf. Duck, ll. 147–8; Collier contrasts the man’s working day, which ends when the sun goes down, with women’s labour, which consists of a set list of tasks which must be completed regardless of time. 178 118. piece: add to. 179 124. women’s pay was markedly lower than men’s and the rate of 6–8 pence seems to have changed little over the next hundred years. 180 131. Sysiphus . . . compare: cf. Duck, l. 280. 181 132. Danaus’ daughters: Danaus’s daughters stabbed their husbands to death on their wedding night and were punished by eternally having to fill leaking water vessels. 182 135. industrious bees: the tradition of likening the organization and industry of bees to that of human society stretches back at least to Virgil’s Georgics; in Collier’s final lines, however, analogies to national politics are replaced by class oppression and

Notes 259

183 184 185 186 187 188 189 190 191 192 193 194 195 196 197

198 199 200 201 202 203

204 205 206 207 208 209 210 211 212 213 214 215

the injustices of capitalism although this analogic mode may also suggest Collier’s resignation to such oppression as an inevitable part of the natural order. 137. sordid: mean, self-interested. 2. deplores: weeps for, laments. 2–3. i.e. the soul, chilled by the winter, draws in on itself and is no longer sociable or energetic. 5. i.e. the white-haired figure of winter appears with the cold north winds. 6. Flora: in Roman myth, the goddess of flowers. 7. desert: desolate, barren. 11. tenant . . . grove: human inhabitants of the woods, but perhaps also animals. 15–18. i.e. winter prevents the conventional activities of pastoral love-making. 22. frozen fetters: i.e. enchained in ice. 24. torpid: sluggish, slow. 25. Hurry . . . again: i.e. spring will soon return bringing with it renewed vigour. 28. secret wild: secluded and uncultivated places. 29. maypole-decking sweet: i.e. flowers used to adorn maypoles for the celebration of spring. 31. joyous circle: both the seasons and the form of the dance with which it is celebrated. 33–4. as Lactilla, Yearsley introduces herself into the poem at this point and adopts for a moment the aestheticizing view of the prospect poet (cf. Denham and Kemp in Chapter 2; Thomson in Chapter 7). 35. neat dome: ‘Clifton church. In this church-yard the author’s mother was buried’ (Yearsley’s note). 36. contrite groan: prayer, but Yearsley’s phrase emphasizes suffering. 44. sad records: tombstones and inscriptions. 48. Start: sudden movement brought on by surprise or terror. 53. bulwark: defensive wall. 59. Croesean: ‘It is supposed this word is derived, though not very legitimately, from Croesus’ (Yearsley’s note). Croesus, King of Lydia (reigned c.560–546 BC), was renowned for his great wealth; his boast that this made him the happiest man in the world was proved short-lived when he was defeated and enslaved by the Persians. Thus his story, like that told by Yearsley, is one of present happiness but future suffering. 63–4: i.e. Yearsley fears that the wealthy and vain will think her suffering only worthy of satire and therefore moves her narrative on. 66. penurious: poor. 67. niggard: scanty. 82. ’whelmed: overwhelmed. 83. the god: the sun god, Apollo. 84. stupendous heights: ‘St. Vincent’s rocks, between which flows the river Avon’ (Yearsley’s note). 86. daw: jackdaw. 87. chattering . . . horror: young birds protected from schoolboys by fearfully high cliffs. 88. low’ring brothers cleft: gloomy or threatening rocks divided by the stream. 90. Co’val: of equal antiquity. 92. balmy springs: ‘The Hot Wells’ (Yearsley’s note). Water from the spa at Hotwells, near Bristol, was believed to be medicinal. 94. genial: enlivening.

260 Notes 216 102. odoriferous: odorous, fragrant. 217 103. fraught: laden. 218 105. weakness . . . fair: excessive sensibility or nervous disorders which Yearsley suggests are often a polite but misguided excuse for laziness. 219 112. rude: uncultivated or vulgar, but with the alternative meaning of healthy or vigorous: thus Yearsley sets the physical activity of ll. 110–11 against the fashionable dissipation of ll. 112–21. 220 113. conceit: vanity, pride. 221 122. rock of scanty soil: ‘Leigh Wood’ (Yearsley’s note). 222 128. useful feeding: i.e. because it produces acorns. 223 129. hamadryad: tree nymph. 224 136. useful channel: the river Avon, which provided the large commercial centre of Bristol with its shipping route. 225 146. Yours . . . while I: a characteristic moment in the poem where Yearsley refocuses her vision, distancing herself from society and adopting, again momentarily, the pastoral view. 226 160. Louisa’s dwelling: ‘The beautiful unfortunate Louisa, fugitive foreigner, lived three years in a state of distraction under this hay-stack, without going into a house. She once confessed, in a lucid interval, that she had escaped from a convent, in which she had been confined by her father, on refusing a marriage of his proposing, her affections being engaged to another man’ (Yearsley’s note). Louisa marks Yearsley’s most important departure from loco-descriptive or prospect poetry. Pope’s account of incarcerated female suffering in ‘Eloisa to Abelard’ lies behind this extended final passage, but the story of patriarchal oppression leading to madness avoids the structuring, focusing and distancing effects of a stable subject position in order to stress the fugitive mental state of this female figure in the landscape with whom Lactilla comes to identify herself. 227 174. Phoebus: the sun. 228 176. kind friend: Hannah More, who raised a subscription for Louisa and had her placed in an asylum. 229 182–3. Yearsley returns to the issues of female education and conduct (see ll. 105–21) and invites her patron to make a distinction between the cruelty of patriarchal oppression and true religious values. 230 200. rapture: ecstasy, mental transport. 231 Combined: an early form of union, the joining together of a group with shared interests to exert pressure. In 1799 the Combination Act was passed to outlaw such organization but heavy anti-Combination legislation was already in place. 232 Lammas Meads: meadow-land which reverts to common use after the summer harvest. 233 horse leaches . . . give give: ‘There is a generation, whose teeth are as swords, and their jaw teeth as knives, to devour the poor from off the earth, and the needy from among men. / The horseleach hath two daughters, crying, Give, give. There are three things that are never satisfied, yea, four things say not, It is enough: / The grave; and the barren womb; the earth that is not filled with water; and the fire that saith not, It is enough’ (Proverbs, 30:14–16). 234 hands of the Enemy: a common phrase in the Old Testament. 235 prively: secretly. 236 prively lye . . . bloud: perhaps drawing on the language of Proverbs, 1:10–19, ‘My son, if sinners entice thee, consent thou not. If they say, Come with us, let us lay wait for blood, let us lurk privily for the innocent without cause . . . walk not

Notes 261

237

238

239 240 241 242 243 244 245 246 247 248 249

250 251

thou in the way with them . . . For their feet run to evil, and make haste to shed blood. . . . And they lay wait for their own blood; they lurk privily for their own lives. So are the ways of every one that is greedy of gain; which taketh away the life of the owners thereof.’ prutrified sores: perhaps a reference to Isaiah, 1: 4–7, ‘Ah sinful nation, a people laden with iniquity, a seed of evildoers . . . they have forsaken the LORD . . . Why should ye be stricken any more? ye will revolt more and more: the whole head is sick, and the whole heart faint. From the sole of the foot even unto the head there is no soundness in it; but wounds, and bruises, and putrifying sores: they have not been closed, neither bound up, neither mollified with ointment. Your country is desolate, your cities are burned with fire: your land, strangers devour it in your presence, and it is desolate, as overthrown by strangers.’ liftest not . . . flames: the expression to ‘lift up the eyes’ is frequently used in the Bible to denote praying; the writers may have in mind Luke, 16: 22–5, ‘And it came to pass, that the beggar died, and was carried by the angels into Abraham’s bosom: and the rich man also died, and was buried; And in hell he lift up his eyes, being in torments, and seeth Abraham afar off, and Lazarus in his bosom And he cried and said, Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus, that he may dip the tip of his finger in water, and cool my tongue; for I am tormented in this flame. But Abraham said, Son, remember that thou in thy lifetime receivedst thy good things, and likewise Lazarus evil things: but now he is comforted, and thou art tormented.’ thas Ruskins: presumably a large-scale grazier making excessive demands on the resources available to commoners. thou hadst: presumably, ‘if you had’. alteration . . . Commoning: i.e. rearranged the rights of all the commoners in a more equitable manner. Odderriferous Ointment: perhaps a reference to Mary Magdalen pouring ointment on Christ shortly before his death. maguor: major. what they hold: i.e. what rights they hold to the use of common land. annerkey: anarchy. easement: relief poors rates: rates paid to finance the relief of the poor in a parish. they survise: thy service. sorted out . . . living: i.e. redeemed by Christ; perhaps a reference to Psalm 116, ‘Then called I upon the name of the Lord; O Lord, I beseech thee, deliver my soul . . . For thou hast delivered my soul from death, mine eyes from tears, and my feet from falling. I will walk before the LORD in the land of the living.’ for as: because. papers: i.e. the notice announcing the intention to enclose land.

Chapter 7 1 2

Gardens: Public and Private Pleasures

capital: principal. Bridgeman: Charles Bridgeman (d.1738), the English landscape architect usually credited with an important role in the transition of gardens from early eighteenthcentury geometrical layouts to the more ‘natural’ designs of William Kent and in the longer term ‘Capability’ Brown.

262 Notes 3 fosses . . . walk: a sunk-fence or ha-ha is a ditch walled on the side facing away from the house, thus providing an unseen boundary for the park beyond. It was often linked with ideas of ‘English liberty’ because it represented a necessary but unnoticed restriction, or freedom within restraints. 4 without: outside, beyond. 5 ascertained . . . garden: circumscribed the formal garden. 6 rude: here, more ‘natural’, untouched by art. 7 Kent: William Kent (1685–1748) had trained as a history painter but found his greatest success as a landscape gardener, creating designs at Stowe, Chiswick, Claremont, Rousham and Kew, among others. He also produced the illustrations for Thomson’s The Seasons. 8 essays: attempts. 9 pencil . . . handled: the extended metaphor draws on the language of landscape painting, thus Kent creates scenes in the physical landscape which others only create on painted canvas. pencil: brush. 10 champaign: open country. 11 screens: a term particularly associated with the flats or side-screens used in the theatre to create the impression of landscape settings. Kent was noted for the way in which he produced individual garden ‘scenes’ reminiscent of stage sets. 12 greatest masters: Walpole’s favourites included Claude Lorrain, Poussin and Salvator Rosa. 13 pencil . . . compasses: Walpole distinguishes between the freedom of a sketch or painting and the geometrical precision of architecture. 14 restoration of Greece: i.e. revival of neoclassical forms. 15 serpentise: adopt a serpentine form: the term had been made popular by the painter William Hogarth who, in his Analysis of Beauty, claimed that the elongated ‘S’ of the serpentine form was the natural line of beauty. 16 shades: trees, which act to produce areas of shade in the overall composition. 17 new creation: Walpole adopts the biblical language of a return to Eden. 18 chastened . . . transformed: Walpole stresses Kent’s ability to work with natural forms rather than against them; his language also points to the values of polite culture in highlighting notions of chastity and polish where these terms merge physical and moral attributes. 19 Freedom . . . trees: trees are no longer topiarized and cut into geometrical forms. 20 but: only. 21 assimilate: fit in. 22 Charles Hamilton . . . Painshill: in the mid-eighteenth century Charles Hamilton (1704–86) created the famous show garden at Painshill, Surrey, but had to sell it to pay off the debts he had incurred in its creation. Painshill merged parkland with picturesque pleasure grounds and offered the visitor striking changes of mood and view as they travelled around the circuit walk, from open landscapes to classical temples, a Turkish tent, or the exotic woodland scenes to which Walpole draws attention. 23 Henry Englefield: (di. 1780) owner of Whiteknights Park, near Reading; the estate was much admired and is described in detail by Francis Grose in The Antiquarian Repertory, 2 vols (1775), 2.1ff. Walpole visited in 1753. 24 Doric . . . pagoda: Walpole lists some of the most common architectural features of contemporary landscape gardens. 25 floats: floods. 26 but: except.

Notes 263 27 hermitage: a structure notionally intended to house a hermit or recluse; it was not unknown for a landowner to hire a ‘hermit’ to add to the variety of the scene, as was the case at Painshill. 28 It is . . . in: Lady Luxborough wrote to William Shenstone of her hermitage at Barrells (see Shenstone, below), ‘I do not enjoy it much myself: the cold weather and incessant rain would hinder me, were I even in better spirits. Indeed, you will say, it is just a proper place for indulging melancholy thoughts; which is true, but therefore I ought to shun it’ (Letters Written by the Late Right Honourable Lady Luxborough, to William Shenstone (1775), 1 August 1751). 29 animated prospect: Walpole iterates a commonly held view; unlike paintings, landscape gardens offer movement and activity in their scenes, whether of people or animals, boats or carriages. 30 Burghley: Burghley House, situated close to the picturesque town of Stamford, Northamptonshire, was landscaped for the 9th Earl of Exeter over a period of about 30 years by Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown. 31 dowager: widow who possesses her dead husband’s property or title. 32 l’ennui . . . singulier: ‘boredom with the beautiful brings about the taste for the odd’. We have not traced the author of this expression. 33 Augustan . . . taste: Walpole rehearses the conventional history of Roman civilization from the reign of the Emperor Augustus (27 BC – AD 14), when literature and the arts flourished, to its eventual decline in decadence and corruption. 34 Titian: Tiziano Vecellio, or Titian (c.1485–1576), one of the great painters of Renaissance Venice and highly prized in eighteenth-century England. 35 Carlo Maratti: (also known as Maratta) Italian baroque painter and etcher (1625–1713), much favoured by Louis XIV and the Papacy. 36 relief: appearance of three-dimensionality. 37 Indian paper: the soft buff-coloured paper from China used for the first and finest impressions from an engraved plate; thus paper that is quite flat and smooth. 38 Borromini: Francesco Borromini (1599–1677), the Italian architect famous for his elaborate baroque style. 39 volutes . . . Ionic order: i.e. the upturned spiral scrolls on the capitals of Ionic columns. 40 propriety: the term implies both good taste and ownership. 41 Sharawadgis: the term sharawadgi was made popular by Sir William Temple in his Garden of Epicurus (1685), in which he associated it with the Chinese use of studied irregularity in gardens. The word does not appear to be of Chinese origins, however. 42 possessor . . . improvements: Walpole’s decision not to write of the professional Brown, despite the brief praise, should perhaps be set against his insistence that landowners are best able to landscape their estates. 43 person . . . picture: the usual practice of Brown, who might stay at an estate for only one or two days before creating his design. 44 free country: Walpole adopts the bullish language of English liberty which assumes only Britain, with its ‘mixed’ constitutional system of monarch, peers and commons, has true political freedom. Britain’s great political rival, absolutist France, is perhaps the primary target here. 45 keeping: upkeep, maintenance. 46 little princes: before unification in the nineteenth century, Germany consisted of a large number of small independent principalities. 47 3–10. Thomson describes the movements of the ‘hurried eye’, from ‘bowery walk’ to ‘bending sky’, river, lake, forest and ocean.

264 Notes 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63

64 65 66 67 68 69 70

71 72 73

4. bowery: like a bower or arbour. 5. covert close: thickset shelter; in hunting, the hiding place of game birds. 11. excursive: making journeys in various directions. 12–40. Thomson emphasizes the variety of sensual experience in the garden by choosing not only brightly coloured but highly scented flowers. 13. wilderness: part of a garden left to look uncultivated. 17. polyanthus: a form of primula with bright and multi-coloured flowers. 18. wall-flower: the wallflower varies in colour from yellow or dark red to a deep rusty orange. 19. stock: highly-scented flowers of the Matthiola or Malcolmia genus. 21–2. auriculas . . . leaves: a primula with petals resembling a bear’s ear, the inner petals of which have a dusting of grey or white; hence Thomson’s ‘shining meal’. 23. renunculas: brightly-coloured flower of the buttercup family. 25. idle freaks: capriciousness; here taking the form of strangely coloured flowers. 26. father dust: pollen. 27. break: reveal themselves, burst forth. 31. musky tribes: strongly scented flowers. 33. jonquils: bulbs with small yellow scented flowers. 34. narcissus: in Greek myth, the handsome son of the river god Cephissus, who falls in love with his own image reflected in a pool (Thomson’s ‘fabled fountain’); unable to move, he pines away and dies, whereupon the gods transform him into the heavily scented flower which bears his name. 36. pinks: plants of the genus Dianthus, with sweetly scented pink, red or white flowers. 37. damask-rose: highly scented rose with soft petals. 41. the transition from small-scale objects of the physical world to thoughts of God is a common one, highlighting man’s limited perspective and God’s omniscience. 41–2. an address to God as the creator and absolute being. 45. great . . . touched: the metaphor alludes to painting; God creates his composition with light touches of his brush. 47. filmy net: the network of capillary vessels in plants. 48. live ether: a term for the medium which, it was thought, filled all of space, allowed the transmission of light and, more important here, created substances crucial to plant growth. 53. torpid: devoid of the power of motion; dormant. detruded: forced downwards. 57–9. Thomson eulogizes benevolence and social love as the god-like qualities of man and of his patron, George, Lord Lyttelton. 61. Hagley-Park: cf. Thomson’s prose account of this landscape in his letter to Elizabeth Young, 29 August 1743, ‘The Park, where we pass a great part of our time, is thoroughly delightful, quite charming. It consists of several little hills, finely tufted with wood and rising softly one above another; from which are seen a great variety of at once beautiful and grand extensive prospects: but I am most charmed with its sweet embowered retirements, and particularly with a winding dale that runs through the middle of it. This dale is overhung with deep woods, and enlivened by a stream, that, now gushing from mossy rocks, now falling in cascades, and now spreading into a calm length of water, forms the most natural and pleasing scene imaginable. At the source of this water, composed of some pretty rills, that purl from beneath the roots of oaks, there is as fine a retired seat as a lover’s heart could wish’ (James Thomson (1700–1748): Letters and Documents, ed. A. D. McKillop (Lawrence, KS, 1958)).

Notes 265 74 75 76 77 78 79 80

81 82 83 84 85 86 87

88 89 90 91 92 93

94 95 96

97 98 99 100 101 102 103

62. Tempe: a valley in Greece celebrated for its beauty. 63. shagged: made shaggy or rough. 72. plaint: murmuring sound 75. abstracted: withdrawn, set apart from. 76. philosophic world: i.e. Lyttelton combines a natural (scientific), moral and metaphysical understanding of the world. 78. or . . . or: either . . . or. 79–84. Thomson outlines the agenda of Lyttelton and other members of the ‘Patriot’ party, who sought to save Britain from corruption and factional party politics and to revive a national artistic culture. 83. weal: welfare, good. venal: for sale, corrupt; thus Thomson sets an ideal commonwealth against the political corruption of patronage and nepotism. 89. Lucinda: Lyttelton’s wife, Lucy Fortescue; see Lyttelton’s ‘monody’ (below). 98–9. Thomson describes the conventionally appropriate attributes for a woman. 100–2. Thomson champions a form of companionate marriage based on love rather than dynastic or financial interests. 109. excursive: travelling in different directions 110. Hall: i.e. Hagley Hall. 111. hospitable genius: Thomson suggests Lyttelton retains the country house customs of hospitality which had largely fallen out of use by this time. See Chapters 1 and 3. 112. broken: broken into different parts, various. 114. Cambrian mountains: Welsh mountains. Hagley was characteristic of mideighteenth-century landscape gardens in its use of distant views. 10. dryads: wood-nymphs. 12–13. i.e. the dryads choose to listen to the voice of Lucy rather than to bird-song. 18. lay: song. 20–1. Philomel . . . plaintive story: in Greek mythology, Philomela was raped and her tongue cut out; she was turned into a nightingale which continued to tell her story. 36. sad sacred earth: i.e. Lucy’s grave. 37. shades: the shade created by the trees, or more generally the landscape, but also the ghosts or spirits of Hagley, the genius of the place. 40–1. Lyttelton links the public world with the effeminate, and his own estate with the conventional domestic female virtues of family and conjugal love; cf. Spring (above) and Thomson’s attempt also to define Hagley as a place of retirement from the public world but one in which Lyttelton’s ‘manly’ political virtues are nevertheless active. 43. sequestered: secluded. 47. silent paths . . . wisdom: cf. Thomson, Spring, and Lyttelton’s use of the garden for political meditation. 53. Sweet babes: the Lytteltons’ children. 54. verdant: green. 57–8. Lyttelton adopts the increasingly conventional view that virtue is to be cultivated in the female domestic sphere. 65. doubly owe: Lyttelton must now take on the role of both father and mother. In fact he made an unhappy remarriage shortly afterwards. William Lyttelton: Fifth son of Sir Thomas Lyttelton.

266 Notes 104 Shenstone refers to this visit in various letters, but was also in the habit of making copies with alterations. In a letter to his friend Richard Graves (c. August 1746), he wrote of Lyttelton and Thomson’s visit, ‘They praised my place extravagantly . . . There were many things said worth telling, but not writing to you.’ 105 regular garden: i.e. a pleasure garden clearly distinguished from the agricultural activity of the farm. 106 Parque ornée . . . expression: Shenstone is misleading here as the term ferme ornée was already in use in France by the 1730s. The distinction is between an ornamented park used for hunting and riding and a farm which continues to be agriculturally productive. The first ferme ornée in England was created by Philip Southcote at Woburn Farm, near Weybridge in Surrey. 107 back landscape . . . bounded: Shenstone adopts the language of painting to describe the landscape; i.e. the background of the composition is clearly defined, as in painting. 108 My behaviour . . . politeness: i.e. Shenstone’s surprise prevents him from expressing the conventional platitudes of polite society, but this demonstrates his genuine happiness. 109 hare . . . spit: a hare being roasted. 110 court: courtyard. 111 bubbies: female breasts. 112 avail himself of: presumably urinate in; the anecdote thus demonstrates Shenstone’s later comment (p. 193) that Thomson ‘had nothing of the gentleman in his person or address’. 113 Virgil’s Grove: the most celebrated part of the Leasowes, Virgil’s Grove employed carefully chosen quotations to link the Roman poet with Shenstone’s own pastoral landscape. 114 devotee . . . Muses: a poet. 115 valuable . . . Hagley: water was one of the key elements of landscape gardening; its lack, as at Hagley, was usually considered a loss. 116 Virgil’s Tomb: i.e. to be placed in Virgil’s Grove. 117 belonging . . . place: Shenstone alludes to the ‘genius of the place’, but also here demonstrates that art is used by the gardener to emphasize this ‘natural’ character. 118 my notion . . . gardening: see Shenstone’s ‘Unconnected Thoughts on Gardening’. 119 Le Vallon occlus: ‘the hidden valley’ (French). 120 sombre occlus: i.e. Thomson makes a distinction between the gloomy or oppressive and a secluded landscape which invites meditation. 121 Petrarch’s Valclusa: home of the Italian poet (1304–74) while writing his famous sonnets to Laura; during this time Petrarch adopted the life of a hermit. 122 Pitt: William Pitt was part of the political group including Shenstone’s neighbour Lyttelton who had opposed the ministry of Robert Walpole. By 1746 he held a government post as paymaster for the army. 123 Chiswick: the estate of the Earl of Burlington in West London. Burlington was an influential champion of neoclassical design, Chiswick house was modelled on the Venetian architect Andrea Palladio’s Villa Rotunda, and around it Burlington attempted to recreate a Roman villa garden. 124 Richmond: Thomson lived at Richmond Hill from 1736. 125 Richmond prospects . . . villas: the view from Richmond Hill was greatly admired in the eighteenth century and was celebrated by Pope and Thomson (Summer) among many others; Pope’s villa at Twickenham and Walpole’s at Strawberry

Notes 267

126 127 128

129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142

143

144

145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153

Hill were among the many fashionable houses built along this stretch of the Thames. abetes: European silver firs, common in mountainous parts of the continent. trees . . . cathedral: according to some theories, gothic architecture had its origins in the natural arches formed in forests by the rising branches of the trees. omnes . . . meam: Shenstone reworks a line from the Roman dramatist Terence, ‘omnes omnia / bona dicere et laudare fortunas meas’ (‘everyone heaped congratulations on me for my good fortune’), The Lady of Andros, 1l. 96–7. length wise: i.e. one horse in front of another rather than side by side. Dr Armstrong: John Armstrong (1709–79), physician and poet, author of The Art of Preserving Health (1744). gentleman: i.e. the usual manners and conventions of polite society. Quin: James Quin (1693–1766), well-known tragic actor. piddling: acting in an insignificant way, trifling. fauns: rural deities associated with Pan. bow’rs: secluded enclosures, an archaism. Nor . . . nor: Neither . . . nor. or . . . or: either . . . or. OBERON: king of the fairies and husband of Titania in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. deal: pine or fir timber sawn into boards. root-houses: small structures made from the roots of trees and shrubs. rotunda: a building with a circular floor-plan and usually – as at Hagley – consisting of open columns supporting a dome. modern castles near: Lyttelton built a sham medieval ruin at Hagley, designed by the local amateur architect Sanderson Miller. Horace Walpole wrote that it displayed ‘the true rust of the barons’ war’. sheaves . . . Joseph’s: Shenstone alludes to the story of Joseph in Genesis: ‘And Joseph dreamed a dream, and he told it his brethren: and they hated him yet the more. And he said unto them, hear, I pray you, this dream which I have dreamed: For, behold, we were binding sheaves in the field, and, lo, my sheaf arose, and also stood upright; and, behold, your sheaves stood round about, and made obeisance to my sheaf’ (Genesis, 37:5–7). fifteen shillings: Shenstone’s limited funds were always a problem; his correspondence with Lady Luxborough repeatedly attempts to make a virtue of the small scale, but always with an acute awareness of the grand works being created by his neighbours at Hagley. See the following letter by Lady Luxborough, 4 June 1749. Lady Duchess: i.e. the Duchess of Bridgewater. Die: Lady Die Egerton, younger daughter of the Duchess of Bridgewater, who was by this time married to Colonel Richard Lyttelton. Lady Caroline: Lady Caroline Egerton, elder daughter of the Duchess of Bridgewater. Lord Feilding: Basil, Earl of Denbigh, styled Viscount Feilding until 1755; he was to become a prominent Tory politician. Colonels: i.e. Colonel Lyttelton. Admiral Smith: Thomas Smith of Hagley. Miss Lyttelton: Hester Lyttelton, the youngest of Sir Thomas Lyttelton’s children. Madame . . . Monsieur: Shenstone’s adoption of French forms of address playfully undercuts but also acknowledges that his guests are members of high society. tete-a-tete: in person.

268 Notes 154 solitude . . . agreeable: Lady Luxborough was to write in a similar fashion about the hermitage built at her estate, ‘I do not enjoy it much myself: the cold weather and incessant rain would hinder me, were I even in better spirits. Indeed, you will say, it is just a proper place for indulging melancholy thoughts; which is true; but therefore I ought to shun it’ (Letter to Shenstone, 1 August 1751). 155 ‘partly like that going from Versailles-Gardens, to Trianon; but has the additional advantage of the babbling Stream, that attend you all the way’ (Spence’s note). 156 ‘Formerly an old hedge; plasht, and with remaining proofs of it’ (Spence’s note). 157 ‘Urn, on rising to the right, is inscribed to Mr Somerville’ (Spence’s note). 158 ‘The water is lost, to the right of the seat, under the root of a tree that makes part of the Root Building about the seat’ (Spence’s note). 159 ‘2 Seats in going up; 2nd catches top of the spire, through a wild peep [illegible]’ (Spence’s note). 160 1. intruding strain: i.e. unasked for poem. 161 2. village swain: Woodhouse defines himself as a self-taught poet. 162 3. cell: room. 163 4. distinguished name: Woodhouse’s perception of Shenstone’s status can be usefully compared with Shenstone’s self-perception and the perceptions of others in this section. 164 6. wonted: customary, usual. 165 9. oaten reed: in pastoral, the traditional wind instrument of the shepherd. Woodhouse likens himself to Shenstone even as he notes their difference of ability as pastoral poets. 166 14. muse’s suitor: a poet. sandaled swain: literally a shepherd, figuratively a further reference to Woodhouse’s own low social status. 167 15–16. while Woodhouse is not a landowner he nevertheless claims a shared humanity with Shenstone because all mankind comes from one common origin. rent-rolls: registers of lands owned and the rents paid on them. 168 17. sordid ore: wealth; literally gold and silver. 169 18. better store: i.e. things of more value. 170 20. in the popular physico-theological tradition (stretching back at least to John Ray and Gilbert Burnett), the natural world can be ‘read’ as the handwriting of God. 171 21. fair domains: the Leasowes. 172 22. conventional definition of the landscape garden as the work of nature and art combined. 173 23. dusky twilight cell: ‘An alcove, from whence is a view of the visto to the wood’ (Woodhouse’s note). 174 24. meagre melancholy: in gardens, melancholy is frequently associated with the reclusive hermit and his sparsely furnished cell; it is meagre also because it is solitary. The image is continued (and personified as female) in ll. 25–8. 175 25. creative fancy: imagination. 176 32. Sol: the sun. 177 37–78. Woodhouse adopts a common convention of landscape garden poetry, made popular by Thomson (cf. Spring, ll. 1–40 and ll. 103–9, the latter echoed by Woodhouse in ll. 37–8). The passage is structured as a series of experiences at different moments in time and space. Woodhouse offers the immediacy of the injunction ‘See’ (ll. 37, 45), the moving spatial geography of ‘Here’ (l. 43), as well as the broader temporal movement of ‘Thence’ (l. 55), ‘then’ (l. 60), ‘Till’ (l. 62), as he follows the course of the stream. In moving also between past and

Notes 269

178 179 180

181 182

183

184 185 186 187

188 189

190

191

192

193 194 195 196 197 198

present tense Woodhouse points to the role of time and memory as well as space in the contemplating mind’s journey through the garden. 40. mazy: intertwined. 41–2. Woodhouse aligns himself with a landowning mentality as he equates man’s laws, and specifically laws of property, with God’s laws. 43. parterres: flat ground with elaborate designs in flowers and shrubs; usually associated with French garden design but here used to denote Shenstone’s more ‘naturalistic’ planting at the Leasowes. 46. margin: bank. 48. ‘The serpentine mineral stream that stains the pebbles with ochre’ (Woodhouse’s note). Ochre, a combination of clay and iron oxide, occurs naturally and varies in colour from red (hence ‘sanguine’) to brown or yellow. The melancholy image of a bleeding stream may well have pleased Shenstone, who was acutely sensitive to the criticism that his water was dirty. 50. slackened nerve: a reference to contemporary theories of psychology, including Burke’s, which did not separate the physiological from the psychological, believing that physical expansion or contraction of the nerves affected the individual’s mood. 51. insatiate pond: ‘Pond below’ (Woodhouse’s note). 54. the naiad or river-nymph who tilts (‘stoops’) the urn represents the source of the stream; a common convention in classical tradition. 56. shining cataract: ‘Cascade falling from this pond’ (Woodhouse’s note). 58. adamantine gleam: adamant was long associated with both diamonds and magnets and assumed to have mysterious powers; by the eighteenth century it was used poetically to mean any very hard substance, but Woodhouse may have in mind its continuing scientific association with diamonds. 59. self-scooped: a natural pool. laves: washes. 66. Narcissus: in Greek myth, the handsome son of the river god Cephissus, who falls in love with his own image reflected in a stream; unable to move, he pines away and dies. 67. ‘The root house’ (Woodhouse’s note). Shenstone placed several structures built out of roots around his estate. They were much admired by some, including Lady Luxborough, and were intended to be associated, as Woodhouse suggests, with the solitary and sparse life of the hermit; as a form of primitive architecture they suggest the simplicity of an earlier way of life and invite the visitor to compare this with the complexity of the modern world. 68. friendly: the benches are friendly because they offer the visitor a moment of rest, but also because they demonstrate Shenstone’s consideration in pointing out particular views of the landscape. 69–72. despite its limited quantities, Shenstone prided himself on his handling of water, using still pools and rushing cascades to create effects both for the eye and the ear. 73. Vertumnus: in Roman myth, the god of the changing year, but often associated more specifically with spring. 74. Flora: in Roman myth, the goddess of flowers and spring. 75. painted kine: cattle of different colours. 76. the cattle fulfil a georgic and utilitarian function, acting as objects of beauty which pay for their keep. 77. plumy choirists: birds; a typically Thomsonian periphrasis. 78. glad: cheer, enliven.

270 Notes 199 79–80. in Greek mythology, Arcadia, a region of the Peloponnese, was the home of Pan, the god of nature, shepherds and gardens. From Virgil’s Eclogues onward, it was commonly used as the setting for an idealized pastoral community set apart from the complications of modern life. Apollo, god of agriculture and cattle, was also god of music; his companions included the Aonian maids or nine muses. Thus, Woodhouse merges classical and Christian myths of an idyllic age to define the Leasowes as a poetical ferme ornée, a return to the Golden Age, and the home at once of pastoral ease, agricultural activity and poetic inspiration. 200 83–4. various song . . . fragments: ‘The mottos and inscriptions’ (Woodhouse’s note). Shenstone placed poetic quotations around the estate to inspire particular moods, or in some cases to warn the locals against picking the flowers (see Letters). 201 86. perhaps a faint echo of Pope’s, ‘The powers gave ear, and granted half his prayer’ (Rape of the Lock, 2.45). 202 87–90. Woodhouse reads and writes only in English; his inability to read Greek and Latin marks his low status, and highlights the limits of learning on a low income. 203 91. awl: a pointed tool used by shoemakers for making holes in leather. 204 92. labour prevents Woodhouse from writing poetry. 205 93. perhaps a reference to the decline in status of Woodhouse’s family from yeoman farmers to servants and cordwainers. 206 94. dazzling prospect: cf. Thomson’s ‘bursting prospect’ (Spring, above, l. 104). 207 95. What is, is best: Woodhouse quotes Pope, ‘All Nature is but art, unknown to thee: / All chance, direction, which thou canst not see; / All discord, harmony, not understood; / All partial evil, universal good: / And, spite of pride, in erring reason’s spite, / One truth is clear “Whatever IS, is RIGHT” ’ (Essay on Man, 2.289–94). 208 96–8. Woodhouse adopts the Christian but also pastoral position of contentment with one’s place in God’s creation. 209 99. write for hire: use poetry to ask for employment, or be paid for his verse. 210 101. serving friend: attendant. 211 106. Indies: south-east Asia and the Caribbean; a conventional image in the Western imagination for untold wealth. 212 109. venal: for sale, open to corruption. 213 110. propitious: well-disposed, favourable. 214 112. Belial: the devil. bane: ruin or curse of. 215 115–16. after the Fall, in Milton’s Paradise Lost, 12, the gates of Eden are closed behind Adam and Eve and guarded by God’s flaming sword. Woodhouse, like Adam and Eve before him, blames others for the loss of Paradise, though he is unlikely to have been making this connection. 216 118. blest day: Sunday. 217 121. Woodhouse characteristically draws attention to those things which make men equal despite social inequalities (cf. l. 16). 218 123. supplicant: one who asks humbly. 219 125. grace: show special favour in. 220 126. youthful votary: Woodhouse himself. 221 129. resound . . . lay: Woodhouse will write better poetry because of the influence of Shenstone and his garden. 222 130. tasteless, tuneless: Woodhouse adopts the modesty for which he praises Shenstone.

Notes 271 223 131. scrannel: harsh, unmelodious. The term recalls Milton’s Lycidas, ‘Their lean and flashy songs / Grate on their scrannel pipes of wretched straw’ (l. 124), referring to false shepherds who only regard their own interests. 224 own hair: Shenstone was unusual in not wearing a wig. 225 He mentioned . . . place: cf. pp. 191–3 and especially Shenstone’s letter to Lady Luxborough, 27 June 1750 (above). 226 Lord D—tm—th: William Lagge (1731–1801), Earl of Dartmouth, a friend of George III. 227 suffrage: expression of approval. 228 innocent . . . amusements: gardening is innocent because it was the employment of Adam and Eve before the Fall. Wildgoose paraphrases Addison’s views in The Spectator, 477 (6 September 1712). 229 spiritualize our ideas: Graves satirizes the language of enthusiasm, and of Methodism in particular. 230 violent . . . world: the journals of the Methodist leader John Wesley contain similar sentiments: ‘We rode through a lovely country to Chepstow. I had designed to go straight on, but yielded to the importunity of our friends to stay and preach in the evening. Meantime, I took a walk in Mr. Morris’s woods. There is scarce anything like them in the kingdom. They stand on the top, and down the side, of a steep mountain, hanging in a semicircular form over the river. Through these woods abundance of serpentine walks are cut, wherein many seats and alcoves are placed, most of which command a surprising prospect of rocks and fields on the other side of the river. And must all these be burned up? What will become of us then, if we set our hearts upon them?’ (The Works of John Wesley: Journals and Diaries V (1765–1775), eds. Reginald W. Ward and Richard P. Heitzenrater, 26 vols (Nashville, TN, 1993), vol. 22, Friday, 25 August 1769). 231 deserted . . . undertake: Wildgoose’s Methodist enthusiasm is ‘romantic’ because it runs counter to his own good sense and to the approval of a parent, but also because it is peripatetic and ignores the parish system of the established church with its close connection between landowner and clergy. 232 the University: Oxford. 233 painted glass: stained glass. 234 I . . . Spirit: Wildgoose claims to be moved by the spirit of God. The entire letter is a pastiche of religious enthusiasm. 235 Publius . . . courteously: in Acts, 28:7–8, the shipwrecked apostle Paul is made welcome by barbarians (‘In the same quarters were the possessions of the chief man of the island, whose name was Publius; who received us, and lodged us three days courteously’). 236 bowels yearn: a common phrase in the Old Testament, where the bowels are associated with pity or kindness, e.g. ‘And Joseph made haste; for his bowels did yearn upon his brother: and he sought where to weep; and he entered into his chamber, and wept there’ (Genesis, 43:30). In Graves’s time, the expression would also retain currency from its use in John Bunyan’s highly popular tale of spiritual travel, Pilgrim’s Progress. 237 idols . . . heart: the prophet Ezekiel speaks God’s words saying, ‘Son of man, these men have set up their idols in their heart, and put the stumbling-block of their iniquity before their face: should I be enquired of at all by them? Therefore speak unto them, and say unto them, Thus saith the Lord God; every man of the house of Israel that setteth up his idols in his heart, and putteth the stumbling-block of his iniquity before his face, and cometh to the prophet; I the Lord

272 Notes

238 239

240

241

242

243

will answer him that cometh according to the multitude of his idols; That I may take the house of Israel in their heart, because they are all estranged from me through their idols . . . And I will set my face against that man, and will make him a sign and a proverb, and I will cut him off from the midst of my people; and ye shall know that I am the Lord’ (Ezekiel, 14:3–8). Pan and Sylvanus: the gods of gardens and woods. Paul or Silas: in Acts, 15–18, Paul is accompanied by Silas as they preach the word of God and convert the gentiles. His itinerancy is an important model for Methodist lay preachers but his writings in the New Testament (including Thessalonians, Galatians, Corinthians, Romans and Philippians) were also among the most important for the established Church of England. forsaken . . . water: the prophet Jeremiah speaks God’s words saying, ‘What iniquity have your fathers found in me, that they are gone far from me, and have walked after vanity, and are become vain? . . . Hath a nation changed their gods, which are yet no gods? but my people have changed their glory for that which doth not profit. Be astonished, O ye heavens, at this, and be horribly afraid, be ye very desolate, saith the Lord. For my people have committed two evils: they have forsaken me the fountain of living waters, and hewed them out cisterns, broken cisterns, that can hold no water’ (Jeremiah, 2:5–13). Bel . . . stoopeth: ‘Bel boweth down, Nebo stoopeth, their idols were upon the beasts, and upon the cattle: your carriages were heavy loaden; they are a burden to the weary beast. They stoop, they bow down together; they could not deliver the burden, but themselves are gone into captivity . . . even to your old age I am he; and even to hoar hairs will I carry you: I have made, and I will bear; even I will carry, and will deliver you . . . Remember the former things of old: for I am God, and there is none else; I am God, and there is none like me’ (Isaiah, 46:1–9). delivered . . . soul: a Methodist phrase meaning to speak one’s beliefs in a sermon; it appears in John Wesley’s Journal, ‘I preached, I suppose, for the last time at St. Mary’s [Oxford]. Be it so. I am now clear of the blood of these men. I have fully delivered my own soul’ (24 August 1744). Piping Fawn: the statue had been presented to Shenstone by his friend and publisher Robert Dodsley. Lead statues were relatively inexpensive, and were a common feature in eighteenth-century gardens.

Index to Editorial Matter Addison, Joseph, 122, 129 The Spectator, 129 aesthetics, xxvii–xxxi, 32–4, 53, 56, 58–9, 135, 158, 165, 169, 181, 185, 191, 195, 198 Abington, Andrew ‘Andrew Abington’s Commandments’, xxxi–xxxii, 148 agricultural revolution, xix agriculture (English) change in, xix practices of, xiii productivity of, xiii regional diversity of, xiii Aldeburgh, 24 American colonies, xxv, 123, 137 Austen, Jane Northanger Abbey, xxix ballads, xxxii, xxxiv, 115–16 Barrell, John, xxv, 185 Becon, Thomas, xviii Bluestocking circle, 89, 198 Bristol, 56 Burke, Edmund, 24 Burlington, Richard Boyle, Earl of, 63, 79 Cambridgeshire, xvi capitalism, xvii, xxx, 1, 122 Carew, Richard, 39 Survey of Cornwall, xxviii, 33, 39–40 Carew, Thomas ‘To Saxham’, xxvi Caroline, Queen, xxxii cartography, 32 censorship, xxxiii Chambers, Douglas, xxx Charles I, King, 104 Chiswick House, 79 chorography, 33, 40, 41 Church, the, xiv city, xi, xxi–xxii, xxv, 13–14, 122, 136, 185 Collier, Mary, xii, xxiv, 165–6, 169 The Woman’s Labour, xxvii

Combined of Cheshunt, Letter from, 176 commerce, 13–14 common land, xiv, 212 complaint, literature of, xxii, 2, 95, 210 concordia discors, 44 cottagers, xiv, 13–14 country house, 63–4, 75, 123, 179 poem, xii, xxxiii, 65, 70, 79 Crabbe, George The Village, xxiv, 2, 24, 136 Crowley, Robert, 4 ‘Of Rent Raisers’, 2, 4–5 deBolla, Peter, xxxi Denham, John, 33, 44 Cooper’s Hill, 44 depopulation, xvii, 13 Diggers, xxxiii, 149 ‘The Diggers of Warwickshire’, xxxiii, 146–7 Dodsley, Robert, 55, 135, 198 Agriculture, A Poem, 24, 135 Description of the Leasowes, 195–6 Drayton, Michael, xxviii Poly-Olbion, 41 Pastorals, 97 Dryden, John Georgics, xxv, xxvi, 122 Works of Virgil, 129 Duck, Stephen, xxiv, xxvii, xxxii, 158, 169 The Thresher’s Labour, xxxii, 146, 158, 165 Dyer, John, 133, 136–7 The Fleece, xxvi, 136–7 Grongar Hill, 136 Elizabeth I, Queen, xxii, 32, 33, 34 emblem book, 123, 128 empire, xxv–xxvi, 122–3 Empson, William, xxii 273

274 Index enclosure attitudes towards, xviii–xix, 13, 24, 136–7, 143, 176 practices of, xvii, xix, 213 progress of, xvi–xvii representation of, xxiv, xxix, 1, 2, 3–4, 53, 148, 176, 210, 211 revolts against, 146–7, 176 Exeter, xiii fens, xiii, xix feudalism, 1 Fiennes, Celia, xiii, 32, 53 Through England on a Sidesaddle, 53 forests, xv, xvi, xix, 210 ferme ornée, 191 Fortescue, Lucy, 188–9 Fowler, Alastair, 63 gardens, 75, 79, 85, 179–81, 195 landscape, xxx–xxxi, 13–14, 79, 179–80, 185, 188–9, 191, 195–6, 202 Gay, John, 118 The Shepherd’s Week, xxi, xxiii, 118 gentry, xiii, xix georgic, xxi, xxiv–xxvii, 114, 122–3, 124, 125, 127, 135, 143, 158, 165 Christian, 123, 124, 244 n.1, 128, 142 imperial, 122, 129, 133, 136–7 style, 129–30 Gilpin, William, xxix, 58–9 Observations, 33 Goldsmith, Oliver, 13, 136, 179 The Deserted Village, xxiv, 2, 13–14, 24, 135 ‘Revolution in Low Life’, 13 ‘The Traveller’, 13 Gough, Richard, 12 The History of Myddle, 12 Graves, Richard, 180 Spiritual Quixote, 191, 202 Gray, Thomas, 180 Hagley, xxx, 179, 185, 188–9 Hartlib, Samuel, xx harvest, xvi, xviii, 24, 113, 158, 165–6 Haywood, Eliza, 90

Herrick, Robert, xxxii, 63, 111 ‘Corinna’s Going a-Maying’, 111 Hesperides, 111, 113 ‘The Hock-Cart’, xxiv, xxvii, 113–14 Hesiod, 130 Hibbard, G. R., 63 Horace, 63 Art of Poetry, xxi Hunt, John Dixon, xxx hunting, 210 husbandmen, xiv industries, rural, xiii inflation, xvi Ireland, 212 James I, King, xxii ‘Book of Sports’, xxxii, 63, 104 Johnson, Samuel, xxiii, 13, 118 Jonson, Ben, 145 ‘To Penshurst’, xii, xxvi, xxxiii, 63, 70 Kay, John, of Woodsome, xxxi, 125–6 Kemp, Anne, 33 Kent, xiii Kermode, Frank, xxi labour and labourers, xiv–xv, xxi, xxiii–xxvii, xxix, xxxiv, 2, 114, 122, 124, 128, 133, 135, 142, 143, 145–6, 148, 158, 165, 169, 176, 185, 198, 211 Lake District, 53 Lancashire, 104 land market, xv, xix land tenure forms of, xv landscape, xxvii–xxix, 32–3, 41, 42, 53, 55–6, 58–9 see also gardens, landscape A Lantern for Landlords, xxxiv, 2, 5–6 Lanyer, Aemilia, 63–4 ‘The Description of Cookham’, xii, 63–5 Laud, William, xviii Leapor, Mary, 64 ‘Crumble Hall’, 84–5 Leasowes, the, xxx, 179, 191, 195–6, 198, 202 liberty, 179, 181

Index 275 Lincolnshire, xiii locus amoenus, 63 Low, Anthony, xxv luxury, 13, 79, 145 Lyttelton, George Lord, xxx, 179, 185 To the Memory of a Lady, 179, 188–9 M., Miss J., 55–6 Letter to William Shenstone, 33, 55 McKeon, Michael, xxi manorial estate, xiv, xx, 1–2 markets and marketing, xiii Martial, 63 Marvell, Andrew, 63 Massinger, Philip A New Way to Pay Old Debts, 2 Methodism, 142, 180, 202 middling sort, xxix, xxx, xxxii, 32, 75, 122, 124, 135, 143, 180, 191, 202 Midlands Revolt, xviii, 146 Miller, Sanderson, 188 Milton, John, 79, 107, 133, 185 ‘L’Allegro’, 107 Lycidas, xxiii Montagu, Elizabeth, 89, 198 Montrose, Louis, xxiii moral economy, xii, 3, 63–4, 143, 179 More, Hannah, 169 More, Thomas Utopia, xi, xxxi, xxxiii–xxxiv, 1, 2–3 nobility, the, xiii Norfolk, xiii nostalgia, xxii, xxiv, 13, 24, 63, 65, 189 see also pastoral Nourse, Timothy, 75 O’Brien, Karen, xxv Palladio, Andrea, 79 Palmer, Thomas Two Hundred Poosees, 123 parish, the, xiv parks, 180–1, 210 pastoral (literature), xi, xxi–xxiv, xxvii, 24, 34, 75, 97, 114, 118, 135, 158, 191 and anti-pastoral, xxiv, 24, 85, 158, 166

patronage, xxxii–xxxiii Peacham, Henry, 32 Philips, Ambrose, 118 picturesque, the, xxix, 33, 53, 55–6, 58–9 ploughman, 123, 133 Pope, Alexander, 63, 145 Epistle to Burlington, 79, 85 Pastorals, xxiii Windsor Forest, 44 population (English) growth of, xiii, xvi effects of, xvi, xvii–xviii, 3 regional variations in, xv, xvi poverty and the poor attitudes towards, xviii–xix, 2 lives of, xx print, xxxii prospect, xxviii, 43, 44, 75, 169–70, 185 retirement and retreat, xxii, xxviii, 33, 42, 43, 75, 90, 107, 111, 170, 185, 189, 191, 202 Richardson, Samuel, 84 Rogationtide, 213 satire, xxi, xxxi, 2, 24, 118, 148 Saxton, Christopher, 32 Scott, Sarah, 64 Millenium Hall, 89–90, 170 sensibility, 56 sentimentalism, 2, 24, 90, 189 servants, xiv, 64, 85 Shakespeare, William, 79 Hamlet, xxi sheep, 3, 136, 210, 211 Shenstone, William, xxx, 55, 179–80, 195–6, 198, 202 correspondence, 191 see also Leasowes, the Sidney, Philip Arcadia, xxiii, 38 Sidney, Robert, 70 Somerset, xiii Spence, Joseph Description of The Leasowes, 195–6 Spenser, Edmund, xxiii, xxxiii, 33 The Shepheardes Calender, xxxiii, 34 Staffordshire, xvi

276 Index stewardship, xii, 5 Stourhead, 181 Strawberry Hill, 180 Strode, William, 33, 42 ‘On Westwell Downs’, xxviii, xxxii, 42 Stubbes, Philip, 95 The Anatomie of Abuses, 95 surveyors, 211 Taylor, John, xxxii, 126 Taylor on Tame-Isis, 126–7 Thompson, E. P., 176 Thomson, James, 133, 188 The Seasons, xxvi, 133, 136, 179, 185, 188, 198 Tintern Abbey, 59 tithes, 213 topographical poetry, xxviii, 13, 33, 42, 43, 44, 64, 169 trade, 13, 122–3, 136–7, 185 travel, xxix, 33, 53, 55, 142, 143 Tusser, Thomas, xvi, xvii–xviii Five Hundred Points of Good Husbandry, xvi, xvii–xviii, 124

Wales, 56, 58–9 Walpole, Horace, xi ‘Essay on Modern Gardening’, 179, 180–1 Warwickshire ‘The Diggers of Warwickshire’, xxxi, xxxiii wasteland, xvi Wayne, Don E., xii Wesley, John, 123, 135, 141–2 Williams, Raymond, xi–xii, xxiii, xxv, 24, 122 Williamson, Tom, xxx Winstanley, Gerrard, xi, 145–6, 148–9 The True Levellers Standard Advanced, xxxiii, 149 Wither, George, 128 Collection of Emblemes, 128 women as authors, xii, xxix, 33, 53, 55–6, 63, 64, 84–5, 89–90, 145, 165 economic positions of, xv–xvi, xxvii, 64–5, 85, 165–6 travellers, 33, 53, 55 Woodhouse, James, xxx, 180 ‘Elegy to William Shenstone’, 198

utopianism, 89 Virgil Eclogues, 118 Georgics, xxv–xxvi, xxx, 122, 129–30, 133, 135, 136, 185

Yearsley, Ann, xii, xxiv, 146, 169–70 Clifton Hill, 169–70 yeomen, xiii–xiv Yorkshire, xiii, xvii Young, Arthur, xviii, 143, 196