ned upon men, there was a necessary reaction in favor of the
_natural_. Men had never lived so utterly in defiance of the laws of
nature before; but they could not do this without feeling a strange
charm in that which they defied; and, accordingly, we find this
reactionary sentiment expressing itself in a base school of what was
called _pastoral_ poetry; that is to say, poetry written in praise of
the country, by men who lived in coffee-houses and on the Mall. The
essence of pastoral poetry is the sense of strange delightfulness in
grass, which is occasionally felt by a man who has seldom set his foot
on it; it is essentially the poetry of the cockney, and for the most
part corresponds in its aim and rank, as compared with other literature,
to the porcelain shepherds and shepherdesses on a chimney-piece as
compared with great works of sculpture.

90. Of course all good poetry, descriptive of rural life, is
essentially pastoral, or has the effect of the pastoral on the minds of
men living in cities; but the class of poetry which I mean, and which
you probably understand by the term pastoral, is that in which a
farmer's girl is spoken of as a "nymph," and a farmer's boy as a
"swain," and in which, throughout, a ridiculous and unnatural refinement
is supposed to exist in rural life, merely because the poet himself has
neither had the courage to endure its hardships, nor the wit to conceive
its realities. If you examine the literature of the 17th and 18th
centuries you will find that nearly all its expressions, having
reference to the country, show something of this kind; either a foolish
sentimentality, or a morbid fear, both of course coupled with the most
curious ignorance. You will find all its descriptive expressions at once
vague and monotonous. Brooks are always "purling;" birds always
"warbling;" mountains always "lift their horrid peaks above the clouds;"
vales always "are lost in the shadow of gloomy woods;" a few more
distinct ideas about hay-making and curds and cream, acquired in the
neighborhood of Richmond Bridge, serving to give an occasional
appearance of freshness to the catalogue of the sublime and beautiful
which descended from poet to poet; while a few true pieces of pastoral,
like the "Vicar of Wakefield," and Walton's "Angler," relieved the
general waste of dullness. Even in these better productions, nothing is
more remarkable than the general conception of the country merely as a
series of green fiel