infection of the age," and tells how he too, for a time, was wont to
compare scene with scene, and to pamper himself "with meagre novelties of
colour and proportion." In another passage he speaks of similar
melodramatic errors, from conformity to book-notions, in his early study
of poetry.

The dignities of plain occurrence then
Were tasteless, and truth's golden mean, a point,
Where no sufficient pleasure could be found.

But imaginative power, and the humility which had been his in childhood,
returned to him--

I shook the habit off
Entirely and for ever.

Yet in one curious respect Gilpin's amateur teaching did leave its mark
on the history of English poetry. When Wordsworth and Coleridge chose
the Wye and Tintern Abbey for their walking tour, they were probably
determined in that direction by the fame of the scenery; and when they
and Southey settled in the Lake district, it may be surmised that they
felt other and stronger attractions than those that came from
Wordsworth's early associations with the place. The Wye, Tintern Abbey,
the English Lakes, the Scottish Highlands--these were the favored places
of the apostles of the picturesque, and have now become memorial places
in our poetic history.

All these gardeners and aesthetic critics who busied themselves with wild
nature were aiming at an ideal which had been expressed in many painted
landscapes, and had been held up as the top of admiration by one of the
greatest English poets. The influence of Milton on the new landscape
interest must be held to be not less than the influence of his
contemporaries, Salvator Rosa and Claude. His descriptions of Paradise
did more than any painting to alter the whole practice of gardening. They
are often appealed to, even by the technical gardeners. In garden-lore
Milton was a convinced Romantic. He has two descriptions of the Garden
of Eden; the slighter of the two occurs on the occasion of Raphael's
entry, and merely resumes the earlier and fuller account:

Their glittering tents they passed, and now is come
Into the blissful field, through Groves of Myrrhe,
And flowering Odours, Cassia, Nard, and Balme;
A Wilderness of Sweets; for Nature here
Wantoned as in her prime and plaid at will
Her Virgin Fancies, pouring forth more sweet,
Wilde above rule or art; enormous bliss.

Coleridge has some remarks, in his _Table Talk_, on Milton's disregard of
painting. There are on