than the Spenserian; but there was no lack of formal imitations,
also, and it will be advisable to notice a few of these here in the order
of their dates.

In 1740 Joseph Warton, then an Oxford undergraduate, wrote his
blank-verse poem "The Enthusiast, or the Lover of Nature." The work of a
boy of eighteen, it had that instinct of the future, of the set of the
literary current, not uncommon in youthful artists, of which Chatterton's
precocious verses are a remarkable instance. Composed only ten years
later than the completed "Seasons," and five years before Shenstone began
to lay out his miniature wilderness at the Leasowes, it is more
distinctly modern and romantic in its preference of wild nature to
cultivated landscape, and of the literature of fancy to the literature of
reasons.

"What are the lays of artful Addison,
Coldly correct, to Shakspere's warblings wild?"

asks the young enthusiast, in Milton's own phrase. And again

"Can Kent design like Nature?. . .
Though he, by rules unfettered, boldly scorns
Formality and method, round and square
Disdaining, plans irregularly great?. . .

"Versailles
May boast a thousand fountains that can cast
The tortured waters to the distant heavens;
Yet let me choose some pine-topped precipice
Abrupt and shaggy, whence a foamy stream,
Like Anio, tumbling roars; or some black heath
Where straggling stands the mournful juniper,
Or yew tree scathed."

The enthusiast haunts "dark forests" and loves to listen to "hollow winds
and ever-beating waves" and "sea-mew's clang." Milton appears at every
turn, not only in single epithets like "Lydian airs," "the level brine,"
"low-thoughted cares," "the light fantastic dance," but in the entire
spirit, imagery, and diction of the poem. A few lines illustrate this
better than any description.

"Ye green-robed Dryads, oft at dusky eve
By wondering shepherds seen; to forest brown,
To unfrequented meads and pathless wilds
Lead me from gardens decked with art's vain pomp. . .
But let me never fall in cloudless night,
When silent Cynthia in her silver car
Through the blue concave slides,. . .
To seek some level mead, and there invoke
Old midnight's sister, contemplation sage
(Queen of the rugged brow and stern-fixed eye),
To lift my soul above this little earth,
This folly-fettered world: to purge my ears,
That