University of Calcutta. Journal of the Department of Letters

From the great and immediate popularity 8 of the poem we can infer that the idea of enjoying a peaceful life in the country (which is the theme of the poem) was welcome to the people of the time. [...] Within the thirty-two years from the date of the publication of Paradise Lost The Age of Pope ; marked by the appeathough more or less of the conventional type ance of a number of poems dealing with yet show signs of first-hand observation in nature many of their descriptions of nature ; then we notice other kinds of poems some of which are professed 5 Published in 1700 this poem rapidly ra [...] His poetical Epistle to the Earl of Dorset written from Copenhagen is purely a descriptive poem in which he has given evidence of his first-hand observation of the various aspects of nature in the 'hoary winter.' The following are some of the beautiful instances from the poem :- (I) In pearls and rubies rich the hawthorns show While through the ice the crimson berries glow. [...] The lines we have quoted already as descriptive of the scenery of the ocean at sunset are quoted again as beautifully illustrative of the poet's observation of colour :— Far in the deep the sun his glory hides A streak of gold the sea and sky divides ; The purple clouds their amber linings show. And edged with flame rolls every wave below : For his observation of odour cf.— At the close of the [...] writing by substituting in the place of these antiquated fables the supestitious mythology which prevails among the shepherds of our own country About six months after the publication of the above there appeared in the Guardian a series of"TASTE FOR NATURE IN THE AGE OF POPE 37 of the old type had become distasteful to the English poets because they came to feel that the use of names and ch