imagination (_Spectator_, Nos. 411-414) base those pleasures upon the
grandeur of Nature; upon its variety and freshness, as of "groves,
fields, and meadows in the opening of the Spring"; and upon its beauty of
form and color. The works of Nature, declares Addison, surpass those of
art, and accordingly "we always find the poet in love with a country
life." Such was the theory; the practice was not out of accord therewith.
Passages appreciative of the lovelier aspects of Nature, and not, despite
the current preference for general rather than specific terms, inaccurate
as descriptions, were written between 1700 and 1726 by Addison himself,
Pope, Lady Winchilsea, Gay, Parnell, Dyer, and many others. Nature
worshippers they were not. Nature lovers they can be justly styled,--if
such love may discriminate between the beautiful and the ugly aspects
of the natural. It is characteristic that Berkeley, in his _Prospect of
Planting Arts and Learning in America_, does not indulge the fancy that
the wilderness is of itself uplifting; it requires, he assumes, the aid
of human culture and wisdom,--"the rise of empire and of arts,"--to
develop its potentialities.

A generation which placidly adhered to the orthodox sentiments of its
predecessors was of course not moved to revolutionize poetical theories
or forms. Its theories are authoritatively stated in Pope's _Essay on
Criticism_; they embrace principles of good sense and mature taste which
are easier to condemn than to confute or supersede. In poetical diction
the age cultivated clearness, propriety, and dignity: it rejected words
so minutely particular as to suggest pedantry or specialization; and
it refused to sacrifice simple appropriateness to inaccurate vigor of
utterance or meaningless beauty of sound. Its favorite measure, the
decasyllabic couplet, moulded by Jonson, Sandys, Waller, Denham, and
Dryden, it accepted reverently, as an heirloom not to be essentially
altered but to be polished until it shone more brightly than ever. Pope