to the sentimental view really the "little brothers" of Man. John
Dalton's crude _Descriptive Poem_ apostrophized what was regarded as the
"savage grandeur" of the Lake country; it is interesting only because it
mentions Keswick, Borrowdale, Lodore, and Skiddaw, half a century
later to become sacred ground. The practical dilemma of the
sentimentalist,--drawn toward solitude by his worship of Nature, and
toward society by his love for Man,--was described by Whitehead in _The
Enthusiast_, the humanitarian impulse being finally given the preference.
Though the last of these pieces is not contemptible in style, none
of these writers had sufficient ardor to compel attention; and if
sentimentalism had not been steadily disseminated through other literary
forms, especially the novel, it might well have been regarded as a lost
cause.

The great poet of this decade was Gray, whose _Elegy Written in a Country
Churchyard_, by many held the noblest English lyric, appeared in 1751.
His classical ideal of style, according to which poetry should have,
in his words, "extreme conciseness of expression," yet be "pure,
perspicuous, and musical," was realized both in the _Elegy_ and in the
otherwise very different _Pindaric Odes_. The ethical and religious
implications of the _Elegy_, its piety, its sense of the frailties as
well as the merits of mankind, are conservative. Nor is there in the
_Pindaric Odes_ any violation of classical principles. Gray never
deviates into a pantheistic faith, a belief in human perfection, a
conception of poetry as instinctive imagination unrestrained, or any
other essential tenet of sentimentalism. Yet the influence of the new
spirit upon him may be discerned. It modified his choice of subjects, and
slightly colored their interpretation, without causing him to abandon the
classical attitude. The _Elegy_ treats with reverence what the Augustans
had neglected,--the tragic dignity of obscure lives; _The Progress of