The treatment of nature in English poetry between Pope and Wordsworth

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The Treatment of Nature in English Poetry Between Pope and Wordsworth by Myra Reynolds is a literary-critical study written in the early 20th century. It investigates how English writers from the late classical/Augustan period to the early Romantics conceived of Nature, arguing that the celebrated Romantic vision was prefigured throughout the 18th century. Beyond verse, it compares poetry with painting, travel writing, fiction, and gardening to trace a broad cultural shift toward valuing the natural world.

The opening of this study frames the 18th century as a transitional era in which older, urban-classical tastes faded while a new, more ardent feeling for Nature slowly gained force; the preface notes new chapters on painting and gardening and asserts that most “Wordsworthian” ideas appeared earlier in germ. A concise review of prior scholarship (from Schiller and Humboldt to Ruskin, Laprade, Biese, Veitch, and Shairp) shows how English 18th‑century evidence has been underread, motivating a study of origins across arts. The first chapter then maps “English classical” poetry (Waller through Pope and into decadence) and demonstrates its dominant traits: a town-loving ethos; dislike or neglect of mountains, the sea, storms, winter, and sky mysteries; preference for tame, cultivated scenes; generalized, bookish description; narrow, conventional similes; decorative personifications; heavy Latin imitation; and a fixed poetic diction of stock epithets. It concludes that this literature treats Nature as servant or foe rather than kin, setting the stage for later chapters that trace the emergence of a new attitude.