They, greedy, and unweeting of the bait,
Crowd to the inviting cates, and swift devour
Their palatable Death; for soon they seek
The neighbouring spring; and drink, and swell, and die.
Then follow some very sensible remarks about the unwholesomeness of the water in which the dead alligators are decomposing,—remarks which Mr. Kipling has unconsciously parodied:—
But ’e gets into the drinking casks, and then o’ course we dies.
The wonderful thing about the “Sugar Cane” is that it was read;—nay, more, that it was read aloud at the house of Sir Joshua Reynolds, and though the audience laughed, it listened. Dodsley published the poem in handsome style; a second edition was called for; it was reprinted in Jamaica, and pirated (what were the pirates thinking about!) in 1766. Even Dr. Johnson wrote a friendly notice in the London “Chronicle,” though he always maintained that the poet might just as well have sung the beauties of a parsley-bed or of a cabbage garden. He took the same high ground when Boswell called his attention to Dyer’s “Fleece.”—“The subject, Sir, cannot be made poetical. How can a man write poetically of serges and druggets?”
It was not for the sake of sentiment or story that the English public read “The Fleece.” Nor could it have been for practical guidance; for farmers, even in 1757, must have had some musty almanacs, some plain prose manuals to advise them. They could never have waited to learn from an epic poem that
the coughing pest
From their green pastures sweeps whole flocks away,