Of solid milk.[112]
The high Miltonic manner was likewise attempted by John Dyer in “The Fleece,” which appeared in 1757, and by James Grainger in “The Sugar Cane” (1764), to mention only the most important. Dyer, deservedly praised for his new and fresh descriptive diction, has not escaped this contagion of latinism: the globe terraqueous, the cerule stream, rich sapinaceous loam, detersive bay salt, etc., while elsewhere there are obvious efforts to recapture the Miltonic cadence. In “The Sugar Cane” the tendency is increased by the necessity thrust upon the poet to introduce numerous technical terms. Thus
though all thy mills
Crackling, o’erflow with a redundant juice
Poor tastes the liquor; coction long demands
And highest temper, ere it saccharize.
Meanwhile Joseph Warton had written his one blank verse poem “The Enthusiast” (1740), when he was only eighteen years old. But though both he and his brother Thomas are among the most important of the poets who show the influence of Milton most clearly, that influence reveals itself rather in the matter of thought than of form, and there is in “The Enthusiast” little of the diction that marred so many of the blank verse poems. Only here and there may traces be seen, as in the following passage:
fairer she
In innocence and homespun vestments dress’d
Than if cerulean sapphires at her ears