And his enjoyment of the simple beauties of nature was as true and heartfelt as Cowper’s. Vivid pictures of country scenes, and homely sketches of country life, are presented to us again and again in verse that is always clear and lucid, though soft and sweet, or rough and rugged, according to the subject. His carefully-constructed verses, in their clearness and in their varying tone, would really seem to have been attuned to the “voiceful Tavy” which he loved so dearly and celebrated so gladly, and by whose side many of them were written.
Why, then, with such a gift, so obviously unexhausted, did he decline to publish anything after the appearance of the second book of Britannia’s Pastorals, in 1616? Probably he felt, as S. Daniel had felt before him, that a people entirely devoted to action and incident could have little taste for pure poetry. Even as early as 1613 he had described a poor poet, sitting up late, wasting ink and paper, and wearing out “many a gray goose quill,” in the vain hope of immortal renown:—
When Loe! (O Fate!) his worke not seeming fit
To walk in equipage with better wit,
Is kept from light, there gnawne by Moathes and Wormes,
At which he frets.
And, in 1623, when he wrote his commendatory verses for Massinger’s Duke of Millaine, he was convinced that there was no demand for any poetry but the drama:—
I am snapt already, and may go my way;
The Poet-Critic’s come; I hear him say:
This Youth’s mistook, the Author’s work’s a Play.