In his prose works Goldsmith has several vigorous attacks on falseness and affectation in poetry. In 1759 he characterized Italian poetry at its lowest ebb, as “no longer an imitation of what we see, but of what a visionary might wish. The zephyrs breathe a most exquisite perfume; the trees wear eternal verdure; fauns, dryads, and hamadryads stand ready to fan the sultry shepherdess ... who is so simple and innocent as often to have no meaning.” This attack on the falseness and affectation of Italian poetry might be quoted verbatim by a modern critic of the popular eighteenth-century pastorals. Goldsmith also praised Gay’s poems saying that “he has hit upon the true spirit of pastoral poetry.” Goldsmith has other keen critical remarks that point in the direction of the new spirit but they do not bear directly on the study of Nature. He is important chiefly because of his interest in man as man, his close and sympathetic delineation of the poor and ignorant. In 1766 James Beattie had written 150 lines of “The Minstrel.” The poem was then laid aside for the “Essay on Truth” and not taken up again till 1770. The first book was published anonymously in 1771. The second book appeared with the author’s name in 1774. The poem consists of 122 Spenserian stanzas. Its design is “to trace the progress of a poetical genius ... till that period when he may be supposed capable of appearing in the world as a minstrel,”[445] and its theme is really the effect of mountain scenery on a poetically sensitive mind. The child, Edwin, is brought up in a remote village among the Scotch hills, and his genius is developed through the varied influence of wild natural scenery until he becomes “itinerant poet and musician.” As a lad his chief pleasure was to follow Where the maze of some bewilder’d stream To deep untrodden groves his footsteps led. He loved to climb craggy cliffs When all in mist the world below was lost. What dreadful pleasure! There to stand sublime Like shipwreck’d mariner on desert coast And view the enormous waste of vapour, toss’d In billows, lengthening to the horizon round, Now scoop’d in gulfs, with mountains now emboss’d. And oft he traced the uplands, to survey, When o’er the sky advanced the kindling dawn, The crimson cloud, blue main and mountain gray. He was Fond of each gentle, and each dreadful scene. In darkness and in storm he found delight. He listened with pleasing dread, to the deep roar Of the wide-weltering waves. When storms came up in black array He hastened from the haunt of man, Along the trembling wilderness to stray. He visited haunted streams by moonlight and let his imagination dwell on graves and ghosts. His soul was possessed by the “mystic transports” born of “melancholy and solitude.” He scanned all Nature with a “curious and romantic eye,” and his imagination was stirred by “old heroic ditties,” by