and his poetry is, in general, marked by the absence of mountain scenery. Dryden’s most famous mountains are “drowsy” and “seem to nod.”[47] In Blackmore’s summary of the charges made by Lucretius concerning the “unartful contrivance of the world,” mountains are styled “the earth’s dishonor and encumbering load.” The only defense made by the poet is that these incumbrances do nevertheless restrain the tides, yield veins of ore, and bear forests of useful wood.[48] So John Philips defends his comfortable hypothesis that nothing is made in vain by the fact that even “that cloud-piercing hill Plinlimmon” is of some value since it furnishes “shrubby browze” for the goats.[49] And Yalden explains how erring Nature supplies her own defects by filling with mines the “vast excrescences of hills” that distort the surface of the earth.[50] Prior’s only mountain is Lebanon with “craggy brow.”[51] Pope has some “bright mountains” that serve to prop the incumbent sky,[52] and he occasionally mentions mountains with such epithets as “hanging,”[53] “hollow,”[53] and “headlong.”[54] Tickell showed his attitude toward mountains in his address to Lord Lonsdale whom he proposed to visit at Lowther Castle near Penrith, declaring that he did not dread the harsh climate and rude country, for the Earl’s presence would be sufficient to “hush every wind and every mountain smooth.”[55] Parnell instances in his catalogue of the horrors of Ireland her hills that with naked heads meet the tempests.[56] Dr. Akenside speaks of a “horrid pile of hills.”[57] Along with this frank disapproval of mountains is a similar dislike for their concomitants such as precipices, wildernesses, and even dense thickets.[58]