The place of the ocean in the classical poetry is likewise significant. It awakened no sense of elation as in Byron, no sense of mysterious kinship as in Shelley. It was simply a waste of waters, dangerous at times, and always wearisome. Though more often mentioned than the mountains, it received an even more narrow and conventional treatment. Except in some elaborate similes there are few descriptions of more than a line in length. We find merely casual mention by means of stock epithets, or very short and unmeaning descriptive phrases. To Waller the sea is “the world’s great waste,” “a watery field,” a “watery wilderness,” or a “main,” liquid, or troubled, or angry, as the case may be.[61] Dryden’s epithets are hardly more felicitous. He uses “watery”[62] with an insistence that finally becomes ludicrous. He has one or two little ocean pictures written apparently for their own sake, but his best use of the ocean is in similitudes.[62] In succeeding poets the treatment of the ocean is exceedingly commonplace and unimaginative. Such small interest as the sea aroused was of a prosaic, utilitarian sort. Young’s “Sea Pieces” and “Ocean” may serve as examples, and they are little more than eulogies of England’s commercial and naval prowess. It is for Britain that “the servant Ocean” “both sinks and swells.” It is solely with reference to her prosperity that soft Zephyr, keen Eurus, Notus, and rough Boreas ”urge their toil.” The main! The main! Is Britain’s reign; * * * * * The main! the main! Be Britain’s strain,[63] is the unvaried theme. The few descriptive passages are of periods when “storms deface the fluid glass,” and seem to have been composed in accordance with Pope’s famous recipe for poetical tempests.[64] The most popular sea poem of the eighteenth century was Falconer’s “Shipwreck” written in 1762. It is a sufficiently remarkable production when thought of as the work of a common sailor but it is difficult for the modern reader to understand the extravagant praise bestowed upon it in its own day.[65] Its tame and conventional love story, its descriptions of the sylvan scenes where Palemon and Anna gave pledges of undying affection, its moralizings on the beneficial effect of poetry, the evils of war, the corrupting lust of gold, its long digression on cities and heroes “renowned in antiquity,” its invocation to the Muses, its mythology, its reverence for “sacred Maro’s art,” are all of the commonplace, classical order. There is in the actual shipwreck scene some vigorous writing, but it deals almost entirely with the emotions of the sailors, and the management of the ship. It would be difficult to find any really effective lines descriptive of the storm itself. The following quotations may stand as fairly representative of the best passages: It comes resistless, and with foaming sweep Upturns the whitening surface of the deep. * * * * *