As has been observed, Dyer speedily left his first love and devoted himself to laborious, didactic blank verse. We cannot find that his two short poems attracted much attention at the time. Thomson’s glory blazed forth so effulgently that lesser lights were but dimly seen. Now, however, as we go from poet to poet of the period, we cannot fail to be impressed by the unusual sincerity, simplicity, and truth with which Dyer wrote of Nature. And we feel that while he lacked Thomson’s power and fertility, he was nearly equal to him in originality, and superior to him in delicacy. David Mallet’s (1705–65) chief poems in which there is use of external Nature are “A Fragment,” “The Excursion,” and “Amyntor and Theodora.” The undated “A Fragment” reads like a poetical exercise in the style of Dyer’s “The Country Walk” and “Grongar Hill.” The octosyllabic verse, the general plan of a walk at different times of day, the ascent of a hill for the view, the pleasure in the solitude of Nature, the moralizing invocations to Health and Freedom, are all suggestive of Dyer. The description of the noontide woodland retreat, of the forest sounds, and of the poet’s revery are like passages in “The Country Walk,” while both the spirit and form of some passages in “Grongar Hill” are paralleled by such lines as, On the brow of mountain high In silence feasting ear and eye,[342] or, And then at utmost stretch of eye A mountain fades into the sky; While winding round, diffused and deep, A river rolls with sounding sweep.[343]