Wordsworth himself was hardly more emphatic in his scorn of vague descriptions and hereditary images, and in his plea for simple truth to Nature. The passages already quoted are sufficient to show how self-conscious and theoretical was Warton’s romanticism. He was not, however, so far as the study of Nature alone is concerned, the first self-conscious worker in the new field. Ramsay and Shenstone had already, apologetically to be sure, but none the less distinctly, entered their protest against the conventional imitations of their day. But Warton uttered no apology. His theory was fully established in his own mind. He came down on the classicists with hammer and tongs, and enunciated in 1756 at least two of the cardinal doctrines of the poets of Nature who wrote forty years later. Thomas Warton’s poems seem at first reading to be but a patchwork of phrases from Milton.[400] “The Pleasures of Melancholy” (1745) was written when he was but seventeen. The theme of this poem is a defense of solitude against various social pleasures, and it has the customary note of delight in darkness, tombs, pale shrines, “fav’rite midnight haunts,” “pale December’s foggy glooms,” and “the pitying moon.” “The First of April,” “Ode on the Approach of Summer,” and “Morning, an Ode,” are of more importance so far as the love of Nature is concerned. The lines on the opening spring show close observation. Reluctant comes the timid spring. Fringing the forest’s devious edge Half rob’d appears the hawthorn hedge. Scant along the ridgy land The beans their new-born ranks expand. The rooks swarm with clamorous call and Wreathe their capacious nests anew. The fisher “bursting through the crackling sedge” Startles from the bordering wood The bashful wild-duck’s early brood. And so loud the blackbird sings That far and near the valley rings. He notes also the kite that sails above the crowded roof of the dove-cote, the plumy crest of thistles, the russet tints and gleams of light in the tops of trees at sunset, the faint, varying shades of green when the new foliage appears on the trees, and the blue tint of the unchanging pine standing in their midst. Warton’s pleasure in wide views is indicated in several passages where he speaks of climbing a hill for the sake of the broad prospect of field and stream. He had also an appreciation of wild Nature, as we see from the descriptions in “The Grave of King Arthur.” Warton’s work is of interest because of the many attractive details scattered through his poems, but there is little unity of effect. The general impression is that he saw Nature first through Milton’s eyes, and that when he afterward made many charming discoveries for himself he tried to express them in the “Il Penseroso” manner.