" It seems almost impossible that this
should have been offered as serious advice; but it was the admired usage
of the time. Whately's book was a recognized authority, and ran through
several editions. He is also known as a Shakespeare critic, of no
particular mark.
A more influential writer than Whately was William Gilpin, an industrious
clergyman and schoolmaster, who spent his holidays wandering and
sketching in the most approved parts of England, Wales and Scotland. His
books on the Picturesque were long held in esteem. The earliest of them
was entitled _Observations on the River Wye and several parts of South
Wales . . . relative chiefly to picturesque beauty_ (1782). Others,
which followed in steady succession, rendered a like service to the Lake
district, the Highlands of Scotland, the New Forest, and the Isle of
Wight. Those books taught the aesthetic appreciation of wild nature to a
whole generation. It is a testimony to their influence that for a time
they enslaved the youth of Wordsworth. In _The Prelude_ he tells how, in
early life, he misunderstood the teaching of Nature, not from
insensibility, but from the presumption which applied to the impassioned
life of Nature the "rules of mimic art." He calls this habit "a strong
infection of the age," and tells how he too, for a time, was wont to
compare scene with scene, and to pamper himself "with meagre novelties of
colour and proportion.
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