Page:Studies of a Biographer 1.djvu/219

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ARTHUR YOUNG
205

way, so as to display the glories of the Wyndcliff and its neighbourhood. Young is almost carried off his feet by his delight, but he recovers sufficiently to intimate some gentle and apologetic criticisms. He gives us an aesthetic discussion as to the correct method of mixing the sublime with the beautiful in due proportions. Young's contemporary, Gilpin, remarks of the same place that it is not 'picturesque,' but extremely romantic, and gives a loose to the 'most pleasing riot of the imagination.' Nothing in the way of literature seems to keep so ill as aesthetic criticism; and we must not be hard upon these poor old gentlemen. They held that nature wanted a little judicious arranging and dramatising. At Wentworth he pronounces that the woods and waters are 'sketched with great taste,' and that the woods in particular have a 'solemn brownness' which is gratifying to the connoisseur. Young had not read Wordsworth, for obvious reasons, and when he wants a bit of poetry has generally to resort to Pope's 'breathes a browner horror o'er the woods.' He much approves of a statue of Ceres and 'a Chinese temple' which temper the rawness of nature at Wentworth; and elsewhere he gives another of his artless aesthetic disquisitions upon