George Dyer

“ Now I am on the subject of poetry, I must announce to you, who, doubtless, in your remote part of the island, have not heard tidings of so great a blessing, that George Dyer hath prepared two ponderous volumes full of poetry and criticism. They impend over the town, and are threatened to fall in the winter. The first volume contains every sort of poetry except personal satire, which George, in his truly original prospectus, renounceth forever, whimsically foisting the intention in between the price of his book and the proposed number of subscribers. ”

“ George Dyer has introduced me to the table of an agreeable old gentleman, Dr. Anderson, who gives hot legs of mutton and grape pies at his sylvan lodge at Isleworth, where, in the middle of a street, he has shot up a wall most preposterously before his small dwelling, which, with the circumstance of his taking several panes of glass out of bedroom windows (for air) , causeth his neighbours to speculate strangely on the state of the good man's pericranicks. Plainly, he lives under the reputation of being deranged. George does not mind this circumstance; he rather likes him the better for it. ”

“ Following this letter should come a letter from Lamb to John Rickman, describing the state of their two George friends: George the First (George Dyer) and George the Second (George Burnett) . Burnett, he says, as ill becomes adversity as Dyer would prosperity. He tells also of another poor acquaintance of Rickman's—one Simonds with a slit lip, who has been to Lamb to borrow money. "Saving his dirty shirt and his physiognomy and his 'bacco box, together with a certain kiddy air in his walk, a man w'd have gone near to have mistaken him for a gentleman. ”

“ Dyer was more than a pessimist; he was not content merely to look on the dark side of things, but associated himself with every bit of shadow he could find.
"I don't see how that can be. People may give up meat, they may reduce their clothing; but they must have bread," replied George.
"But they don't want nearly so much as they used to," said Dyer bitterly, "and they looks at anything nowadays avore they takes it. When I started business a healthy working man would finish off two loaves a day; and one's as much as he can manage now. The human race ain't improving, sir ”

“ Dyer," said George. "When you make up my bill for lodgings and bread puddings, just remember that you owe me a pound."
"You wouldn't think of such a thing. You'm too much of a gentleman," cried Mrs. Dyer.
"The missus fancies you meant it, sir. She ain't very humorous," explained the baker.
George had a trick of nodding after supper, and that evening he did not wake until it was nearly time to sleep more seriously. Remembering that Bessie would be sitting up to surrender the keys, he hurried out ”

“ In an ease of composition which runs into laxity he reminds us occasionally of George Wither. His chief merit is, that while independent of Thomson, he was inspired by the same love, and wrote with the same aim. Dyer is not content with bare description, but likes to moralize on the landscape he surveys. Thus, when looking on a ruined tower, the poet exclaims ”

“ Durie, Robert Durnford, Anthony William Durno, James Durward, Alan Dusgate, Thomas Dussek, Sophia Dutens, Louis Duval, Charles Allen Duval, Claude Duval, Lewis Duval, Philip Dwarris, Fortunatus William Lilley Dwight, John Dwight, Samuel Dwnn, Lewys Dwyer, Michael Dyce, Alexander Dyce, William Dyce-Sombre, David Ochterlony Dyche, Thomas Dyer, Edward Dyer, George Dyer, Gilbert Dyer, James Dyer, John Dyer, Joseph Chessborough Dyer, Samuel Dyer, Thomas Henry Dyer, William Dyfrig (d.612) . ”

“ After the introduction of the electric light, Edison was more than ever in demand socially, but he shunned functions like the plague, not only because of the serious interference with work, but because of his deafness. Some dinners he had to attend, but a man who ate little and heard less could derive practically no pleasure from them. "George Washington Childs was very anxious I should go down to Philadelphia to dine with him. I seldom went to dinners. He insisted I should go—that a special car would leave New York. ”

“ Teach their unwilling hands, nor yet complain :
Yours with the public good shall ever rise, 100
Ever, while o'er the lawns and airy downs
The bleating sheep and shepherd's pipe are heard ;
While in the brook ye blanch the glist'ning Fleece,
And th' am'rous youth, delighted with your toils,
Quavers the choicest of his sonnets, warm'd 105
By growing traffic, friend to wedded love.
The am'rous youth, with various hopes inflam'd,
Now on the busy stage see him step forth,
With beating breast : high-honour'd he beholds
Rich industry. First he bespeaks a loom ”

“ Perhaps Lincolnshire was not altogether consoling to one who had known the Towy valley. His last work was full of reminiscences of Wales. At Coningsby, he was busy with his longest poem, "The Fleece." He composed laboriously; and Akenside, who was giving him medical advice, helped him in the work. It is his biggest effort, and when we consider the subject, his greatest success. A very large proportion of dulness is to be expected from Dyer on wool; but it does not obscure the excellence of his design; even where his thought is rustic, the style is pure; in some places he is nearly grand ”

“ The woolcomber and the poet appear to me such discordant natures, that an attempt to bring them together is to couple the serpent with the fowl. When Dyer, whose mind was not unpoetical, has done his utmost, by interesting his reader in our native commodity, by interspersing rural imagery, and incidental digressions, by cloathing small images in great words, and by all the writer's arts of delusion, the meanness naturally adhering, and the irreverence habitually annexed to trade and manufacture, sink him under insuperable oppression ”

“ Fortunately a good woman took him under her wing; they were married in 1825; and Dyer's last days were happy. His best books were his Life of Robert Robinson and his History of the University and Colleges of Cambridge. Lamb and his friends laughed at him and loved him. In addition to the stories told by Lamb in his letters and essays, there are amusing characteristics of Dyer in Crabb Robinson's diary, in Leigh Hunt, in Hazlitt, in Talfourd, and in other places. All bear upon his gentleness, his untidiness and his want of humour. ”

“ It is obvious that Dyer must have been much out of doors. He probably knew South Wales intimately. He had a short, practical experience of agriculture, and a love of animals. At the same time he was not a hearty out-door philosopher. His health was always indifferent, and the Campagna had injured it. He seems to have had an amiable, constitutional melancholy, and must have known the angrier moods of that "sweet enemy"; for, in 1729, he is said to have written his epitaph. He called himself "old and sickly" in middle age ”

“ But as his inclinations were always dishonest, he could not long confine himself to honesty and labour, but in a short space meeting with a young man in the neighbourhood, who was very uneasy in his circumstances, and on ill terms with ms friends, and very much disordered in his mind on account of the misfortunes under which he laboured, Dyer began immediately to cast eyes upon him as one who would make him a fit companion. ”

“ When he himself was upon his death-bed he greeted his old friend Colonel Dyer—he of the absent overcoat and over-shoes—with:
"Dyer, I'm almost gone. I am in the shadow of death. I am standing upon the very brink. I cannot see clearly, I cannot speak coherently, the film of death obstructs my sight. I know what this means. It is the end, but all is well with me. I have no fear. I have said and done things that would have been better left unsaid and undone, but I have never willfully wronged a man in my life. I have no concern for myself. I am concerned only for those I leave behind. ”

“ Or real exigencies ; passions swift
Forerunning reason ; strong contrarious bents,
The steps of men dispersing wide abroad
O'er realms and seas. There, in the solemn scene, 625
Infinite wonders glare before their eyes,
Humiliating the mind enlarg'd ; for they
The clearest sense of Deity receive
Who view the widest prospect of his works,
Ranging the globe with trade thro' various climes; 630
Who see the signatures of boundless love,
Nor less the judgments of Almighty Pow'r,
That warn the wicked, and the wretch who 'scapes
From human justice ”

“ John Dyer, born 1700, was a much more reputable person. He was educated at Westminster; began life as an itinerant artist, with a keen eye to the beauties of nature, when that taste was little cultivated. He was appointed to the rectory by Sir John Heathcote in 1752, and in 1755 to Kirkby-on-Bain, for which he exchanged Belchford, where he had formerly been. ”

“ Dyer is not afraid of being written down as unscientific for reflecting upon a future or ideal social order, indicated in certain traits at least, in discoverable social potencies. This is the more gratifying from the fact that his training as a civil engineer cannot be charged with tendency to create a bias toward impractical abstract speculation. ”

“ Perhaps Linnet will place the bomb; perhaps Kauffman will do it himself. Dyer has lost his incriminating papers and notes and is on his way to Washington in an endeavor to recover them.
"Associated with Dyer in his horrible activities is Mrs. Augusta Charleworth, occupying a high social position, but of German birth and therefore a German sympathizer. She is clever, and her brains supplement those of Dyer, who seems more shrewd than initiative, being content to execute the orders of others. ”

“ It had taken the objective it was sent for, and this boy has had to help shell the position where Dyer would have been if the battalion hadn’t been sacrificed. His idea is that it was a perhaps inevitable sacrifice, but the thought that he might have been pouring lead and steel in on his friend, still alive and hiding in a shell-hole, has got on his nerves till he’s all in pieces. He’s a giant physically, but Dyer is twice his size, nevertheless.”
[348] “I’ll find him,” said Jane. She felt suddenly weak with dread. ”

“ Sir Edward Dyer, a noted English courtier and poet, was born at Sharpham Park, Somersetshire, and died in 1607. He had a great reputation as a poet among his contemporaries, but very little of his work has survived. “My Mind to Me a Kingdom Is,” is universally accepted as his. ”

“ Dyer's knowledge of the drama (which formed part of the subject of his first publication) may be guessed, by his having read Shakespeare, "an irregular genius," and having dipped into Rowe and Otway, but never having heard of any other writers in that class. In absence of mind, he probably exceeded every other living man. Lamb has set forth one instance (which I know to be a fact) of Dyer's forgetfulness, in his "Oxford in the Vacation;" and to this various others might be added, such as his emptying his snuff-box into the teapot when he was preparing breakfast for a hungry friend, &c. ”

“ During his lifetime, and early in the next century, critics were at a loss to know on what work his fame rested. Edmund Bolton in ‘Hypercritica’ says that he ‘had not seen much of Sir Edward Dyer's poetry;’ and William Drummond, coupling his name with Raleigh's, observes: ‘Their works are so few that have come to my hands, I cannot well say anything of them.’ Rawl. MS. Poet. 85 contains a few poems ascribed, with more or less authority, to Dyer. ”

“ Some of the stanzas in this poem were printed by Byrd separate from the rest: they are here given in what seemed the most natural order.
[The longest and apparently earliest version of this favourite poem is signed "E. Dier," in MS. Rawl. Poet. 85, fol. 17 in the Bodleian Library, and Dr. Hannah [972] attributes it to Sir Edward Dyer, the friend of Spenser and Sidney, whose little pieces were chiefly printed in England's Helicon. Sir Edward Dyer, of Sharpham Park, Somersetshire, was born about the year 1540. He was educated at Oxford, and afterwards was employed in several embassies. ”

“ Eddison does not belong to himself. He is the property of the telegraph company which lodges him in New York at a superb hotel; keeps him on a luxurious footing, and pays him a formidable salary so as to be the one to know of and profit by his discoveries. The company has, in the dwelling of Eddison, men in its employ who do not quit him for a moment, at the table, on the street, in the laboratory. ”

“ The reference to clothes is interesting, as it is one of the few subjects in which Edison has no interest. It rather bores him. His dress is always of the plainest; in fact, so plain that, at the Bergmann shops in New York, the children attending a parochial Catholic school were wont to salute him with the finger to the head, every time he went by. Upon inquiring, he found that they took him for a priest, with his dark garb, smooth-shaven face, and serious expression. Edison says: "I get a suit that fits me ”

“ Dyer is not a poet of bulk or dignity sufficient to require an elaborate criticism. "Grongar Hill" is the happiest of his productions: it is not indeed very accurately written; but the scenes which it displays are so pleasing, the images which they raise so welcome to the mind, and the reflexions of the writer so consonant to the general sense or experience of mankind, that when it is once read, it will be read again. ”

“ Leaving the university without a degree, he travelled on the continent; and in 1566 he was at the court of Elizabeth. His patron in 1571 was the Earl of Leicester, over whom he seems to have exercised much influence. In 1572 he addressed a very curious letter of advice to Sir Christopher Hatton, who had fallen under the displeasure of the queen. Dyer himself had also incurred royal disfavour, for Gilbert Talbot, writing in 1573 to his father, the Earl of Shrewsbury, says: ‘Dyer lately was sick of a consumption, in great danger ”