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They do not appear in Lewis's own Miscellany, printed in 1726. Grongar Hill was first printed in Savage's Miscellanies as an Ode, and was reprinted in the same year in Lewis's Miscellany, in the form it now bears. In his Miscellanies, 1726, the beautiful poem, 'Away, let nought to love displeasing, reprinted in Percy's Reliques, vol. i. book iii. No. 13, first appeared. See ante, p. 58.
He has a definite, if a modest, place in literature as the author of three poems, Grongar Hill , The Ruins of Rome , and The Fleece . The first of these is the best, and the best known, and contains much true natural description; but all have passages of considerable poetical merit, delicacy and precision of phrase being their most noticeable characteristic.
Dyer's Grongar Hill, which mingles reflection with natural description in the manner of Gray's Elegy written in a Country Churchyard, was composed in the octosyllabic verse of Milton's L'Allegro and Il Penseroso. Milton's minor poems, which had hitherto been neglected, exercised a great influence on Collins and Gray.
"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 are so welcome to the mind, and the reflections of the writer so consonant to the general sense or experience of mankind, that when it is once read, it will be read again.
The quality of your observation has astonished me. What have most pleased me have been "Recollections after a Ramble," and those "Grongar Hill" kind of pieces in eight-syllable lines, my favourite measure, such as "Cooper Hill" and "Solitude." In some of your story-telling Ballads the provincial phrases sometimes startle me. I think you are too profuse with them.
Think of having a Crowner's quest, and all the questions and dark suspicions of murder. People would haunt the spot and say, 'Here died the poet of Grongar Hill." The poet of "Grongar Hill" was, of course, John Dyer another of Lamb's instances of the ambiguities arising from proper names. The rescue. At these words, in the London Magazine, Lamb put this footnote:
Reflection must not be amplified, for these are pieces devoted to the fancy; a scene may be painted throughout the poem; a sentiment must be conveyed in a verse. In the "Grongar Hill" of Dyer we discover some strokes which may serve to exemplify this criticism. The poet, contemplating the distant landscape, observes
Having studied a while under his master, he became, as he tells his friend, an itinerant painter, and wandered about South Wales and the parts adjacent; but he mingled poetry with painting, and about 1727 printed "Grongar Hill" in Lewis's Miscellany.
He was prompt with his answer: 'Why, Sir, they were written by one Lewis, who was either under-master or an usher of Westminster-school, and published a Miscellany, in which Grongar Hill first came out . Johnson praised them highly, and repeated them with a noble animation.
Among these I recognised the triple crest of the Eildons, Grongar Hill, Cithaeron and Etna; while the reed-fringed waters of the Mincius flowed musically between the banks and braes o' bonny Doon to join the Tweed.
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