From The Landscape, a Didactic Poem

Richard Payne Knight (1750–1824), who was twice a member of Parliament and became a trustee of the British Museum in 1814, made significant contributions to classical scholarship, to the study of coins, and to various debates in philosophical aesthetics. His first book, An Account of the Remains of the Worship of Priapus (1786), examined erotic symbolism in ancient Greek and Roman culture and traced its afterlife in the Christian world, earning him some notoriety for his explicit treatment of the subject. His next major work, The Landscape, a Didactic Poem (1794), is an example of the poetic essay (didactic meaning ‘to instruct’) and shares the use of heroic couplets with Alexander Pope’s (1688–1744) Essay on…