Doctor Syntax Sketching the Lake (Derwent Water)

In 1786 the Reverend William Gilpin published his great work “Observations, relative chiefly to picturesque beauty, made in the year 1772, on several parts of England, particularly the mountains and lakes of Cumberland and Westmorland”.

 

In 1812, there appeared a book entitled “The tour of Doctor Syntax in search of the Picturesque” (with the alternative title “Doctor Syntax’s Tour of the Lakes”), illustrated by the caricaturist Thomas Rowlandson and accompanied by a long, comic poem by William Combe. This was a direct satire of William Gilpin and his book and proved to be hugely popular at a time when Lake District tourism was beginning to take off.

 

Of the thousands of lines in Combe’s poem here are four :

 

He ne’er will, as an artist shine,

Who copies nature line by line,

Who’er from nature takes a view,

Must copy and improve it too.

 

So nothing much has changed.

 

In the poem, needless to say, the horse makes sure (soon after this picture was "taken") that Doctor Syntax ends up in the lake.

 

Done