John Dyer (1699 – December 1757) was a painter and Welsh poet turned clergyman of the Church of England who maintained an interest in his Welsh ancestry. He was most recognized for Wordsworth’s sonnet, To The Poet, John Dyer, addressed to him, and for Grongar Hill, one of Dyer’s six early poems featured in Richard Savage’s Miscellaneous Poems and Translations by Several Hands (February 1726), a collection of works featuring ‘Hillarian’ circle verse. His unsuccessful works include Ruins of Rome, The Fleece, Country Walk, An Epistle To A Friend In Town, To Aurelia and The Enquiry.
Although Dyer’s popularity was short lived after Grongar Hill, William Wordsworth and John Gray praised John Dyer’s imagination and style as having, “more of poetry in his imagination than almost any of our number, but rough and injudicious.”
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“Approval of what is approved of
Is as false as a well-kept vow.”
—Sir John Betjeman (1906–1984)
“My mind to me a kingdom is;
Such present joys therein I find
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Though much I want which most would have,
Yet still my mind forbids to crave.”
—Sir Edward Dyer (c. 1540–1607)