Dyer, JOHN

Dyer, JOHN, an English poet, was born about 1700, near Llandilo, in Carmarthenshire, and educated at Westminster. On the death of his father, a solicitor, he abandoned law, and took to art, rambling over South Wales and the English country near. In 1727 he published his poem of Grongar Hill, remarkable for simplicity, waruth of feeling, and exquisite descriptions of natural scenery, which it was much more a merit for a man to see than now. He next travelled in Italy, returned in bad health to publish a second poem, the Ruins of Rome (1740), took orders, and became vicar of Catthorpe in Leicestershire in 1741, which he exchanged later for the Lincolnshire livings of Belchford, Coningsby, and Kirkby-on-Bain. He died in 1758. The year before his death he published The Fleece, an unpretentious didactic poem, which had the honour to be praised by Wordsworth in a sonnet.