Cristall begins to adopt the role of a “pupil of nature” as early as the preface. Here, Cristall compares herself disadvantageously to other authors of the day, and voices doubts about being able to emulate authors who “devoted” “their lives to the study of metaphysical and moral truth” (i). By comparing her work, however modestly, to great writers who are seeking, as the reader is led to suppose Cristall also is seeking, for “metaphysical and moral truth”, our attention is implicitly drawn to Cristall’s ambition for these same attainments. Cristall uses the apology format to alert the reader to her own “study of metaphysical and moral truth”, a study which, she tells us, she took to “Nature” (i). She speaks of her limited knowledge and experience, and this is turned into a quiet boast of sorts for her own style (McGann 198) when she says “the dictates of Nature may be sometimes more just than conclusions drawn from a partial knowledge of the world” (i). Cristall yet further emphasises her role as a “pupil of nature” figure when she tells us that her poetry has its source in the natural world and that her juvenilia is a collection “which a love for the beauties of nature inspired” (ii). Jacqueline Labbe describes how Cristall promotes herself as a “child of nature” (“The Seductions of Form” 156), heightened by her professed feminine ignorance of “rules” (ibid, 157). The language Cristall uses to describe her poetry furthers the idea that it was cultivated in nature. As she explains, “the versification is wild”, and her poems took their “irregular” form as an organic process unguided by rules; they are “the natural consequence” of inspiration unfettered by convention (ii). Even while Cristall is apparently dismissing her own work, she is demanding to be understood as a rightful pupil of the landscape, a pupil who succeeds in finding “moral truth” and poetic inspiration in the natural world.
Cristall begins to adopt the role of a “pupil of nature” as early as the preface. Here, Cristall compares herself disadvantageously to other authors of the day, and voices doubts about being able to emulate authors who “devoted” “their lives to the study of metaphysical and moral truth” (i). By comparing her work, however modestly, to great writers who are seeking, as the reader is led to suppose Cristall also is seeking, for “metaphysical and moral truth”, our attention is implicitly drawn to Cristall’s ambition for these same attainments. Cristall uses the apology format to alert the reader to her own “study of metaphysical and moral truth”, a study which, she tells us, she took to “Nature” (i). She speaks of her limited knowledge and experience, and this is turned into a quiet boast of sorts for her own style (McGann 198) when she says “the dictates of Nature may be sometimes more just than conclusions drawn from a partial knowledge of the world” (i). Cristall yet further emphasises her role as a “pupil of nature” figure when she tells us that her poetry has its source in the natural world and that her juvenilia is a collection “which a love for the beauties of nature inspired” (ii). Jacqueline Labbe describes how Cristall promotes herself as a “child of nature” (“The Seductions of Form” 156), heightened by her professed feminine ignorance of “rules” (ibid, 157). The language Cristall uses to describe her poetry furthers the idea that it was cultivated in nature. As she explains, “the versification is wild”, and her poems took their “irregular” form as an organic process unguided by rules; they are “the natural consequence” of inspiration unfettered by convention (ii). Even while Cristall is apparently dismissing her own work, she is demanding to be understood as a rightful pupil of the landscape, a pupil who succeeds in finding “moral truth” and poetic inspiration in the natural world.