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to exercise itself on the objects of poetry; and it retains much of its interest in afterlife, from being associated with the scenes of our youthful pleasures.

When we attribute the popularity which this poem has obtained, in some degree to its Defects, we allude not only to the faults of the style, but to the very cast of thought, and the intellectual quality of the sentiments, by which the poem is characterized. A contemporary critic has remarked, that "There are few minds in which the love of poetry does not form a sort of intellectual instinct; an instinct often blind and indiscriminating, yet having reference to something nobler than the wants of the physical being, and valuable as connected with the first development of the imagination and passions. The poetry which aims at popularity, must be adapted to that numerous class of readers in whom this instinctive feeling exists, but who have stopped short at a very low degree of mental cultivation, or whose imagination has been neglected amid the pursuits of afterlife." There is nothing in Thomson that requires any painful exercise of the faculties, that calls for any of the higher exertions of the imagination, or that soars beyond the experience of the humblest intellect. His style is indeed learned and ornate. But Burke has shown that words may the most powerfully affect the mind, when their meaning is indefinite. Where Thomson's language is the most inflated, his expressions have generally a specious grandeur of meaning derived from the felicity with which they are selected. His genius is in this re

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spect conspicuous: like the evening sun, which imparts pomp and brightness to the unsubstantial clouds with which it is enveloped, it changes the very character of the faults which it appropriates.

The greatest defect in the Seasons respects the cast of its moral sentiments; but in this respect it is not the less adapted to the more numerous class of the readers of poetry. The Religion of the Seasons is of that general kind which Nature's self might teach to those who had no knowledge of the God of Revelation. It is a lofty and complacent sentiment, which plays upon the feelings like the ineffable power of solemn harmony, but has no reference to the quality of our belief, to the dispositions of the heart, or to the habitual tendency of the character; still less does it involve a devotional recognition of the revealed character of the Divine Being. But on this very account "The Seasons" was adapted to please at the time that Pope ruled the republic of taste, and to the same cause the poem is still indebted for at least some of its admirers.

The love of the Poet of the Seasons, is the "Passion of the Groves." The author, it is said, was susceptible of no higher sentiment. There is a prevailing vulgarity of feeling on this subject, which is only concealed by the splendour of the diction. The Poet's ideas of love are such as a schoolboy would naturally derive from the perusal of the Pantheon and Ovid's Metamorphoses. We know we shall offend common prejudice, in pro

nouncing the tale of Musidora, which has furnished so many artists with a subject, and the publishers of so many editions of Thomson with a captivating embellishment, to be as vulgarly conceived, and to be as coarse in sentiment, though not in expression, as a Dutch painting. But still Thomson is chastity and purity itself in comparison with his contemporaries. There is always an air of elegance, and even of refinement, thrown over his warmest pictures. The Seasons, though they may administer fuel to an excited imagination, contain scarcely an expression that would raise the blush of modesty. This decorum of expression extends also in general to his ideas; and he is not perhaps to be blamed if these do not rise, in point of elevation of sentiment, above the level of his experience.

We are indebted, however, to Thomson for one passage on domestic happiness, at the conclusion of his "Spring," which does high credit to his feelings as a man and as a poet. Thomson never loved; but he was not an unamiable character. He was an affectionate brother: his benevolence, though it partook of the indolence of his character, was fervid; and by his friends, we are told, he was very tenderly and warmly beloved.

It is unnecessary to dwell on the beauties or merits of his great poem. Johnson has remarked, that "his mode of thinking and expressing his thoughts is original." This is no small praise. His descriptions, varying and rising with his sub

ject, are at times magnificent; at other times, they display all the minute accuracy only to be obtained by familiar observation. No one but an angler could have described with so felicitous correctness the fly-fisher's sport in the first Season. There breathes throughout his poem the enthusiasm of the poet of nature: and if we cannot allow that the reader of the Seasons "wonders that he never saw before what Thomson shows him," unless it be a reader unaccustomed to hold converse with the beautiful in the material world, yet he derives a high and more genuine gratification, in finding the scenes he loves described so well.

The highest praise which he has received ought not to be suppressed; it is said by Lord Lyttelton, in the prologue to his posthumous play, that his works contained

"No line which, dying, he could wish to blot."

SPRING.

The subject proposed. Inscribed to the Countess of Hertford. The season is described as it affects the various parts of nature, ascending from the lower to the higher; with digressions arising from the subject. Its influence on inanimate matter. On vegetables. On brute animals. And last, on man. Concluding with a dissuasive from the wild and irregular passion of love, opposed to that of a pure and happy kind.

COME, gentle Spring, ethereal mildness, come,
And from the bosom of yon dropping cloud,
While music wakes around, veil'd in a show'r
Of shadowing roses, on our plains descend.

O Hertford, fitted or to shine in courts
With unaffected grace, or walk the plain
With innocence and meditation join'd
In soft assemblage, listen to my song,
Which thy own season paints; when nature all
Is blooming and benevolent, like thee.

And see where surly Winter passes off, Far to the north, and calls his ruffian blasts: His blasts obey, and quit the howling hill, The shatter'd forest, and the ravag'd vale; While softer gales succeed, at whose kind touch, Dissolving snows in livid torrents lost,

The mountains lift their green heads to the sky.