Most of these examples are on subjects which Thomson did not make peculiarly his own. From his own proper sphere may be gathered still finer specimens of his art. It would be difficult to surpass the line in which he describes the verdure and the unnumbered flowers of the meadow as "the negligence of nature, wide and wild"; and Mr. Saintsbury has justly praised the picture of "the yellow wallflower stained with iron-brown" as perfect of its kind. In another style, but scarcely less admirable, is the description of a swollen winter stream:

"It boils, and wheels, and foams, and thunders through."

The line not only raises up before the eye a picture of the furious torrent, but fills the ear with its roar. Again, for concise truth and rich suggestiveness the following lines will bear comparison with almost any:

"The plaint of rills,

That, purling down amid the twisted roots

Which creep around, their dewy murmurs shake
On the soothed ear."

Here every epithet is pictorial, and not a word can be. spared without damage to the whole. The same merits are seen in the lines descriptive of the appearance of the sky at the beginning of a winter storm :—

"Rising slow,

Blank in the leaden-coloured east, the moon

Wears a wan circle round her blunted horns."

Sometimes a single epithet is enough to betray the master hand, as in the picture of the bird not to be tempted from her nest, "though the whole loosened Spring

around her blow"; or in the adjective which he applies to a summer night, "With quickened step Brown night retires," where the 'brown' is felt to be as true as it is novel.

It will be observed that the best of these quotations are as simple as the thought will permit them to be. There are however few continuous passages of many lines in Thomson of which this can be said. He had a taste for rotundity of phrase, for ear-filling words. This fault is conspicuous in the luscious description of the glories of the torrid zone which, with kindred themes, fills a great part of Summer--the longest, and on the whole the weakest, of the four poems which make up The Seasons. There is however visible also in those passages that striving after truth which would have redeemed more serious errors. Thomson had never been in tropical climates, and it was inevitable that there should be less of reality in his description of them than in passages depicting scenes with which his daily walks had rendered him familiar. But he had read carefully to prepare himself by the best means in his power for his task, and he made a strenuous effort to reconstruct a real scene. He is partly, but not completely, successful. On the one hand he escapes the common fallacy of describing the tropics as rich in many-coloured flowers; on the other he makes the hippopotamus walk the plains and seek the hills for food.

This determination to be faithful is the ruling spirit of The Seasons. It carried Thomson much farther than the casual reader is apt to see. He was not content with the external appearance of things, but always sought to

penetrate beneath the surface; and if it is a merit in the painter to study anatomy that he may the better understand the true play of human muscles, surely it is no less a merit of the poet to make himself acquainted with botany that his descriptions may be the more true and exact. Such knowledge may doubtless be perverted, as it was by the sculptor who has left that monstrosity of Milan Cathedral, a human figure stripped of its skin; or as it was in Erasmus Darwin's Botanic Garden. Examples may be found in Thomson himself of a not very poetical use of knowledge; but as in the main he is free from pedantry, the trouble he took to extend his information must be ranked on virtue's side. The only matter for regret is that it was not sufficient to preserve him entirely from mistakes.

But, apart from the question of the more than ample compensations which Thomson affords, it is impossible altogether to regret the splendour of taste which results in verse such as this, in which the poet connects the radiance of gems with the sunlight :

"At thee the ruby lights its deepening glow,
And with a waving radiance inward flames;
From thee the sapphire, solid ether, takes
Its hue cerulean; and, of evening tinct,
The purple-streaming amethyst is thine.
With thy own smile the yellow topaz burns;
Nor deeper verdure dyes the robe of Spring,
When first she gives it to the southern gale,
Than the green emerald shows. But, all combined,
Thick through the whitening opal play thy beams;

Or, flying several from its surface, form

A trembling variance of revolving lines, As the site varies in the gazer's hand." VOL. II.

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Another extract will illustrate Thomson's more sober

hued style :

"Now from the town,

Buried in smoke, and deep, and noisome damps,

Oft let me wander o'er the dewy fields,

Where freshness breathes, and dash the trembling drops

From the bent bush, as through the verdant maze
Of sweet-briar hedges I pursue my walk;

Or taste the smell of dairy; or ascend
Some eminence, Augusta, of thy plains,
And see the country, far diffused around,

One boundless blush, one white empurpled shower
Of mingled blossoms: where the raptured eye
Hurries from joy to joy; and, hid beneath
In fair profusion, yellow Autumn smiles."

It is to be regretted that this passage is marred by the affected name, Augusta, for London; but except for that there is nothing which could be wished away. The style is perfectly simple where simplicity is desirable, and warms and colours when the subject demands it.

To the poetry of which these extracts are specimens— favourable specimens, no doubt-a very high rank must be assigned. It is in the first place absolutely true. Those conventionalities which suggest that Thomson is not genuine to the core are mere excrescences upon his style, the bad inheritance of his age. And secondly, the truth which he gives the world is new. The thought is his own, and equally his own is the versification. rejects the favourite metre of the day for blank verse; and though in particular phrases and turns of expression the reader may detect the influence which Milton must always exercise over anyone who adopts his measure, Thomson's verse is no mere echo of that of any earlier

He

poet. Johnson justly remarks, "His numbers, his pauses, his diction, are of his own growth, without transcription, without imitation."

Even in The Seasons however there are evidences of the limitations which prevented Thomson from fulfilling those higher hopes which an early work of such distinguished merit inevitably inspired. One such indication is the frequent recurrence of identical rhythms. Another, which goes deeper, is an insufficiency, under all its gorgeousness, in Thomson's diction. His eye saw more than his pen could express. Thus :-

"How clear the cloudless sky! how deeply tinged

With a peculiar blue."

The poet sees that the blue requires an adjective to define it, but that which he supplies is not pictorial.

A noticeable feature of Thomson is the almost complete absence from his poetry of that "pathetic fallacy" which, by identifying the feelings of man with the spirit of nature, has, to the modern mind, given so deep a charm to much of our later verse. This "pathetic fallacy" made its appearance soon after Thomson. It is present in the poetry of Fergusson; it tinges still more deeply that of Burns; and it is of the very essence of Wordsworth's. But in Thomson there is very little of it. Even a passing touch, such as "the plaint of rills" in one of the passages quoted above, is exceptional. He was not an idealist; he sought simply to depict what he saw, and what apparently everyone might easily see. On the other hand, if Thomson was a realist, he was assuredly not one of the type to which the garbage of nature is as valuable and as well worthy