classical allusions, brief as they necessarily must be, will be found not devoid of interest. Finally, I have endeavoured, in the biographical notices, to select those traits of character most likely to bring out the portraits of the celebrated men intended to be pourtrayed in the boldest relief, so that all who look upon the pictures may at once recognise the originals.

With regard to the poems themselves, their merits are so universally acknowledged, that little is required from me, the editor, upon that head. It has been justly remarked, "that poetical genius is almost always united with an exquisite sensibility to the beauties of Nature." This sensibility was a prominent feature in the character of Thomson, and its influence is displayed conspicuously in the Seasons. An enthusiast himself, he studied Nature in all her most graceful and fascinating forms; he faithfully transferred the beauties he observed to his pages, and his object evidently was to animate his readers with the same enthusiasm for her worship which he himself experienced.

"To me be Nature's volume broad-display'd;

And to peruse its all-instructing page,

Or, haply catching inspiration thence,

Some easy passage, raptur'd, to translate,
My sole delight.Ӡ

Such, indeed, is the province of the poet: to him "all the glories of external nature; all that is amiable,

*Stewart's Elements, p. 117.

† Summer, 1. 192-6.

or interesting, or respectable in human character; all that excites and engages our benevolent affections; all those truths which make the heart feel better and more happy;-all these supply materials out of which he forms and peoples a world of his own, where no inconveniences damp our enjoyments, and where no clouds darken our prospects.” * From such materials the poet of the Seasons has drawn largely; and the scenes he has represented are pourtrayed with the most truthful pencil. But it is not solely the beautiful in Nature that he has painted with such magical colouring; he has, also, displayed abundant proofs that the awful and sublime, the hurricane and the whirlwind, are equally within the grasp of his genius. The following description of a storm at sea is scarcely surpassed by that of Eschylus in the Prometheus, after Mercury has delivered his message to the doomed victim of the vengeance of Jupiter, chained to the rock :

"Lash'd into foam, the fierce conflicting brine
Seems o'er a thousand raging waves to burn.
Meantime the mountain billows, to the clouds
In dreadful tumult swell'd, surge above surge
Burst into chaos with tremendous roar,
And anchor'd navies from their stations drive,
Wild as the winds across the howling waste
Of mighty waters: now the inflated wave
Straining they scale, and now impetuous shoot
Into the secret chambers of the deep,

The wintry Baltic thundering o'er their heads."†

*Stewart's Elements, p. 499.

† Winter, 1. 159–170.

Indeed, the finest descriptions in the Seasons are those in which the poet indulges his enthusiastic delight in images of power.

In many of the productions of our best poets we can trace the imitation of some model, which their authors seem to have adopted as the guide of their labours. It might be supposed that the Georgics of Virgil furnished the idea of the Seasons; but although many of the subjects treated of in the Georgics form, also, the themes of the Seasons, yet there is no affinity between the labours of the Roman poet and those of Thomson, except that both, in choosing an apparently unpoetick subject, has redeemed the error by the skill and poetical genius displayed in its treatment. The idea of writing the Seasons, Thomson himself informed Mr. Collins, was taken from the four pastorals published by Pope in 1709, entitled, Spring, Summer, Autumn, and Winter*: but they have no resemblance in common, and indeed we can find no poetick prototype for the Seasons; so that we may unhesitatingly affirm, that their poet, filled with the admiration of his subject, sought no model to work by but that which Nature presented to him; consequently, he has produced a truly original poem. There is, also, much truth in the remark of Dr. Murdoch, one of his biographers," that to judge from the imitations of his

It is a curious coincidence that Dr. Armstrong, the author of The Art of preserving Health, had just finished a poem on Winter, when the Winter of Thomson appeared. — Corney's Ed. of the Seasons, Life of Thomson, p. xxxiii.

manner, which have been following him close from the very first publication of Winter, he seems to have fixed no inconsiderable æra of English poetry." How far this absence of similarity of the Seasons to prior poetical productions may be regarded as complimentary to the taste of the author, may be questioned; for taste can be improved and perfected only by the careful study of the accumulated productions of genius; and to the neglect of such sources of improvement of taste, we may venture to attribute some of the few faults of the Seasons.

In the first place, the parts of the poems do not always hang well together: they do not naturally suggest one another; they seem as if each portion were a detached poem, and all these portions arranged without a strict regard to method. In the second place, although their style is bold and approaching sublimity, yet it is not altogether free from censurable matter; its failing is turgidity; for, although the poet should employ all the charms of language as so many instruments of his art, yet much judgment is required in their application. The employment of ornament does not imply exuberance, which not unfrequently appears in the style of our author, his words sometimes rather filling the ear than wholly satisfying the mind. But, notwithstanding this fondness of gaudy epithets, justice must oblige the most severe critic to acknowledge that the verse of our poet is wholly free from that absurd pomposity, which is deservedly termed fustian. With regard to the structure of his

verse, it has been not untruly said that it sometimes disappoints the ear, and occasionally deforms some of the finest ideas in the poem. All these defects, however, are but a grain of sand in the balance when weighed against the intrinsic merits of the Seasons. No poet, indeed, ever more truly merited the eulogy in those lines, penned by himself, on philosophy, and justly inscribed on the monument of their author in Westminster Abbey,

"Tutor❜d by thee, sweet Poetry exalts

Her voice to ages; and informs the page

With music, image, sentiment, and thought
Never to die!"

The present edition of the poem is printed from the edition by Bolton Corney, Esq., which was "printed from the edition of 1746, containing the final revision of the author, who died in 1748." No pictorial illustrations are appended to this edition, the object being to produce a volume of such a moderate price that it can be introduced into schools, and become available to a class of readers who cannot afford to purchase illustrated, expensive works.

I have not given any biographical sketch of Thomson, because his life has been so frequently written, and I have nothing to add to the narratives already in the hands of the public.

A. T. T.

30. Welbeck Street,

London.