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WINTER.

Seem to the shivering Sailor from afar,

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Shapeless, and white, an Atmosphere of Clouds. Projected huge, and horrid, o'er the Maria, deep, деер, Kom | Alps frown on Alps, or rushing hideous down,

As if old Chaos was again return'd,

Shake the firm Pole, and make an Ocean boil.

Whance heap'd abrupqalong the howling Shore,
And in various Shapes (as Fancy leans)

667!

Work'd by the Waves the cryftal Pillars heave

Bwells the blue Portic, the Gothic Dome

Shoots fretted up; and Birds, and Beats, and Men,

1

And bid to roar no more: a bleak Expanse,
Shagg'd o'er with wavy Rocks, chearless, and void
Of every Life, that from the dreary Months
Flies conscious fouthward. Miferable they !

Who,

Facsimile MS. corrections

But nearer, and more frequent, as it loads
The sighing gale, she springs amazed, and all
The savage soul of game is up at once:

The pack full-opening, various: the shrill horn,
Resounded from the hills; the neighing steed,
Wild for the chase; and the loud hunter's shout;
O'er a weak, harmless, flying creature, all
Mixed in mad tumult and discordant cry.

FROM "THE CASTLE OF INDOLENCE."

Joined to the prattle of the purling rills

Were heard the lowing herds along the vale,
And flocks loud bleating from the distant hills,
And vacant shepherds piping in the dale;
And, now and then, sweet Philomel would wail,
Or stock-doves plain amid the forest deep,

That drowsy rustled to the sighing gale ;
And still a coil the grasshopper did keep;
Yet all these sounds y-blent inclinèd all to sleep.

Full in the passage of the vale, above,

A sable, silent, solemn forest stood;

Where nought but shadowy forms was seen to move,
As Idles fancied in her dreaming mood;

And up the hills, on either side, a wood

Of blackening pines, ay waving to and fro,

Sent forth a sleepy horror through the blood;

And where this valley winded out, below,

The murmuring main was heard, and scarcely heard, to flow.

A pleasing land of drowsihed it was,

Of dreams that wave before the half-shut eye;
And of gay castles in the clouds that pass,
For ever flashing round a summer sky;
There eke the soft delights, that witchingly

Instil a wanton sweetness in the breast,

And the calm pleasures always hovered nigh;
But whate'er smacked of 'noyance or unrest,
Was far, far off expelled from this delicious nest.

Another powerful innovator was EDWARD YOUNG, but his influence was not so pure as that of Thomson. The author of Night Thoughts was an artist of a force approaching that of genius, but his error was to build that upon rhetoric which he should have based on imagination. The history of Young is one of the most curious in the chronicles of literature. Born far back in the seventeenth century, before Pope or Gay, he wrote in the manner of the Anne wits, without special distinction, through all the years of his youth and middle life. At the age of sixty he collected his poetical works, and appeared to be a finished mediocrity. It was not until then, and after that time, that, taking advantage of a strange wind of funereal enthusiasm that swept over him, he composed the masterpiece by which the next generation knew him, his amazingly popular and often highly successful Night Thoughts. It was in the sonorous blank verse of this adroit poem that the vague æsthetic melan

choly of the age found its most striking exposition. It was hardly completed before a prose rival and imitation, the Meditations among the Tombs of Hervey, deepened its effect and surpassed it in popularity, though never

approaching it in real literary ability. These two books, so pompous, unctuous, and hollow-the one illuminated by passages of highly artistic execution, the other mere barren bombast-occupied the fancies of men for well-nigh one hundred years, surviving the great revival, and successfully competing with Wordsworth and Keats.

Edward Young (1683-1765) was the son of the rector of Upham in Hampshire, where he was born in June 1683; the father ultimately became Dean of Salisbury. Extremely little has been preserved about the youth and even the early middle life of this poet. He was educated at Winchester School, and went to Oxford in 1702. He seems to have shown no promise of distinction; at college he was "a foolish youth, the sport of peers and poets." He was elected, however, a law fellow of All Souls' in 1708, and continued to reside at the University. When past the age of thirty he began to publish, but his

Edward Young

earliest essays showed little talent. His peculiar forcible gloom is displayed for the first time in The Last Day, a really fine thing, part of which was printed in the Guardian in 1713. Young seems to have looked to Queen Anne, who was his godmother, for patronage, and at her death he disappears. It has been conjectured that he went to Ireland. In 1719 he put on the stage his tragedy of Busiris, and in 1721

The Revenge; the latter enjoyed a substantial success, and Young, now forty years of age, became a personage at last. At this time, and for some years to come, he was enjoying the patronage of the Duke of Wharton. From 1725 to 1728 Young was engaged in publishing, in six instalments, his satires, which were afterwards united under