THOMSON.

PRINCIPAL EVENTS OF HIS LIFE.-James Thomson-the painter of the Seasons-was born in 1700, at Ednam, Roxburghshire, of which place his father was the minister. He received his early education at Jedburgh, previously to his entering the University of Edinburgh, as a divinity student. Circumstances diverted his attention to other objects, and in 1725 he went up to London, as a literary adventurer. At this time the manuscript of "Winter" was his only property. He gradually became known and appreciated, was patronised by the Lord Chancellor Talbot, and Frederick, Prince of Wales, enjoyed from the government two or three small sinecure offices and pensions, wrote poems and plays, and died in 1748. He was buried in the churchyard of Richmond, Surrey.

PRINCIPAL WORKS.-Besides his great works, "The Seasons,” and the "Castle of Indolence," he wrote the poems entitled, "Britannia," and "Liberty," several tragedies, and in conjunction with Mallet, the masque of "Alfred," in which occurs the national song of "Rule Britannia, &c.," which is generally ascribed to Thomson, while others claim it for his coadjutor.

CHARACTERISTIC SPIRIT AND STYLE.-"Habits of early admiration teach us all to look back upon this poet as the favourite companion of our solitary walks, and as the author who has first or chiefly reflected back to our minds, a heightened and refined sensation of the delight which rural scenery affords us. The judgment of cooler years may somewhat abate our estimation of him, though it will still leave us the essential features of his poetical character to abide the test of reflection. The unvaried pomp of his diction suggests a most unfavourable comparison with the manly idiomatic simplicity of Cowper; at the same time, the pervading spirit and feeling of his poetry is in general more bland and delightful than that of his great rival in rural description. Cowper's image of nature is more curiously distinct and familiar. Thomson carries our associations through a wider circuit of speculation and sympathy. His touches cannot be more faithful than Cowper's, but they are more soft and select, and less disturbed by the intrusion of homely objects. Cowper was certainly much indebted to him;

and though he elevates his style with more reserve and judgment than his predecessor, yet, in his highest moments, he seems to retain an imitative remembrance of him. It is almost stale to remark the beauties of a poem so universally felt; the truth and general interest with which he carries us through the life of the year; the harmony of succession which he gives to the casual phenomena of nature; his pleasing transition from native to foreign scenery; and the soul of exalted and unfeigned benevolence which accompanies his prospects of the creation. It is but equal justice to say, that amidst the feeling and fancy of the Seasons, we meet with interruptions of declamation, heavy narrative, and unhappy digression. As long as he dwells in the pure contemplations of nature, and appeals to the universal poetry of the human breast, his redundant style comes to us as something venial and adventitious-it is the flowing vesture of the Druid; and, perhaps, to the general experience is rather imposing: but, when he returns to the familiar narrations or courtesies of life, the same diction ceases to seem the mantle of inspiration, and only strikes us by its unwieldy difference from the common costume of expression.

"To the Castle of Indolence he brought not only the full nature but the perfect art of a poet. There he redeemed the jejune ambition of his style, and retained all its wealth and luxury without the accompaniment of ostentation. Every stanza of that charming allegory, at least of the whole first part of it, gives out a group of images from which the mind is reluctant to part, and a flow of harmony which the ear wishes to hear repeated."

VERSIFICATION. "As a writer, he is entitled to one praise of the highest kind; his mode of thinking, and of expressing his thoughts, is original. His blank verse is no more the blank verse of Milton, or of any other poet, than the rhymes of Prior are the rhymes of Cowley. His numbers, his pauses, his diction, are of his own growth, without transcription, without imitation."2

THE SUMMER MORNING.

WHEN now no more the alternate Twins are fired,
And Cancer reddens with the solar blaze,

Short is the doubtful empire of the night;
And soon, observant of approaching day,

1 Campbell. "Specimens, &c.," p. 403. 2 Dr. Johnson. "Lives of the Poets."

The meek-eyed Morn appears, mother of dews;1
At first faint-gleaming in the dappled east,
Till far o'er ether spreads the widening glow,
And, from before the lustre of her face,

White break the clouds away. With quickened step
Brown night retires; young day pours in apace,
And opens all the lawny prospect wide.

The dripping rock, the mountain's misty top,
Swell on the sight, and brighten with the dawn.

Blue, through the dusk, the smoking currents shine;
And from the bladed field the fearful hare
Limps awkward; while along the forest-glade
The wild deer trip, and often turning gaze
At early passenger. Music awakes,2
The native voice of undissembled joy;
And thick around the woodland hymns arise.
Roused by the cock, the soon-clad shepherd leaves
His mossy cottage, where with peace he dwells;
And from the crowded fold, in order, drives
His flock, to taste the verdure of the morn.
Falsely luxurious, will not man awake;
And, springing from the bed of sloth, enjoy
The cool, the fragrant, and the silent hour,
To meditation due and sacred song?

For is there aught in sleep can charm the wise?
To lie in dead oblivion, losing half

The fleeting moments of too short a life;

Total extinction of the enlightened soul!

Or else to feverish vanity alive,

Wildered and tossing through distempered dreams!
Who would in such a gloomy state remain
Longer than nature craves, when every muse
And every blooming pleasure wait without,
To bless the wildly-devious morning walk?
But yonder comes the powerful king of day,

1 Mother of dews-It is not easy to see the force of this characteristic. The dews are not produced by morning, whose influence only tends to dissipate them; they are however revealed by the morning rays, and this perhaps is the meaning of the passage. Thomson's descriptions must be judged of in the whole -the parts are often very tame and feeble.

2 Music awakes, &c.-i. e. music, which is the native voice, &c. This is the pointing in Mr. Bolton Corney's beautiful edition of Thomson;-the common reading omits the comma after "awakes."

Rejoicing in the east.1 The lessening cloud,
The kindling azure, and the mountain's brow
Illumed with fluid gold, his near approach
Betoken glad. Lo! now, apparent all,

Aslant the dew-bright earth and coloured air,
He looks in boundless majesty abroad,

And sheds the shining day, that burnished plays
On rocks, and hills, and towers, and wandering streams,
High-gleaming from afar. Prime cheerer, light! 2

Of all material beings first and best!

Efflux divine! Nature's resplendent robe !
Without whose vesting beauty all were wrapt
In unessential3 gloom.

THE TRAVELLER LOST IN THE SNOW.

As thus the snows arise, and foul and fierce
All Winter drives along the darkened air,
In his own loose-revolving fields the swain
Disastered stands; sees other hills ascend,
Of unknown joyless brow; and other scenes,
Of horrid prospect, shag the trackless plain:
Nor finds the river, nor the forest, hid
Beneath the formless wild; but wanders on
From hill to dale, still more and more astray;
Impatient flouncing through the drifted heaps,
Stung with the thoughts of home; the thoughts of home
Rush on his nerves, and call their vigour forth,
In many a vain attempt. How sinks his soul!
What black despair, what horror fills his heart!
When for the dusky spot, which fancy feigned
His tufted cottage rising through the snow,
He meets the roughness of the middle waste,
Far from the track and blest abode of man!
While round him night resistless closes fast,
And every tempest, howling o'er his head,
Renders the savage wilderness more wild.
Then throng the busy shapes into his mind
Of covered pits, unfathomably deep,

Rejoicing in the east-in reference probably to Psalm xix, 4, 5, which see.

2 Prime cheerer, light, &c.—Compare these lines with the commencement of

Milton's" Address to Light," p. 326.

3 Unessential-void of real being, unsubstantial, impalpable.

A dire descent! beyond the power of frost;
Of faithless bogs; of precipices huge,

Smoothed up with snow; and, what is land unknown,
What water, of the still unfrozen spring,

In the loose marsh or solitary lake,

Where the fresh fountain from the bottom boils.
These check his fearful steps; and down he sinks
Beneath the shelter of the shapeless drift,
Thinking o'er all the bitterness of death,
Mixed with the tender anguish nature shoots
Through the wrung bosom of the dying man—
His wife, his children, and his friends unseen.
In vain for him' the officious wife prepares
The fire fair-blazing, and the vestment warm;
In vain his little children, peeping out
Into the mingling storm, demand their sire,
With tears of artless innocence. Alas!
Nor wife, nor children, more shall he behold,
Nor friends, nor sacred home. On every nerve
The deadly winter seizes; shuts up sense;
And, o'er his inmost vitals creeping cold,
Lays him along the snows a stiffened corse,
Stretched out, and bleaching in the northern blast.
Ah! little think the gay licentious proud,
Whom pleasure, power, and affluence surround;
They, who their thoughtless hours in giddy mirth,
And wanton, often cruel, riot waste;

Ah! little think they, while they dance along,
How many feel, this very moment, death,
And all the sad variety of pain;

How many sink in the devouring flood,
Or more devouring flame; how many bleed
By shameful variance 'twixt man and man;
How many pine in want, and dungeon glooms;
Shut from the common air, and common use
Of their own limbs; how many drink the cup
Of baleful grief, or eat the bitter bread
Of misery; sore pierced by wintry winds,
How many shrink into the sordid hut
Of cheerless poverty; how many shake

1 In vain for him, &c.-The tenderness of this passage is most touching; the conception is perhaps derived from Lucretius, (see the passage quoted, note 8, p. 61,) but the application of it is due to Thomson.