man of malice, and of blood, beneath a pealing horizon:

"He thinks the tempest weaves* around his head,
Loudens the roar to him, and in his eye

The bluest vengeance glares."

And the solitary atheist, attempting to pray, but unable, is also unhappily erazed.

I do not so much regret the banished passage which, in the first edition, succeeds to the story of Celadon and Amelia. It has obscurities of expression, and the picture has not Thomson's usual distinctness.

The horizon and landscape, shining out after the storm, is painted with double beauty and precision in the last edition; and what a gem is the added episode of Musidora bathing! The augmentation of the list of British heroes, sages, and patriots, must be welcome to every mind attached to its country, and admiring virtue..

The fine compliment to Scotland, and its inhabitants, with the simile of the Aurora Borealis for their talents, and the description of the ignis-fatuus, and the friendly meteor, and of the northern

* Weaves, a very bold but very fine word in that place-the loom of vengeance.-S.

lights, are all transferred from Summer, where they appeared in the first edition, to Autumn in the last, and are there seen with expanded power, and heightened grace; and in Summer we have the comet in their room.

Here end the material alterations in this splendid poetic Season. The final passages, in all the Seasons, remain as they were originally written-so also the opening ones, except the two first lines in the exordium of Summer, which are beautifully altered-and one word only in that to Winter," red evening sky," is well changed to 66 grim evening sky."

And thus, loving the employment, have I been fond to evince how sedulously I have pursued the task of comparison, which your letters suggested. That which has been my pleasure, was Johnson's duty as the literary biographer of the great poet of nature. In a few posts, I purpose to send you the result of my scrutiny through the two remaining Seasons, and remain, &c.

LETTER XIV.

THOS. PARK, Esq.

Lichfield, May 19, 1798.

I RESUME, with alacrity, the agreeable theme of my last letter. And now, in the poem Autumn, instead of the strengthened fancy of the bard expanding his descriptions, and exploring a wider range of country, to add new scenery in his finished edition of Summer, we perceive here his matured judgment removing, with happy chisel, the incrustations of obscurity, and brilliantly polishing, by little touches, as it passes through the first 500 lines. In one of them we find the broad epithet gaudy given to Spring in both editions. It would have applied better to Summer-but, perhaps, he took it from Dryden; yet its sense in that author, where he applies it to Spring, being less direct,-metaphoric, not literal,—is more defensible; "The spring of life, the bloom of gaudy years."

he says,

In the charming paraphrase of the Scripture story, Boaz and Ruth, for two half lines which had introduced city dames, who had no business

there, we are presented with the pretty simile of the myrtle in the desert;-that desert a little landscape among the Appenines, distinctly brought to the eye; and the speech of Palemon closes much more elegantly than in the early copy. The inundation has only one half line altered, and it is finely altered. Except in that one spot, it was not possible to improve it.

The field-sports were originally so admirably described, as not to want either addition or correction; and consequently have received few, and slight ones, in the final revision. To the inebriate evening, which succeeds, the picture of the toping doctor is added. All the pictures in that group are justly and strongly coloured; but the subject is disgusting. We are sorry to see Thomson exchanging the pencils of Poussin, Claude, and Salvator, for those of Teniers and Ostade.

In the primal composition of this Season, philosophy and poetic painting very interestingly combine, where the autumnal fogs commence ;the sources of the inland streams are suggested ;where the birds on their migration are so distinctly presented to the memory and imagination ;— where the wild landscapes of Caledonia emerge, and that spirited eulogium on the virtues and talents of her sons is breathed. Along these parts, fine as they originally were, the alterations of the

consummate edition in this poem, become more considerable. We perceive the poet to have acquired more accurate ideas of natural history, and the power of imparting them in still more luminous diction. Sixty entire new lines are here added, in which all the mighty mountains of the globe pass in review before us, as the origin of lakes and rivers is conjectured. To make room for these, her royal highness, Princess Amelia, was dislodged in good hour, for she was a most intrusive person where she originally stood.

I wish the poet had also expunged the passage which begins, " O is there not some patriot," &c. How vexed we feel to see a curtain suddenly dropt on the scenery of the waning year, that we may attend to the patriotism of introducing the muslin manufacture into Scotland, and of looking better after the herrings. Succeeding to the prospect of the Scotish lakes, rivers, and mountains, and of the heroes who defended them, how unimportant seems the simpering portrait of the Duke of Argyle, with his "engaging turn" and "rich tongue," but there it was originally, and there has its author decreed it should unalienably remain.

Ah! how glad we are to escape from the muslinlooms, the herrings, and the duke, into the woods