memory, a series of clearly seen images. But with this the function of the imagination almost ceases; the sheer memory of what has been observed dominates so far as content is concerned, and the result is little more than an elaborately phrased enumeration of details. At times Thomson does this somewhat more interestingly: the chosen epithet has not infrequently a penetrating power that brings before us some essential characteristic, "springing the imagination," to use Meredith's phrase. But in general a somewhat literal rendering of fact is the prevailing method. Professor Beers has pointed out a few passages in which Thomson treats the more awe-inspiring aspects of nature in an approach to the romantic manner, but he admits that these are merely occasional. On the other hand, there is much description by hearsay, and no small amount of purely conventional matter that comes close to the landscape of Pope's Windsor Forest. Further, it will be observed that though Thomson uses blank verse instead of the couplet, his language is profusely decorated with that mannered and pretentious poetic diction that roused the indignation of Wordsworth against the neo-classical tradition. The farmer appears as the "swain," the cow as "the full-udder'd mother," milk as "the food of innocence and health," the hens do not gather, "the household fowls convene," the greyhound is not idle but "vacant." In diction, clearly, Thomson is no reformer.

It appears, then, that this supposed leader of the romantic revolt must base his claim chiefly on the imitative Spenserianism of The Castle of Indolence, and that The Seasons shows him reacting from neo-classicism only in the possession of a realistic method in the treatment of nature, while his language remains purely neo-classic.

Later in the century we find a somewhat similar phenomenon in Cowper. The vogue of Thomson had produced many imitators both at home and abroad, so that when we come to the descriptive writing of Cowper, it is with no shock of contrast. But Cowper was a finer and sincerer spirit than Thomson, and his pictorial passages are admirable examples of the poetry of observation of nature, in which a loving sense of the fact is illumined by imaginative insight and regulated by a feeling for traditional form not too oppressive.

Nor rural sights alone, but rural sounds
Exhilarate the spirit, and restore
The tone of languid nature. Mighty winds,
That sweep the skirt of some far-spreading wood
Of ancient growth, make music not unlike
The dash of ocean on his winding shore,
And lull the spirit while they fill the mind;
Unnumber'd branches waving in the blast,
And all their leaves fast fluttering, all at once.
Nor less composure waits upon the roar
Of distant floods, or on the softer voice
Of neighbouring fountain, or of rills that slip
Through the cleft rock, and, chiming as they fall
Upon loose pebbles, lose themselves at length
In matted grass, that with a livelier green
Betrays the secret of their silent course.

(The Task, 1, 181-196.)

In such a passage we are made to share the response of a finely sensitive perception to the more delicately stimulating of natural phenomena. It exhibits clearly the contribution to poetry of the realistic tendency, and it is the outcome, not of any reactionary or reforming purpose, but merely of the natural balance of qualities in the poet's temperament.

Very differently did George Crabbe feel with regard to this matter. In his youth Crabbe had been brought up under hard circumstances in the somewhat unpicturesque scenery of the coast of Suffolk. These physical surroundings stamped themselves on his memory, and bore fruit after many days. The traditional form in which classical poetry had sought to cater to the natural taste for country life was the pastoral; but as this form came down from century to century it gathered ever new features and uses, and left the actual country farther and farther behind it. The pastorals of Philips and Pope are extreme examples of the tendency of a literary tradition to become mannered and artificial, and it was to be supposed that every one had long since given up regarding this literary mode as anything but quaintly decorative. Not so George Crabbe. The contrast between the golden world of the artificial pastoral, or even the idealized country life of The Deserted Village, and the actual conditions of the English laborer as he knew him, roused him to fierce resentment, and he bursts into verse as a professed realist, yielding to no imaginative vision, and caring for form only so far as it helped to make his protest effective.

Fled are those times, when in harmonious strains
The rustic poet praised his native plains :
No shepherds now, in smooth alternate verse,
Their country's beauty or their nymphs' rehearse;
Yet still for these we frame the tender strain,
Still in our lays fond Corydons complain,

And shepherds' boys their amorous pains reveal,
The only pains, alas! they never feel.

On Mincio's banks, in Cæsar's bounteous reign,
If Tityrus found the Golden Age again,
Must sleepy bards the flattering dream prolong,
Mechanic echoes of the Mantuan song?
From Truth and Nature shall we widely stray,
Where Virgil, not where Fancy, leads the way?

I grant indeed that fields and flocks have charms

For him that grazes, or for him that farms;
But when amid such pleasing scenes I trace
The poor laborious natives of the place,
And see the mid-day sun, with fervid ray,
On their bare heads and dewy temples play;
While some, with feebler heads and fainter hearts,
Deplore their fortune, yet sustain their parts :
Then shall I dare these real ills to hide
In tinsel trappings of poetic pride ?

No; cast by Fortune on a frowning coast,
Which neither groves nor happy valleys boast;
Where other cares than those the Muse relates,
And other shepherds dwell with other mates;
By such examples taught, I paint the Cot
As Truth will paint it, and as Bards will not.

Lo! where the heath, with withering brake grown o'er,
Lends the light turf that warms the neighbouring poor ;
From thence a length of burning sand appears,
Where the thin harvest waves its wither'd ears;
Rank weeds, that every art and care defy,
Reign o'er the land, and rob the blighted rye :
There thistles stretch their prickly arms afar,
And to the ragged infant threaten war
With mingled tints the rocky coasts abound,
And a sad splendour vainly shines around.

...

(The Village, 1, 7 ff.)