poetical diction was needed than that which was current in the poetry of the day. He naturally looked back to the last great example in English literature of exalted poetical expression; and besides borrowing the actual language of Milton, he endeavoured to advance further in the spirit of his exemplar, and ventured himself to make such additions to the poetical language as he felt to be needed for the expression of his own conceptions. He deserves the credit, as we shall see, of having made an adventurous endeavour to vary and enrich the forms of poetical expression in English, and of having partially succeeded in his enterprise. This general survey of Thomson's position as a poet of nature may fitly be closed by a reference to some noteworthy appreciations of his powers by critics of very different schools. The first shall be that contained in Joseph Warton's Essay on the Genius of Pope, which is quoted not because Warton was the first to discover Thomson's true merits, as is suggested by Wordsworth, who is determined to believe that Thomson was admired by his own generation, not for his merits, but for his faults; but because it is a sound and sober estimate of his position, and has been more often talked of than read. It is true that Warton, from his own love of romance, somewhat overvalues the romantic element in Thomson; but in other respects his appreciation is very just. The essay was first published in 1756, eight years after the poet's death. "Thomson was blessed with a strong and copious fancy; he hath enriched poetry with a variety of new and original images, which he painted from nature itself and from his own actual observations: his descriptions have therefore a distinctness and truth which are utterly wanting in those of poets who have only copied from each other, and have never looked abroad on the objects themselves. . . . Though the diction of The Seasons is sometimes harsh and inharmonious, and sometimes turgid and obscure, and though in many instances the numbers are not sufficiently diversified by different pauses, yet is this poem on the whole, from the numberless strokes of nature in which it abounds, one of the most captivating and amusing in our language. . . . The scenes of Thomson are frequently as wild and romantic as those of Salvator Rosa, varied with precipices and torrents and 'castled cliffs' and deep valleys, with piny mountains and the gloomiest caverns." 1 ... In the second place we may quote the estimate of Johnson, which is quite unexpectedly favourable : "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. He thinks in a peculiar train, and he thinks always as a man of genius he looks round on Nature and on Life with the eye which Nature bestows only on a poet, the eye that distinguishes, in everything presented to its view, whatever there is on which imagination can delight to be detained; and with a mind that at once comprehends the vast and attends to the minute." 2 Finally, in our own day, Professor Saintsbury has justly appreciated Thomson as follows: : "He has the peculiar merit of choosing a subject which 1 Essay on the Genius and Writings of Pope, vol. i. p. 41 (ed. 1772). The statement of Wordsworth that most of the passages of Thomson which were selected by Warton for admiration are absent from the early editions of The Seasons, is quite without foundation. Out of fifteen or sixteen passages which Warton quotes or refers to, all but three (Summer, 976 ff., 1048 ff., and Autumn, 773 ff.) are to be found in the edition of 1730, the first complete edition of The Seasons. 2 Lives of the Poets. appeals to and is comprehensible by everybody; which no one can scorn as trivial, and yet which no one can feel to be too fine or too esoteric for him. And though he treats this in the true poetical spirit of making the common as though it were uncommon, he does not make it too uncommon for the general taste to relish. . . . No degeneracy of education or of fashion, short of an absolute return to barbarism, can prevent The Seasons from attracting admiration as soon as they are read or heard. They are not perhaps in any single point possessed of the qualities of the highest poetry. But such poetry as they do possess is perfectly genuine and singularly suitable for its purpose." And again : "It would hardly be too much to say that, making allowance for the time over which his influence has extended, no poet has given the special pleasure which poetry is capable of giving, to so large a number of persons, in so large a measure as Thomson." 1 1 The English Poets, ed. T. H. Ward, vol. iii. p. 169 f. CHAPTER IV THE SEASONS Of the external history of The Seasons, that is to say, the circumstances of the publication of the separate poems, Winter, Summer, Spring, and Autumn, and of the main differences in extent and substance between the earlier and the later editions, something has already been said. The literary examination of this work remains to be undertaken, and as a preliminary to criticism we may properly set forth in the present chapter a summary of its contents, treating it now as a single complete poem, and following the text which was arrived at finally by the author. "The great defect of The Seasons," says Johnson, "is want of method." It is true, no doubt, that the poems are of a somewhat rambling character, but it would be unjust to say that they are without plan. Winter describes the gradual progress of the season, from wind and rain to snow-storms, from snow to frost, and from frost to thaw; Summer sets before us the process of a day from sunrise to midnight; and Spring displays the influence of the season upon the natural world, in regular ascent from the lower to the higher spheres: Autumn alone can, with any justice, be said to be incoherent. But the advantage of regularity is to a great extent lost in all these poems by diffuseness and digressions; and in so far as each poem produces an impression of unity, this is chiefly by virtue of the accumulation of scenes harmonised to a particular tone, and representing in various forms the same characteristics of external nature. The total impression would undoubtedly be more satisfactory, if there were not an element of confusion and disorder in the materials by which it is produced. The unity of the whole work depends partly upon the general similarity of subject and treatment in the separate poems, and partly upon the thoughts and feelings expressed in the concluding Hymn, beginning: "These, as they change, Almighty Father, these Are but the varied God. The rolling year Is full of Thee." That A strong religious sentiment is shown throughout The Seasons, and here the religious idea is appropriately set forth as the motive of the whole work. Thomson believed in a personal God there can be no doubt, however much some of his expressions may seem to suggest Pantheism. The following is only one of many passages which might be quoted to this effect: "Mysterious round! what skill, what force divine, |