Unwearied plying the mechanic tool, Gather'd the seeds of trade, of useful arts, Of civil wisdom and of martial skill." Again we return to our subject, with a rather abrupt transition. The wind blows from the south, and "The frost resolves into a trickling thaw." The rivers swell and flood the plain with brown torrents, and the ice of the northern seas cracks and roars, threatening destruction to the bark which is tossed amid the floating fragments. The fully established reign of Winter over the conquered year suggests concluding reflections upon the life of Man : "See here thy pictur'd life; pass some few years, Thy flowering Spring, thy Summer's ardent strength, And pale concluding Winter comes at last, And shuts the scene." Yet the course of the seasons itself suggests the hope of immortality, and of a second birth of heaven and of earth; and then will be revealed the purpose of the eternal scheme, and the Power and Wisdom which have so often been arraigned will at length be justified. CHAPTER V THE SEASONS (continued) IT was no mere accident which determined that the poetical work which we have just analysed should be produced by a native of North Britain. Edinburgh was at a very great distance from London in those days; and it had a literary society which was to a great extent independent of the contemporary fashions in the south, though the strictly national literature of Scotland no longer survived, and classical English poetry and prose were the accepted models. The literary society of Edinburgh was never of an exclusively urban character, and Scottish poetry had to a great extent retained that traditional feeling for external nature, which had appeared, for example, in Gavin Douglas, whose Prologues to the seventh and twelfth books of his translation of the Eneid had set an early example of the poetical treatment of the seasons. The youthful Thomson, full of the impressions made upon his susceptible nature by the scenery and surroundings of his home, found nothing in the literary fashions of Edinburgh to discourage him in his early attempts to describe the appearances of nature in his verse. Nor was he alone in attempting such themes. We have already seen that he acknowledged obligations to a poem on Winter by his friend. Riccaltoun; and we find both Mallet and Armstrong employing their poetical powers in the same direction independently of Thomson and of one another. There seems, in fact, to have been rather a singular outburst of nature poetry in blank verse among Edinburgh students of this time; and though Thomson was the most eminently successful of the school, we cannot by any means say that he was the founder of it. Thomson was in some respects a highly original poet. He looked at nature with his own eyes and not through the medium of books, and he combined a singular keenness and accuracy of observation with the imagination of an artist. At the same time he was dependent to a great extent upon literary models for the form of his expression; and the more so because the language which he used was for him a literary and not a vernacular form of speech. We shall see how much he was under the influence of Milton as regards the versification and the diction of The Seasons, and meanwhile it is instructive to note the more important reminiscences in particular passages either of Milton or of other poets, with a view to appreciating the literary influences under which the principal work of our author was prepared for and actually achieved. Shiels, in his Life of Thomson, remarks: "He often said that if he had anything excellent in poetry, he owed it to the inspiration he first received from reading the Fairy Queen in the very early part of his life." This is quite possible, and it is fully in accordance with the experience of other English poets, but we should hardly have guessed it from The Seasons, where it would be difficult to find any distinct reminiscences of Spenser. On the other hand, the poetical books of the Bible are a frequent source of inspiration, the poet is familiar with Milton's early poems as well as with Paradise Lost, and sometimes a suggestion comes from Denham, from John Philips, or from Pope. Having had a sound classical education, he knew Virgil well, and he could not fail to be especially attracted by the Georgics. This is a source of suggestion which must be taken into account from the first, but the importance of it is distinctly greater for the text of 1744 than for the earlier editions. Other Latin poets, as Lucretius and Horace, occasionally have influence. Thomson's appreciation of the poetry of the Bible is testified by his youthful paraphrase of the 104th Psalm, by his reference to the Book of Job in the preface to the second edition of Winter, and by his tolerably frequent use of Biblical expressions, e.g. "still the gracious clouds Dropp'd fatness down" (Spring, 261), "the lucid chambers of the south" (Winter, 15), “And on the wings of the careering wind Walks dreadfully serene" (ib., 199), "As thus we talk'd, Our hearts would burn within us" (ib., 594); and the Hymn is modelled largely upon the 148th Psalm. To such examples as these of Biblical influence may be added the imitation of the story of Ruth and Boaz in the episode of Lavinia and Palemon. The special debt which is due to Milton on the score of poetical diction and versification may conveniently be discussed later. As regards the literary parallels, they seem to be due for the most part less to deliberate imitation than to half-unconscious reminiscence. The glance of departing radiance at sunset after storm (Spring, 189 ff.) is partly suggested by Paradise Lost, ii. 492 ff. The picture of Amanda, in Spring, 485 ff., "Come with those downcast eyes, sedate and sweet, is evidently from Il Penseroso; and the "villages embosom'd soft in trees," of 1. 953, from L'Allegro. The "haunted stream," of Summer, 12, is from L'Allegro, 130; and the ideas expressed in Summer, 622 ff., are those of Il Penseroso, 139 ff. :— "There in close covert by some brook, While the bee with honied thigh," etc., The fine passage in Summer, 175 ff.,—— is suggested by Paradise Lost, iii. 3 ff., and the succeeding lines by Paradise Lost, iv. 675 f., 66 - nor think, though men were none, That heav'n would want spectators, God want praise." In the lines upon the ministry of angels and spirits, Summer, 525 ff., "Convers'd with angels and immortal forms, On gracious errands bent; to save the fall we are reminded of Comus, 455 ff. :— "A thousand liveried angels lackey her, And in Summer, 556 ff. :— "Here frequent at the visionary hour, And voices chanting from the wood-crown'd hill, |