the noon of a summer's day: as attendants of the evening, indeed, they have been mentioned; Resounds the living surface of the ground: To him who muses through the woods at noon; But the novelty and nature we admire in the descriptions of Thomson, are by no means his only excellencies; he is equally to be praised for impressing on our minds the effects, which the scene delineated would have on the present spectator or hearer. Thus having spoken of the roaring of the savages in a wilderness of Africa, he introduces a captive, who, though just escaped from † prison and slavery under the tyrant of Morocco, is so terrified and astonished at the dreadful uproar, that The wretch half wishes for his bonds again. Thus * Summer, ver. 280. + Summer, ver. 935. Thus also having described a caravan lost and overwhelmed in one of those whirlwinds that so frequently agitate and lift up the whole sands of the desert, he finishes his picture by adding, that, In Cairo's crouded streets,* Th' impatient merchant, wondering waits in vain, And thus, lastly, in describing the pestilence that destroyed the British troops at the siege of Carthagena, he has used a circumstance inimitably lively, picturesque and striking to the imagination; for he says, that the admiral not only heard the groans of the sick that echoed from ship to ship, but that he also pensively stood, and listened at midnight to the dashing of the waters, occasioned by throwing the dead bodies into the sea; Heard, nightly, plung'd into the sullen waves, A minute * Ver. 976 + Ver. 1047. A minute and particular enumeration of circumstances judiciously selected, is what chiefly discriminates poetry from history, and renders the former, for that reason, a more close and faithful representation of nature than the latter. And if our poets would accustom themselves to contemplate fully every object, before they attempted to describe it, they would not fail of giving their readers more new and more complete images than they generally do.* These * A summer evening, for instance, after a shower, has been frequently described: but never, that I can recollect, so justly as in the following lines, whose greatest beauty is that hinted above, a simple enumeration of the appearances of nature, and of what is actually to be seen at such a time. They are not unworthy the correct and pure Tibullus. They were written by the late Mr. Robert Bedingfield, author of the Education of Achilles, a Poem, in Dodsley's Miscellanies. Vespere sub verno, tandem actis imbribus, æther Aureus abrupto curvamine desuper arcus Fulget, et ancipiti lumine tingit agros. Pallentes sparsim accrescunt per pascua fungi, Plurimus These observations on Thomson, which, how ever, would not have been so large, if there had been already any considerable criticism on his character, might be still augmented by an examination and developement of the beauties in the loves of the Birds, in SPRING, verse. 580; a view of the torrid zone in SUMMER, verse 630; the rise of fountains and rivers in AUTUMN, verse 781; a man perishing in the snows, in WINTER, verse 277; the wolves descending from the Alps, and a view of winter within the polar circle, verse 389; which are all of them highly-finished originals, excepting Plurimus annosâ decussus ab arbore limax In putri lentum tramite sulcat iter. Splendidus accendit per dumos lampida vermis, Roscida dum tremulâ semita luce micat. a few These are the particular circumstances that usually succeed a shower at that season, and yet these are new, and untouched by any other writer. The Carmina Quadragesimalia, volume the second, printed at Oxford 1748, from whence this is transcribed, (page 14,) contain many copies of exquisite descriptive poetry, in a genuine classical style. See particularly The Rivers, page 4. The Morning, page 12. The House of Care, from Spenser, page 16. The Mahometan Paradise, page 32. The Trees of different soils, page 63. The Bird's Nest, page 82. Geneva, page 89. Virgil's Tomb, page 97. The Indian, page 118. The House of Discord, page 133. Columbus first discovering the land of the West Indies, page 125, &c. a few of those blemishes intimated above. WIN TER is, in my apprehension, the most valuable of these four poems; the scenes of it, like those of Il Penseroso of Milton, being of that awful, solemn, and pensive kind, on which a great genius best delights to dwell. POPE, it seems, was of opinion, that descriptive poetry is a composition as absurd as a feast made up of sauces and I know many other persons that think meanly of it. I will not presume to say it is equal, either in dignity or utility, to those compositions that lay open the internal constitution of man, and that IMITATE characters, manners, and sentiments. I may, however, remind such contemners of it, that, in a sister-art, landscape-painting claims the very next rank to history-painting; being ever preferred to single portraits, to pieces of still-life, to droll-figures, to fruit and flower-pieces; that Titian thought it no diminution of his genius, to spend much of his time in works of the former species; and that, if their principles lead them to condemn Thomson, they must also condemn the Georgics of Virgil; and the greatest part of the noblest descriptive VOL. I. E |