The vegetable world is also thine,

Parent of Seasons! who the pomp precede

That waits thy throne, as through thy vast domain,
Annual, along the bright ecliptic road

In world-rejoicing state it moves sublime.

Hence, in old dusky time, a deluge came:
When the deep-cleft disparting orb, that arched
The central waters round, impetuous rushed
With universal burst into the gulf,

And o'er the high-piled hills of fractured earth
Wide-dashed the waves in undulation vast,
Till, from the centre to the streaming clouds,
A shoreless ocean tumbled round the globe.1

The sonorousness of such resounding lines is sometimes increased by the Miltonic device of introducing unusual proper names which have an imaginative appeal:

Whence with annual pomp,

Rich king of floods! o'erflows the swelling Nile.
From his two springs in Gojam's sunny realm
Pure-welling out, he through the lucid lake

Of fair Dambea rolls his infant stream.

. . . . and all that from the tract

Of woody mountains stretched thro' gorgeous Ind

Fall on Cormandel's coast or Malabar;

From Menam's orient stream.2

One passage of the kind is of particular interest because the first part of it was clearly suggested by a purple patch in Paradise Lost:

The huge incumbrance of horrific woods
From Asian Taurus, from Imaus stretched
Athwart the roving Tartar's sullen bounds;
Give opening Hemus to my searching eye,
And high Olympus pouring many a stream!
Oh, from the sounding summits of the north,
The Dofrine Hills, through Scandinavia rolled

"Hail, wedded love," is quoted), 55 ("the mind is its own place" is cited, without quotation-marks, from P. L., i. 254). In the preface to the second edition of Winter Milton is mentioned and the expression "the sober Suit of the Evening" (cf. "civil-suited Morn, Penseroso, 122) is used.

1 Summer, 1008, 112-116; Spring, 309-16. See also Spring, 70-77; Summer, 17584, 651-2; Winter, 94-117. The following lines (Summer, 90-94) illustrate how Thomson, owing partly to the jerkiness of his style, sometimes failed in his attempts at the orotund:

To farthest Lapland and the frozen main;
From lofty Caucasus, far seen by those
Who in the Caspian and black Euxine toil;

From cold Riphaean rocks, which the wild Russ
Believes the stony girdle of the world.1

There are some respects in which the Scottish bard even outdid his master, what was with the earlier poet a native manner frequently becoming with the later one an exaggerated mannerism.__In the following typical passage, for instance, naturalness of expression, as well as the flow of the verse, has been lost through excessive and inartistic inversions and the use of adjectives for adverbs:

Here wandering oft, fired with the restless thirst

Of thy applause, I solitary court

The inspiring breeze, and meditate the book

Of Nature, ever open, aiming thence

Warm from the heart to learn the moral song.

And, as I steal along the sunny wall,

Where Autumn basks, with fruit empurpled deep,

My pleasing theme continual prompts my thought."

There may be as many distortions of the normal word-order in Paradise Lost as in The Seasons, but they seem less frequent because they are better adapted to the epic style and because Milton introduces them more skilfully. It will be observed that in the passage quoted the adjectives which take the places of adverbs are likely to be out of their normal order, and that some of them, like "solitary" in the second line, are used not so much adverbially as appositively. Except in such instances appositives are not common in Thomson, nor are parenthetical expressions.3

Thomson's use of words is no less Miltonic than his style. Adjectives, besides being, as we have seen, constantly employed as adverbs, are occasionally used as nouns. We find, for instance, "the blue profound," "that full complex," "the pure cerulean," "the blue immense," "the blue serene," "the breezy void," "the solitary vast," "the... licentious proud," and "whatever fair [i. e., beauty]

1 Autumn, 782-93; cf. P. L., iii. 431-2. A passage in Thomson's Liberty (iii. 22656), from which the following lines are taken, contains many proper names:

To where the frozen Tanais scarcely stirs
The dead Maeotic pool, or the long Rha

In the black Scythian sea his torrent throws.

2 Autumn, 668–75. Note such chiasmic inversions as "To the quire celestial Thee resound" (Summer, 190).

3 I have noticed parenthetical expressions in Summer, 1627 (cf. line 995 of the 1730 edition); Autumn, 732, 889–91, 900-901, 1204; Winter, 410, 667, 926.

High fancy forms." Adjectives are made into verbs in such expressions as "Spring.. Greened all the year," "whatever greens the spring," "to . . serene his soul," "savaged by woe," "truth. . . Elates his being," "the . . . ray Russets the plain." 2 Verbs and substantives interchange places in the phrases "in sad presage,' " "a sweep of rivers," "the chide of streams," "one wide waft," "oaks. . . tuft the . . . mounts," "by hardship sinewed," "a. . . calm Fleeces unbounded ether," "the swain Disastered stands," "tempest the... brine."3 In The Seasons, as in Paradise Lost, intransitive verbs are sometimes made transitive, and vice versa. The Nile, for instance, "devolves his maze,” and a tongue is described as "devolving . . . A roll of periods"; similarly, we have "dejects his... eye,' ""gazing the inverted landscape," "meditate the blue profound," "meditate the book," "protrudes the bursting gems," and, as examples of transitive verbs used intransitively, "insect armies waft Keen in the . . . breeze," and lightning "discloses wide." 4

In this matter of interchanging the parts of speech Thomson is, except in using adjectives for adverbs, more conservative than his master, but in the number of his unusual compound words he leaves him far behind. He makes these in almost every conceivable way: by combining adverbs with participles, as in "idly-butting," "idlytortured," "seldom-meeting," "soon-descending," " 'ever-cheating," "ill-submitting"; adverbs (or adjectives used as adverbs) with adjectives, as in "wildly-devious," "fair-diffusive," "richly-gorgeous," or with verbs, as in "full-exerts,"" wide-hover," "thick-urge," "gaytwinkle"; nouns with participles, as in "woodbine-wrought," "fever-cooling," "life-sufficing," "jargon-teaching," "stench-involved," "forest-rustling," "wisdom-tempered," "folly-painting,"

1 Summer, 1248 (cf. P. L., ii. 980), 1785; Autumn, 1097, 1356; Winter, 693; Autumn, 126; Winter, 804 (cf. P. L., vi. 203), 322; Spring, 1139-40 (cf. P. L., ix. 608, xi. 717, etc.).

2 Spring, 320-21; Autumn, 1260; Spring, 870; Summer, 1081; Autumn, 1336-7; Hymn, 95-6.

3 Summer, 1050 (cf. P. L., vi. 201, P. R., i. 394, etc.); Autumn, 712, 1267; Winter, 271; Spring, 915; Summer, 1468; Autumn, 958; Winter, 278-9, 1016 (cf. Liberty, iv. 142, and P. L., vii. 412).

Summer, 816; Autumn, 16-17; Summer, 1066, 1247 (cf. P. L., viii. 258, etc.), 1248 (cf. Comus, 547, and Lycidas, 66); Autumn, 670, 1311; Spring, 121-2 (cf. P. L., ii. 1042); Summer, 1138. Somewhat similar is the use of "preys," instead of "preys upon" with an object, in "The . . . eagle preys in distant isles" (Spring,

759-65).

...

5 Spring, 801, 1044; Summer, 26; Winter, 50, 210, 957.

• Summer, 80, 851, 1622; Spring, 1120; Autumn, 173; Winter, 141, 788.

"snow-fed," or with adjectives, as in "dew-bright," "blood-happy," "plume-dark," or even with other nouns, as in "household-kind," "torrent-softness," "monarch-swain," "Parent-Power," "reapertrain," "labourer-ox." Most common of all is the combination of an adjective (as a rule used adverbially) with a participle (commonly the present), as in "white-empurpled," "fresh-expanded," "various-blossomed," "mellow-tasted," "sad-dispersed," "mute-imploring," "nice-judging," "white-dashing," "dire-clinging," "deepfermenting,” “fierce-conflicting," "swift-gliding," "new-moulding," "hollow-blustering," "new-creating."2 As both present and past participles are used in these words, and as the adjectives are related to the participles in different ways, there is greater variety in such compounds than is at first realized; yet their number can hardly fail to impress even the casual reader, for a single line sometimes contains two, and five successive lines occasionally have as many as four.3

But the feature of Thomson's diction that is likely to attract most attention is his use of uncommon words derived from the Latin. He has, for example, "vernant," "clamant," "prelusive," "amusive," "infusive," "diffusive," "effulgent," "effulged," "effulgence," "detruded," "sublimed,' "sublimed," "convolved," "convolution," "exanimate," " "efflux," "distent," "emergent," "relucent,' "turgent," "luculent," "conjunctive," "incomposed," "effused," "infracted," "auriferous," "sequacious," "ovarious," "innoxious," "flexile," "illapse," "magnific," "concoctive," "empurpled," "agglomerating," "incult,” “relumed," "constringent." Thomson also follows Milton in giving to a word a meaning or an application which it had in Latin or Greek but has lost in English. Thus we find such expressions as the farmer "incumbent o'er" the plough, "the liberal

1 Summer, 461, 668, 836, 1544; Autumn, 1206; Winter, 151, 377, 615, 995; Summer, 86; Autumn, 456, 869; Spring, 772, 985; Summer, 494, 546; Autumn, 225; Winter, 240.

2 Spring, 110; Summer, 477; Autumn, 5, 705; Winter, 263; Spring, 163, 408, 912; Autumn, 875; Winter, 13, 159, 196, 951, 989, 1044.

3 See, for example, Spring, 1059; Winter, 210, 437; Spring, 381-5.

Spring, 82 (cf. P. L., x. 679); Autumn, 350; Spring, 175, 216 (also Summer, 1660), 868; Summer, 1229 (also Autumn, 657, 882); Spring, 190 (also Summer, 135, 635, Autumn, 38, etc.); Summer, 1519 (the New English Dictionary gives no instance of "effulge" before 1729,- Thomson's Britannia and Savage's Wanderer); Autumn, 25 (also Winter, 643, etc.; cf. P. L., iii. 388, v. 458, vi. 680); Spring, 568, 827 (also Summer, 110), 837 (also Summer, 343, Autumn, 1183, cf. P. L., vi. 328); Autumn, 839; Spring, 1052; Summer, 92; Spring, 145, 263; Summer, 162; Autumn, 693; Winter, 710; Summer, 1776, 491 (cf. P. L., ii. 989), 509 (also 1256), 604, 648, 1713; Autumn, 875, 1161; Summer, 980, 1262; Autumn, 134 (cf. P. L., v. 773, x. 354), 408, 674, 766, 884; Winter, 491 (also 838), 699. See also Macaulay's Thomson, 157-9.

air" (abundant), "the crude unripened year," "the effusive South, the "lapse" of a stream, the "horrid heart" of a lion, a pool "reverted" by its bank, "the latent rill," "Essential Presence" (God), "unessential gloom," "the opponent bank" (opposite), eaglets "ardent with paternal fire," "the informing Author" (God, who works within), "the outrageous flood" (violent), "will preventing will" (anticipating), "the sordid stream" (muddy), "bounteous" milk, "diffused" (of a person), walking "in cheerful error," storks "in congregation full," mountains "invested with a keen . . . sky," "frequent foot," a river "constrained" between two hills, "the inflated wave," "frost-concocted glebe" (cooked or solidified), "obsequious" reindeer (obedient).1 It will be seen that these peculiarities of diction not only are of the same kind that Milton employed, but are frequently the same words put to the same uncommon uses. Other words which Thomson seems to have borrowed from the master are "mossy-tinctured," "low-thoughted," "massy," "shagged," "dappled," "weltering," "darkling."?

Any such analysis as this must, however, fall far short of giving an adequate impression of the language and style of The Seasons. It cannot show how frequently the characteristics occur, and it must overlook much that cannot be tabulated but that materially affects the general impression. The fact is that, if there is a pompous, contorted way of saying a thing, Thomson is likely to hit upon it; that of two words he prefers the one of Latin origin and of two Latin words that which is less common. Calling things by their right names and speaking simply, directly, and naturally, as in conversation, seems to have been his abhorrence. The stories of Musidora and "the lovely young Lavinia" are closer to real country life than the language and style in which they are told are to ordinary speech;

1 Spring, 41 (cf. the . . . beech that o'er the stream Incumbent hung," Summer, 1363-4, "night incumbent o'er their heads," Winter, 924, and P. L., i. 226), 98, 142 (cf. Lycidas, 3), 144 (cf. “effusive source,” Summer, 1732, “large effusion” of rain, Spring, 176, and P. L., vi. 765), 160 (cf. P. L., viii. 263), 265 (cf. the "horrid loves" of animals, 830, and P. L., ix. 185, etc.), 407, 496, 557 (cf. P. L., v. 841); Summer, 94 (cf. P. L., ii. 439); Spring, 666, 760, 860 (cf. "Informer of the planetary train," i. e. God, and "Poetry. informs the page With music," Summer, 104, 1753-5), 1071 (cf. P. L., ii. 435, vii. 212, X. 232), 1123 (cf. Nativity, 24); Summer, 386, 679; Autumn, 517 (cf. Samson, 118), 626 (cf. with P. L., iv. 239, vii. 302, and cf. "erroneous race," Isaac Newton, 199, with P. L., vi. 146), 859, 882 (cf. P. L., i. 208, iii. 10, vii. 372); Winter, 6, 101, 166, 706 (also Autumn, 7), 854 (cf. P. L., vi. 783).

2

Spring, 381 (cf. P. L., v. 285, Comus, 752); Autumn, 967 (cf. Comus, 6); Spring, 840 (also Summer, 669, Autumn, 1244, etc., and cf. P. L., i. 285, ii. 878, etc., eleven times in all), 910 (cf. Winter, 281, and Comus, 429); Summer, 48 (cf. Allegro, 44, of the dawn in each case), 265 (cf. P. L., i. 78, Lycidas, 13); Autumn, 753 (also Winter, 536, and cf. P. L., iii. 39).