yet perhaps I may mend in that respect. to your husband, and believe me to be,

Remember me kindly

'Your most affectionate brother,

(Addressed) 'To Mrs. Thomson in Lanark ''

'JAMES THOMSON.'

The benevolence of Thomson was fervid, but not active"; he 43 would give on all occasions what assistance his purse would supply; but the offices of intervention or solicitation he could not conquer his sluggishness sufficiently to perform3. The affairs of others, however, were not more neglected than his own. He had often felt the inconveniences of idleness, but he never cured it; and was so conscious of his own character, that he talked of writing an Eastern Tale of The Man who loved to be in Distress.

Among his peculiarities was a very unskilful and inarticulate 44 manner of pronouncing any lofty or solemn composition. He was once reading to Doddington, who, being himself a reader eminently elegant, was so much provoked by his odd utterance, that he snatched the paper from his hand, and told him that he did not understand his own verses 5.

The biographer of Thomson has remarked that an author's 45 life is best read in his works: his observation was not welltimed. Savage, who lived much with Thomson', once told me how he heard a lady remarking that she could gather from his

'Boswell, in 1777, put his wife's two nephews 'to school in Lanark, under the care of Mr. Thomson, the master of it, whose wife is sister to the author of The Seasons. She is an old woman, but her memory is very good.' Boswell's Johnson, iii. 116.

His inoffensive disposition' is mentioned in his obituary notice in Gent. Mag. 1748, p. 380. He is attacked for inhumanity in a letter to the same Magazine (1754, p. 409) on field-sports.Thomson, who was one of these preachers of benevolence, encourages the rage of sportive cruelty against the fox.'

3 Dr. Burney, one day finding him in bed at two o'clock in the afternoon, asked how he came to lie so long. "Ecod, mon, because I had no mot-tive to rise." Prior's

Malone, p. 415.

4 Much of this character belonged also to Johnson.

5 Ante, CONGREVE, 7; SWIFT, 119 n. 'Thomson, in reading his Agamemnon to the actors in the green-room, pronounced every line with such a broad Scotch accent that they could not restrain themselves from a loud laugh. He goodnaturedly said to the manager :"Do you, Sir, take my play and go on with it; for though I can write a tragedy I find I cannot read one. DAVIES, Dram. Misc. iii. 498.

Works, 1775, Preface, p. 33. 'Savage officiated as Master when, on Sept. 13, 1737, Thomson 'was admitted free and accepted Mason at Old Man's Coffee-House, Charing Cross.' N. & Q. 2 S. i. 131.

46

works three parts of his character, that he was ‘a great lover', a great swimmer, and rigorously abstinent 3'; but, said Savage, he knows not any love but that of the sex; he was perhaps never in cold water in his life; and he indulges himself in all the luxury that comes within his reach. Yet Savage always spoke with the most eager praise of his social qualities, his warmth and constancy of friendship, and his adherence to his first acquaintance when the advancement of his reputation had left them behind him.

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 every thing presented

sons; yet I am not over fond of them, because they are all description, and nothing is doing; whereas Milton engages me in actions of the highest importance.' Works, xvii. 398.

'Thomson's blank verse was execrably bad.' COLERIDGE, Table Talk, 1884, p. 280.

'Thomson wrote his blank verse before his ear was formed as it was when he wrote The Castle of Indolence and some of his short rhyme poems.' WORDSWORTH, Memoirs, ii. 386.

W. Allingham recorded in his Journal:- Mr. Barnes [the Dorsetshire poet] said, "I like Thomson's blank verse," to which Tennyson, stretching out his arms, returned in an emphatic voice, "I hate it like poison," at which we all laughed."

'JOHNSON. Thomson, I think, had as much of the poet about him as most writers. Everything appeared to him through the medium of his favourite pursuit. He could not have viewed those two candles burning but with a poetical eye.' Boswell's Johnson, i. 453.

Hazlitt, in a criticism of Crabbe,

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. The reader of The Seasons wonders that he never saw before what Thomson shews him, and that he never yet has felt what Thomson impresses.

His is one of the works in which blank verse seems properly 47 used'; Thomson's wide expansion of general views, and his enumeration of circumstantial varieties, would have been obstructed and embarrassed by the frequent intersection of the sense, which are the necessary effects of rhyme.

His descriptions of extended scenes and general effects bring 48 before us the whole magnificence of Nature, whether pleasing or dreadful. The gaiety of Spring, the splendour of Summer, the tranquillity of Autumn, and the horror of Winter, take in their turns possession of the mind. The poet leads us through the appearances of things as they are successively varied by the vicissitudes of the year, and imparts to us so much of his own enthusiasm that our thoughts expand with his imagery and kindle with his sentiments 2. Nor is the naturalist without his part in the entertainment; for he is assisted to recollect and to combine, to arrange his discoveries, and to amplify the sphere of his contemplation 3.

The great defect of The Seasons is want of method; but for 49 this I know not that there was any remedy. Of many appear

describing the various appearances of nature; but that he failed when he ventured to step out of this path, and particularly when he attempted to be moral, in which attempt he always became verbose.' Mitford's Gray, v. 36.

Goldsmith describes him as 'in general a verbose and affected poet.' Works, iii. 438.

3 The naturalist would be surprised to find in the first edition of Winter, 1. 44, that

'Sad Philomel, perchance, pours forth her plaint

Far, thro' the withering copse.'

But what did a Scotchman know of the nightingale? When the poet transferred the passage to Autumn, 1. 974, 'sad Philomel' became 'some widowed songster.'

50

51

ances subsisting all at once, no rule can be given why one should be mentioned before another; yet the memory wants the help of order, and the curiosity is not excited by suspense or expectation.

His diction is in the highest degree florid and luxuriant, such as may be said to be to his images and thoughts 'both their lustre and their shade''; such as invests them with splendour, through which perhaps they are not always easily discerned. It is too exuberant, and sometimes may be charged with filling the ear more than the mind 2.

These poems, with which I was acquainted at their first appearance, I have since found altered and enlarged by subsequent revisals, as the author supposed his judgement to grow more exact, and as books or conversation extended his knowledge and opened his prospects3. They are, I think, improved

'The moon pull'd off her veil of

light,

That hides her face by day from
sight,

Mysterious veil of brightness made,
That's both her lustre and her
shade.'
Hudibras, ii. i. 905; post, AKEN-
SIDE, 16.

2 Post, COLLINS, 17. Dr. Johnson said, "Thomson's fault is such a cloud of words sometimes that the sense can hardly peep through. Shiels [ante, HAMMOND, 1] was one day sitting with me. I took down Thomson, and read aloud a large portion of him, and then asked, 'Is not this fine?' Shiels having expressed the highest admiration, 'Well, Sir (said I), I have omitted every other line." Boswell's Johnson, iii. 37.

Grimm says of The Seasons :-'A force d'être riche et fleuri il devient monotone et fatigant; c'est le reproche qu'on a fait au poëme des Plaisirs de l'imagination [post, AKENSIDE, 16].' Grimm's Mémoires, 1814, ii. 23.

Wordsworth wrote of The Seasons: —'It is a work of inspiration; much of it is written from himself, and nobly from himself. . . . It is remarkable that, excepting the nocturnal Reverie of Lady Winchelsea and a passage or two in the Windsor Forest of Pope, the poetry of the period

...

intervening between the publication of the Paradise Lost and The Seasons does not contain a single new image of external nature. . . . We are not able to collect any unquestionable proofs that the true characteristics of Thomson's genius as an imaginative poet were perceived till the elder Warton, almost forty years after the publication of The Seasons, pointed them out by a note in his Essay on Pope [ii. 244]. In The Castle of Indolence (of which Gray speaks so coldly) these characteristics were almost as conspicuously displayed, and in verse more harmonious and diction more pure. Yet that fine poem was neglected on its appearance, and is at this day the delight only of a few!' Wordsworth's Works, vi. 368-72.

'Thomson recalled the nation to the study of nature, which since Milton had been utterly neglected.' SOUTHEY, Specimens, Preface, p. 32. Sir Walter Scott, in 1828, said of Milton and Thomson:- Thomson is the most read of the two.' Life of W. Bell Scott, 1892, i. 73.

Hazlitt records Northcote as saying about 1830' For boarding-school misses Thomson's Seasons has an immense attraction, though I never I could read it.' Conversations of Northcote, p. 198.

3 'The original text of The Seasons,' writes Judge Willis, 'consisted of

in general; yet I know not whether they have not lost part of what Temple calls their race, a word which, applied to wines, in its primitive sense, means the flavour of the soil '.

Liberty, when it first appeared, I tried to read, and soon 52 desisted. I have never tried again, and therefore will not hazard either praise or censure 2.

The highest praise which he has received ought not to be 53 supprest; it is said by Lord Lyttelton in the Prologue to his posthumous play that his works contained

'No line which, dying, he could wish to blot 3.

3,902 lines. The edition of 1746, the last that received the poet's revision, consists of 5,423 lines. Winter, p. 6. For the alterations see ib. Preface, and N. & 2.4 S. xi. 419.

' Johnson defines race as 'a particular strength or taste of wine, applied by Temple to any extraordinary natural force of intellect,' and quotes a passage from his Essay of Gardening. Temple's Works, 1757, iii. 229.

Thomson was admirable in description; but it always seemed to me that there was somewhat of affecta

tion in his style. ... I could wish too, with Dr. Johnson, that he had confined himself to this country.... He was however a true poet.' COWPER, Works, vi. 169.

'I possess,' writes Mitford, 'an interleaved copy of The Seasons (ed. 1738) which belonged to Thomson, with his own alterations, and with numerous alterations and additions by Pope, in his own writing. Almost all the amendments made by Pope were adopted by Thomson.' Mitford's Gray, ii. Preface, p. 7 n. Whether these alterations are by Pope is very doubtful. See Tovey's Thomson, i. 189; N. & 2.8 S. xii. 327, 389, 437; 9 S. i. 23, 129, 289, 415. [Mr. G. C. Macaulay ina letter to the Athenaeum, Oct. 1, 1904 (p. 446), rejects the Pope theory and identifies the corrector as

Lyttelton, both on a priori grounds and from a careful comparison of his handwriting with the MS. alterations in Mitford's interleaved Seasons, now in the Brit. Mus. Mr. Tovey, on the other hand, considers that 'Lyttelton's hand is neat and scholarly, and quite unlike the unknown's manuscript.' Thomson's Works, 1897, i. 195.]

In the first edition this Life ends here. The 'Prologue to Sophonisba, by Pope and Mallet' followed. 3Not one immoral, one corrupted thought,

One line which dying he could wish to blot.' Prologue to Coriolanus, Works, iv. 182.

'M. Despréaux [Boileau] s'applaudissait fort à l'âge de soixante et onze ans, de n'avoir rien mis dans ses vers qui choquât les bonnes mœurs. "C'est une consolation, disait-il, pour les vieux poètes qui doivent bientôt rendre compte à Dieu de leurs actions." Euvres, 1747, v. 41.

'I remember St. Austin in one of his epistles tells us that Tully says of one of the great orators, Nullum unquam verbum quod revocare vellet emisit. "That no word ever fell from him that he could wish to have recalled." TILLOTSON, Sermons, 1757, xi. 93.