he might not always deem it prudent to relieve, he had ample opportunities of making known to others, "whose hearts, he knew, were not contracted by the ample fortune they had acquired." This was most probably the time when Quin, the celebrated actor, was first introduced to the acquaintance of our poet; and Millar was likely to have been his informant with regard to the recurrence of one of these "urgent occasions." Concerning this interview Johnson says, "The commencement of this benevolence is very honourable to Quin, who had long lived with Thomson in fond intimacy;" and "who is reported to have delivered Thomson, then known to him only for his genius, from an arrest, by a very considerable present: and its continuance is honourable to both; for friendship is not always the sequel of obligation." At that period of his life he had much need of these friendly interferences, till he was introduced, through the recommendation of Dr. Rundle, to the Talbot family, and, through them, to many powerful patrons, who felt great pleasure in studying his interests, and promoting his welfare.

In surveying Thomson's poetical labours from 1727 to 1730, one is astonished at the correct and highly-varied knowledge which he displayed in his "Summer," "Spring," and "Autumn," in "Sophonisba," and in his "Poem to the Memory of Sir Isaac Newton." In all these may be traced an extensive acquaintance with general history and the narratives of recent travellers, with mental philosophy, natural history, astronomy, &c. He must either have been a most discursive reader while a resident in the University, or had subsequently acquired the happy art of accumulating all available knowledge, and of holding the choice materials in store till emergent occasions might demand their tasteful appropriation.

I.-Page xx.

Strong Characteristics of Originality in Thomson's Poetry. IN confirmation of Murdoch's high character of our author's poetry, I append the recorded opinions of two eminent critics, Dr. Samuel Johnson and Dr. Joseph Warton.

I. DR. SAMUEL JOHNSON.

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 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 shows him, and that he never yet has felt what Thomson impresses.

His is one of the works in which blank verse seems properly 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 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. Nor is the naturalist without his part in the entertainment; for he is assisted to recollect and to combine, to range his discoveries, and to amplify the sphere of his contemplation.

The great defect of the "Seasons" is want of method; but for this I know not that there was any remedy. Of many appearances 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 invest 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.-JOHNSON'S "Lives of the Poets," pp. 237-239.

II. DR. JOSEPH WARTON.

Ir would be unpardonable to conclude these remarks on descriptive poesy, without taking notice of the "Seasons" of Thomson, who had peculiar and powerful talents for this species of composition. Let the reader, therefore, pardon a digression, if such it be, on his merits and character.

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 to those of poets who have only copied from each other, and have never looked abroad on the objects themselves. Thomson was accustomed to wander away into the country for days, and for weeks, attentive to "each rural sight, each rural sound;" while many a poet, who has dwelt for years in the Strand, has attempted to describe fields and rivers, and generally succeeded accordingly. Hence that nauseous repetition of the same circumstances; hence that disgusting impropriety of introducing what may be called "a set of hereditary images," without proper regard to the age, or climate, or occasion, in which they were formerly used. 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; and which, as its beauties are not of a transitory

kind, as depending on particular customs and manners, will ever be perused with delight. 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. Innumerable are the little circumstances in his descriptions totally unobserved by all his predecessors. What poet hath ever taken notice of the leaf, that, towards the end of autumn,

Incessant rustles from the mournful grove, Oft startling such as, studious, walk below, And slowly circles through the waving air? Or who, in speaking of a summer evening, hath ever mentioned

The quail that clamours for his running mate?

Or the following natural image at the same time of the year?

Wide o'er the thistly lawn, as swells the breeze,

A whitening shower of vegetable down

Amusive floats.........

In what other poet do we find the silence and expectation that precedes an April shower insisted on, as in verse 165 of "Spring?" Or where,

The stealing shower is scarce to patter heard,
By such as wander through the forest walks,
Beneath the' umbrageous multitude of leaves?

How full, particular, and picturesque, is this assemblage of circumstances that attend a very keen frost in a night of winter!

Loud rings the frozen earth, and hard reflects

A double noise; while at his evening watch

The village dog deters the nightly thief;

The heifer lows; the distant water-fall

Swells in the breeze; and with the hasty tread

Of traveller, the hollow-sounding plain
Shakes from afar.

In no one subject are common writers more confused and unmeaning, than in their descriptions of rivers, which are

generally said only to wind and to murmur, while their qualities and courses are seldom accurately marked. Examine the exactness of the ensuing description, and consider what a perfect idea it communicates to the mind:

Around the' adjoining brook, that purls along
The vocal grove, now fretting o'er a rock,
Now scarcely moving through a reedy pool,
Now starting to a sudden stream, and now
Gently diffused into a limpid plain ;

A various group the herds and flocks compose,
Rural confusion.

A group worthy the pencil of Giacomo da Bassano, and so minutely delineated, that he might have worked from this sketch :

He adds, that the ox, in the middle of them,

.From his sides

The troublous insects lashes, to his sides
Returning still.

A natural circumstance, that, to the best of my remembrance, hath escaped even the natural Theocritus. Nor do I recollect that any poet hath been struck with the murmurs of the numberless insects that swarm abroad at the noon of a summer's day: as attendants of the evening, indeed, they have been mentioned:

Resounds the living surface of the ground:

Nor undelightful is the ceaseless hum

To him who muses through the woods at noon;
Or drowsy shepherd, as he lies reclined

With half-shut eyes.

But the novelty and nature we admire in the descriptions of Thomson, are by no means his only excellences; 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