loved nature and frequented woods. In this sense it is used of Thomson himself, in Collins's melodious lines to his memory:—

'In yonder grave a druid lies,' &c.

292. his sister of the copses. The nightingale; Philomela.

293. He crept along, unpromising of mien. The description would have suited Thomson himself in his later years. He stooped in walking, was slovenly in his dress; was 'neither a petit maître nor a boor-he had simplicity without rudeness, and a cultivated manner without being courtly.' (Testimony of Dr. Robertson, Richmond.) This is the bard of Canto I, st. lxviii, reformed of his one vice.

295. Angels are meant.

303. those wretched men, who will be slaves. The line reminds one of the chorus of Thomson's Rule Britannia.

306. Thrice happy he who, &c. The persuasive poet, happier than the coercive statesman.

307-312. The knight on a red horse, emblematic of war; the bard on a milk-white palfrey, emblematic of persuasion and peace.

325. that fatal valley gay.

Canto I, st. ii, and st. v. 336. The frail good man.

345. of this avail.

See its description fully set forth in

The victim of Indolence.

An archaic idiom; 'take advantage of this.'

351. In purgatorial fires. Cp. Hamlet, Act I, sc. v, ll. 10-12. 'Beneath a spacious palm.'-Canto I, 1. 61.

352.

367. With magic dust their eyne, &c. Cp. Comus

6 Thus I hurl

My dazzling spells into the spongy air,

Of power to cheat the eye with blear illusion.

Her eye

Hath met the virtue of this magic dust.'-11. 153-165. 380. The wary retiarius. Thomson has a note on this: 'A gladiator, who made use of a net which he threw over his adversary.' He carried the net (rete) in his right hand, and a three-pointed lance (tridens) in his left. If he missed his aim, by either flinging the net too short or too far, he at once took to flight, preparing his net the while for another cast. Meanwhile his adversary (Secutor) followed, and attempted to dispatch him with a sword, or a ball of lead. (See an account of the ancient gladiatorial shows in any book of Roman Antiquities.)

383. The weakest line in the poem-'bordering, indeed, on the ludicrous.'

385. flounced to and fro. See Spring, 1. 434, and Note. Cp. Savage's Wanderer, Canto IV

Where [in the net] flounce, deceived, the expiring finny prey.'

387. his... nail. For the sing. form, cp.' Dick, the shepherd, blows his nail.'-Shakespeare.

398. Avernus.

A lake filling the crater of an extinct volcano, round (in circumference about a mile or more), very deep, and girt with high banks. It was near Cumæ, and the Cumaan Sibyl lived near it in a cave which had connection with the infernal world (see Æneid). Cimmerians lived in the perpetual gloom of its banks.

The

405. Touch soul with soul. 'Speak from the heart, and touch their hearts with the sincerity of your appeal.'

410. Till tinkling in clear symphony they rung. A singularly expressive line, suggesting by its very sound the peculiar tones of a harp. Cp. Scott's Lay of the Last Minstrel

'Till every string's according glee

Was blended into harmony.'-Introd. Canto I. 415-567. The song of Philomelus, contained in these lines, matches at every point the Song of Indolence in the first Canto. It is as poetical, as powerful in its appeal, and is animated, of course, by a higher morality.

423. Cp. Pope's Essay on Man, Ep. I, ll. 267–280, ending with the line which so closely resembles this one—

'He fills, he bounds, connects, and equals all.'

See also Spring, 1. 854.

426-429. The theory of spiritual evolution here briefly expressed was the firm belief of Thomson throughout his life. He makes numerous references to it. See Spring, Note, 11. 374-377; Liberty, III, 11. 68–70; The Hymn, Note, ll. 115, 116; and II. 562, 563 infra.

432, 433. That cosmos excels chaos.'

443. the brighter palm. Because excellence in Art is of a superior kind to excellence in feats of bodily strength, &c., for which also the palm was given.

448. o'er the nations shook her conquering dart. The pilum. Cp. Milton, Par. Lost, Bk. XI, ll. 491, 492—

449.

'Over them triumphant Death his dart

Shook.'

The laurell, meed of mightie conquerours

And poets sage.'-Faerie Queene, Bk. I, Canto I, st. ix. 456. cities . . . their towery fronts. 'Pheræ deckt with towers' (Chapman's Homer).

460. Great Homer's song. The Iliad. (See Winter, 1. 533, and Note.)

462. Sweet Maro's muse. The poet Virgil. (See Winter, 1. 532, and Note.) Virgil regarded Mantua, on an island in the Mincius, as his

birthplace, but he was born rather at the village of Andes in the neighbourhood.

463. the Mincian reeds. Milton's Lycidas

'Thou honoured flood,

Smooth-sliding Mincius, crowned with vocal reeds.'—ll. 85, 86. 464. The wits of modern time. The poets after the Renaissance. 466. Paradise Lost would not have been written.

467. Stratford-on-Avon is in Warwickshire. Shakespeare would have been merely a happy and companionable peasant.

468. my master Spenser. Cp. Lydgate's 'My mayster Chaucer' in his Prol. to The Falls of Princes. The Castle of Indolence was written professedly in imitation of Spenser's style. (See Thomson's Advertisement prefixed to his Poem.) The Mulla was Spenser's poetical name for the Awbeg, a tributary of the Blackwater of county Cork. It was on the banks of the Mulla that Spenser read part of his Faerie Queene to Sir Walter Raleigh in 1589; the friends sat—

471. starry lights of virtue. See a lengthened description of them in Winter, ll. 439-540.

535. The world is poised. The balance of power is preserved.

554. Resolve! and

557, 558. Let godlike reason .

Speak the

Young's Night Thoughts, I, 11. 30, 31—

'On Reason build Resolve,

That column of true majesty in man!'

Cp. also Burns's Epistle to Dr. Blacklock—

'Come, firm Resolve, take thou the van,
Thou stalk o' carl-hemp in man!'

562, 563. See Note, Canto II, 11. 426–429 supra.
580. this fleshly den. The body.

614. That lazar-house. See Canto I, st. lxxiii.

639. [Repentance] rejoices Heaven. See Parables of The Lost Sheep, Lost Piece of Money, &c. There is more joy in heaven over one sinner that repenteth,' &c.

653. dolorous mansion. Purgatory.

655. soft and pure as infant goodness. Cp. the Scripture story of Naaman the Syrian leper washing away his disease in the Jordan: 'And his flesh came again like unto the flesh of a little child, and he was clean' (2 Kings v. 14).

phrase, X:

How long, ye scorners of the truth,
Scornful will ye remain?

The time will come when humbled low
In sorrow's evil day,

Your voice by anguish shall be taught,
But taught too late to pray.

Prayers then extorted shall be vain,
The hour of mercy past.'

697. Auster.

The south-west wind, bringing fogs a

698. Caurus. The north-west wind; 'frosty Caurus Beggary personified. Scorn personified.

703. The first. 712. The other.

721. Brentford town, a town of mud. The county to at the mouth of the Brent, a tributary of the Thames. here over the Thames, leading to Kew. Thomson knew but apparently did not admire it. From his description -what is quite true-that the town is one long street.

Ff