and from contemplation of the Christian virtues of a Dodington, a Chesterfield, a Walpole. It wings his theology, as the ostrich's pinions, though not permitting it to soar, accelerate its course upon earth. I recollect This King of Terrors is the Prince of Peace.15 Or studied the philosophy of tears? 16 Life's a debtor to the grave, 17 Death's lattice, letting in eternal day.17 Too low they build who build beneath the stars.18 'Tis nothing but full knowledge of the truth.20 Then I wonder whether somewhere, deep within the Court Chaplain's breast, a song-bird may not have been caged. The Poetical Works of Edward Young (Aldine Edition of the British Poets). Two vols. William Pickering, 1852. 1 The Complaint; or, Night Thoughts: Night VIII. JAMES THOMSON 1700-1748 I ONCE was attacking to Mark Pattison the poetry of the period I will call Hanoverian. After his manner he assented until I began upon the Seasons, when he demurred. He considered that its author wrote with personal knowledge. Thomson I still think stilted and artificial. He prefers pedantic Latinisms-such as amusive, delusive, diffusive, effusive, elusive, prelusive-to racy Saxon. He confounds verbal solecisms with new ideas. His upstrokes are as broad as his downstrokes. Not rarely he is delicate to the verge of comedy, as in Damon's belated respect for the modesty of fair Musidora. Finally, he adopts an air of having studied Nature in books rather than in situ. Nevertheless, his love for her was real. He had, I now fully agree, observed her at first hand, although he hides his familiarity underneath a coating of literary tradition and fashion. He had followed the mowers, as they rake the green-appearing ground, And drive the dusky wave along the mead.1 His own eyes had noted the reluctant approach of the summer night, with faint erroneous ray : While wavering woods, and villages, and streams, He had seen how in autumn: The huge dusk, gradual, swallows up the plain ; Unbounded o'er the world; and mingling thick, A formless grey confusion covers all.3 Though not himself a witness, he must have learnt from men, not books, how, where the Northern ocean, in vast whirls, the migratory birds swarm in preparation for their southern flight; at the given moment departing, Infinite wings! till all the plume-dark air, And rude resounding shore are one wild cry.1 In the home of his boyhood, among the borderland moors and pastures, animated nature had been his school. birds had warned him of the coming of a blast: A blackening train Of clamorous rooks thick urge their weary flight. Plies his sad song. The cormorant on high Wheels from the deep, and screams along the land. The Their lessons he repaid with tenderness and pity. Charmingly he touches a theme Unknown to fame-the passion of the groves, The imprisonment in cages of the songsters of 'boundless air' revolted him. Translating Virgil, he denounces the robbery of nests-above all, the nightingale's, who returning to her desolated home-for the singer remained for the eighteenth-century Philomela-tells Her sorrows through the night; and on the bough, Takes up again her lamentable strain Of winding woe; till, wide around, the woods All English childhood once was familiar with his welcome to the robin, who, sacred to the household gods, Wisely regardful of the embroiling sky, Against the window beats; then, brisk, alights And pecks, and starts, and wonders where he is.8 He overflowed with kindliness to everything sensible to pleasure and pain. If a century had to pass before a system more profitable as well as more humane of hive-keeping was introduced, it was no fault of the poet of the Seasons. As eloquently as wisely he had pleaded against the wasteful yearly massacre of myriads of honey-bees, stifled, while, not dreaming ill, The happy people, in their waxen cells, Sat tending public cares." With contemptuous anger he protests against sport with guns and dogs: the triumph o'er the timid hare; The falsely cheerful, barbarous game of death.10 His instinct of equity, in days before the horse had replaced the bullock at the plough, was, again like Virgil's, troubled at the slaughter of the plain, harmless, honest ox, To swell the riot of the autumnal feast, Exaggerated sentiment there may be; but it will be forgiven in return for the quick succession of pictures, suffused with kindness, and generally as true as they are gracious. They are oases in the poetic Sahara of the parched central eighteenth century, which the supercilious present age thinks itself sufficiently better supplied to afford to neglect. Neglected, even the noble concluding Hymn, by a generation which continually uses phrases from the Seasons as naturally as if they were its daily literary food; yet, the whole, buried in oblivion far less entire than has overwhelmed other work of the same pen. Dr. Johnson declared it a hard task to read through the poem of Liberty. Contemporary, no less than later, public opinion acted on his judgement. Probably the subject was too democratic for its own time, and too declamatory for the present. At any rate, the author, whose favourite it was, might have offered fair reasons for his liking, if not for his preference. He has studded it with grand passages, a flotilla of splendid images descending the current of universal history. He acknowledges a world's debt to Phoenicia for letters That paint the voice, and silent speak to sight.12 The friend of the whole 'living chain' is grateful to the philosopher of Magna Graecia, who into his tender system took Whatever shares the brotherhood of life; 13 the man of taste and letters renders obeisance to Hellas, mother of the arts, Which to bright science blooming fancy bore; 14 |