Chapter 4

John Gay (1685-1732).

Gay, who enjoyed an unbroken friendship with the brotherhood of wits, and was treated by them like a spoilt child, was born at Barnstaple in 1685, and left an orphan at the age of ten. He was educated at the free grammar school in the town, and was afterwards, to his discontent, apprenticed to a mercer in London. He escaped from this uncongenial employment to be dependent on an uncle, and thus early exhibited his life-long disposition to rely upon others for support. 'Providence,' Swift writes, 'never designed Gay to be above two-and-twenty by his thoughtlessness and gullibility. He has as little foresight of age, sickness, poverty, or loss of admirers as a girl of fifteen.' His weakness, it has been said, appealed to Swift's strength, and Swift, Pope, and Arbuthnot were Gay's most faithful friends. They found something in him to laugh at and to love. Ladies, too, treated him with the kind of friendliness which has a touch of commiseration. In 1714 Gay was appointed secretary to Lord Clarendon, a post which he owed to Swift, but the death of Queen Anne in that year brought the Whigs into office, and destroyed thepoet's prospects. Prior to this he had been secretary to the imperious Duchess of Monmouth. He was now left without money or employment, and owed much to the generosity of Pope. It was Gay's lot 'in suing long to bide,' to be always hoping, and nearly always disappointed. 'He seems,' says his latest biographer, 'to have begun his career under the impression that it was somebody's duty to provide for him in the world, and this impression clung to him through nearly the whole of a lifetime.'[27]Ten years before his death he was eagerly looking to others for support. Writing to Swift, he says: 'I lodge at present in Burlington House, and have received many civilities from many great men, but very few real benefits. They wonder at each other for not providing for me, and I wonder at them all.'

Gay's first poem of any mark wasThe Shepherd's Week(1714), six burlesque pastorals, a subject proposed to him by Pope, who was then smarting from the praise Philips had received inThe Guardian. But if Pope meant Gay to poke his fun at Philips inThe Shepherd's Week, he must have been disappointed, for the poems were accepted as genuine bucolics, and although humorously absurd, are, to say the least, more true to rustic life than the pastorals either of Philips or of Pope.The Shepherd's Weekwas followed byTrivia(1715), a piece suggested by Swift'sCity Shower. It is one of Gay's most notable productions, not as a poem, but as a vivid description of the streets of London nearly two hundred years ago. The great reputation he obtained as the author ofThe Fables(1727), and still more ofThe Beggar's Opera(1728), the idea of which was suggested to Gay by Swift, survived him for some years.The Fableswere written for and dedicated tothe youthful Duke of Cumberland, who is asked to "accept the moral lay, and in these tales mankind survey." There is skill and ingenuity in the poems, but higher merit they cannot boast, and young readers are likely to prefer the illustrations which generally accompanyThe Fablesto the letterpress. Many of Gay's allusions are beyond the apprehension of the young, and have a political flavour.The Beggar's Operawas intended as a burlesque of the Italian opera, which had been long the laughing-stock of men of letters, and as the play was thought to have political significance, and the character of Macheath to be a portrait of Walpole, it was received with enthusiasm, and acted in London for about sixty nights. So popular did the opera become, that ladies carried about the songs on their fans.

Eight years before, Gay had published his poems by subscription, and in those happy days for versemen had gained £1,000 by the venture. He put the money into South Sea stock, and lost it all. ForThe Beggar's Operahe received about £800. It was followed byPolly, a play of the same coarse character, which, for political reasons, was not allowed to be acted. The result was that it had a large sale, and put money in Gay's purse. Ten thousand five hundred copies are said to have been printed in one year, and the £1,200 realized by the sale were very wisely retained for the poet's use by the Duke of Queensberry, under whose roof he had at length found a warm nest. To the student Gay is chiefly interesting as the only noteworthy poet of the period, south of the Tweed, gifted with a lyrical capacity. Two or three of his songs and ballads, and especiallyBlack-Eyed Susan, have a charm beyond the reach of the mechanical versifier. But the art of song is at a low level even in the hands of Gay. The lyric which the Elizabethan and Jacobean poets loved so well, and of which the present century has produced specimens to be matched only by Shakespeare, may be said to have been lost to English poetry for the first half of the last century, since neither Prior's verse, delightful though it be, nor the songs of Gay, have enough of the poetical element to form exceptions to this statement.

In hisTaleshe follows Prior in grossness, while inferior to him in art. Like the greater number of the Queen Anne poets, Gay flatters with a free hand. In an epistle addressed to Lintot, the bookseller, he declares that Anacreon lives once more in Sheffield, and Waller in Granville, that Buckingham's verse will last to distant time; while Ovid sings again in Addison, and 'Homer'sIliadshines in hisCampaign.'

One of the liveliest and most graceful of Gay's poems is addressed to Pope 'On his having finished his translation of Homer'sIliad.' It is calledA Welcome from Greece, and describes the friends who assembled to greet the poet on his return to England.

Three stanzas from the Epistle shall be quoted:

'Oh, what a concourse swarms on yonder quay!The sky re-echoes with new shouts of joy;By all this show, I ween 'tis Lord Mayor's day;I hear the voice of trumpet and hautboy—No, now I see them near.—Oh, these are theyWho come in crowds to welcome thee from Troy.Hail to the bard, whom long as lost we mournedFrom siege, from battle, and from storm returned!'What lady's that to whom he gently bends?Who knows not her? Ah! those are Wortley's eyes:How art thou honoured, numbered with her friends!For she distinguishes the good and wise.The sweet-tongued Murray near her side attends;Now to my heart the glance of Howard flies;Now Hervey, fair of face, I mark full well,With thee Youth's youngest daughter, sweet Lepell.'I see two lovely sisters hand in hand,The fair-haired Martha and Teresa brown;Madge Bellenden, the tallest of the land;And smiling Mary, soft and fair as down.Yonder I see the cheerful Duchess stand,For friendship, zeal, and blithesome humours known;Whence that loud shout in such a hearty strain?Why, all the Hamiltons are in her train!'

'What lady's that to whom he gently bends?Who knows not her? Ah! those are Wortley's eyes:How art thou honoured, numbered with her friends!For she distinguishes the good and wise.The sweet-tongued Murray near her side attends;Now to my heart the glance of Howard flies;Now Hervey, fair of face, I mark full well,With thee Youth's youngest daughter, sweet Lepell.

'I see two lovely sisters hand in hand,The fair-haired Martha and Teresa brown;Madge Bellenden, the tallest of the land;And smiling Mary, soft and fair as down.Yonder I see the cheerful Duchess stand,For friendship, zeal, and blithesome humours known;Whence that loud shout in such a hearty strain?Why, all the Hamiltons are in her train!'

Gay's love of good living was known to all his friends. 'As the French philosopher,' Congreve wrote, 'used to prove his existence bycogito ergo sum, the greatest proof of Gay's existence isedit ergo est.' For a long time his health compelled him to give up wine, and he tells Swift that he had also left off verse-making, 'for I really think that man must be a bold writer who trusts to wit without it.' He was dispirited, he told Swift not long before his death, for want of a pursuit, and found 'indolence and idleness the most tiresome things in the world.'

Gay died in 1732 at the Duke of Queensberry's house, and Pope grieved that one of his nearest and longest ties was broken. He was interred, to quote Arbuthnot's words, 'as a peer of the realm,' in Westminster Abbey. The superficial character of the poet may be seen in his couplet transcribed upon the monument:

'Life is a jest, and all things show it;I thought so once, and now I know it.'

Edward Young (1684-1765).

Gay's moderate gift of song was withheld from the famous author of theNight Thoughts. Yet Young was vain enough to think that he possessed it, and wrote a patriotic ode calledOcean, preceded by an elaborate essay on lyric poetry. He also producedImperium Pelagi(1729),A Naval Lyric written in Imitation of Pindar's spirit. The lyric,which was travestied by Fielding in hisTom Thumb,[28]reads like a burlesque, and badly treated though Pindar was by the versemen of the last century, there is perhaps not one of them who mocks him more outrageously than Young. He says that this ode is an original, and no critic is likely to dispute the assertion.

Young was born in 1684 at Upham, near Winchester, his father, who was afterwards Dean of Sarum, being at that time the rector of the village. Edward was placed upon the foundation at Winchester College, and remained there until he was eighteen. He was then sent up to New College, and afterwards removed to Corpus. At the age of twenty-seven he was nominated to a law fellowship at All Souls, and took his degree of B.C.L. and his doctor's degree some years later. Characteristically enough he began his poetical career byAn Epistle to Lord Lansdowne(1712), who is praised for his heavenly numbers, and is said to have been born "to make the muse immortal." His next poem of any consequence,The Last Day, written in heroic couplets, and filling three books, is correct, or fairly so, in versification, and execrable in taste. Young, it may be supposed, wished to produce a sense of solemnity in the treatment of his theme, and he does so by lamenting that the very land 'where the Stuarts filled an awful throne' will in that day be forgotten. The want of taste which so often deforms Young's verse is also seen in the imagery he employs to illustrate the fear whicheven good men may have on appearing before that 'dread tribunal.'

'Thus the chaste bridegroom, when the priest draws nigh,Beholds his blessing with a trembling eye;Feels doubtful passions throb in every vein,And in his cheeks are mingled joy and pain,Lest still some intervening chance should rise,Leap forth at once, and snatch the golden prize,Inflame his woe, by bringing it so late,And stab him in the crisis of his fate.'

His next poem,The Force of Religion, or Vanquished Love, was suggested by the execution of Lady Jane Grey and Lord Guildford, a subject chosen for a tragedy by John Banks (1694), by Rowe in 1715, and treated with considerable dramatic power in our own day by Ross Neil. In Young's hands this fine theme becomes a rhetorical exercise without poetry and without pathos. A few lines will suffice to show the style of the poem. Jane and Dudley, it must be premised, are imprisoned in a gloomy hall:

'What can they do? They fix their mournful eyes—Then Guildford, thus abruptly: "I despiseAn empire lost; I fling away the crown;Numbers have laid that bright delusion down;But where's the Charles, or Dioclesian, where,Could quit the blooming, wedded, weeping fair?Oh! to dwell ever on thy lip! to standIn full possession of thy snowy hand!And thro' the unclouded crystal of thine eyeThe heavenly treasures of thy mind to spy!Till rapture reason happily destroys,And my soul wanders through immortal joys!Give me the world, and ask me, where's my bliss?I clasp thee to my breast and answer, this."'

Verse of this quality, which might be amply quoted, is of interest to the student of literature, since in Young's day it passed current for poetry. But in accepting hisclaims as a poet the faith of the age must have been often strained.

Walpole, who despised the whole tribe of poets, and cared nothing for literature, had by some strange chance awarded to Young a pension of £200 a-year, whereupon in a piece calledThe Instalment, addressed to Sir Robert, Britain is called upon to behold

'His azure ribbon and his radiant star,'

and the poet's breast 'glows with grateful fire' as he exclaims:

'The streams of royal bounty turned by theeRefresh the dry domains of poesy.My fortune shows, when arts are Walpole's care,What slender worth forbids us to despair:Be this thy partial smile from censure free,'Twas meant for merit, though it fell on me.'

Following in the steps of George Sandys, but with inferior power, and in a less racy diction, Young performed the vain task of paraphrasing part of the Book of Job, one of the noblest poems the world possesses, and translated in our authorized version in language not to be surpassed for dignity and simplicity.

In 1719 hisBusiriswas performed.The Revenge, a better known tragedy, written on the French model, followed in 1721, and kept the stage for some time. Seven years laterThe Brothers, his third and last tragedy, was in rehearsal, but the poet, who had lately taken holy orders, withdrew it at the last moment. These tragedies, which are full of sound and fury, are destitute of tragic power.The Revenge, in which Zanga acts the part of an Iago, has some forcible scenes, and so, despite much rant and fustian, hasBusiris. Plenty of blood is shed, of course, and the heroines of the plays die by their own hands. Tragedy is supposed to exercise an elevating influence, but to counteract this happy result,BusirisandThe Revengeare followed by indecent epilogues, in which the speakers jest at the feelings which the plays may have excited. ForThe BrothersYoung wrote his own epilogue. It is decent and dull. His genius was better fitted for satire than for the drama, andThe Universal Passion, which consists of seven satires published in a collected form in 1728, brought him reputation and money. The poet Crabbe was never more surprised in his life than when John Murray (the famous 'My Murray' of Byron) gave him £3,000 for the copyright of his poems; Young received the same sum for work immeasurably inferior in value, and in a less legitimate way. Two thousand pounds, it is stated, was a gift from the Duke of Grafton, who said it was the best bargain he ever made, as the satires were worth £4,000. Young, it will be seen, preceded Pope as a satirist. He is more generous and humane, and has none of the venomous attacks on living persons by which Pope added piquancy to his verse. But he is a careless writer, and for the most part lacks the exquisite precision, the subtle wit, the rhythmical felicity, which make the couplets of Pope so memorable.The Dunciad, theMoral Essays, and theImitationsare read by all lovers of literature, butThe Universal Passionis forgotten. Of the six satires, the two on women are the most spirited, and may be compared with Pope's on the same subject. The different foibles, and faults worse than foibles of the women of that day are exhibited with a satirist's licence, and occasionally with a Pope-like terseness. Take the following, for example:

'There is no woman where there's no reserve,And 'tis on plenty your poor lovers starve.''Few to good breeding make a just pretence;Good breeding is the blossom of good sense.''A shameless woman is the worst of men.''Naked in nothing should a woman be,But veil her very wit with modesty.'

'There is no woman where there's no reserve,And 'tis on plenty your poor lovers starve.'

'Few to good breeding make a just pretence;Good breeding is the blossom of good sense.'

'A shameless woman is the worst of men.'

'Naked in nothing should a woman be,But veil her very wit with modesty.'

It was not until he was nearly fifty that Young, disappointed of the preferment he sought, took holy orders, and in 1730 accepted the college living of Welwyn, in Herts, which he held till his death.

In the following year the poet married Lady Elizabeth Lee, a daughter of the Earl of Lichfield, a union that lasted ten years. One son was the offspring of this marriage. Lady Elizabeth had a daughter by a former marriage, who was married to Mr. Temple, a son of Lord Palmerston, and shortly before her own death she lost both daughter and son-in-law, who, there can be little doubt, are the Philander and Narcissa of theNight Thoughts, the earlier books of which were published in 1742. This once celebrated poem, written in his old age, is the one effort of Young's genius that has enjoyed a great popularity. It suited well an age which, while far from moral, delighted in moral treatises and in didactic verse. In theNight ThoughtsYoung remembers that he is a clergyman, and puts on his gown and bands. He puts on also his singing robes, and shows the reader what none of his earlier poems prove, that he is in the presence of a poet.

TheNight Thoughtsis remarkable in its finest passages for a strong, but sombre imagination, and for a command of his instrument that puts Young at times nearly on a level with the greatest masters of blank verse. On this height, however, he does not stay long. He is rich in great thoughts, but they do not fall unconsciously, as it were, while the poet pursues his argument. They are aphorisms uttered generally in single lines which are apt to break the continuity of the poem and to injure the harmony of itsversification. The theme of Life, Death, and Immortality is not a narrow one, and affords ample space for imaginative treatment. Young's treatment of it is too often declamatory; he drops the poet in the rhetorician and the wit. There is much of the false sublime in the poem, and much that reveals the hollow character of the writer. The first book is the finest, sparkling with felicitous expressions and rising frequently to true poetry. The poetical quality of that book, however, is lessened by the author's passion for antithesis. The merit of the following passage, for example, is not due to poetical inspiration:

'How poor, how rich, how abject, how august,How complicate, how wonderful is man!How passing wonder He, who made him such!Who centered in our make such strange extremesFrom different natures, marvellously mixed,Connexion exquisite of distant worlds!Distinguished link in being's endless chain!Midway from nothing to the Deity;A beam etherial, sullied, and absorbt!Though sullied and dishonoured still divine!Dim miniature of greatness absolute!An heir of glory! a frail child of dust!Helpless immortal! insect infinite!A worm! a god!—I tremble at myself,And in myself am lost. At home a stranger,Thought wanders up and down, surprised, aghast,And wondering at her own: How reason reels!O what a miracle to man is man!Triumphantly distressed! what joy! what dread!Alternately transported and alarmed!What can preserve my life? or what destroy?An angel's arm can't snatch me from the grave:Legions of angels can't confine me there.'

The opening of the ninth and last book will give a more favourable illustration of Young's style:

'As when a traveller, a long day pastIn painful search of what he cannot find,At night's approach, content with the next cot,There ruminates awhile, his labour lost;Then cheers his heart with what his fate affords,And chants his sonnet to deceive the time,Till the due season calls him to repose;Thus I, long-travelled in the ways of men,And dancing with the rest the giddy mazeWhere Disappointment smiles at Hope's career;Warned by the languor of life's evening ray,At length have housed me in an humble shed,Where, future wandering banished from my thought,And waiting, patient, the sweet hour of rest,I chase the moments with a serious song.Song soothes our pains, and age has pains to soothe.'

While moralizing on man's mortality Young is seldom a cheerful monitor, he dwells with too great persistence on the incidents of death and of bodily corruption, too little on life with which we have more to do than with death. Thus with a strange perversion he exclaims:

'This is the desart, this the solitude,How populous, how vital, is the grave!This is creation's melancholy vault,The vale funereal, the sad cypress gloom,The land of apparitions, empty shades!All, all on earth is shadow, all beyondIs substance; the reverse is folly's creed.'

and harping on the same theme in the ninth book, says:

'What is the world itself? Thy world—a grave.Where is the dust that has not been alive?The spade, the plough, disturb our ancestors;From human mould we reap our daily bread;The globe around earth's hollow surface shakes,And is the ceiling of her sleeping sons.O'er devastation we blind revels keep;Whole buried towns support the dancer's heel.'

Robert Blair (1699-1746).

On laying down theNight Thoughtsthe student may be advised to read Blair'sGrave, a poem in less than 800 lines of blank verse, composed in a fresher and more rigorous style than the far larger work of Young, and rather moulded, as Mr. Saintsbury has observed, 'upon dramatic than upon purely poetical models.'The Grave, which was written before the publication of theNight Thoughts,[29]abounds with poetical felicities, and is pregnant with suggestions that seize the imagination, and appeal alike to the intellect and the heart. The brevity of the piece is in its favour; there is not a line that flags.

'Tell us, ye dead! will none of you, in pityTo those you left behind, disclose the secret?Oh! that some courteous ghost would blab it out,—What 'tis you are and we must shortly be.I've heard that souls departed have sometimesForewarned men of their death. 'Twas kindly doneTo knock and give the alarm. But what meansThis stinted charity? 'Tis but lame kindnessThat does its work by halves. Why might you notTell us what 'tis to die? Do the strict lawsOf your society forbid your speakingUpon a point so nice?—I'll ask no more:Sullen, like lamps in sepulchres, your shineEnlightens but yourselves. Well, 'tis no matter;A very little time will clear up all,And make us learn'd as you are, and as close.'

Blair, who was a Scotch clergyman, wrote also anElegy in Memory of William Law, a Professor of Moral Philosophy in Edinburgh, whose daughter he married. He writes in a masculine and homely style. His imagery is often more powerful than pleasing, but some of his similes win attention by their beauty. For example:

"Look how the fair one weeps! the conscious tearsStand thick as dewdrops on the bells of flowers."

Among the victims claimed by the grave is

'The long demurring maid,Whose lonely unappropriated sweetsSmiled, like yon knot of cowslips on the cliff,Not to be come at by the willing hand.'

And the death of a good man is pictured in this musical couplet:

'Night dews fall not more gently to the groundNor weary worn out winds expire so soft.'

Cowper, referring to the poets of his century, said that every warbler had Pope's tune by heart. But if they had the tune by heart, many of them did not make it a vehicle for their verse, and among these are poets of the weight and worth of Thomson and Young, of Gray and Collins. Poets of a minor order, too, such as Somerville, Armstrong, Glover, Shenstone, Akenside, and John Dyer, either did not use the heroic distich which Pope crowned with such honour, or used it in their least significant poems.

James Thomson (1700-1748).

Thomson's influence, though less visible than Pope's, was probably as great. It was felt by the poets who loved Nature, and had no turn for satire. To pass to him from Prior, Gay, and Young is to leave the town for thecountry. English poetry owes much to the author ofThe Seasons, who was the first among the poets of his century to bring men back to 'Nature, the Vicar of the Almighty Lord.' He could not, indeed, shake off altogether the fetters of the conventional diction current in his day, and his style is often turgid and verbose. But Thomson had, to use a phrase of his own, 'a fine flame of imagination,' and when brought face to face with Nature he has the inspiration of a poet who discerns the lessons which Nature is ready to teach.

James Thomson was born at Ednam, on the banks of the Tweed, on September 11th, 1700, but his father removed to Jedburgh shortly afterwards, and there the future poet gained his first impression of rural scenes. He began to rhyme in boyhood, but, unlike most young poets, had the good sense to make an annual bonfire of his youthful effusions. At the early age of fifteen he was sent to the university at Edinburgh, his father, who was a Presbyterian minister, wishing that his son should follow the same vocation. But Thomson was not destined to 'wag his head in a pulpit.' He had a friend at this time in David Mallet, a minor poet of more prudence than principle, and when Mallet had the good fortune to gain a tutorship in London, his companion also started for the metropolis in search of money and fame. It was a desperate venture, and the young poet's difficulties were increased by the loss of his letters of introduction. Scotchmen however have always countrymen willing to help them, and Thomson whose pedigree on the mother's side connected him with the famous house of Home, found temporary employment as tutor to a child of Lord Binning who belonged by marriage to the same family. Afterwards he resided with Millan, a bookseller at Charing Cross, and then having finishedWinter(1726), on which he had been at work for sometime, he sold it to the publisher for three guineas. Before long it was read and warmly praised by Aaron Hill, then a man of mark in the world of letters. Sir Spencer Compton, the Speaker, to whom the poem was dedicated, gave the poet twenty guineas for the compliment; Rundle, the Bishop of Derry, and several ladies of rank cheered him with their praise, and Thomson's success was assured. It was the age of patrons, and he practised without shame and without discrimination the art of flattery. Each book ofThe Seasonshad a dedication, and the honour was one for which some kind of payment was expected.Summerappeared in 1727 andSpringin the year following. In 1729 the appearance ofBritanniashowed the popularity of the poet and of his theme, for three editions were sold. It is a distinctly party poem, and contains an attack upon Walpole—whom he had previously praised as the 'most illustrious of patriots'—for submitting to indignities from Spain. The British Lion roars loudly in it, but there is more of fustian in the piece than of true patriotism. 'How dares,' the poet exclaims, 'the proud Iberian rouse to wrath the masters of the main:'

'Who told him that the big incumbent warWould not ere this have rolled his trembling portsIn smoky ruin? and his guilty stores,Won by the ravage of a butchered world,Yet unatoned, sunk in the swallowing deep,Or led the glittering prize into the Thames?'

In February, 1729-30, Thomson's tragedy ofSophonisba, a subject previously chosen by Marston (1606), and by Lee (1676), was acted at Drury Lane. The play was dedicated to the queen, and on the opening night the house was crowded, but the success of the piece was slight. Thomson's genius was not dramatic, and while his characters declaim,they do not act. His next play,Agamemnon(1738), was not lost for want of labour or of friends. Pope appeared in the theatre on the first night, and was greeted with applause. The Prince and Princess of Wales were present on another occasion, but the play did not live long. His third attempt,Edward and Eleanora, was prohibited by the Lord Chamberlain, since it was supposed to praise the Prince of Wales at the expense of the Court. In 1740 theMasque of Alfred, by Thomson and Mallet, was performed.Tancred and Sigismundafollowed in 1745, and this tragedy, in which Garrick played the leading part, had at the time a considerable measure of success. The plot is more interesting than that ofSophonisba, and the characters are more life-like. Despite its effusive sentiment, Garrick's splendid acting would, no doubt, make the tragedy effective on the stage, but it does not add to the literary reputation of the poet.Coriolanus, Thomson's last drama, was not performed upon the stage until the year after his death.

Voltaire, who had met Thomson and liked him—the liking, indeed, seemed to be universal—praised his tragedies for being 'elegantly writ.' 'It may be,' he says, 'that his heroes are neither moving nor busy enough, but taking him all in all, methinks he has the highest claim to the greatest esteem.' The value of Voltaire's criticism of an English dramatist is best appreciated by remembering his ignorant judgment of Shakespeare.

Thomson's laurels were gained in another field of poetry. On the production ofAutumnin 1730,The Seasonsin its complete form was published by subscription in quarto. The four books, as we have already said, appeared at different times,Winterbeing the first in order andAutumnthe latest. The Hymn with which the poem concludes may be compared, and will not greatly suffer in thecomparison, with Adam's morning hymn in the fifth book ofParadise Lost, and with Coleridge'sHymn in the Valley of Chamouni. Like them it is raised, to use the poet's own words, to an 'Almighty Father.' A brief extract shall be given:

'His praise, ye brooks, attune, ye trembling rills;And let me catch it as I muse along.Ye headlong torrents, rapid, and profound;Ye softer floods, that lead the humid mazeAlong the vale; and thou, majestic main,A secret world of wonders in thyself,Sound His stupendous praise, whose greater voiceOr bids you roar, or bids your roarings fall.Soft roll your incense, herbs, and fruits, and flowers,In mingled clouds to Him, whose sun exalts,Whose breath perfumes you, and whose pencil paints.Ye forests bend, ye harvests wave, to Him;Breathe your still song into the reaper's heart,As home he goes beneath the joyous moon.* * * * *Great source of day! best image here belowOf thy Creator, ever pouring wide,From world to world, the vital ocean round,On Nature write with every beam His praise.The thunder rolls: be hushed the prostrate world;While cloud to cloud returns the solemn hymn.Bleat out afresh, ye hills; ye mossy rocksRetain the sound: the broad responsive low,Ye valleys, raise; for the Great Shepherd reigns,And His unsuffering kingdom yet will come.'

* * * * *

Great source of day! best image here belowOf thy Creator, ever pouring wide,From world to world, the vital ocean round,On Nature write with every beam His praise.The thunder rolls: be hushed the prostrate world;While cloud to cloud returns the solemn hymn.Bleat out afresh, ye hills; ye mossy rocksRetain the sound: the broad responsive low,Ye valleys, raise; for the Great Shepherd reigns,And His unsuffering kingdom yet will come.'

Swift complains that theSeasons, being all descriptive, nothing is doing, a defect inseparable from the subject. But the work has a poet's best gift—imagination—and a poet's instinct for apprehending the charm of what is minute in Nature, as well as of what is grand.

Thomson has been called the naturalist's poet, and Hartley Coleridge observes that he is 'a perfect reservoirof natural images.' In his account of what he had learnt only by report he depends sometimes on the ignorant traditions of the country people; but in describing what he observes with the bodily eye, and with the eye of the mind, he is faithful to what he sees, and to what he perceives. No Dutch painter can be more exact and accurate than Thomson in the delineation of familiar scenes, and of animal life. In illustration of this gift, which Cowper shares with him, a scene, not to be surpassed for truthfulness of description, shall be quoted fromWinter:

'Through the hushed air the whitening shower descends,At first thin-wavering; till at last the flakesFall broad and wide and fast, dimming the dayWith a continual flow. The cherished fieldsPut on their winter robe of purest white.'Tis brightness all; save where the new snow meltsAlong the mazy current. Low the woodsBow their hoar head; and ere the languid sun,Faint from the west, emits his evening ray,Earth's universal face, deep-hid and chill,Is one wild dazzling waste, that buries wideThe works of man. Drooping, the labourer-oxStands covered o'er with snow, and then demandsThe fruit of all his toil. The fowls of heaven,Tamed by the cruel season, crowd aroundThe winnowing store, and claim the little boonWhich Providence assigns them. One alone,The redbreast, sacred to the household gods,Wisely regardful of th' embroiling sky,In joyless fields and thorny thickets, leavesHis shivering mates, and pays to trusted manHis annual visit. Half afraid, he firstAgainst the window beats; then brisk, alightsOn the warm hearth; then, hopping o'er the floor,Eyes all the smiling family askance,And pecks, and starts, and wonders where he is—Till more familiar grown, the table-crumbsAttract his slender feet. The foodless wildsPour forth their brown inhabitants. The hare,Though timorous of heart and hard besetBy death in various forms, dark snares, and dogs,And more unpitying men, the garden seeksUrged on by fearless want. The bleating kindEye the bleak heaven, and next the glistening earth,With looks of dumb despair; then, sad-dispersedDig for the withered herb through heaps of snow.'

Thomson loves also to paint the landscape on a broad scale, and though his diction is sometimes too florid, he generally satisfies the imagination, as, for instance, in the splendid description inSummerof a sand-storm in the desert.

'Breathed hotFrom all the boundless furnace of the sky,And the wide, glittering waste of burning sand,A suffocating wind the pilgrim smitesWith instant death. Patient of thirst and toil,Son of the desert! even the camel feels,Shot through his withered heart, the fiery blast.Or from the black-red ether, bursting broad,Sallies the sudden whirlwind. Straight the sands,Commoved around, in gathering eddies play;Nearer and nearer still they darkening come;Till with the general all-involving stormSwept up, the whole continuous wilds arise;And by their noonday fount dejected thrown,Or sunk at night in sad disastrous sleep,Beneath descending hills, the caravanIs buried deep. In Cairo's crowded streetsThe impatient merchant, wondering, waits in vain,And Mecca saddens at the long delay.'

TheSeasonswas at one time, and for many years the most popular volume of poetry in the country. It was to be found in every cottage, and passages from the poem were familiar to every school-boy. The appreciation ofthe work was more affectionate than critical, and Thomson's faults were sometimes mistaken for beauties; but the popularity of theSeasonswas a healthy sign, and the poem, a forerunner of Cowper'sTask, brought into vigorous life, feelings and sympathies that had been long dormant.

Pope, who is twice mentioned in the poem, took a great interest in its progress through the press. Thomson consulted him frequently, and accepted many of his suggestions, while apparently retaining at all times an independent judgment. To the familiar episode of 'the lovely young Lavinia' the following graceful passage is said, but on very doubtful authority to have been added by Pope.[30]The first line, given for the sake of the context, is from Thomson's pen:

'Thoughtless of beauty, she was Beauty's self,Recluse amid the close-embowering woods;As in the hollow breast of Apennine,Beneath the shelter of encircling hills,A myrtle rises, far from human eye,And breathes its balmy fragrance o'er the wild;So flourished, blooming and unseen by all,The sweet Lavinia; till, at length, compelledBy strong necessity's supreme commandWith smiling patience in her looks she wentTo glean Palemon's fields.'

Thomson had now gained the highest mark of his fame, and, like Pope, had won it in a few years. Nearly two years of foreign travel followed, the poet having obtainedthe post of governor to a son of the Solicitor-General. The fruit of this tour was a long poem in blank verse onLiberty, which probably gave him infinite labour, but his ascent upon this occasion of what he calls 'the barren, but delightful mountain of Parnassus,' was labour lost. It is enough to say ofLiberty, that it contains more than three thousand lines of unreadable blank verse. Sinecures were the rewards of genius in Thomson's day, and he was made Secretary of Briefs in the Court of Chancery. He took a cottage at Richmond, within an easy walk of Pope, and the two poets met often and lived amicably.

Thomson did not enjoy his official fortune long, for his patron died, and though he might have kept his post had he applied to the Lord Chancellor, in whose gift it was, he appears to have been too lazy to do so. His friend Lyttelton in this emergency introduced him to the Prince of Wales, who, on learning that his affairs 'were in a more poetical posture than formerly,' gave him a pension of £100 a year. There was no certainty in a gift of this nature, and in about ten years it was withdrawn.

The Castle of Indolence(1748) was the latest labour of Thomson's life, and in the judgment of many critics takes precedence ofThe Seasonsin poetical merit. This verdict may be questioned, but the poem, written in the Spenserian stanza, has a soothing beauty and an enchanting felicity of expression which show the poet's genius in a new light. It is unlike any poetry of that age, and when compared withThe Seasons, the verse, as Wordsworth justly says, 'is more harmonious and the diction more pure.' All the imagery of the poem is adopted to the vague and sleepy action of the characters represented in it. It is a veritable poet's dream, which carries the reader in its earliest stanzas into 'a pleasing land of drowsy-head:'

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