life." There is nothing in Thomson that requires any painful exercise of the faculties, that calls for any of the higher exertions of the imagination, or that soars beyond the experience of the humblest intellect. His style is indeed learned and ornate. But Burke has shown that words may the most powerfully affect the mind when their meaning is indefinite. Where Thomson's language is the most inflated, his expressions have generally a specious grandeur of meaning derived from the felicity with which they are selected. His genius is in this respect conspicuous: like the evening sun, which imparts pomp and brightness to the unsubstantial clouds with which it is enveloped, it changes the very character of the faults which it appropriates.

The greatest defect in the SEASONS respects the cast of its moral sentiments; but in this respect it is not the less adapted to the more numerous class of the readers of poetry. The Religion of the Seasons, is of that general kind which Nature's self might teach to those who had no knowledge of the God of Revelation. It is a lofty and complacent sentiment, which plays upon the feelings like the ineffable power of solemn harmony, but has no reference to the quality of our belief, to the dispositions of the heart, or to the habitual tendency of the character; still less does it involve a devotional recognition of the revealed character of the Divine Being. But on this very account" the Seasons" was adapted to please at the time that Pope ruled the republic of taste,

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and to the same cause the poem is still indebted for at least some of its admirers.

The love of the Poet of the Seasons, is the "Passion of the Groves." The author, it is said, was susceptible of no higher sentiment. There is a prevailing vulgarity of feeling on this subject, which is only concealed by the splendour of the diction. The Poet's ideas of love are such as a schoolboy would naturally derive from the perusal of the Pantheon and Ovid's Metamorphoses. We know we shall offend common prejudice, in pronouncing the tale of Musidora, which has furnished so many artists with a subject, and the publisher of so many editions of Thomson with a captivating embellishment, to be as vulgarly conceived, and to be as coarse in sentiment, though not in expression, as a Dutch painting. But still Thomson is chastity and purity itself in comparison with his contemporaries. There is always an air of elegance, and even of refinement, thrown over his warmest pictures. The Seasons, though they may administer fuel to an excited imagination, contain scarcely an expression that would raise the blush of modesty. This decorum of expression extends also in general to his ideas; and he is not perhaps to be blamed if these do not rise, in point of elevation of sentiment, above the level of his experience.

We are indebted, however, to Thomson for one passage on domestic happiness, at the conclusion of bis "Spring," which does high credit to his feelings

as a man and as a poet. Thomson never loved; but he was not an unamiable character. He was an affectionate brother: his benevolence, though it partook of the indolence of his character, was fervid, and by his friends, we are told, he was very tenderly and warmly beloved.

It is unnecessary to dwell on the beauties or merits of his great poem. Johnson has remarked, that "his mode of thinking and of expressing his thoughts is original." This is no small praise. His descriptions, varying and rising with his subject, are at times magnificent; at other times they display all the minute accuracy only to be obtained by familiar observation. No one but an angler could have described with such felicitous correctness the fly-fisher's sport in the first Season. There breathes throughout his poem the enthusiasm of the poet of Nature; and if we cannot allow that the reader of the Seasons wonders that he never saw before what Thomson shows him, unless it be a reader unaccustomed to hold converse with the beautiful in the material world, yet he derives a high and more genuine gratification, in finding the scenes he loves described so well.

James Thomson was born at Ednam, in the shire of Roxburgh, in 1700. Winter was published in 1726; Summer and Spring in the following years; and Autumn, with his collected works, in 1730. The incidents of his life consisted of the patronage he suc

ceeded in obtaining, and the disappointments he had to encounter. His mother lived to see her son rising into eminence. Through the friendship of Lord Lyttelton, he was established in ease, if not in affluence, when taking cold on the water between London and Kew, he caught a disorder, which, with some careless exasperation, terminated fatally, August 27, 1748. A tablet has been recently placed on the wall of Richmond church, by the exertions of Mr. Park, in conjunction with Lord Buchan, to denote the place of his interment.

TO THE SHADE OF THOMSON,

ON CROWNING HIS BUST WITH BAYS.

WHILE Virgin Spring, by Eden's flood,
Unfolds her tender mantle green,

Or pranks the sod in frolic mood,
Or tunes Eolian strains between:

While Summer with a matron grace
Retreats to Dryburgh's cooling shade,

Yet oft, delighted, stops to trace
The progress of the spiky blade:

While Autumn, benefactor kind,
By Tweed erects his aged head,
And sees, with self-approving mind,
Each creature on his bounty fed

While maniac Winter rages o'er

The hills whence classic Yarrow flows, Rousing the turbid torrent's roar,

Or sweeping, wild, a waste of snows:

So long, sweet poet of the year!

Shall bloom that wreath thou well hast won

While Scotia, with exulting tear,

Proclaims that THOMSON Was her son.

BURNS.