"For whom the merry bells had rung; I ween, The in-door quiet and cushioned ease, where " all was one full-swelling bed;" the out-of-door stillness, broken only by "the stock-dove's plaint amid the forest deep, "That drowsy rustled to the sighing gale”— are in the most perfect and delightful keeping. But still there are no passages in this exquisite little production of sportive ease and fancy, equal to the best of those in the Seasons. Warton, in his Essay on Pope, was the first to point out and do justice to some of these; for instance, to the description of the effects of the contagion among our ships at Carthagena-" of the frequent corse heard nightly plunged amid the sullen waves," and to the description of the pilgrims lost in the deserts of Arabia. This last passage, profound and striking as it is, is not free from those faults of style which I have already noticed. Breath'd hot From all the boundless furnace of the sky, With instant death. Patient of thirst and toil, Is buried deep. In Cairo's crowded streets, Th' impatient merchant, wond'ring, waits in vain; And Mecca saddens at the long delay." There are other passages of equal beauty with these; such as that of the hunted stag, followed by "the inhuman rout," That from the shady depth The whole of the description of the frozen zone, in the Winter, is perhaps even finer and more thoroughly felt, as being done from early associations, than that of the torrid zone in his Summer. Any thing more beautiful than the following account of the Siberian exiles is, I think, hardly to be found in the whole range of poetry. "There through the prison of unbounded wilds, And cheerless towns far distant, never bless'd, The feeling of loneliness, of distance, of lingering, slow-revolving years of pining expectation, of desolation within and without the heart, was never more finely expressed than it is here. The account which follows of the employments of the Polar night—of the journeys of the natives by moonlight, drawn by rein-deer, and of the return of spring in Lapland— "Where pure Niemi's fairy mountains rise, is equally picturesque and striking in a different way. The traveller lost in the snow, is a wellknown and admirable dramatic episode. I prefer, however, giving one example of our author's skill in painting common domestic scenery, as it will bear a more immediate comparison with the style of some later writers on such subjects. It is of little consequence what passage we take. The following description of the first setting in of winter is, perhaps, as pleasing as any. Through the hush'd air the whitening shower descends, Fall broad and wide, and fast, dimming the day Put on their winter-robe of purest white: 'Tis brightness all, save where the new snow melts Bow their hoar head; and ere the languid Sun, N His shivering mates, and pays to trusted man Against the window beats; then, brisk, alights And pecks, and starts, and wonders where he is: The hare, By death in various forms, dark snares and dogs, It is thus that Thomson always gives a moral sense to nature. Thomson's blank verse is not harsh, or utterly untuneable; but it is heavy and monotonous; it seems always labouring up-hill. The selections which have been made from his works in Enfield's Speaker, and other books of extracts, do not convey the most favourable idea of his genius or taste; such as Palemon and Lavinia, Damon and Musidora, Celadon and Amelia. Those parts of any author which are most liable to be stitched in worsted, and framed and glazed, are not by any |