Seasons of the Year, intensify to our imagination the mental state to which they are for the moment felt to be analogous?— "Now is the winter of our discontent Made glorious summer by the sun of York!" That will do. The feeling he wished to inspire, is inspired; and the further analogical images which follow add nothing to our feeling, though they show the strength and depth of his into whose lips they are put. A bungler would have bored us with ever so many ramifications of the same idea, on one of which, in our weariness, we might have wished him hanged by the neck till he was dead. We are an Old Man, and though single not singular; yet, without vanity, we think ourselves entitled to say, that we are no more like Winter, in particular, than we are like Spring, Summer, or Autumn. The truth is, that we are much less like any one of the Seasons, than we are like the whole Set. Is not Spring sharp? So are we. Is not Spring snappish? So are we. Is not Spring boisterous? So are we. Is not Spring "beautiful exceedingly?" So are we. Is not Spring capricious? So are we. Is not Spring, at times, the gladdest, gayest, gentlest, mildest, meekest, modestest, softest, sweetest, and sunniest of all God's creatures that steal along the face of the earth? So are we. So much for our similitude-a staring and striking one-to Spring. But were you to stop there, what an inadequate idea would you have of our character! For only ask your senses, and they will tell you that we are much liker Summer. Is not Summer often infernally hot? So are we. Is not Summer sometimes cool as its own cucumbers? So are Does not Summer love the shade? So do we. Is not Summer, nevertheless, somewhat "too much i' the sun?" So are we. Is not Summer famous for its thunder and lightning? So are we. Is not Summer, when he chooses, still, silent, and serene as a sleeping seraph? And so too-when Christopher chooses are not we? Though, with keen remorse we confess it, that, when suddenly wakened, we are too often more like a fury or a fiend—and that completes the likeness; for all who know a Scottish Summer, with one voice exclaim-" So is he!" But our portrait is but half-drawn; you know but a moiety of our character. Is Autumn jovial?—ask Thomson -so are we. Is Autumn melancholy ?-ask Alison and Gil we. So are we. lespie so are we. Is Autumn bright ?-ask the woods and groves-so are we. Is Autumn rich ?—ask the whole world— Does Autumn rejoice in the yellow grain and the golden vintage, that, stored up in his great Magazine of Nature, are lavishly thence dispensed to all that hunger, and quench the thirst of the nations? So do we. After that, no one can be so pur-and-bat-blind as not see that North is, in very truth, Autumn's gracious self, rather than his Likeness or Eidolon. But So do we. So are we. "Lo, Winter comes to rule th' inverted year!” “Sullen and sad, with all his rising train— The great author of the “ Seasons Winter and his train "Exalt the soul to solemn thought, And heavenly musing!" says, that So do we. And, "lest aught less great should stamp us mortal," here we conclude the comparison, dashed off in few lines by the hand of a great master, and ask, Is not North, Winter? Thus, listener after our own heart! thou feelest that we are imaged aright in all our attributes neither by Spring, nor Summer, nor Autumn, nor Winter; but that the character of Christopher is shadowed forth and reflected by the Entire Year. A FEW WORDS ON THOMSON. POETRY, one might imagine, must be full of Snow-scenes. If so, they have almost all dissolved-melted away from our memory-as the transiencies in nature do which they coldly pictured. Thomson's "Winter," of course, we do not include in our obliviousness-and from Cowper's "Task" we might quote many a most picturesque Snow-piece. But have frost and snow been done full justice to by them or any other of our poets? They have been well spoken of by two-Southey and Coleridge of whose most poetical compositions respectively, "Thalaba" and the "Ancient Mariner," in some future volume we may dissert. Thomson's genius does not so often delight us by exquisite minute touches in the description of nature as that of Cowper. It loves to paint on a great scale, and to dash objects off sweepingly by bold strokes-such, indeed, as have almost always distinguished the mighty masters of the lyre and the rainbow. Cowper sets nature before your eyesThomson before your imagination. Which do you prefer? Both. Be assured that both poets had pored night and day upon her—in all her aspects—and that she had revealed herself fully to both. But they, in their religion, elected different modes of worship-and both were worthy of the mighty mother. In one mood of mind we love Cowper best, in another Thomson. Sometimes the Seasons are almost a Task-and sometimes the Task is out of Season. There is delightful distinctness in all the pictures of the Bard of Olney-glorious gloom or glimmer in most of those of the Bard of Ednam. Cowper paints trees-Thomson woods. Thomson paints, in a few wondrous lines, rivers from source to sea, like the mighty Burrampooter-Cowper, in many no very wondrous lines, brightens up one bend of a stream, or awakens our fancy to the murmur of some single waterfall. But a truce to anti thesis-a deceptive style of criticism-and see how Thomson sings of Snow. Why, in the following lines, as well as Christopher North in his Soliloquy on the Seasons "The cherish'd fields Put on their winter-robe of purest white. 'Tis brightness all; save where the new snow melts Along the mazy current." Nothing can be more vivid. 'Tis of the nature of an ocular spectrum. Here is a touch like one of Cowper's. Note the beauty of the epithet "brown," where all that is motionless is white "The foodless wilds Pour forth their brown inhabitants." That one word proves the poet. Does it not? The entire description from which these two sentences are selected by memory—a critic you may always trust to—is admirable; except in one or two places where Thomson seems to have striven to be strongly pathetic, and where he seems to us to have overshot his mark, and to have ceased to be perfectly natural. 66 Thus 66 Drooping, the ox Stands cover'd o'er with snow, and then demands The fruit of all his toil." The image of the ox is as good as possible. We see him, and could paint him in oils. But, to our mind, the notion of his demanding the fruit of all his toils "-to which we freely acknowledge the worthy animal was well entitled-sounds, as it is here expressed, rather fantastical. Call it doubtful— for Jemmy was never utterly in the wrong in any sentiment. Again "The bleating kind Eye the bleak heaven, and next the glistening earth, The second line is perfect; but the Ettrick Shepherd agreed with us-one night at Ambrose's-that the third was not quite right. Sheep, he agreed with us, do not deliver themselves up to despair under any circumstances; and here Thomson transferred what would have been his own feeling in a corresponding condition, to animals who dreadlessly follow their instincts. Thomson redeems himself in what immediately succeeds Then, sad dispersed, Dig for the wither'd herb through heaps of snow." For, as they disperse, they do look very sad—and no doubt are so; but had they been in despair, they would not so readily, and constantly, and uniformly, and successfully, have taken to the digging, but whole flocks had perished. You will not, we are confident, be angry with us for quoting a few lines that occur soon after, and which are a noble example of the sweeping style of description which, we said above, characterises the genius of this sublime poet : "From the bellowing east, In this dire season, oft the whirlwind's wing Tipp'd with a wreath high-curling in the sky." Well might the Bard, with such a snow-storm in his imagination, when telling the shepherds to be kind to their helpless charge, addressed them in language which, in an ordinary mood, would have been bombast. "Shepherds," says he, "baffle the raging year!" How? Why merely by filling their with food. But the whirlwind was uppens "Far off its coming groan'd," and the poet was inspired. Had he not been so, he had not cried, "Baffle the raging year;" and if you be not so, you will think it a most absurd expression. Did you ever see water beginning to change itself into ice? Yes. Then try to describe the sight. Success in that trial will prove you a poet. People do not prove themselves poets only by writing long poems. A line-two words-may show that they are the Muse's sons. How exquisitely does Burns. picture to our eyes moonlight water undergoing an ice-change! "The chilly frost beneath the silver beam, Crept, gently crusting o'er the glittering stream!" |