This various instinct in brutes ascribed to the continual and unbounded energy of Divine Providence.

Influence of the Spring on man, inspiring a universal benevolence, the love of mankind, and of nature.

Accounted for from that general harmony which then attunes the world.

Effects of the Spring in woman, with a caution to the fair sex. Hence a dissuasive from the feverish, extravagant, and unchastised passion of love, in an account of its false raptures, pangs, and jealousies.

The whole concludes with the happiness of a pure mutual love, founded on friendship, conducted with honour, and confirmed by children.

LINE 5. The Countess of Hertford was a woman of some poetical taste, as shown by her own verses and by her patronage of poets. Horace Walpole accredited her with ' as much taste for the writings of others as modesty about her own '-though Johnson speaks rather contemptuously of her 'poetical operations'. It was her habit, he says, 'to invite every summer some poet into the country to hear her verses and assist her studies;' and he goes on to relate that when the invitation came to Thomson, in 1727, the poet disappointed her expectations by finding more delight in carousing with the Earl than in poetizing with the Countess, and therefore never received another invitation. It is extremely probable, however, that Thomson wrote part of Spring at Marlborough Castle, in Wiltshire, the seat of the Earl of Hertford; and it is certain that as a poet he retained the respect and regard of the Countess as long as he lived. In 1748 we find her generously recommending to one of her friends the poem of that year- Mr. Thomson's Castle of Indolence.' She died, Duchess of Somerset, in 1754.

108. Augusta ; London-so designated from the time of Constantine, early in the fourth century.

271. Here followed, in all editions from the first (in 1728) to that of 1738, the following passage of 28 11. (withdrawn in 1744) :— This to the Poets gave the Golden Age; When, as they sung in allegoric phrase, The sailor-pine had not the nations yet

In commerce mixed; for every country teemed
With every thing. Spontaneous harvests waved
Still in a sea of yellow plenty round.
The forest was the vineyard, where, untaught
To climb, unpruned and wild, the juicy grape

Burst into floods of wine. The knotted oak

Shook from his boughs the long, transparent streams
Of honey, creeping through the matted grass.
The uncultivated thorn a ruddy shower

Of fruitage shed on such as sat below

In blooming ease and from brown labour free, Save what the copious gathering grateful gave. The rivers foamed with nectar; or diffuse, Silent and soft, the milky maze devolved. Nor had the spongy full-expanded fleece Yet drunk the Tyrian dye. The stately ram Shone through the mead in native purple clad, Or milder saffron; and the dancing lamb The vivid crimson to the sun disclosed. Nothing had power to hurt; the savage soul, Yet untransfused into the tyger's heart, Burned not his bowels, nor his gamesome paw Drove on the fleecy partners of his play: While from the flowery brake the serpent rolled His fairer spires, and played his pointless tongue. In the second of these lines, for allegoric', which is given in the earlier editions (beginning in 1728), the editions 1730-38 substitute'elevated '.

340. Ravine.' This form of 'rapine' (a Middle English form) occurs in all editions, from 1728 to 1746.

483-7. These lines were introduced into the poem in 1744. Amanda was a Miss Elizabeth Young, one of the daughters of Captain Gilbert Young, a gentleman belonging to Dumfriesshire. The sincerity and constancy of Thomson's affection for Miss Young, from 1736 to 1744, are evidenced in various ways-by contemporary report, his own correspondence and verse, and certain lyrics which appear among his miscellaneous poems. Mrs. Young 'constantly opposed his pretensions to her daughter', says Ramsay of Ochtertyre, saying to her one day "What! would you marry Thomson? He will make ballads and you will sing them "-from which one may infer that the poet was not in a pecuniary position to maintain a wife. Amanda became the wife of Admiral Campbell. We have some glimpse of her appearance as she showed to her lover in these lines of his :

O thou, whose tender, serious eyes
Expressive speak the mind I love,

The gentle azure of the skies,

The pensive shadows of the grove;

as well as in the passage in Spring 1. 483.

:

755-65. The original text which remained in the earlier editions (1728-38) was as follows:

High from the summit of a craggy cliff,

Hung o'er the green sea grudging at its base,
The royal eagle draws his young, resolved
To try them at the sun. Strong-pounced, and bright
As burnished day, they up the blue sky wind,
Leaving dull sight below, and with fixed gaze
Drink in their native noon: the father-king

Claps his glad pinions, and approves the birth.

The alteration was made for edition 1744.

827-9. This short passage is a condensation of the original text of seven lines which stood as follows from 1728 to 1738:

How the red lioness, her whelps forgot

Amid the thoughtless fury of her heart;

The lank rapacious wolf; the unshapely bear;
The spotted tyger, fellest of the fell;

And all the terrors of the Libyan (Lybian) swain, By this new flame their native wrath sublimed, Roam the surrounding waste in fiercer bands, &c. 861-6. Instead of these six lines the earlier editions (1728-38) give the following:

His grandeur in the heavens: the sun and moon,
Whether that fires the day, or, falling, this

Pours out a lucid softness o'er the night,

Are but a beam from him. The glittering stars,
By the deep ear of meditation heard,

Still in their midnight watches sing of him.

He nods a calm. The tempest blows his wrath,
Roots up the forest, and o'erturns the main.
The thunder is his voice, and the red flash
His speedy sword of justice. At his touch
The mountains flame. He takes the solid earth
And rocks the nations. Nor in these alone,
In every common instance God is seen;
And to the man, who casts his mental eye
Abroad, unnoticed wonders rise. But chief
In thee, boon Spring, and in thy softer scenes
The smiling God appears; while water, earth,
And air attest his bounty, which instils

Into the brutes this temporary thought, &c. (two lines). 903. This line was followed in the original text (1728-38) by the following passage of twelve lines, dropped in 1744:

'Tis harmony, that world-attuning power
By which all beings are adjusted, each
To all around, impelling and impelled
In endless circulation, that inspires

This universal smile. Thus the glad skies,

The wide-rejoicing earth, the woods, the streams
With every life they hold, down to the flower

That paints the lowly vale, or insect-wing

Waved o'er the shepherd's slumber, touch the mind,
To nature tuned, with a light-flying hand
Invisible, quick-urging through the nerves
The glittering spirits in a flood of day.

In the first of these lines the first and second editions (1728 and 1729 respectively) give 'world-embracing' for 'worldattuning 'the latter being the reading from 1730 to 1738.

906. George, eldest son of Sir Thomas Lyttelton, of Hagley Park, in Worcestershire. Born in 1709, died 1773. He wrote

Dialogues of the Dead, &c. As a politician he opposed the policy of Walpole, and in 1744 became one of the lords of the Treasury. Previously he had been secretary to the Prince of Wales. In 1755 he was Chancellor of the Exchequer, and was raised to the peerage in 1757. Thomson's first visit to Hagley Park was in 1743. Lucinda,' 1. 936, refers to Mrs. Lyttelton (Lucy Fortescue), whose death was lamented by her husband in a monody, the tenderest and most touching of his verses. He was a true friend to Thomson in many ways. In the preparation of a new edition of The Seasons for 1744 the poet was indebted to him for some suggestions.

991-1008. The original text (editions 1728, 1729) was as follows:

Effusing heaven; and listens ardent still
To the small voice, where harmony and wit,
A modest, melting, mingled sweetness flow.
No sooner is the fair idea formed,
And contemplation fixes on the theme,
Than from his own creation wild he flies,
Sick of a shadow. Absence comes a pace,
And shoots his every pang into his breast.
'Tis nought, &c.

SUMMER

[Inscribed to the Right Honourable Mr. Dodington.

First published in 1727 (1,146 11.); last edition in author's lifetime published in 1746 (1,805 ll.).]

THE ARGUMENT

THE subject proposed. Invocation. Address to Mr. Dodington. An introductory reflection on the motion of the heavenly bodies; whence the succession of the Seasons. As the face of nature in this season is almost uniform, the progress of the poem is a description of a Summer's day. The dawn. Sun-rising. Hymn to the sun. Forenoon. Summer insects described. Hay-making. Sheep-shearing. Noonday. A woodland retreat. Group of herds and flocks. A solemn grove: how it affects a contemplative mind. A cataract, and rude scene. View of Summer in the torrid zone. Storm of thunder and lightning. A tale. The storm over. A serene afternoon. Bathing. Hour of walking. Transition to the prospect of a rich, well-cultivated country; which introduces a panegyric on Great Britain. Sunset. Evening. Night. Summer meteors. A comet. The whole concluding with the praise of philosophy.*

*The above is substantially the Argument of the poem in the first collected edition of The Seasons (1730). The notes in italics were added in 1744-all except 'A comet', which was added in 1746. In the Argument for 1730, for 'Sun-rising', appears A view of the sun rising'; for 'Hay-making', appears Rural Prospects'; for 'View of Summer in the Torrid Zone', appears A Digression on Foreign Summers'; and the note 'Rural Prospects', of 1730, is withdrawn in 1744, as is also the note The Morning '—superseded by The Dawn'. For Group of herds and flocks', the 1730 edition gives ‘A Group of Flocks and Herds'. The order in which the notes of the Argument come in 1730 differs considerably from the order in which they are presented above-that is, from their order in edd. 1744 and 1746.

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