promise. It is contained in the 100 transferred lines to which reference has already been made. The necessity for their transference shows that the scheme of a series of poems on the seasons had not yet occurred to him when, in the autumn of 1725, he was engaged upon Winter. The lines have autumn, or departing summer', for their theme. They were appropriately incorporated with the poem on Autumn when the turn of autumn came to be treated in the afterthought of The Seasons. intention of describing the various appearances of nature' in the other seasons was first announced in the prose preface which he wrote for the second edition of Winter: he had done so well with the winter theme that, doubtless, friends wishing to be complimentary hoped he would favour them with poems on the other seasons too. But till he took Autumn in hand-and Autumn was taken last-he did not seek to withdraw the lines from Winter. They served as an approach to the main theme. Winter sullen and sad, and all his rising train of vapours, and clouds, and storms-these are his theme. At the same time he cannot choose but consecrate to 'Autumn' 'one pitying line'-for so it read when the poem was still on the anvil. But in the published text of March, 1726, it runs

Thee, too, inspirer of the toiling swain,

Fair Autumn, yellow-robed, I'll sing of thee,
Of thy last tempered days and sunny calms,
When all the golden hours are on the wing.

And so he does, fulfilling the promise there and then, and having at the moment of so writing no separate ulterior poem in view. Commencing with the hovering hornet poised threateningly in the genial blaze of September, he sings on through

falling leaves and sobbing winds and withering flowers, for nearly 100 lines, till he arrives at his 'theme in view '

For see where Winter comes himself, confessed,

Striding the gloomy blast!

It was not till after March, 1726, when his first venture in the poetical arena was beginning to win popular favour, that the joy of successful authorship inspired him with the idea of 'rounding the revolving year' in separate flights on the other seasons; but before that, in the shadow of obscurity, bereavement, and comparative poverty, he wrote of himself as 'one whom the gay season suited not, and who shunned the summer's glare'. To him, as he was then situated, they were uncongenial both as seasons and as subjects for poetry. His personal mood when he chose winter was very much the mood of Burns when he sang, dolefully enough, more than half a century later—

Come, Winter, with thine angry howl,
And, raging, bend the naked tree;
Thy gloom will soothe my cheerless soul
When Nature all is sad like me!

Thomson's great merit lies in his restoration of nature to the domain of poetry from which it had been banished by Pope and his school. He dared to dispute, and he disproved by his own practice and the astonishing success which at once accompanied it, the dictum of Pope that in matters poetic 'the proper study of mankind is man'. His wonderful observing power and his enthusiasm for his subject went far to make his treatment of nature a success. He was sincerely and healthily enamoured of nature. The wild romantic country was his delight. 'I know

no subject more elevating, more amusing, more ready to awake the poetical enthusiasm, the philosophical reflection, and the moral sentiment than the works of nature. Where can we meet with such variety, such beauty, such magnificence-all that enlarges and transports the soul? . . . But there is no thinking of these things without breaking out into poetry.' Thus he wrote, with much more of the same tenor, in his prose preface to the second edition of Winter; from which it appears that, in his view of the question, nature was not only a fit and proper subject for direct poetical treatment, but the greatest and grandest of all subjects. With the whole domain of nature before him he chose winter as the particular subject of his first essay'. It is by no means the most inviting of the seasons. The aspect of nature in winter is in general a forbidding aspect. Yet under his guidance we may discover the poetry of winter. Let us look where he points, and listen as he directs, and some share of his own enthusiasm for nature in all her shows and forms' will enter our soul like the dawning of a new sense. His first great scene is a rainstorm. The skies are foul with mingled mist and rain, the plain lies a brown deluge ; hill-tops and woods are dimly seen in the dreary landscape; the cattle droop in the sodden fields, the poultry crowd motionless and dripping in corners of the farmyard. It is a world of squalor and wretchedness. Yet there is the bright contrast of the ploughman rejoicing by the red fire of his cottage hearth, talking and laughing, and reckless of the storm that rattles on his humble roof. Meanwhile streams swell to rivers, and rivers rise in spate; the current carries every obstacle before it-stacks and bridges and mills: nothing can stop its

progress; dams are burst, rocks are surmounted, glens and gullies are choked with the mad, plunging water.

It boils, and wheels, and foams, and thunders through!

A recent critic has limited Thomson's love of nature to nature in her gentle and even her homely moods. Thomson's description of the river in flood is one of many passages in his poetry that contradict the criticism. The description of the windstorm is another. A third is the poetic realization of the Deluge, ending with the magnificent line

A shoreless ocean tumbles round the globe.

Applied to Cowper or Goldsmith, the criticism would fit, but it shows a strange misconception of the genius of Thomson.

His presentation of a snowstorm is Thomson's highest achievement in natural description. The approach is well led up to. As we read we recall what we have often seen. The whole description is a splendid specimen of Thomson's peculiar art in the realization of a scene. It is rather a narrative of successive events set before us with dramatic vividness. The air grows colder, the sky saddens, there is a preternatural hush, and then the first flakes make their miraculous appearance, thinwavering at first, but by and by falling broad and wide and fast, dimming the day. It is, as if by magical transformation, a world of purity and peace. It is now, by way of episode, that we have the charming vignette of the redbreast at the parlour window. It is a perfect picture of its kind, unmatched for clearness and delicate accuracy of detail. We hear the soft beat of the breast on the frosted pane; we

see the slender feet on the warm floor, and the eye looking askance with mingled boldness and shyness at the smiling and amused children. But we are soon summoned away to the sheep-walks on the Cheviots. All winter is driving along the darkened air. The snow is falling, and drifting. It is the drifting that the shepherd fears. Its effect is not only to hide but to alter the landmarks. Scenes familiar become foreign; the landscape wears a strange look; valleys are exalted, and rough places are made plain. At last the shepherd is completely bewildered, and he stands disastered in the midst of drift and snowfall. The whole moor seems to be revolving around him, as gusts of wind lift the surface-snow like a blanket and whirl it around. The first realization of his danger-his destiny !-is finely suggested. Few scenes are more pathetic than Thomson's lost shepherd perishing in the snow. The pathos is heightened by that little crowd of curly heads at the cottage door or window, not many furlongs distant, where

his little children, peeping out

Into the mingling storm, demand their sire
With tears of artless innocence. Alas!

Nor wife nor children more shall he behold,
Nor friends, nor sacred home.

Joyous winter days of clear frost are described with no less effective touches, among which one remembers the swain on the frozen upland stepping on solid crystal, and looking down curiously into the sullen deeps of the river. But enough has been said. or suggested to show Thomson's fidelity to nature, and the art with which he discloses the poetry of nature. A love for nature is synonymous with a love for Thomson.