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[In consecrated earth,

And on the holy hearth,

The lars and lemurs moan with midnight plaint;
In urns and altars round,

A drear and dying sound

Affrights the flamens at their service quaint!

Methinks we behold the priests interrupted in the middle of the secret ceremonies they were performing, "in their temples dim," gazing with ghastly eyes on each other, and terrified, and wondering from whence these aërial voices. should proceed! I have dwelt chiefly on this ode as much less celebrated than L'Allegro and Il Penseroso, which are now universally known; but which, by a strange fatality, lay in a sort of obscurity, the private enjoyment of a few curious readers, till they were set to admirable music by Mr. Handel. And, indeed, this volume of Milton's Miscellaneous Poems has not till very lately met with suitable regard. Shall I offend any rational admirer of POPE, by remarking, that these juvenile descriptive poems of Milton, as well as his Latin Elegies, are of a strain far more exalted than any the former author can boast? Let me add, at the same time, what justice obliges me to add, that they

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are far more incorrect. For in the very ode before us, occur one or two passages, that are puerile and affected to a degree not to be paralleled in the purer, but less elevated, compositions of POPE. The season being winter when Jesus was born, Milton says,

Nature, in awe to HIM,*
Had dofft her gawdy trim.

And afterwards observes, in a very epigrammatic and forced thought, unsuitable to the dignity of the subject, and of the rest of the ode, that," she wooed the air, to hide her guilty front with innocent snow,'

And on her naked shame,+

Pollute with sinful blame,

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The saintly veil of maiden white to throw,

Confounded that her Maker's eyes

Should look so near upon her foul deformities.

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*This conceit, with the rest, however, is more excusable, if we recollect how great a reader, especially at this time, "Milton was of the Italian Poets. It is certain that Milton, in

the beginning of the ode, had the third sonnet of Petrarch strong in his fancy.

Era 'l giorno, ch' al sol si scoloraro

Per la pietà del suo fattore i rai;

Quand', &c.

+ Milton's Miscellaneous Poems, vol. ii.

page 19.

"It is enough," in the words of Voltaire, "to think one perceives some errors in this great genius; and it is a sort of consolation to a mind so bounded and limited as mine, to be persuaded, that the greatest men are sometimes deceived like the vulgar."

It would be unpardonable to conclude these remarks on descriptive poesy, without taking notice of the SEASONS of Thomson, who had peculiar and powerful talents for this species of composition. Let the reader, therefore, par don a digression, if such it be, on his merits and character.

Thomson was blessed with a strong and copious fancy; he hath enriched poetry with a variety of new and original images, which he painted from nature itself, and from his own actual observations: his descriptions have, therefore, a distinctness and truth, which are utterly wanting to those of poets who have only copied from each other, and have never looked abroad on the objects themselves, Thomson was accustomed to wander away into

the

the country for days, and for weeks, attentive to" each rural sight, each rural sound;" while many a poet, who has dwelt for years in the Strand, has attempted to describe fields and rivers, and generally succeeded accordingly. Hence that nauseous repetition of the same circumstances; hence that disgusting impropriety of introducing what may be called a set of hereditary images, without proper regard to the age, or climate, or occasion, in which they were formerly used. Though the diction of the SEASONS is sometimes harsh and inharmonious, and sometimes turgid and obscure, and though, in many instances, the numbers are not sufficiently diversified by different pauses, yet is this poem, on the whole, from the numberless strokes of nature in which it abounds, one of the most captivating and amusing in our language; and which, as its beauties are not of a transitory kind, as depending on particular customs and manners, will ever be perused with delight. The scenes of Thomson are frequently as wild and romantic as those of Salvator Rosa, varied with precipices and torrents, andcastled cliffs," and deep vallies, with

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piny mountains, and the gloomiest caverns. Innumerable are the little circumstances in his descriptions, totally unobserved by all his predecessors.

What poet hath ever taken notice of the leaf, that, towards the end of autumn,

Incessant rustles from the mournful grove,*

Oft startling such as, studious, walk below,
And slowly circles through the waving air?

Or who, in speaking of a summer evening, hath ever mentioned

The quail that clamours for his running mate?

Or the following natural image at the same time of the year?

Wide o'er the thistly lawn, as swells the breeze,

A whitening shower of vegetable down

Amusive floats, t

In what other poet do we find the silence and expectation that precedes an April shower insisted on, as in ver. 165 of SPRING? Or where,

The

* Ver. 1004.

+ Ver. 1657.

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