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The stealing shower is scarce to patter heard,
By such as wander through the forest walks,
Beneath th' umbrageous multitude of leaves.*

How full, particular, and picturesque, is this assemblage of circumstances that attend a very keen frost in a night of winter!

Loud rings the frozen earth, and hard reflects
A double noise; while at his evening watch
The village dog deters the nightly thief;
The heifer lows; the distant water-fall
Swells in the breeze; and with the hasty tread
Of traveller, the hollow-sounding plain
Shakes from afar.t

In no one subject are common writers more confused and unmeaning, than in their descriptions of rivers, which are generally said only to wind and to murmur, while their qualities and courses are seldom accurately marked. Examine the exactness of the ensuing description, and consider what a perfect idea it communicates to the mind.

Around th' adjoining brook, that purls along

The vocal grove, now fretting o'er a rock,

Now

* Ver. 176.

+ Winter, ver. 731.

Now scarcely moving through a reedy pool,
Now starting to a sudden stream, and now
Gently diffus'd into a limpid plain;

A various groupe the herds and flocks compose,
Rural confusion.*

A groupe worthy the pencil of Giacomo da Bassano, and so minutely delineated, that he might have worked from this sketch:

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He adds, that the ox, in the middle of them,

From his sides

The troublous insects lashes, to his sides
Returning still.†

A natural circumstance, that, to the best of my remembrance, hath escaped even the natural Theocritus. Nor do I recollect that any poet hath been struck with the murmurs of the numberless insects that swarm abroad at

the

Summer, ver. 479.

+ Summer, ver. 485. et seq.

the noon of a summer's day: as attendants of the evening, indeed, they have been mentioned;

Resounds the living surface of the ground:
Nor undelightful is the ceaseless hum

To him who muses through the woods at noon;
Or drowsy shepherd, as he lies reclin'd

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But the novelty and nature we admire in the descriptions of Thomson, are by no means his only excellencies; he is equally to be praised for impressing on our minds the effects, which the scene delineated would have on the present spectator or hearer. Thus having spoken of the roaring of the savages in a wilderness of Africa, he introduces a captive, who, though just escaped from † prison and slavery under the tyrant of Morocco, is so terrified and astonished at the dreadful uproar, that

The wretch half wishes for his bonds again.

Thus

* Summer, ver. 280.

+ Summer, ver. 935.

Thus also having described a caravan lost and overwhelmed in one of those whirlwinds that so frequently agitate and lift up the whole sands of the desert, he finishes his picture by adding, that,

In Cairo's crouded streets,*

Th' impatient merchant, wondering waits in vain,
And Mecca saddens at the long delay.

And thus, lastly, in describing the pestilence that destroyed the British troops at the siege of Carthagena, he has used a circumstance inimitably lively, picturesque and striking to the imagination; for he says, that the admiral not only heard the groans of the sick that echoed from ship to ship, but that he also pensively stood, and listened at midnight to the dashing of the waters, occasioned by throwing the dead bodies into the sea;

B

Heard, nightly, plung'd into the sullen waves,
The frequent corse.† -

A minute

* Ver. 976

+ Ver, 1047.

A minute and particular enumeration of circumstances judiciously selected, is what chiefly, discriminates poetry from history, and renders the former, for that reason, a more close and faithfuld representation of nature than the latter. And if our poets would accustom themselves to contemplate fully every object, before they attempted to describe it, they would not fail of giving their readers more new and more complete images than they generally do.ely s

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A summer evening, for instance, after a shower, has been frequently described: but never, that I can recollect, so justly as in the following lines, whose greatest beauty is that hinted above, a simple enumeration of the appearances of nature, and of what is actually to be seen at such a time. They are not unworthy the correct and pure Tibullus. They were written by the late Mr. Robert Bedingfield, author of the Education of Achilles, a Poem, in Dodsley's Miscellanies.goo Vespere sub verno, tandem actis imbribus, æther -111 Guttatim sparsis rorat apertus aquis.

Aureus abrupto curvamine desuper arcus [Fulget, et ancipiti lumine tingit agros. Continuò sensus pertentat frigoris aurat

A93 Vivida, et insinuans mulcet amænus odor.
A Pallentes sparsim accrescunt per pascua fungi,
Lætius et torti graminis herba viret.

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