biographers, 'than
universally admired those only excepted who had not been used to feel,
or to look for anything in poetry, beyond a _point_ of satirical or
epigrammatic wit, a smart _antithesis_ richly trimmed with rime, or
the softness of an _elegiac_ complaint. To such his manly classical
spirit could not readily commend itself, till, after a more attentive
perusal, they had got the better of their prejudices, and either
acquired or affected a truer taste. A few others stood aloof, merely
because they had long before fixed the articles of their poetical
creed, and resigned themselves to an absolute despair of ever seeing
anything new and original. These were somewhat mortified to find
their notions disturbed by the appearance of a poet, who seemed to owe
nothing but to nature and his own genius. But, in a short time, the
applause became unanimous, every one wondering how so many pictures,
and pictures so familiar, should have moved them but faintly to what
they felt in his descriptions. His digressions too, the overflowings
of a tender benevolent heart, charmed the reader no less, leaving him
in doubt, whether he should more admire the Poet or love the Man.'

This case appears to bear strongly against us--but we must distinguish
between wonder and legitimate admiration. The subject of the work is
the changes produced in the appearances of nature by the revolution
of the year: and, by undertaking to write in verse, Thomson pledged
himself to treat his subject as became a Poet. Now, it is remarkable
that, excepting the nocturnal _Reverie of Lady Winchelsea_, and a
passage or two in the _Windsor Forest_ of Pope, the poetry of the
period intervening between the publication of the _Paradise Lost_ and
the _Seasons_ does not contain a single new image of external nature;
and scarcely presents a familiar one from which it can be inferred
that the eye of the Poet has been steadily fixed upon his object, much
less that his feelings had urged him to work upon it in the spirit of
genuine imagination. To what a low state knowledge of the most obvious
and important phenomena had sunk, is evident from the style in which
Dryden has executed a description of Night in one of his Tragedies,
and Pope his translation of the celebrated moonlight scene in
the _Iliad_. A blind man, in the habit of attending accurately to
descriptions casually dropped from the lips of those around him, might
easily depict these appearances with more truth.