tely applied than in
the season he describes, which most resembles the genial clime with the
deep serenity of an Italian heaven. Milton in Italy had experienced the
_brown evening_, but it may be suspected that Thomson only recollected
the language of the poet.

The same observation may be made on two other poetical epithets. I shall
notice the epithet "LAUGHING" applied to inanimate objects; and "PURPLE"
to beautiful objects."

The natives of Italy and the softer climates receive emotions from the
view of their WATERS in the SPRING not equally experienced in the
British roughness of our skies. The fluency and softness of the water
are thus described by Lucretius:--

----Tibi suaveis Daedala tellus
Submittit flores: _tibi_ RIDENT _aequora ponti_.

Inelegantly rendered by Creech,

The roughest sea puts on smooth looks, and SMILES.

Dryden more happily,

The ocean SMILES, and smooths her wavy breast.

But Metastasio has copied Lucretius:--

A te fioriscono
Gli erbosi prat:
E i flutti RIDONO
Nel mar placati.

It merits observation, that the _Northern Poets_ could not exalt their
imagination higher than that the water SMILED, while the modern Italian,
having before his eyes _a different Spring_, found no difficulty in
agreeing with the ancients, that the waves LAUGHED. Modern poetry has
made a very free use of the animating epithet LAUGHING. Gray has
LAUGHING FLOWERS: and Langhorne in two beautiful lines personifies
Flora:--

Where Tweed's soft banks in liberal beauty lie,
And Flora LAUGHS beneath an azure sky.

Sir William Jones, in the spirit of Oriental poetry, has "the LAUGHING
AIR." Dryden has employed this epithet boldly in the delightful lines,
almost entirely borrowed from his original, Chaucer:--

The morning lark, the messenger of day,
Saluted in her song the morning gray;
And soon the sun arose, with beams so bright,
That all THE HORIZON LAUGHED to see the joyous sight.
_Palamon and Arcite_, B. ii.[25]

It is extremely difficult to conceive what the ancients precisely meant
by the word _purpureus_. They seem to have designed by it anything
BRIGHT and BEAUTIFUL. A classical friend has furnished me with numerous
significations of this word which are very contradictory. Albinovanus,
in his elegy on Livia, mentions _Nivem purpureum_. Catullus, _Quercus
ramos purpureos_. Horace, _Purpureo bibet ore nectar_,