ing in
Latinisms like _effusive_, _precipitant_, _irriguous_, _horrific_,
_turgent_, _amusive_. The lover who hides by the stream where his
mistress is bathing--that celebrated "serio-comic bathing"--is described
as "the latent Damon"; and when the poet advises against the use of worms
for trout bait, he puts it thus:

"But let not on your hook the tortured worm
Convulsive writhe in agonizing folds," etc.

The poets had now begun to withdraw from town and go out into the
country, but in their retirement to the sylvan shades they were
accompanied sometimes, indeed, by Milton's "mountain nymph, sweet
Liberty," but quite as frequently by Shenstone's nymph, "coy Elegance,"
who kept reminding them of Vergil.

Thomson's blank verse, although, as Coleridge says, inferior to Cowper's,
is often richly musical and with an energy unborrowed of Milton--as
Cowper's is too apt to be, at least in his translation of Homer.[10] Mr.
Saintsbury[11] detects a mannerism in the verse of "The Seasons," which
he illustrates by citing three lines with which the poet "caps the climax
of three several descriptive passages, all within the compass of half a
dozen pages," viz.:

"And Egypt joys beneath the spreading wave."
"And Mecca saddens at the long delay."
"And Thule bellows through her utmost isles."

It would be easy to add many other instances of this type of climacteric
line, _e.g. _("Summer," 859),

"And Ocean trembles for his green domain."

For the blank verse of "The Seasons" is a blank verse which has been
passed through the strainer of the heroic couplet. Though Thomson, in
the flow and continuity of his measure, offers, as has been said, the
greatest contrast to Pope's system of versification; yet wherever he
seeks to be nervous, his modulation reminds one more of Pope's
antithetical trick than of Shakspere's or Milton's freer structure. For
instance ("Spring," 1015):

"Fills every sense and pants in every vein."

or (_Ibid._ 1104):

"Flames through the nerves and boils along the veins."

To relieve the monotony of a descriptive poem, the author introduced
moralizing digressions: advice to the husbandman and the shepherd after
the manner of the "Georgics"; compliments to his patrons, like Lyttelton,
Bubb Dodington, and the Countess of Hertford; and sentimental narrative
episodes, such as the stories of Damon and Musidora,[12] and Celadon and
Amelia in "Summer," and of Lavinia and Pal