WILLIAM SOMERVILE. The author of The Chase is still included in our list of poets, but is now rarely read or consulted. WILLIAM SOMERVILE (1677-1742) was, as he tells Allan Ramsay, his brother-poet, A squire well born, and six foot high. His patrimonial estate (to which he succeeded in 1704) lay in Warwickshire, and was worth £1500 per annum from which, however, had to be deducted a jointure of £600 to his mother. He was generous, but extravagant, and died in distressed circumstances. Leaving no issue, his estate descended to Lord Somerville. Somervile's poetical works are The Two Springs, a Fable, 1725; Occasional Poems, 1727; and The Chase, 1735. The Chase is in blank verse, and contains practical instructions and admonitions to sportsmen. The following is an animated sketch of a morning in autumn, preparatory to 'throwing off the pack :' Now golden Autumn from her open lap Her fragrant bounties showers; the fields are shorn; And counts his large increase; his barns are stored, Hail, gentle Dawn! mild, blushing goddess, hail! Their inward ecstasy, their pleasing sport Somervile wrote a poetical address to Addison, on the latter purchasing his estate in Warwickshire. In his verses to Addison,' says Johnson, 'the couplet which mentions Clio is written with the most exquisite delicacy of praise; it exhibits one of those happy strokes that are seldom attained.' Addison, it is well known, signed his papers in the Spectator with the letters forming the name of Clio. The couplet which gratified Johnson so highly is as follows: When panting virtue her last efforts made, In welcoming Addison to the banks of Avon, In heaven he sings; on earth your muse supplies Gross as this misjudgment is, it should be remembered that Voltaire also fell into the same. The cold marble of Cato was preferred to the living and breathing creations of the 'myriad-minded' magician. JAMES THOMSON. The publication of the Seasons was an important era in the history of English poetry. So true and beautiful are the descriptions in the poem, and so entirely do they harmonise with those fresh feelings and glowing impulses which all would wish to cherish, that a love of nature seems to be synonymous with a love of Thomson. It is difficult to conceive a person of education in this country, imbued with an admiration of rural or woodland scenery, not entertaining a strong affection and regard for that delightful poet, who has painted their charms with so much fidelity and enthusiasm. The same features of blandness and benevolence, of simplicity of design and beauty of form and colour, which we recognise as distinguishing traits of the natural landscape, are seen in the pages of Thomson, conveyed by his artless mind as faithfully as the lights and shades on the face of creation. No criticism or change of style has, therefore, affected his popularity. We may smile at sometimes meeting with a heavy monotonous period, a false ornament, or tumid expression, the result of an indolent mind working itself up to a great effort, and we may wish that the subjects of his description were sometimes more select and dignified; but this drawback does not affect our permanent regard or general feeling; our first love remains unaltered; and Thomson is still the poet with whom some of our best and purest associations are indissolubly joined. In the Seasons we have a poetical subject poetically treated-filled to overflowing with the richest materials of poetry, and the emanations of benevolence. In the Castle of Indolence we have the concentration or essence of those materials applied to a subject less poetical, but still affording room for luxuriant fancy, the most exquisite art, and still greater melody of numbers. JAMES THOMSON was born at Ednam, near Kelso, county of Roxburgh, on the 11th of September 1700. His father, who was then minister of the parish of Ednam, removed a few years afterwards to that of Southdean in the same county, a primitive and retired district situated among the lower slopes of the Cheviots. Here the young poet spent his boyish years. The gift of poesy came early, and some lines written by him at the age of fourteen, shew how soon his manner was formed: Now I surveyed my native faculties, And traced my actions to their teeming source: situation of Secretary of Briefs in the Court of Though born a poet, Thomson seems to have advanced but slowly, and by reiterated efforts, to refinement of taste. The natural fervour of the man overpowered the rules of the scholar. The first edition of the Seasons differs materially from the second, and the second still more from the third. Every alteration was an improvement in delicacy of thought and language. In his eighteenth year, Thomson was sent to Edinburgh College. His father died in 1720, and the poet proceeded to London to push his fortune. His college friend, Mallet, procured him the situation of tutor to the son of Lord Binning, and being shewn some of his descriptions of Winter, advised him to connect them into one regular poem. This was done, and Winter was published in March 1726, the poet having received only three guineas for the copyright. A second and a third edition appeared the same year. Summer appeared in 1727. In 1728 he issued proposals for publishing, by subscription, the Four Seasons; the number of subscribers, at a guinea each copy, was 387; but many took more than one, and Pope One of the finest and most picturesque similes (to whom Thomson had been introduced by in the work was supplied by Pope, to whom Mallet) took three copies. The tragedy of Soph- Thomson had given an interleaved copy of the onisba was next produced; and in 1731 the poet edition of 1736. The quotation will not be out of accompanied the son of Sir Charles Talbot, after-place here, as it is honourable to the friendship of wards lord chancellor, in the capacity of tutor or the brother-poets, and tends to shew the importtravelling-companion, to the continent. They ance of careful revision, without which no excelvisited France, Switzerland, and Italy, and it is lence can be attained in literature or the arts. easy to conceive with what pleasure Thomson How deeply must it be regretted that Pope did must have passed or sojourned among scenes not oftener write in blank verse! In Autumn, which he had often viewed in imagination. In describing Lavinia, the lines of Thomson were: November of the same year the poet was at Rome, and no doubt indulged the wish expressed in one of his letters, 'to see the fields where Virgil gathered his immortal honey, and tread the same ground where men have thought and acted so greatly. On his return next year he published his poem of Liberty, and obtained the sinecure Thoughtless of beauty, she was Beauty's self, And pleased a look as Patience e'er put on, Pope drew his pen through this description, and with pride and pleasure-and so they stand in all has expressed in one noble stanza of the Castle the subsequent editions: of Indolence: Thoughtless of beauty, she was Beauty's self, As in the hollow breast of Apennine, And breathes its balmy fragrance o'er the wild; I care not, Fortune, what you me deny; You cannot bar my constant feet to trace The woods and lawns, by living stream, at eve: Let health my nerves and finer fibres brace, And I their toys to the great children leave; Of fancy, reason, virtue, nought can me bereave. 'The love of nature,' says Coleridge, 'seems to have led Thomson to a cheerful religion; and a That the genius of Thomson was purifying and gloomy religion to have led Cowper to a love of working off its alloys up to the termination of his nature. The one would carry his fellow-men along existence, may be seen from the superiority in with him into nature; the other flies to nature style and diction of the Castle of Indolence. from his fellow-men. In chastity of diction, howBetween the period of his composing the Seasons ever, and the harmony of blank verse, Cowper and the Castle of Indolence, says Campbell, leaves Thomson immeasurably below him; yet, I 'he wrote several works which seem hardly to still feel the latter to have been the born poet.' accord with the improvement and maturity of his The ardour and fulness of Thomson's descriptaste exhibited in the latter production. To the tions distinguish them from those of Cowper, Castle of Indolence he brought not only the full who was naturally less enthusiastic, and who was nature, but the perfect art of a poet. The mate-restricted by his religious tenets, and by his critirials of that exquisite poem are derived originally cal and classically formed taste. The diction of from Tasso; but he was more immediately in- the Seasons is at times pure and musical; it is too debted for them to the Faery Queen: and in elevated and ambitious, however, for ordinary meeting with the paternal spirit of Spenser, he themes, and where the poet descends to minute seems as if he were admitted more intimately to description, or to humorous or satirical scenes-as the home of inspiration.' If the critic had gone in the account of the chase and fox-hunters' dinner over the alterations in the Seasons, which Thomson in Autumn-the effect is grotesque and absurd. had been more or less engaged upon for about Campbell has happily said, that as long as sixteen years, he would have seen the gradual Thomson dwells in the pure contemplation of improvement of his taste, as well as imagination. nature, and appeals to the universal poetry of the So far as the art of the poet is concerned, the human breast, his redundant style comes to us as last corrected edition, as compared with the early something venial and adventitious-it is the flowcopies, is a new work. The power of Thomson, ing vesture of the Druid; and perhaps, to the however, lay not in his art, but in the exuberance general experience, is rather imposing; but when of his genius, which sometimes required to be he returns to the familiar narrations or courtesies disciplined and controlled. The poetic glow is of life, the same diction ceases to seem the mantle spread over all. He never slackens in his enthus- of inspiration, and only strikes us by its unwieldy iasm, nor tires of pointing out the phenomena of difference from the common costume of expresnature, which, indolent as he was, he had surveyed sion.' Cowper avoided this want of keeping under every aspect, till he had become familiar between his style and his subjects, adapting one with all. Among the mountains, vales, and to the other with inimitable ease, grace, and forests, he seems to realise his own words: variety; yet only rising in one or two instances to the higher flights of Thomson. Man superior walks Amid the glad creation, musing praise, But he looks also, às Johnson has finely observed, 'with the eye which nature bestows only on a poet-the eye that distinguishes, in everything presented to its view, whatever there is on which imagination can delight to be detained, and with a mind that at once comprehends the vast, and attends to the minute.' He looks also with a heart that feels for all mankind. His sympathies are universal. His touching allusions to the condition of the poor and suffering, to the hapless state of bird and beast in winter; the description of the peasant perishing in the snow, the Siberian exile, or the Arab pilgrims-all are marked with that humanity and true feeling which shews that the poet's virtues 'formed the magic of his song.' The genuine impulses under which he wrote he See Milford's edition of Gray's works. All Pope's corrections were adopted by Thomson, In 1843, a Poem to the Memory of Mr Congreve, inscribed to her Grace Henrietta, Duchess of Marlborough, was reprinted for the Percy Societyunder the care of Mr Peter Cunningham-as a genuine though unacknowledged production of Thomson, first published in 1729. We have no doubt of the genuineness of this poem as the work of Thomson. It possesses all the characteristics of his style. We subjoin a few of the detached pictures and descriptions in the Seasons, and part of the Castle of Indolence. Showers in Spring. The north-east spends his rage; he now shut up Not such as wintry storms on mortals shed, Oppressing life; but lovely, gentle, kind, And full of every hope, of every joy, The wish of nature. Gradual sinks the breeze And wait the approaching sign, to strike at once The clouds consign their treasures to the fields, Birds Pairing in Spring. To the deep woods Or roughening waste their humble texture weave: Beat by unnumbered wings. The swallow sweeps With constant clamour: O what passions then, 610 A Summer Morning. With quickened step Brown night retires: young day pours in apace, Summer Evening. Low walks the sun, and broadens by degrees, Just o'er the verge of day. The shifting clouds Assembled gay, a richly gorgeous train, In all their pomp attend his setting throne. Air, earth, and ocean smile immense. And now, As if his weary chariot sought the bowers Of Amphitrite, and her tending nymphsSo Grecian fable sung-he dips his orb; Now half immersed; and now a golden curve Gives one bright glance, then total disappears. Confessed from yonder slow-extinguished clouds, All ether softening, sober evening takes Her wonted station in the middle air; A thousand shadows at her beck. First this She sends on earth; then that of deeper dye Steals soft behind; and then a deeper still, In circle following circle, gathers round, To close the face of things. A fresher gale Begins to wave the wood, and stir the stream, Sweeping with shadowy gust the fields of corn: While the quail clamours for his running mate. Wide o'er the thistly lawn, as swells the breeze, A whitening shower of vegetable down Amusive floats. The kind impartial care Of nature nought disdains: thoughtful to feed Her lowest sons, and clothe the coming year, From field to field the feathered seeds she wings. His folded flock secure, the shepherd home Hies merry-hearted; and by turns relieves The ruddy milkmaid of her brimming pail; The beauty whom perhaps his witless heartUnknowing what the joy-mixed anguish meansSincerely loves, by that best language shewn Of cordial glances, and obliging deeds. Onward they pass o'er many a panting height, And valley sunk, and unfrequented; where At fall of eve the fairy people throng, In various game and revelry, to pass The summer night, as village stories tell. But far about they wander from the grave Of him whom his ungentle fortune urged Against his own sad breast to lift the hand Of impious violence. The lonely tower Is also shunned; whose mournful chambers holdSo night-struck fancy dreams-the yelling ghost. Among the crooked lanes, on every hedge, The glowworm lights his gem; and through the dark A moving radiance twinkles. Evening yields Autumn Evening Scene. But see the fading many-coloured woods, Meantime light-shadowing all, a sober calm Oft let me wander o'er the russet mead, And through the saddened grove, where scarce is heard One dying strain, to cheer the woodman's toil. The pale descending year, yet pleasing still, Roll wide the withered waste, and whistle bleak. And woods, fields, gardens, orchards all around, The western sun withdraws the shortened day, The dusky-mantled lawn. Meanwhile the moon, A smaller earth, gives all his blaze again, A Winter Landscape. Through the hushed air the whitening shower descends, And pecks, and starts, and wonders where he is: |