And yet it is evident that the crazy Bristol boy and the astute Scotchman were alike the creatures of the age and the peculiar circumstances in which they lived. No other age of English history could have produced them. In an earlier period, they would have found no curiosity in the people to warrant their attempts; and in a later time, the increase in antiquarian studies would have made these efforts too easy of detection.

CHAPTER XXXII.

POETRY OF THE TRANSITION SCHOOL.

The Transition Period.

James Thomson.

The Seasons.

The Castle of Indolence.

TH

Mark Akenside.

Pleasures of the Imagination.
Thomas Gray.

The Elegy. The Bard.

THE TRANSITION PERIOD.

William Cowper.
The Task.

Translation of Homer.
Other Writers.

HE poetical standards of Dryden and Pope, as poetic examples and arbiters, exercised tyrannical sway to the middle of the eighteenth century, and continued to be felt, with relaxing influence, however, to a much later period. Poetry became impatient of too close a captivity to technical rules in rhythm and in subjects, and began once again to seek its inspiration from the worlds of nature and of feeling. While seeking this change, it passed through what has been properly called the period of transition,—a period the writers of which are distinctly marked as belonging neither to the artificial classicism of Pope, nor to the simple naturalism of Wordsworth and the Lake school; partaking, indeed, in some degree of the former, and preparing the way for the latter.

The excited condition of public feeling during the earlier period, incident to the accession of the house of Hanover and the last struggles of the Jacobites, had given a political character to every author, and a political significance to almost every literary work. At the close of this abnormal condition of things, the poets of the transition school began their labors; untrammelled by the court and the town, they. invoked the muse in green fields and by babbling brooks;

from materialistic philosophy in verse they appealed through the senses to the hearts of men; and appreciation and popularity rewarded and encouraged them.

JAMES THOMSON. The first distinguished writer of this school was Thomson, the son of a Scottish minister. He was born on the 11th of September, 1700, at Ednam in Roxburghshire. While a boy at school in Jedburgh, he displayed poetical talent: at the University of Edinburgh he completed his scholastic course, and studied divinity; which, however, he did not pursue as a profession. Being left, by his father's death, without means, he resolved to go to the great metropolis to try his fortunes. He arrived in London in sorry plight, without money, and with ragged shoes; but through the assistance of some persons of station, he procured occupation as tutor to a lord's son, and thus earned a livelihood until the publication of his first poem in 1726. That poem was Winter, the first of the series called The Seasons: it was received with unusual favor. The first edition was speedily exhausted, and with the publication of the second, his position as a poet was assured. In 1727 he produced the second poem of the series, Summer, and, with it, a proposal for issuing the Four Seasons, with a Hymn on their succession. In 1728 his Spring appeared, and in the next year an unsuccessful tragedy called Sophonisba, which owed its immediate failure to the laughter occasioned by the line,

O Sophonisba, Sophonisba O!

This was parodied by some wag in these words:

O Jemmie Thomson, Jemmie Thomson O!

and the ridicule was so potent that the play was ruined.

The last of the seasons, Autumn, and the Hymn, were first printed in a complete edition of The Seasons, in 1730. It was at once conceded that he had gratified the cravings of the

day, in producing a real and beautiful English pastoral. The reputation which he thus gained caused him to be selected as the mentor and companion of the son of Sir Charles Talbot in a tour through France and Italy in 1730 and 1731.

In 1734 he published the first part of a poem called Liberty, the conclusion of which appeared in 1736. It is designed to trace the progress of Liberty through Italy, Greece, and Rome, down to her excellent establishment in Great Britain, and was dedicated to Frederick, Prince of Wales.

His tragedies Agamemnon and Edward and Eleanora are in the then prevailing taste. They were issued in 1738-39. The latter is of political significance, in that Edward was like Frederick the Prince of Wales - heir apparent to the crown; and some of the passages are designed to strengthen the prince in the favor of the people.

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The personal life of Thomson is not of much interest. From his first residence in London, he supported, with his slender means, a brother, who died young of consumption, and aided two maiden sisters, who kept a small milliner-shop in Edinburgh. This is greatly to his praise, as he was at one time so poor that he was arrested for debt and committed to prison. As his reputation increased, his fortunes were ameliorated. In 1745 his play Tancred and Sigismunda was performed. It was founded upon a story universally popular, the same which appears in the episode of The Fatal Marriage in Gil Blas, and in one of the stories of Boccaccio. He enjoyed for a short time a pension from the Prince of Wales, of which, however, he was deprived without apparent cause; but he received the office of Surveyor-General of the Leeward Islands, the duties of which he could perform by deputy; after that he lived a lazy life at his cottage near Richmond, which, if otherwise reprehensible, at least gave him the power to write his most beautiful poem, The Castle of Indolence. It appeared in 1748, and was universally ad-, mired; it has a rhetorical harmony similar and quite equal

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to that of the Lotos Eaters of Tennyson. The poet, who had become quite plethoric, was heated by a walk from London, and, from a check of perspiration, was thrown into a high fever, a relapse of which caused his death on the 27th of August, 1748. His friend Lord Lyttleton wrote the prologue to his play of Coriolanus, which was acted after the poet's death, in which he says:

His chaste Muse employed her heaven-taught lyre
None but the noblest passions to inspire,

Not one immoral, one corrupted thought,

One line which, dying, he could wish to blot."

The praise accorded him in this much-quoted line is justly his due: it is greater praise that he was opening a new pathway in English Literature, and supplying better food than the preceding age had given. His Seasons supplied a want of the age: it was a series of beautiful pastorals. The descriptions of nature will always be read and quoted with pleasure; the little episodes, if they affect the unity, relieve the monotony of the subject, and, like figures introduced by the painter into his landscape, take away the sense of loneliness, and give us a standard at once of judgment, of measurement, and of sympathetic enjoyment; they display, too, at once the workings. of his own mind in his production, and the manners and sentiments of the age in which he wrote. It was fitting that he who had portrayed for us such beautiful gardens of English nature, should people them instead of leaving them solitary.

THE CASTLE OF INDOLENCE. – This is an allegory, written after the manner of Spenser, and in the Spenserian stanza. He also employs archaic words, as Spenser did, to give it greater resemblance to Spenser's poem. The allegorical characters are well described, and the sumptuous adornings and lazy luxuries of the castle are set forth con amore. The spell that enchants the castle is broken by the stalwart knight Industry; but the glamour of the poem remains, and makes the reader in love with Indolence.