of any of the Four Seasons. The scenes are grand and
lively. It is in that season that the creation appears in distress, and
nature assumes a melancholy air; and an imagination so poetical as
Thomson's, could not but furnish those awful and striking images, which
fill the soul with a solemn dread of _those Vapours, and Storms, and
Clouds_, he has so well painted. Description is the peculiar talent of
Thomson; we tremble at his thunder in summer, we shiver with his
winter's cold, and we rejoice at the renovation of nature, by the sweet
influence of spring. But the poem deserves a further illustration, and
we shall take an opportunity of pointing out some of its most striking
beauties; but before we speak of these, we beg leave to relate the
following anecdote.

As soon as Winter was published, Mr. Thomson sent a copy of it as a
present to Mr. Joseph Mitchell, his countryman, and brother poet, who,
not liking many parts of it, inclosed to him the following couplet;

Beauties and faults so thick lye scattered here,
Those I could read, if these were not so near.

To this Mr. Thomson answered extempore.

Why all not faults, injurious Mitchell; why
Appears one beauty to thy blasted eye;
Damnation worse than thine, if worse can be,
Is all I ask, and all I want from thee.

Upon a friend's remonstrating to Mr. Thomson, that the expression of
blasted eye would look like a personal reflexion, as Mr. Mitchell had
really that misfortune, he changed the epithet blasted, into blasting.
But to return:

After our poet has represented the influence of Winter upon the face of
nature, and particularly described the severities of the frost, he has
the following beautiful transition;

--Our infant winter sinks,
Divested of its grandeur; should our eye
Astonish'd shoot into the frigid zone;
Where, for relentless months, continual night
Holds o'er the glitt'ring waste her starry reign:
There thro' the prison of unbounded wilds
Barr'd by the hand of nature from escape,
Wide roams the Russian exile. Nought around
Strikes his sad eye, but desarts lost in snow;
And heavy loaded groves; and solid floods,
That stretch athwart the solitary waste,
Their icy horrors to the frozen main;
And chearless towns far distant, never bless'd
Save when its annual course, the caravan
Bends to the golden coast of rich Cathay[5]
With news of human-kind. Yet there life glows;
Yet cherished there, beneath t