subject of the work is the
changes produced in the appearances of Nature by the revolution of the
year: and, by undertaking to write in verse, Thomson pledged himself to
treat his subject as became a Poet. Now it is remarkable that, excepting
the nocturnal 'Reverie' of Lady Winchilsea, and a passage or two in the
'Windsor Forest' of Pope, the poetry of the period intervening between
the publication of the 'Paradise Lost' and the 'Seasons' does not
contain a single new image of external Nature; and scarcely presents a
familiar one from which it can be inferred that the eye of the Poet had
been steadily fixed upon his object, much less that his feelings had
urged him to work upon it in the spirit of genuine imagination. To what
a low state knowledge of the most obvious and important phenomena had
sunk, is evident from the style in which Dryden has executed a
description of Night in one of his Tragedies, and Pope his translation
of the celebrated moonlight scene in the 'Iliad.' A blind man, in the
habit of attending accurately to descriptions casually dropped from the
lips of those around him, might easily depict these appearances with
more truth. Dryden's lines are vague, bombastic, and senseless;[14]
those of Pope, though he had Homer to guide him, are throughout false
and contradictory. The verses of Dryden, once highly celebrated, are
forgotten; those of Pope still retain their hold upon public
estimation,--nay, there is not a passage of descriptive poetry, which at
this day finds so many and such ardent admirers. Strange to think of an
enthusiast, as may have been the case with thousands, reciting those
verses under the cope of a moonlight sky, without having his raptures in
the least disturbed by a suspicion of their absurdity!--If these two
distinguished writers could habitually think that the visible universe
was of so little consequence to a poet, that it was scarcely necessary
for him to cast his eyes upon it, we may be assured that those passages
of the older poets which faithfully and poetically describe the
phenomena of Nature, were not at that time holden in much estimation,
and that there was little accurate attention paid to those appearances.

[14] CORTES _alone in a night-gown_.

All things are hush'd as Nature's self lay dead; The mountains seem to
nod their drowsy head. The little Birds in dreams their songs repeat,
And sleeping Flowers beneath the Night-dew sweat: Even Lust and Envy
sleep; yet Love de