nd's storm-loving,
mist-enamoured sun, which till you have seen on a day of thunder, you
cannot be said ever to have seen the sun. Cowper followed Thomson merely
in time. We should have had "The Task," even had we never had "The
Seasons." These two were "heralds of a mighty train ensuing;" add them,
then, to the worthies of our own age, and they belong to it--and all the
rest of the poetry of the modern world--to which add that of the
ancient--if multiplied by ten in quantity--and by twenty in
quality--would not so variously, so vigorously, and so truly image the
form and pressure, the life and spirit of the mother of us all--Nature.
Are then "The Seasons" and "The Task" Great Poems? Yes.--Why? What! Do
you need to be told that that Poem must be great, which was the first to
paint the rolling mystery of the year, and to show that all its Seasons
are but the varied God? The idea was original and sublime; and the
fulfilment thereof so complete, that some six thousand years having
elapsed between the creation of the world and of that poem, some sixty
thousand, we prophesy, will elapse between the appearance of that poem
and the publication of another equally great, on a subject external to
the mind, equally magnificent. We further presume, that you hold sacred
the "hearth." Now, in "The Task," the "hearth" is the heart of the poem,
just as it is of a happy house. No other poem is so full of domestic
happiness--humble and high; none is so breathed over by the spirit of
the Christian religion.

Poetry, which, though not dead, had long been sleeping in Scotland, was
restored to waking life by THOMSON. His genius was national; and so,
too, was the subject of his first and greatest song. By saying that his
genius was national, we mean that its temperament was enthusiastic and
passionate, and that, though highly imaginative, the sources of its
power lay in the heart. "The Castle of Indolence" is distinguished by
purer taste and finer fancy; but with all its exquisite beauties, that
poem is but the vision of a dream. "The Seasons" are glorious realities;
and the charm of the strain that sings the "rolling year" is its truth.
But what mean we by saying that "The Seasons" are a national
subject?--do we assert that they are solely Scottish? That would be too
bold, even for us; but we scruple not to assert, that Thomson has made
them so, as far as might be without insult, injury, or injustice, to
the rest of the globe. His suns rise