scribed this verse of the "Elegy,"--

"Here scattered oft, the loveliest of the year,
By hands unseen, are showers of violets found;
The redbreast loves to build and warble here,
And little footsteps lightly print the ground."

If, indeed, he had known how to strew such gems through his "English
Garden," we should have had a poem that would have out-shone "The
Seasons."

And this mention reminds me, that, although I have slipped past his
period, I have said no word as yet of the Roxburgh poet; but he shall be
neglected no longer. (The big book, my boy, upon the third shelf, with a
worn back, labelled THOMSON.)

This poet is not upon the gardeners' or the agricultural lists. One can
find no farm-method in him,--indeed, little method of any sort; there is
no description of a garden carrying half the details that belong to
Tasso's garden of Armida, or Rousseau's in the letter of St. Preux.[E]
And yet, as we read, how the country, with its woods, its valleys, its
hillsides, its swains, its toiling cattle, comes swooping to our vision!
The leaves rustle, the birds warble, the rivers roar a song. The sun
beats on the plain; the winds carry waves into the grain; the clouds
plant shadows on the mountains. The minuteness and the accuracy of his
observation are something wonderful; if farmers should not study him,
our young poets may. _He_ never puts a song in the throat of a jay or a
wood-dove; _he_ never makes a mother-bird break out in bravuras; _he_
never puts a sickle into green grain, or a trout in a slimy brook; _he_
could picture no orchis growing on a hillside, or columbine nodding in a
meadow. If the leaves shimmer, you may be sure the sun is shining; if a
primrose lightens on the view, you may be sure there is some covert
which the primroses love; and never by any license does a white flower
come blushing into his poem.

I will not quote, where so much depends upon the atmosphere which the
poet himself creates, as he waves his enchanter's wand. Over all the
type his sweet power compels a rural heaven to lie reflected; I go from
budding spring to blazing summer at the turning of a page; on all the
meadows below me (though it is March) I see ripe autumn brooding with
golden wings; and winter howls and screams in gusts, and tosses tempests
of snow into my eyes--out of the book my boy has just now brought me.

One verse, at least, I will cite,--so full it is of all pastoral
feeling, so brimming o