ound the hedge, where you may figure me walking any time of
day, and sometimes of the night.... May your health continue till
you have scraped together enough to return home and live in some
snug corner, as happy as the Corycius senex in Virgil's fourth
Georgic, whom I recommend both to you and myself as a perfect
model of the truest happy life.

It is a fact that Solitude and Nature became a passion with him. He
would wander about the country for weeks at a time, noting every
sight and sound, down to the smallest, and finding beauty and divine
goodness in all. His _Seasons_ were the result.

There is faithful portraiture in these landscapes in verse; some have
charm and delicacy, but, for the most part, they are only catalogues
of the external world, wholly lacking in links with the inner life.

Scene after scene is described without pause, or only interrupted by
sermonizing; it is as monotonous as a gallery of landscape paintings.

The human beings introduced are mere accessories, they do not live,
and the undercurrent of all is praise of the Highest. His
predilection is for still life in wood and field, but he does not
neglect grander scenery; his muse

"Sees Caledonia, in romantic view:
Her airy mountains, from the waving main
Invested with a keen diffusive sky,
Breathing the soul acute; her forests huge,
Incult, robust, and tall, by Nature's hand
Planted of old; her azure lakes between,
Poured out extensive and of watery wealth
Full; winding, deep and green, her fertile vales,
With many a cool translucent brimming flood
Washed lovely...."

And in _A Hymn_ we read:

Ye headlong torrents rapid and profound,
Ye softer floods that lead the humid maze
Along the vale; and thou, majestic main,
A secret world of wonders in thyself.

It is the lack of human life, the didactic tone, and the wearisome
detail which destroys interest in the _Seasons_--the lack of happy
moments of invention. Yet it had great influence on his
contemporaries in rousing love for Nature, and it contains many
beautiful passages. For example:

Come, gentle Spring, ethereal mildness, come,
And from the bosom of yon dropping cloud,
While music wakes around, veiled in a shower
Of shadowing roses, on our plains descend.

His most artistic poem is Winter:

When from the pallid sky the sun descends
With many a spot, that o'er his glaring orb
Uncertain wanders, stained; red fie