ented to its view, whatever there is on which imagination can
delight to be detained, and with a mind that at once comprehends the
vast, and attends to the minute. The reader of the Seasons wonders that
he never saw before what Thomson shows him, and that he never yet has
felt what Thomson impresses.

His is one of the works in which blank verse seems properly used.
Thomson's wide expansion of general views, and his enumeration of
circumstantial varieties, would have been obstructed and embarrassed by
the frequent intersection of the sense, which are the necessary effects
of rhyme.

His descriptions of extended scenes and general effects bring before us
the whole magnificence of nature, whether pleasing or dreadful. The
gaiety of spring, the splendour of summer, the tranquillity of autumn,
and the horrour of winter, take, in their turns, possession of the mind.
The poet leads us through the appearances of things as they are
successively varied by the vicissitudes of the year, and imparts to us
so much of his own enthusiasm, that our thoughts expand with his
imagery, and kindle with his sentiments. Nor is the naturalist without
his part in the entertainment; for he is assisted to recollect and to
combine, to arrange his discoveries, and to amplify the sphere of his
contemplation.

The great defect of the Seasons is want of method; but for this I know
not that there was any remedy. Of many appearances subsisting all at
once, no rule can be given why one should be mentioned before another;
yet the memory wants the help of order, and the curiosity is not excited
by suspense or expectation.

His diction is in the highest degree florid and luxuriant, such as may
be said to be to his images and thoughts, "both their lustre and their
shade:" such as invest them with splendour, through which, perhaps, they
are not always easily discerned. It is too exuberant, and sometimes may
be charged with filling the ear more than the mind.

These poems, with which I was acquainted at their first appearance, I
have since found altered and enlarged by subsequent revisals[168], as
the author supposed his judgment to grow more exact, and as books or
conversation extended his knowledge and opened his prospects. They are,
I think, improved in general; yet I know not whether they have not lost
part of what Temple calls their "race;" a word which, applied to wines,
in its primitive sense, means the flavour of the soil.

Liberty, when it firs