only the
soul of genius can give it a presence--though afterwards all eyes dimly
recognise it, on its being shown to them, as something more vivid than
their own faint experience, yet either kindred to it, or virtually one
and the same. Almost all human nature can, in some measure, understand
and feel the most exquisite and recondite image which only the rarest
genius could produce. Were it not so, great poets might break their
harps, and go drown themselves in Helicon.

"From brightening fields of ether fair disclosed,
Child of the Sun, refulgent SUMMER comes,
In pride of youth, and felt through Nature's depth:
He comes attended by the sultry hours,
And ever-fanning breezes, on his way;
While, from his ardent look, the turning Spring
Averts her blushful face, and earth, and skies,
All smiling, to his hot dominion leaves."

Here the Impersonation is stronger--and perhaps the superior strength
lies in the words "child of the Sun." And here in the words describing
Spring, she too is more of an Impersonation than in the other
passage--averting her blushful face from the Summer's ardent look. The
poet having made Summer masculine, very properly makes Spring feminine;
and 'tis a jewel of a picture--for ladies should always avert their
blushful faces from the ardent looks of gentlemen. Thomson, indeed,
elsewhere says of an enamoured youth overpowered by the loving looks of
his mistress,--

"From the keen gaze her lover turns away,
Full of the dear ecstatic power, and sick
With sighing languishment."

This, we have heard, from experienced persons of both sexes, is as
delicate as it is natural; but for our own simple and single selves, we
never remember having got sick on any such occasion. Much agitated, we
cannot deny--if we did, the most credulous would not credit us--much
agitated we have been, when our lady-love, not contented with fixing
upon us her dove-eyes, began billing and cooing in a style from which
the cushat might have taken a lesson with advantage, that she might the
better perform her innocent part on her first assignation with her
affianced in the pine-grove on St Valentine's day; but never in all our
long lives got we absolutely _sick_--nor even _squeamish_--never were we
obliged to turn away with our hand to our mouth--but, on the contrary,
we were commonly as brisk as a bee at a pot of honey; or, if that be too
luscious a simile, as brisk as that same wond