erful insect murmuring for
a few moments round and round a rose-bush, and then settling himself
down seriously to work, as mute as a mouse, among the half-blown petals.
However, we are not now writing our Confessions--and what we wished to
say about this passage is, that in it the one sex is represented as
turning away the face from that of the other, which may be all natural
enough, though polite on the gentleman's part we can never call it; and,
had the female virgin done so, we cannot help thinking it would have
read better in poetry. But for Spring to avert _his_ blushful face from
the ardent looks of Summer, has on us the effect of making both Seasons
seem simpletons. Spring, in the character of "ethereal mildness," was
unquestionably a female; but here she is "unsexed from the crown to the
toe," and changed into an awkward hobbletehoy, who, having passed his
boyhood in the country, is a booby who blushes black at the gaze of his
own brother, and if brought into the company of the lasses, would not
fail to faint away in a fit, nor revive till his face felt a pitcherful
of cold water.

"Crown'd with the sickle and the wheaten sheaf,
While Autumn, nodding o'er the yellow plain,
Comes jovial on," &c.,

is, we think, bad. The Impersonation here is complete, and though the
sex of Autumn is not mentioned, it is manifestly meant to be male. So
far, there is nothing amiss either one way or another. But "nodding o'er
the yellow plain" is a mere statement of a fact in nature--and
descriptive of the growing and ripening or ripened harvest--whereas it
is applied here to Autumn, as a figure who "comes jovial on." This is
not obscurity--or indistinctness--which, as we have said before, is
often a great beauty in Impersonation; but it is an inconsistency and a
contradiction--and therefore indefensible on any ground either of
conception or expression.

"There are no such essential vices as this in the "Castle of
Indolence"--for by that time Thomson had subjected his inspiration to
thought--and his poetry, guided and guarded by philosophy, became
celestial as an angel's song.

"See, Winter comes, to rule the varied year,
Sullen and sad, with all his rising train,
Vapours, and clouds, and storms. Be these my theme,
These! that exalt the soul to solemn thought,
And heavenly musing. Welcome, kindred glooms!
Congenial horrors, hail! with frequent foot,
Pleased have I, in my cheerful morn o