,
selected for no other reason than because the order of succession is the
same. Between the several ages of man, and the seasons, there is an
obvious resemblance, which has furnished similes from time immemorial,
but there is no propriety in peopling a spring scene with children, and
a winter scene with the old, since all ages figure together in the
world, and manifest the feelings which belong to their years, whether it
happens to be winter or spring. If the plan had any merit, Pope did not
conform to it. The shepherds who sing in spring are grown up. The
shepherd who sings in summer is a boy. Winter is a funereal lament for a
young lady who was cut off in her prime, and has not the most distant
reference to old age. The different passions proper to each time of
life, which Pope professes to have distinguished, are altogether
overlooked. Love is the sole passion which animates the actors in
Spring, Summer, and Autumn; and the shepherd in Winter celebrates the
departed Daphne in the same lover-like rhapsodies which prevail
throughout the three preceding poems. The rural employments proper to
each season have been equally forgotten. Sheep-keeping and verse-making
are the only occupations, though the poet declares he had changed the
scene to suit the changing employment, and represents the first pastoral
as sung in a valley, the second on the banks of a stream, the third on a
hill, and the fourth in a grove. In place of the variety to which he
lays claim, we have a general sameness, and if he had kept faithfully to
the outline he sketched, he would, with his mode of composition, have
done little towards diversifying the series. He wanted the "intimate
acquaintance with those minute and particular appearances of nature
which," as Bowles says, "can alone give a lively and original colour to
the painting of pastoral poetry." The scenes of his four lays,--the
valley, the stream, the hill, and the grove,--are just mentioned, and
nothing more. There is no attempt to depict them to the mind, and it
does not contribute to variety simply to tell the reader that he is now
in a valley, and now upon a hill. The seasons themselves are only marked
by the superficial, notorious circumstances which convey no pleasure in
the repetition, unless they are accompanied by the nice discriminating
touches of an exact observer. To say that showers descend, that birds
sing, that crocuses blow, and that trees put forth their leaves in
spring, suppl