ies the mind with no fresh ideas, nor assists in giving a
new beauty and a more definite form to the ideas we possessed before.
The genius of Pope was in another direction; and when we contrast the
picturesque details of Thomson's Seasons with the blank common-places of
the Pastorals, we perceive how wide is the interval between the elegant,
harmonious versifier, and the genuine poet of nature. Sheep are twice
mentioned in Pope's Winter, once at ver. 5,

Now sleeping flocks in their soft fleeces lie;

and again at ver. 37,

For her the flocks refuse their verdant food.

Widely different in life and vividness are the lines in which Thomson
paints the flocks under their true wintry aspect, when the snow is
falling, and has buried up the herbage.

The bleating kind
Eye the bleak heaven, and next the glist'ning earth,
With looks of dumb despair.

In a verse which is not original, but which is more descriptive than
usual, Pope speaks of the breezes which, in spring, blow gently among
the osiers:

Let vernal airs through trembling osiers play.

This is flat by the side of the passage in Thomson's Spring, where he
describes the effects of the lightest current of air upon the aspen:

Not a breath
Is heard to quiver through the closing woods,
Or rustling turn the many-twinkling leaves
Of aspen tall.

The epithet "closing" is happily applied to woods just bursting into
foliage, and the epithet "many-twinkling" is exquisitely appropriate to
the leaves of the aspen, which, when every other tree is still, and the
air can hardly be felt to stir, dance up and down incessantly, with an
endless play of light and shadow, and rustle as they wave joyously to
and fro. Nature scarce affords a prettier sight, or a more soothing
sound. These comparisons might be extended through pages, and they are
fair examples of Pope's inferiority in a style which was unsuited to his
turn of mind, and of which he had never formed adequate ideas.

Roscoe could perceive no impropriety in transferring classical customs
and mythology to the plains of Windsor. He conceived that every
objection was obviated by the announcement of Pope, "that pastoral is an
image of the golden age," which leaves us to infer, that during this
happy interlude our British shepherds adopted the manners and religion
of Greece. But the golden age was itself an exploded fable, which h