correct and in this he merely represented the characteristic aspiration of his time. Yet even among the high priests of correctness we find the idea that correctness was the only essential, held up to ridicule. Cf. Addison's portrait of Ned Softly. The Tatler, No. 163.

192.-179. The Bard, etc., i.e., Ambrose Philips (1675?1749), a poet and one of Pope's many enemies. Philips's Pastorals and Pope's Pastorals appeared in the same collection (Tonson's Miscellany, 1709), and certain compliments to this rival work of Philips' so excited Pope's morbidly jealous temper that he wrote a paper for The Guardian, in which Philips' Pastorals and his own were ironically compared.—180. ▲ Persian tale. Philips was liberally paid (according to Dr. Johnson's opinion) for this work, since he may have received half a crown, not for the translation, but for each section into which it was divided. (See Johnson's Lives of the Poets, Life of Philips.)-190. A Tate. Nahum Tate (1652–1715) succeeded Shadwell as poet laureate in 1692. He wrote most of the second part of Absalom and Achitophel and made a number of translations from the classics. Pattison reminds us that, as Pope's own success had been largely due to his translations of Homer, the sneer at translators is particularly ill-timed. -193. One whose fires. This masterly but grossly unjust and mendacious attack upon Addison (Atticus), Pope's former friend, is one of the most justly familiar passages in all his work. Pattison says of these lines: "They are at once a masterpiece of Pope's skill as a poet, and his base disposition as a man. They unite the most exquisite finish of sarcastic expression with the venomous malignity of personal rancour." The lines were included in the Prologue to the Satires as an after-thought. They were written earlier and sent to Addison, and they were first published as a fragment in 1727. We are told that they were in great demand, and Atterbury was so much impressed by them that he advised Pope to devote his efforts to satire. Macaulay says of the passage: "One charge which Pope has enforced with great skill is probably not without foundation. Addison was, we are inclined to believe, too fond of presiding over a circle of humble friends. Of the other imputations which these famous lines are intended to convey, scarcely one has ever been proved to be just, and some are certainly false. That Addison was not in the habit of damning with faint praise' appears from innumerable passages in his writings, and from none more than from those in which he mentions Pope. And it is not merely unjust, but ridiculous, to describe a man who made the fortune of almost every one of his intimate friends, as so obliging that he ne'er obliged.'" (Essay on Addison. See also Spence's Anecdotes, and Pope' in Thackeray's English Humorists.)

THOMSON TO TENNYSON

(CIR. 1730-CIR. 1830.)

THE POETS OF THE MODERN PERIOD.

195.-The modern period of English poetry has its rise during the early half of the eighteenth century, in a divergence, more and more radical as the century advances, from the form, the spirit, and the literary standards exemplified by Pope and dominant in his time. It is customary to associate the beginning of this fresh poetic current with the work of two Scotchmen, Allan Ramsay (1685-1758) and James Thomson (17001748). Some of the distinctive qualities of this new poetry were a more genuine pleasure in nature and country-life, a deeper sympathy with all forms of suffering in man or in animals, a growing reverence for human nature, a revival of the old delight in Elizabethan literature, and the introduction of more varied and less mechanical metrical forms in place of the heroic couplet. (Int. Eng. Lit. 255-282.) The presence and increase of these and other allied qualities will be apparent from a careful consecutive reading of the selections. From Thomson to Burns the trend in the direction just indicated steadily becomes more apparent. All these poets are poets of nature, each in his own manner and degree: Collins, Gray, and Burns are manifestly preeminent in their lyrical gift; while Thomson, Gray, Cowper, and Burns show both the gathering spirit of tenderness and the feeling of the new democracy. In Wordsworth, Coleridge, Southey, and Scott, the break with the outworn standards of Pope's day became complete. The poets from Byron to the advent of Tennyson may likewise be roughly grouped together. Many of them were obviously influenced by the spirit of that seething, rebellious, and morbidly melancholy time, when the agitations that followed the French Revolution were slowly subsiding, and democracy gathering force for another advance. With the advent of Tennyson, about 1830, we enter the threshold of our own time,

THOMSON.

195.-JAMES THOMSON (1700-1748) was born at Ednam, Roxburghshire, where his father was the parish minister. This Border region, separated from England by the Cheviot Hills, lies immediately to the east of Ayrshire, the district which fifty-nine years later gave birth to Burns. During his youth, spent in these unconfined and beautiful surroundings, Thomson was far removed from that circle of wits and satirists that from the heart of London dominated English letters. Thus early familiar with nature, it was Thomson's mission to freshen and sweeten the close and vitiated air of English poetry with the free air and wholesome sunshine of the open fields. "Winter," the first instalment of The Seasons, was published in 1726; "Spring" and "Summer" followed in 1727 and 1728, and the concluding part, “Autumn," in 1730. Like many other writers of his time, Thomson tried his hand at the drama, but with small success. Rule Britannia, the national song of England, appeared first in a masque produced by him in 1740, and has escaped the oblivion which has overtaken his dramatic productions. In The Castle of Indolence (1748) he employed the stanza of Spenser, and also followed him in diction and manner. This and The Seasons are his most important poems.

THE SEASONS.

SPRING.

16. Livid. The use of this word here is, from our associations with it, hardly a happy one. The idea appears to be that, contrasted with the white of the dissolving snows, the streams look lead-colored or bluish-black.

196.-26. Aries, the Ram, is the first of the signs of the Zodiac, and Taurus, or the Bull, the second. About thirty days would elapse between the time the sun is at the first point of Aries (or the time when the sun crosses the equator towards the north) and the time of its entrance into Taurus. Consequently the date the poet wishes to indicate is about a month after the vernal equinox (March 21st), or the latter part of April.-55. Maro Vergil, whose full name was Publius Vergilius Maronis. The reference is to the Georgics.

197.-60. And some, etc. Probably a reference to the familiar story of Cincinnatus. The prophet Elisha (1. Kings xxx. 19) may have been one of those in the poet's mind in the earlier passage.-70-72. As the sea... your empire owns, etc,

It should be remembered that England was not at this time (1728) the world-power which she was shortly destined to become. The fight for the supremacy in India and America had yet to be fought. Nevertheless, when Thomson wrote, the foundations of her world-trade were being laid under the sagacious management of Walpole, and the passage has an interest through its bearing on the commercial conditions of the time. Cf. Autumn, 117 et seq.

198.-108. Augusta = London. (See n. to Dryden's Mac Flecknoe, 1. 64.) Many elevations on the outskirts of London would have afforded a good view of the fields in Thomson's time.

SUMMER.

199.-378. People. Seldom used except of human beings; compare, however, The ants are a people not strong, yet they prepare their meats in the summer.' (Prov. xxx. 25.)-386. Sordid, here = dirty (obs.).

AUTUMN.

200.-3. The Doric reed, i.e., the pipe, or oaten reed, of the pastoral poet. Rustic and pastoral poetry was associated with the Dorians, and especially with the Dorians in Sicily. See Lycidas, n. to 1. 189.

201.-957. Fleeces unbounded ether. A unique, or at least an unusual, use of fleeces. The sense is that the calm spreads over the boundless atmosphere as soft as a fleece of wool. (See Centy. Dict.)

WINTER.

Winter was the

202.-5. Welcome, kindred glooms!, etc. first of the four poems on The Seasons to be composed. It was begun in a period of depression, just after Thomson had given up a tutorship which he had regarded as a desirable opening. He was "without employment, without money, with few friends, [and] saddened by the loss of his mother." This pas sage," says Minto, "expressed his own forlorn mood on the approach of the winter of 1725."-8. Nursed by careless solitude, etc. Thomson, born in the Scottish Border country near the waters of the Tweed, passed his youth in the freedom and beauty of that fascinating region. Dr. Johnson tells us that Thomson while a schoolboy at Jedburgh, a town in that vicinity, was given to poetical composition.

203.-224. Livid. See n. to Spring, 1. 16, supra.-246. The red-breast, etc. To appreciate the accuracy of this beautiful description, we must remember that the English robin (which

is, of course, the bird here referred to) is a different bird from its American namesake. Its trust in man, its timid entrance into human dwellings, enforced by the rigors of winter, are well-recognized facts. The peculiar understanding subsisting in England between man and this familiar bird is perhaps reflected in the well-known ballad, where the robins cover the lost children with leaves.

205.-356. The social tear. . . the social sigh, i.e., the tear or sigh prompted by sympathy with or compassion for society at large. Cf. Pope, Essay on Man, IV. 396. "That true selflove and social are the same."-359. The generous band, etc. That is, a Parliamentary Committee appointed at the instance of Oglethorpe (afterwards founder of Georgia) to investigate the condition of the Fleet and Marshalsea prisons. This committee began its work in 1729. Thomson does not exaggerate the horrors which this inquiry disclosed. In the allusion to "little tyrants" (367) the poet probably had in mind one, Thomas Bambridge, then warden of the Fleet, a brutal and despotic man who wrung exorbitant fees from the wretched inmates. This passage does not appear in the original version of Winter, 1726, which was considerably shorter than that with which we are familiar. The first version, it will be observed, was published some three years before the events here referred to took place, and the fact that these lines are a later insertion explains an apparent discrepancy in dates.

COLLINS.

"

207.-WILLIAM COLLINS (1721-1759), whose poetry, insignificant in amount and restricted in range, yet includes some of the most exquisitely finished and unobtrusively beautiful lyrics in the language, was born in Chichester, Sussex. His poetic faculty early declared itself. Born when the superiority of reason and " good sense to emotion and imagination, was preached and exemplified in high places, Collins (in Dr. Johnson's phrase) "delighted to rove through the meanders of enchantment" and " gaze on the magnificence of golden palaces." The spell of the gorgeous East mysteriously took hold of him, and he wrote his Persian Eclogues (pub. 1742) while yet at school at Winchester. He came to London about 1744, determined to devote himself to literature and full of "projects." His Odes on Several Descriptive and Allegoric Subjects, etc., appeared at the close of 1746 (dated 1747), preceding by a few months only the poetic advent of Gray. Wide as were the differences in life and character between these two poets, the two greatest lyric voices of their time, in