A groupe worthy the pencil of Giacomo da Baffano, and fo minutely delineated, that he might have worked from this sketch;

On the graffy bank

Some ruminating lie; while others stand
Half in the flood, and often bending fip

The circling furface.

He adds, that the ox in the middle of them,

From his fides

The troublous infects lafhes, to his fides
Returning ftill*.

A natural circumstance, that to the best of my remembrance hath escaped even the natural Theocritus. Nor do I recollect that any poet hath been struck with the murmurs of the numberless infects, that fwarm abroad at the noon of a fummer's day; as attendants of the evening indeed, they have been mentioned;

Refounds the living furface of the ground:

Nor undelightful is the ceaseless hum

To him who muses through the woods at noon;

Or drowsy shepherd, as he lies reclin'd

With half-fhut eyes *.

*Summer, Ver. 485. et feq.

*Summer, Ver. 299.

But

But the novelty and nature we admire in the descriptions of Thomfon are by no means his only excellencies; he is equally to be praised, for impreffing on our minds the effects, which the fcene delineated would have on the present spectator or hearer. Thus having spoken of the roaring of the favages in a wilderness of Africa, he introduces a captive, who though just escaped from * prison and flavery under the tyrant of Morocco, is fo terrified and astonished at the dreadful uproar, that

The wretch half wishes for his bonds again.

Thus also having described a caravan loft and overwhelmed in one of thofe whirlwinds that fo frequently agitate and lift up the whole fands of the defart, he finishes his picture by adding that,

In Cairo's crouded ftreets *,

Th'impatient merchant, wondering waits in vain,
And Mecca faddens at the long delay.

And thus, lastly, in defcribing the peftilence

that deftroyed the British troops at the fiege

* Summer, Ver. 925.

* Ver. 966.

Of

of Carthagena, he has ufed a circumftance inimitably lively, picturesque, and striking to the imagination; for he says that the admiral not only heard the groans of the fick that echoed from ship to fhip, but that he also pensively stood, and liftened at midnight to the dashing of the waters, occafioned by throwing the dead bodies into the fea;

Heard, nightly, plung'd into the fullen waves,
The frequent corse *.

A minute and particular enumeration of circumstances judiciously selected, is what chiefly discriminates poetry from history, and renders the former, for that reason, a more close and faithful representation of nature than the latter. And if our poets would accustom themselves to contemplate fully every object, before they attempted to defcribe it, they would not fail of giving their readers more new images than they generally do †.

* Ver. 1035.

THESE

+ A fummer evening, for inftance, after a shower, has been frequently defcribed: but never, that I can recollect, fo juftly as

THESE obfervations on Thomson, which however would not have been fo large, if there had been already any confiderable criticism on his character, might be still aug

in the following lines, whofe greatest beauty is that hinted above, a fimple enumeration of the appearances of nature, and of what is actually to be feen at such a time. They are not unworthy the correct and pure Tibullus.

Vefpere fub verno, tandem actis imbribus, æther
Guttatim fparfis rorat apertus aquis.
Aureus abrupto curvamine defuper arcus

Fulget, et ancipiti lumine tingit agros.
Continuò fenfus pertentat frigoris aura

Vivida, et infinuans mulcet amænus odor.
Pallentes fparfim accrefcunt per pafcua fungi,
Lætius et torti graminis herba viret.
Plurimus annosâ decuffus ab arbore limax
In putri lentum tramite fulcat iter.
Splendidus accendit per dumos lampida vermis,
Rofcida dum tremulâ femita luce micat.

These are the particular circumftances that ufually fucceed a
shower at that season, and yet these are new and untouched by
any other writer. The Carmina Quadragefimalia, volume
the fecond, printed at Oxford 1748, from whence this is
tranfcribed, (page 14,) contain many copies of exquifite descrip-
tive poetry, in a genuine claffical ftyle. See particularly The
Rivers, page 4. The Morning, page 12.
The Houfe of
Care, from Spenfer, page 16. The Mahometan paradise,
page 32. The Trees of different foils, page 63. The Bird's
neft, page 82. Geneva, page 89.
The Indian, page 118. The Houfe
Columbus first difcovering the land
page 125. &c.

Virgil's tomb, page 97.

of Discord, page 133. of the Weft Indies,

mented

mented by an examination and developement of the beauties in the Loves of the birds, in SPRING, verfe 580. A view of the torrid zone in SUMMER, verfe 626. The rife of fountains and rivers in AUTUMN, verfe 781. A man perishing in the fnows, in WINTER, verfe 277. The wolves descending from the Alps, and a view of winter within the polar circle, verse 809, which are all of them highlyfinished originals, excepting a few of those blemishes intimated above. WINTER is in my apprehenfion the most valuable of these four poems; the scenes of it, like those of Il Penferofo of Milton, being of that awful, folemn, and penfive kind, on which a great genius beft delights to dwell.

POPE it seems was of opinion, that descriptive poetry is a compofition as abfurd as a feast made up of fauces: and I know many other perfons that think meanly of it. I will not presume to fay it is equal, either in dignity or utility, to those compofitions that lay open the internal conftitution of man, and