The Seasons was at one time, and for many years the most popular volume of poetry in the country. It was to be found in every cottage, and passages from the poem were familiar to every school-boy. The appreciation of the work was more affectionate than critical, and Thomson's faults were sometimes mistaken for beauties; but the popularity of the Seasons was a healthy sign, and the poem, a forerunner of Cowper's Task, brought into vigorous life, feelings and sympathies that had been long dormant.
Pope, who is twice mentioned in the poem, took a great interest in its progress through the press. Thomson consulted him frequently, and accepted many of his suggestions, while apparently retaining at all times an independent judgment. To the familiar episode of 'the lovely young Lavinia' the following graceful passage is said, but on very doubtful authority to have been added by Pope.[30] The first line, given for the sake of the context, is from Thomson's pen:
'Thoughtless of beauty, she was Beauty's self,
Recluse amid the close-embowering woods;
As in the hollow breast of Apennine,
Beneath the shelter of encircling hills,
A myrtle rises, far from human eye,
And breathes its balmy fragrance o'er the wild;
So flourished, blooming and unseen by all,
The sweet Lavinia; till, at length, compelled
By strong necessity's supreme command
With smiling patience in her looks she went
To glean Palemon's fields.'
Thomson had now gained the highest mark of his fame, and, like Pope, had won it in a few years. Nearly two years of foreign travel followed, the poet having obtained the post of governor to a son of the Solicitor-General. The fruit of this tour was a long poem in blank verse on Liberty, which probably gave him infinite labour, but his ascent upon this occasion of what he calls 'the barren, but delightful mountain of Parnassus,' was labour lost. It is enough to say of Liberty, that it contains more than three thousand lines of unreadable blank verse. Sinecures were the rewards of genius in Thomson's day, and he was made Secretary of Briefs in the Court of Chancery. He took a cottage at Richmond, within an easy walk of Pope, and the two poets met often and lived amicably.
Thomson did not enjoy his official fortune long, for his patron died, and though he might have kept his post had he applied to the Lord Chancellor, in whose gift it was, he appears to have been too lazy to do so. His friend Lyttelton in this emergency introduced him to the Prince of Wales, who, on learning that his affairs 'were in a more poetical posture than formerly,' gave him a pension of £100 a year. There was no certainty in a gift of this nature, and in about ten years it was withdrawn.
The Castle of Indolence (1748) was the latest labour of Thomson's life, and in the judgment of many critics takes precedence of The Seasons in poetical merit. This verdict may be questioned, but the poem, written in the Spenserian stanza, has a soothing beauty and an enchanting felicity of expression which show the poet's genius in a new light. It is unlike any poetry of that age, and when compared with The Seasons, the verse, as Wordsworth justly says, 'is more harmonious and the diction more pure.' All the imagery of the poem is adopted to the vague and sleepy action of the characters represented in it. It is a veritable poet's dream, which carries the reader in its earliest stanzas into 'a pleasing land of drowsy-head:'
'In lowly dale, fast by a river's side,
With woody hill o'er hill encompassed round,
A most enchanting wizard did abide,
Than whom a fiend more fell is nowhere found.
It was, I ween, a lovely spot of ground;
And there a season atween June and May
Half prankt with Spring, with Summer half embrowned,
A listless climate made, where, sooth to say,
No living wight could work, ne carèd even for play.'
There are verbal inspirations in a great poet which satisfy the ear, capture the imagination, and live in the memory for ever. Milton's pages are studded with them like stars; Gray has a few, Wordsworth many, and Keats some not to be surpassed for witchery. Of such poetically suggestive lines Thomson has his share, and although it seems unfair to remove them from their context, the excision may be made in a few cases, since they show not only that a new poet had appeared in an age of prose, but a poet of a new order, whose inspiration was felt by his successors. How poetically imaginative is Thomson's imagery of the 'meek-eyed morn, mother of dews;' of
'Ships dim discovered dropping from the clouds;'
of