Autumn furnishes even more surprising instances: the stag “adhesive to the track,” the sands “strowed bibulous above,” “forests huge incult,” etc., as well as numerous passages of sustained latinism.[103]
In “Winter,” which grew from an original 405 lines in 1726 to 1,069 lines in 1746, latinism of vocabulary is not prominent to the same extent as in the three previous books, but the following is a typical sample:
Meantime in sable cincture shadows vast
Deep-tinged, and damp and congregated clouds
And all the vapoury turbulence of heaven
Involves the face of things.
(ll. 54 foll.)[104]
The revisions after 1730 do not show any great pruning, or less indulgence in these characteristics; rather the contrary, for many of them are additions which did not appear until 1744. Now and then Thomson has changed his terms and epithets. Thus in the lines
the potent sun
Melts into limpid air the high-raised clouds