At this point it is necessary to hark back for the purpose of considering other works which had been appearing alongside of the works just discussed. It has already been remarked that in this matter of the use of abstraction and personification the influence of Milton early asserted itself, and there can be no doubt that a good deal of it may be traced to the influence more especially of the early poems. Indeed, the blank verse poems, which attempted to imitate or parody the “grand style” of the great epics, furnish few examples of the personified abstraction. The first of these, the “Splendid Shilling” and “Cyder” of John Philips (1705-1706) contains but few instances. In Somerville’s “Chase” there is occasionally a commonplace example, such as “brazen-fisted Time,” though in his ode “To Marlborough” he falls into the conventional style quickly enough. In the rest of the blank verse poems Mallet’s “Excursion” (1738), and his “Amyntor and Theodora” (1744), comparatively little use is made of the device, a remark also applicable to Dyer’s “Ruins of Rome” (1740), and to Grainger’s “Sugar Cane” (1764).
The fashion for all these blank verse poems had been started largely by the success of “The Seasons,” which appeared in its original form from 1726 to 1730, to undergo more than one revision and augmentation until the final edition of 1744. Though Thomson’s work shows very many traces of the influence of Milton, there is no direct external evidence that his adoption of blank verse was a result of that influence. Perhaps, as has been suggested,[204] he was weary of the monotony of the couplet, or at least considered its correct and polished form incapable of any further development. At the same time it is clear that having adopted “rhyme-unfettered verse,” he chose to regard Milton as a model of diction and style, though he was by no means a slavish imitator.
With regard to the special problems with which we are here concerned, it must be noted that when Thomson was first writing “The Seasons,” the device of personified abstraction had not become quite so conventional and forced in its use as at a later date. Nevertheless examples of the typical abstraction are not infrequent; thus, in an enumeration of the passions which, since the end of the “first fresh dawn,” have invaded the hearts and minds of men, we are given “Base Envy,” withering at another’s joy; “Convulsive Anger,” storming at large; and “Desponding Fear,” full of feeble fancies, etc. (“Spring,” 280-306). Other examples are somewhat redeemed by the use of a felicitous compound epithet, “Art imagination-flushed” (“Autumn,” 140), “the lonesome Muse, low-whispering” (ibid., 955), etc. In “Summer” (ll. 1605 foll.) the poet presents one of the usual lists of abstract qualities (“White Peace, Social Love,” etc.), but there are imaginative touches present that help to vitalize some at least of the company into living beings:
The tender-looking Charity intent
On gentle deeds, and shedding tears through smiles—
and the passage is thus a curious mixture of mechanical abstractions with more vivid and inspired conceptions.
Occasionally Thomson employs the figure with ironical or humorous intention, and sometimes not ineffectively, as in the couplet,
Then sated Hunger bids his brother Thirst
Produce the mighty bowl.
(“Autumn,” 512)