He is also fond of the apostrophic personification, often feebly, as when, acting upon a suggestion from Mallet,[205] he writes:
Comes, Inspiration, from thy hermit seat,
By mortal seldom found, etc.
(“Summer,” l. 15)
As for the seasons themselves, we do not find any very successful attempts at personification. Thomson gives descriptive impressions rather than abstractions: “gentle Spring, ethereal mildness” (“Spring,” 1), “various-blossomed Spring” (“Autumn,” 5); or borrowing, as often, an epithet from Milton, “refulgent Summer” (“Summer,” 2); or “surly Winter” (“Spring,” 11).
But in these, and similar passages, the seasons can hardly be said to be distinctly pictured or personified. In “Winter,” however, there is perhaps a more successful attempt at vague but suggestive personification:[206]
See Winter comes, to rule the varied year,
Sullen and sad, with all his rising train
Vapours, and clouds and storms.
But on the whole Thomson’s personifications of the seasons are not, poetically, very impressive. There is little or no approach to the triumphant evocation with which Keats conjures up Autumn for us, with all its varied sights and sounds, and its human activities vividly personified in the gleaner and the winnower