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round and round a rose-bush, and then settling himself down seriously to work, as mute as a mouse, among the half-blown petals. However, we are not now writing our Confessions

gorgeous-for the Bard came to his subject full of inspiration; and as it was the inspiration, here, not of profound thought, but of passionate emotion, it was right that music at the very first moment should overflow the and what we wished to say about this paspage, and that it should be literally strewed sage is, that in it the one sex is represented as with roses. An imperfect Impersonation is turning away the face from that of the other, often proof positive of the highest state of which may be all natural enough, though poetical enthusiasm. The forms of nature polite on the gentleman's part we can never undergo a half humanizing process under the call it; and, had the female virgin done so, we intensity of our love, yet still retain the cha- cannot help thinking it would have read better racter of the insensate creation, thus affecting in poetry. But for Spring to avert his blushful us with a sweet, strange, almost bewildering, face from the ardent looks of Summer, has on blended emotion that scarcely belongs to either us the effect of making both Seasons seem simseparately, but to both together clings as to a pletons. Spring, in the character of " ethereal phenomenon that only the eye of genius sees, mildness," was unquestionably a female; but because only the soul of genius can give it a here she is "unsexed from the crown to the presence-though afterwards all eyes dimly toe," and changed into an awkward hobbleterecognise it, on its being shown to them, as hoy, who, having passed his boyhood in the something more vivid than their own faint ex-country, is a booby who blushes black at the perience, yet either kindred to it, or virtually one and the same. Almost all human nature can, in some measure, understand and feel the most exquisite and recondite image which only the rarest genius could produce. Were it not so, great poets might break their harps, and go drown themselves in Helicon.

"From brightening fields of ether fair disclosed,
Child of the Sun, refulgent SUMMER comes,
In pride of youth, and felt through Nature's depth:
He comes attended by the sultry hours,
And ever-fanning breezes, on his way;
While, from his ardent look, the turning Spring
Averts her blushful face, and earth, and skies,
All smiling, to his hot dominion leaves."

gaze of his own brother, and if brought into the company of the lasses, would not fail to faint away in a fit, nor revive till his face felt a pitcherful of cold water.

"Crown'd with the sickle and the wheaten sheaf, While Autumn, nodding o'er the yellow plain, Comes jovial on," &c.,

is, we think, bad. The Impersonation here is complete, and though the sex of Autumn is not mentioned, it is manifestly meant to be male. So far, there is nothing amiss either one way or another. But “nodding o'er the yellow plain" is a mere statement of a fact in nature and descriptive of the growing and ripening or ripened harvest-whereas it is applied here to Autumn, as a figure who "comes jovial on." This is not obscurity-or indistinctness-which, as we have said before, is often a great beauty in Impersonation; but it is an inconsistency and a contradiction-and therefore indefensible on any ground either of conception or expression.

Here the Impersonation is stronger-and perhaps the superior strength lies in the words child of the Sun." And here in the words describing Spring, she too is more of an Impersonation than in the other passage-avert ing her blushful face from the Summer's ardent look. The poet having made Summer masculine, very properly makes Spring feminine; and 'tis a jewel of a picture-for ladies should There are no such essential vices as this in always avert their blushful faces from the the "Castle of Indolence"-for by that time ardent looks of gentlemen. Thomson, indeed, Thomson had subjected his inspiration to elsewhere says of an enamoured youth over-thought-and his poetry, guided and guarded powered by the loving looks of his mistress, by philosophy, became celestial as an angel's

"From the keen gaze her lover turns away, Full of the dear ecstatic power, and sick With sighing languishment."

This, we have heard, from experienced persons of both sexes, is as delicate as it is natural; but for our own simple and single selves, we never remember having got sick on any such occasion. Much agitated, we cannot deny-if we did, the most credulous would not credit us-much agitated we have beenwhen our lady-love, not contented with fixing upon us her dove-eyes, began billing and cooing in a style from which the cushat might have taken a lesson with advantage, that she might the better perform her innocent part on her first assignation with her affianced in the pine-grove on St. Valentine's day; but never in all our long lives got we absolutely sickher even squeamish-never were we obliged to turn away with our hand to our mouth-but, on the contrary, we were commonly as brisk as a bee at a pot of honey; or, if that be too luscious a simile, as brisk as that same wonderful insect murmuring for a few moments

song.

"See, Winter comes, to rule the varied year,
Sullen and sad, with all his rising train,
Vapours, and clouds, and storms. Be these my theme,
These that exalt the soul to solemn thought,
And heavenly musing. Welcome, kindred glooms!
Congenial horrors, hail! with frequent foot,
Pleased have I, in my cheerful morn of life,
When nursed by careless Solitude I lived,
And sung of Nature with unceasing joy,
Pleased have I wander'd through your rough domain;
Trod the pure virgin-snows, myself as pure ;
Heard the winds roar, and the big torrents burst;
Or seen the deep-fermenting tempest brew'd
In the grim evening sky. Thus pass'd the time,
Till through the lucid chambers of the south
Look'd out the joyous Spring, look'd out, and smiled!”
Divine inspiration indeed! Poetry, that if read
by the bedside of a dying lover of nature,
might

"Create a soul

Under the ribs of death!"

What in the name of goodness makes us suppose that a mean and miserable November day, even while we are thus Rhapsodizing, is drizzling all Edinburgh with the worst of all imaginable Scottish mists-an Easterly Harr1

We know that he infests ali the year, but shows his poor spite in its bleakest bitterness in March and in November. Earth and heaven are not only not worth looking at in an Easterly Harr, but the Visible is absolute wretchedness, and people wonder why they were born. The visitation begins with a sort of characterless haze, waxing more and more wetly obscure, till you know not whether it be rain, snow, or sleet, that drenches your clothes in dampness, till you feel it in your skin, then in your flesh, then in your bones, then in your marrow, and then in your mind. Your blinking eyes have it too-and so, shut it as you will, has your moping mouth. Yet the streets, though looking blue, are not puddled, and the dead cat lies dry in the gutter. There is no eaves-dropping-no gushing of water-spouts. To say it rained would be no breach of veracity, but a mere misstatement of a melancholy fact. The truth is, that the weather cannot rain, but keeps spit, spit, spitting, in a style suffi

cient to irritate Socrates-or even Moses him

self; and yet true, veritable, sincere, genuine, and authentic Rain could not-or if he could would not-so thoroughly soak you and your whole wardrobe, were you to allow him a day to do it, as that shabby imitation of a tenthrate shower, in about the time of an usual sized sermon. So much cold and so much wet, with so little to show for it, is a disgrace to the atmosphere, which it will take weeks of the sunniest the weather can afford to wipe off. But the stores of sunniness which it is in the power of Winter in this northern latitude. to

accumulate, cannot be immense; and therefore we verily believe that it would be too much to expect that it ever can make amends for the hideous horrors of this Easterly Harr. The Cut-throat!

On such days suicides rush to judgment. That sin is mysterious as insanity-their graves are unintelligible as the cells in Bedlam. Oh! the brain and the heart of man! Therein is the only Hell. Small these regions in space, and of narrow room-but haunted may they be with all the Fiends and all the Furies. A few nerves transmit to the soul despair or bliss. At the touch of somethingwhence and wherefore sent, who can say something that serenes or troubles, soothes or jars-she soars up into life and light, just as you may have seen a dove suddenly cleave the sunshine-or down she dives into death and darkness, like a shot eagle tumbling into the sea! Materialism! Immaterialism! Why should mortals, whom conscience tells that they are immortals, bewildered and bewildering ponder upon the dust! Do your duty to God and man, and fear not that, when that dust dies, the spirit that breathed by it will live for ever. Feels not that spirit its immortality in each sacred thought? When did ever religious soul fear annihilation! Or shudder to think that, having once known, it could ever forget God? Such forgetfulness is in the idea of eternal death. Therefore is eternal death impossible to us who can hold communion with our Maker. Our knowledge of Him-dim and remote though it be is a God-given pledge that he will redeem us from the doom of the grave.

Let us then, and all our friends, believe, with Coleridge, in his beautiful poem of the "Nightingale," that

"In Nature there is nothing melancholy," not even November. The disease of the body may cause disease in the soul; yet not the less trust we in the mercy of the merciful-not the less strive we to keep feeding and trimming that spiritual lamp which is within us, even when it flickers feebly in the dampy gloom, like an earthly lamp left in a vaulted sepulchre, about to die among the dead. Heaven seems to have placed a power in our Will as mighty as it is mysterious. Call it not Liberty, lest you should wax proud; call it not Necessity, lest you should despair. But turn from the oracles of man-still dim even in their clearest responses-to the Oracles of God, which are never dark; or if so, but

"Dark with excessive bright"

to eyes not constantly accustomed to sustain the splendour. Bury all your books, when around you-bury them all, powerful though you feel the night of skepticism gathering you may have deemed their spells to illuminate the unfathomable-open your Bible, and all the spiritual world will be as bright as day.

The disease of the body may cause disease to the soul. Ay, madness. Some rapture in the soul makes the brain numb, and thence sudden or lingering death;-some rupture in the brain makes the soul insane, and thence life worse than death, and haunted by horrors beyond what is dreamt of the grave and all its corruption. Perhaps the line fullest of meaning that ever was written, is

"Mens sana in corpore sano."

When nature feels the flow of its vital blood pure and unimpeded, what unutterable gladhealth! Then the mere consciousness of exness bathes the spirit in that one feeling ofistence is like that emotion which Milton speaks of as breathed from the bowers of Pa

radise

"Vernal delight and joy, able to drive
All sadness but despair;"

It does more-for despair itself cannot prevail
against it. What a dawn of bliss rises upon
healthful as the sun! Then
us with the dawn of light, when our life is

"It feels that it is greater than it knows."

God created the earth and the air beautiful through the senses; and at the uplifting of a little lid, a whole flood of imagery is let in upon the spirit, all of which becomes part of its very self, as if the enjoying and the enjoyed were one. Health flies away like an angel, and her absence disenchants the earth. What shadows then pass over the ethereal surface of the spirit, from the breath of disordered matter!-from the first scarcely-felt breath of despondency, to the last scowling blackness of despair! Often men know not what power placed the fatal fetters upon them-they see even that a link may be open, and that one effort might fling off the bondage; but their souls are in slavery, and will not be free. Till something like a fresh wind, or a sudden sunbeam, comes across them, and in a moment their whole existence is changed, and they see the very va

nishing of their most dismal and desperate | ple of Apollo or Plutus, we smile at the idea dream.

"Somewhat too much of this"-so let us strike the chords to a merrier measure-to a "livelier lilt"-as suits the variable spirit of our Soliloquy. Be it observed, then, that the sole certain way of getting rid of the blue devils, is to drown them in a shower-bath. You would not suppose that we are subject to the blue devils? Yet we are sometimes their very slave. When driven to it by their lash, every occupation, which when free we resort to as pastime, becomes taskwork; nor will these dogged masters suffer us to purchase emancipation with the proceeds of the toil of our groaning genius. But whenever the worst comes to the worst, and we almost wish to die so that we might escape the galling pressure of our chains, we sport buff, and into the shower-bath. Yet such is the weakness of poor human nature, that like a criminal on the scaffold, shifting the signal kerchief from hand to hand, much to the irritation of his excellency the hangman, one of the most impatient of men and more to the satisfaction of the crowd, the most patient of men and wo

of surmounting, so molehillish do they look,
and we kick them aside like an old footstool.
Let the country ask us for a scheme to pay off
the national debt-there she has it; do you re-
quest us to have the kindness to leap over the
moon-here we go; excellent Mr. Blackwood
has but to say the word, and a ready-made
Leading Article is in his hand, promotive of
the sale of countless numbers of "my Maga-
zine," and of the happiness of countless num-
bers of mankind. We feel-and the feeling
proves the fact-as bold as Joshua the son of
Nun-as brave as David the son of Jesse-as
wise as Solomon the son of David-and as
proud as Nebuchadnezzar the son of Nebopo-
lazzar. We survey our image in the mirror-
and think of Adam. We put ourselves into
the posture of the Belvidere Apollo.

"Then view the Lord of the unerring bow,
The God of life, and poesy, and light,
The Sun in human arms array'd, and brow
All radiant from his triumph in the fight.
The shaft hath just been shot-the arrow bright
With an immortal vengeance; in his eye
And nostril beautiful disdain, and might
And majesty flash their full lightnings by,
Developing in that one glance the Deity."

men-we often stand shut up in that sentry-Up four flight of stairs we fly-for the bath is looking canvas box, dexterously and sinis- in the double-sunk story-ten steps at a bound trously fingering the string, perhaps for five-and in five minutes have devoured one quarshrinking, and shuddering, and grueing minutes, ere we can summon up desperation to pull down tern loaf, six eggs, and a rizzar, washing all upon ourselves the rushing waterfall! Soon as bowl of coffee, over with a punch-bowl of congou and a teathe agony is over, we bounce out the colour of beet-root, and survey ourselves in a five-foot mirror, with an amazement that, on each successive exhibition, is still as when we first experienced it,

"Enormous breakfast,

Wild without rule or art! Where nature plays
Her virgin fancies."

And then, leaning back on our Easy-chair, we
perform an exploit beyond the reach of Euclid

utter demolition of our admirable friend Sir

David Brewster's diatribe, in a late number of the Quarterly Review, on the indifference of government to men of science, chuckle over our nobly-won order, K. C. C. B., Knight Companion of the Cold Bath.

"In life's morning march, when our spirits were young."-why, wE SQUARE THE CIRCLE, and to the By and by, we assume the similitude of an immense boiled lobster that has leapt out of the pan-and then, seeming for a while to be an emblematical or symbolical representation of the setting Sun, we sober down into a faint pink, like that of the Morn, and finally subside into our own permanent flesh-light, which, as we turn our back upon ourselves, after the fashion of some of his majesty's ministers, re

minds us of that line in Cowper descriptive of

the November Moon

Many analogies between the seasons of the year and the seasons of life, being natural, have been a frequent theme of poetry in all countries. Had the gods made us poetical, we should now have poured forth a few exquisite illustrations of some that are very affecting and impressive. "Resplendent less, but of an ampler round." It has, however, often been felt by us, that not Like that of the eagle, our youth is renewed-a few of those one meets with in the lamentawe feel strong as the horse in Homer-a divine glow permeates our being, as if it were the subdued spiritual essence of caloric. An intense feeling of self-not self-love, mind ye, and the farthest state imaginable in this wide world from selfishness-elevates us far up above the clouds, into the loftiest regions of the sunny blue, and we seem to breathe an atmosphere, of which every glorious gulp is inspiration. Despondency is thrown to the dogs. Despair appears in his true colours, a more grotesque idiot than Grimaldi, and we treat him with a guffaw. All ante-bath difficulties seem now-what they really are-facilities of which we are by far too much elated to avail ourselves; dangers that used to ap-system-therefore, individual natural objects in pear appalling are felt now to be lulling securities-obstacles, like mountains, lying in our way of life as we walked towards the tem

tions of whey-faced sentimentalists, are false or fantastic, and do equal violence to all the seasons, both of the year and of life. These gentry have been especially silly upon the similitude of Old Age to Winter. Winter, in external nature, is not the season of decay. An old tree, for example, in the very dead of winter, as it is figuratively called, though bare of leaves, is full of life. The sap, indeed, has sunk down from his bole and branchesdown into his toes or roots. But there it is, ready, in due time, to reascend. Not so with an old man-the present company always excepted ;—his sap is not sunk down to his toes, but much of it is gone clean out of the

Winter are not analogically emblematical of people stricken in years. Far less does the Winter itself of the year, considered as a sea

son, resemble the old age of life considered as est, gentlest, mildest, meekest, modestest, softa season. To what peculiarities, pray, in the est, sweetest, and sunniest of all God's creacharacter and conduct of aged gentlemen in tures that steal along the face of the earth? So general, do rain, sleet, hail, frost, ice, snow, are we. So much for our similitude-a staring winds, blasts, storms, hurricanes, and occa- and striking one-to Spring. But were you sional thunder and lightning, bear analogy? to stop there, what an inadequate idea would We pause for a reply. Old men's heads, it is you have of our character! For only ask your true, are frequently white, though more fre- senses, and they will tell you that we are much quently bald, and their blood is not so hot as liker Summer. Is not Summer often infernally when they were springalds. But though there hot? So are we. Is not Summer sometimes be no great harm in likening a sprinkling of cool as its own cucumbers? So are we. Does white hair on mine ancient's temples to the not summer love the shade? So do we. Is appearance of the surface of the earth, flat or not Summer, nevertheless, somewhat "too mountainous, after a slight fall of snow-and much i' the sun?" So are we. Is not Sumindeed, in an impassioned state of mind, we mer famous for its thunder and lightning? So feel a moral beauty in such poetical expres- are we. Is not summer, when he chooses, sion as "sorrow shedding on the head of still, silent, and serene as a sleeping seraph? youth its untimely snows"-yet the natural And so too-when Christopher chooses-are propriety of such an image, so far from justi- not we? Though, with keen remorse we confying the assertion of a general analogy be- fess it, that, when suddenly wakened, we are tween Winter and Old Age, proves that the too often more like a fury or a fiend—and that analogies between them are in fact very few, completes the likeness; for all who know a and felt to be analogies at all, only when Scottish Summer, with one voice exclaimtouched upon very seldom, and very slightly," So is he!" But our portrait is but halfand, for the most part, very vaguely-the truth drawn; you know but a moiety of our characbeing, that they scarcely exist at all in reality, ter. Is Autumn jovial?-ask Thomson-so but have an existence given to them by the are we. Is Autumn melancholy?-ask Alison power of creative passion, which often works and Gillespie-so are we. Is Autumn bright? like genius. Shakspeare knew this well-as-ask the woods and groves-so are he knew every thing else; and, accordingly, he gives us Seven Ages of Life-not Four Seasons. But how finely does he sometimes, by the mere use of the names of the Seasons of the Year, intensify to our imagination the mental state to which they are for the moment felt to be analogous ?—

"Now is the winter of our discontent

we.

Is Autumn rich?-ask the whole worldso are we. Does Autumn rejoice in the yellow grain and the golden vintage, that, stored up in his great Magazine of Nature, are lavishly thence dispensed to all that hunger, and quench the thirst of the nations? So do we. After that, no one can be so purand-bat-blind as not see that North is, in very truth, Autumn's gracious self, rather than his Likeness or Eidolon. But

"Lo, Winter comes to rule th' inverted year!”

Made glorious summer by the sun of York!" That will do. The feeling he wished to inspire, is inspired; and the further analogical images which follow add nothing to our feelings, though they show the strength and depth of his into So do we. whose lips they are put. A bungler would have bored us with ever so many ramifications of the same idea, on one of which, in our weariness, we might have wished him hanged by the neck till he was dead.

"Sullen and sad, with all his rising train-
Vapours, and clouds, and storms!"

So are we. The great author of the "Sea-
sons" says, that Winter and his train

"Exalt the soul to solemn thought, And heavenly musing!"

We are an Old Man, and though single not singular; yet, without vanity, we think ourselves entitled to say, that we are no more like So do we. And, "lest aught less great should Winter, in particular, than we are like Spring, stamp us mortal," here we conclude the comSummer, or Autumn. The truth is, that we parison, dashed off in few lines by the hand of are much less like any one of the Seasons, a great master, and ask, Is not North, Winter! than we are like the whole Set. Is not Spring Thus, listener after our own heart! Thou feelsharp! So are we. Is not Spring snappish? est that we are imaged aright in all our atSo are we. Is not Spring boisterous! So are tributes neither by Spring, nor Summer, nor Is not Spring "beautiful exceedingly!" Autumn, nor Winter; but that the character So are we. Is not Spring capricious? So are of Christopher is shadowed forth and reflected we. Is not Spring, at times, the gladdest, gay-by the Entire Year.

we.

A FEW WORDS ON THOMSON.

and where he seems to us to have overshot his mark, and to have ceased to be perfectly natu ral. Thus

"Drooping, the ox

Stands cover'd o'er with snow, and then demands
The fruit of all his toil."

"The bleating kind

Eye the bleak heaven, and next the glistening earth,
With looks of dumb despair."

POETRY, one might imagine, must be full of Snow-scenes. If so, they have almost all dissolved-melted away from our memory-as the transiencies in nature do which they coldly pictured. Thomson's "Winter," of course, we do not include in our obliviousness-and from Cowper's "Task" we might quote many a The image of the ox is as good as possible. most picturesque Snow-piece. But have frost We see him, and could paint him in oils. But, and snow been done full justice to by them to our mind, the notion of his "demanding the or any other of our poets? They have been fruit of all his toils"-to which we freely acwell spoken of by two-Southey and Coleridge knowledge the worthy animal was well en-of whose most poetical compositions respec-titled-sounds, as it is here expressed, rather tively, "Thalaba" and the “Ancient Mariner," fantastical. Call it doubtful-for Jemmy was in some future volume we may dissert. Thom- never utterly in the wrong in any sentiment. son's genius does not so often delight us by Againexquisite minute touches in the description of nature as that of Cowper. It loves to paint on a great scale, and to dash objects off sweepingly by bold strokes-such, indeed, as have The second line is perfect; but the Ettrick Shepalmost always distinguished the mighty mas- herd agreed with us-one night at Ambrose's ters of the lyre and the rainbow. Cowper sets-that the third was not quite right. Sheep, nature before your eyes-Thomson before your imagination. Which do you prefer? Both. Be assured that both poets had pored night and day upon her-in all her aspects-and that she had revealed herself fully to both. But they, in their religion, elected different modes of worship and both were worthy of the mighty mother. In one mood of mind we love Cowper best, in another Thomson. Sometimes the Seasons are almost a Task, and sometimes the Task For, as they disperse, they do look very sad― is out of Season. There is delightful distinct- and no doubt are so; but had they been in ness in all the pictures of the Bard of Olney-despair, they would not so readily, and conglorious gloom or glimmer in most of those of stantly, and uniformly, and successfully, have the Bard of Ednam. Cowper paints trees- taken to the digging, but whole flocks had perThomson woods. Thomson paints, in a few wondrous lines, rivers from source to sea, like the mighty Burrampooter-Cowper, in many no very wondrous lines, brightens up one bend of a stream, or awakens our fancy to the murmur of some single waterfall. But a truce to antithesis-a deceptive style of criticism-and see how Thomson sings of Snow. Why, in the following lines, as well as Christopher North in his Winter Rhapsody

"The cherish'd fields Put on their winter-robe of purest white. 'Tis brightness all; save where the new snow melts Along the mazy current."

Nothing can be more vivid. "Tis of the nature of an ocular spectrum.

Here is a touch like one of Cowper's. Note the beauty of the epithet "brown," where all that is motionless is white

"The foodless wilds

Pour forth their brown inhabitants."

he agreed with us, do not deliver themselves up to despair under any circumstances; and here Thomson transferred what would have been his own feeling in a corresponding condition, to animals who dreadlessly follow their instincts. Thomson redeems himself in what immediately succeeds→→→

"Then, sad dispersed,

Dig for the wither'd herb through heaps of snow.”

ished.

You will not, we are confident, be angry with us for quoting a few lines that occur soon after, and which are a noble example of the sweeping style of description which, we said above, characterizes the genius of this sublime poet:

"From the bellowing east

In this dire season, oft the whirlwind's wing Sweeps up the burden of whole wintry plains At one wide waft, and o'er the hapless flocks, Hid in the hollow of two neighbouring hills, The billowy tempest whelms; till upward urged, The valley to a shining mountain swells, Tipp'd with a wreath high-curling in the sky." Well might the bard, with such a snow-storm in his imagination, when telling the shepherds to be kind to their helpless charge, address them in a language which, in an ordinary mood, would have been bombast. "Shepherds," says he, "baffle the raging year!" How? Why merely by filling their pens with food. But the whirlwind was up

"Far off its coming groan'd,"

That one word proves the poet. Does it not? The entire description from which these two sentences are selected by memory-a critic and the poet was inspired. Had he not been you may always trust to-is admirable; ex-so, he had not cried, "Baffle the raging year;" cept in one or two places where Thomson and if you be not so, you will think it a most seems to have striven to be strongly pathetic, absurd expression.

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