planting of the vegetable into "distant dangerous climates: "* they, happily for themselves, bave no other idea but to dig on here, eat, drink, sleep, and kiss their wives. As to more important business, I have nothing to write to you. You know best the course of it. Be (as you always must be) just and honest: but if you are unhappily romantic, you shall come home without money, and write a tragedy on yourself. Mr. Lyttelton told me that the Grenvilles and he had strongly recommended the person the governor and you proposed for that considerable office, lately fallen vacant in your department, and that there were good hopes of succeeding. He told me also that Mr. Pitt had said, it was not to be expected that offices such as that is, for which the greatest interest is made here at home, could be accorded to your recommendation; but that, as to the middling or inferior offices, if there was not some particular reason to the contrary, regard would be had thereto. This is all that can be reasonably desired; and if you are not infected with a certain Creolean distemper, (whereof, I am persuaded, your soul will utterly resist the contagion, as I hope your body will that of their natural ones,) there are few men so capable of that unperishable happiness, that peace and satisfaction of mind, that proceed from being reasonable and moderate in our desires, as you are. These are the treasures, dug from an inexhaustible mine in our own breasts; which, like those in the kingdom of heaven, the rust of time cannot corrupt, nor thieves break through and steal. I must learn to work this mine a little more, being struck off from a certain hundred pounds a year which you know I had. West, Mallet, and I were all routed in one day. If you would know why-out of resentment to our friend + in Argyll-street. Yet I have hopes given me of having it restored with interest, some time or other. Ah! that some time or other is a great deceiver.

"Coriolanus" has not yet appeared upon the stage, from the little dirty jealousy of Tullus-I mean of him who was

Nearly the poet's own expression in his (then recently altered) "Hymn on the Seasons: ""To distant barbarous climes."-Edit. + George, afterwards Lord Lyttelton. + Garrick.

desired to act Tullus-towards him* who can alone act Coriolanus. Indeed, the first has entirely jockeyed the last off the stage for this season; but I believe he will return on him next season, like a giant in his wrath. Let us have a little more patience, Paterson; nay, let us be cheerful. At last all will be well; at least all will be over-here, I mean: God forbid it should be so hereafter! But, as sure as there is a God, that will not be so.+

Now that I am prating of myself, know that, after fourteen or fifteen years, the "Castle of Indolence" comes abroad in a fortnight. It will certainly travel as far as Barbadoes. You have an apartment in it, as a night-pensioner, which you may remember I filled up for you during our delightful party at North Haw. Will ever these days return again? Do not you remember your eating the raw fish that was never caught?

All our friends are pretty much in statu quo, except it be poor Mr. Lyttelton. He has had the severest trial a humane, tender heart can have :§ but the old physician Time will at last close up his wounds, though there must always remain an inward smarting.

Mitchel is in the House for Aberdeenshire, and has spoken modestly well: I hope he will be in something else soon. None deserves better: true friendship and humanity dwell in his heart. Gray is working hard at passing his accounts. I spoke to him about that affair. If he gives you any trouble about it, even that of dunning, I shall think of it strangely; but I dare say he is too friendly to do it. He values himself justly upon being friendly to his old

* Quin.

† It is pleasing to see the last expressions of the poet's confidence, that the form of the soul is eternal; that great spirits perish not with the body. There may be worthless vessels, and there may be vessels fitted for destruction; but of all that Heaven has endowed with feelings to enjoy it, nothing shall be lost, and the King of heaven shall raise it up again at the last day.

The "Castle of Indolence" is the finest poem of the kind in any language,-worthy of the ripened taste of Thomson, and of a polished age. § The death of his Lucy.

Sir Andrew Mitchel of Thainstoun.

B B

friends, and you are among the oldest. Symmer is at last tired of quality, and is going to take a semi-country house at Hammersmith.

I am sorry that honest sensible Warrender (who is in town) seems to be stunted in church-preferment. He ought to be a tall cedar in the house of the Lord. If he is not so at last, it will add more fuel to my indignation, that burns already too intensely, and throbs towards an eruption. Peter Murdoch is in town, tutor to Admiral Vernon's son; and is in good hopes of another living in Suffolk, that country of tranquillity, where he will then burrow himself in a wife, and be happy. Good-natured, obliging Millar is as usual.

Though the doctor * increases in his business, he does not decrease in spleen; but there is a certain kind of spleen that is both humane and agreeable, like Jacques's in the play. I sometimes have a touch of it.-But I must break off this chat with you about our friends, which, were I to indulge it, would be endless.

As for politics, we are, I believe, upon the brink of a peace. The French at present are vapouring in the siege of Maestricht; at the same time they are mortally sick in their marine, and through all the vitals of France. It is a pity we cannot continue the war a little longer, and put their agonizing trade quite to death. This siege, I take it, they mean as their last flourish in the war.

May your health, which never failed you yet, still continue, till you have scraped together enough to return home, and live in some snug corner, as happy as the Corycius senex, in Virgil's fourth Georgic, whom I recommend both to you and myself as a perfect model of the truest happy life. Believe me to be ever most sincerely and affectionately Yours, &c.,

JAMES THOMSON.

*Doctor Armstrong.-Armstrong was a worthy man, a good physician, and perhaps one of the best scientific didactic poets in the world, as appears from his poem on the Art of preserving Health. Thomson has described his absent moods in the "Castle of Indolence," in the sixtieth stanza.

When the good Doctor was with the British army in Flanders, as surgeon or physician, he was taken prisoner one day, taking what he called a stroll beyond the lines."

III. SPECIMENS OF THE SECOND EDITION OF THE "SEASONS," MCCXXXVIII.

In the "Seasons" published in 1738, the following paragraph occupied the space between verses 135-169 of Spring." But in the edition of 1744, Thomson transferred it to "Summer," and it now stands as verses 287-317. By comparing them together, the reader will discover many improvements in style and expression.

I. ALL NATURE FULL OF LIFE.

THESE are not idle philosophic dreams :

Full NATURE swarms with life. The' unfaithful fen
In putrid steams emits the livid cloud

Of pestilence. Through subterranean cells,

Where searching sunbeams never found a way,
Earth animated heaves. The flowery leaf

Wants not its soft inhabitants.

The stone,

Hard as it is, in every winding pore

Holds multitudes. But chief the forest-boughs,
Which dance unnumber'd to the' inspiring breeze,
The downy orchard, and the melting pulp
Of mellow fruit, the nameless nations feed
Of evanescent insects. Where the pool
Stands mantled o'er with green, invisible,
Amid the floating verdure millions stray.
Each liquid too, whether of acid taste,
Potent or mild, with various forms abounds.
Nor is the lucid stream, nor the pure air,
Though one transparent vacancy they seem,
Devoid of theirs. Even animals subsist
On animals, in infinite descent;

And all so fine adjusted, that the loss

Of the least species would disturb the whole.
Stranger than this the' inspective glass confirms,
And to the curious gives the' amazing scenes
Of lessening life; by Wisdom kindly hid
From eye and ear of man: for if at once

The worlds in worlds enclosed were push'd to light,

Seen by his sharpen'd eye, and by his ear
Intensely bended heard, from the choice cate,
The freshest viands, and the brightest wines,
He'd turn abhorrent, and, in dead of night,
When Silence sleeps o'er all, be stunn'd with noise.

II. DESCRIPTION OF THE TORRID ZONE, AND OF A CITY COVERED
WITH SAND IN THE DESERTS OF ARABIA.

THUS far transported by my country's love,
Nobly digressive from my theme, I've aim'd
To sing her praises in ambitious verse;
While slightly to recount I simply meant
The various Summer horrors, which infest
Kingdoms that scorch below severer suns;
Kingdoms on which, direct, the flood of day
Oppressive falls, and gives the gloomy hue
And feature gross; or, worse, to ruthless deeds,
Wan jealousy, red rage, and fell revenge,
Their hasty spirit prompts.* Ill-fated race!
Although the treasures of the sun be theirs,
Rocks rich in gems, and mountains big with mines,
Whence, over sands of gold, the Niger rolls
His amber wave;+ while on his balmy banks,
Or in the spicy Abyssinian vales,

The citron, orange, and pomegranate, drink
Intolerable day, yet in their coats

A cooling juice contain !

Peaceful beneath

Leans the huge elephant; and in his shade
A multitude of beauteous creatures play,
And birds of bolder note rejoice around.§
And oft amid their aromatic groves,

Touch'd by the torch of noon, the gummy bark,
Smouldering, begins to roll the dusky wreath.
Instant, so swift the ruddy ruin spreads,

A cloud of incense shadows all the land;

* See this sentence amplified in verses 884-890 of “Summer" in the present edition.

† See verses 860-875.

§ See verses 716-732.

See verses 657-663.