light which I have received from the poets of Greece and of Rome; and while I recollect, with a species of enthusiasm, that rapture I first received from the animated accounts of nature with which their works are adorned; I cannot help sometimes thinking that the taste which they have produced in modern times, that fondness of imitation they have given birth to, has in some respects hurt the works of the moderns, and, instead of improving, helped to spoil many an exertion of genius. The mythological allusions of the ancients were grafted on the popular opinions of the country; as such to a reader of the times they were natural; the mind easily acknowledged their justice, and something like an implicit belief attended their perusal. Even when they are perused by a modern, in the writings of the ancients, he acquires some portion of this belief. The same ductility of imagination which creates our sympathy and interest in the passions and feelings of an Achilles and an Æneas, though they lived in a distant region, and a period long since past, makes us enter into their religious creed, and the effects thereby produced. Our reason is for a time suspended; and we can for a moment suppose Minerva to descend from heaven to assist a Grecian hero, or Eolus to inflate the winds at the suit of Juno, to overwhelm in the billows the unfortunate son of a rival goddess. But those animated and personified descriptions, however natural in an ancient author, and however they may interest even a modern reader by the same sympathy which engages us in the fate of a hero who died a thousand years ago, have now ceased to be natural. When used by a modern writer, they do not proceed from an animated mind, impressed and governed by the belief of his countrymen, but are the effect of a mere copy, the feeble offspring of a cold and servile imitation. Whether it has proceeded from this cause I know not; but while I feel the most pleasing delusion from the mythological fictions of the ancient authors, I have always felt something very much the reverse from the same fictions when appearing in the works of the moderns. The scenes which nature lays before us, and the actions of those men who are placed in interesting situations, when well described, and naturally represented, must ever be delightful; but when in a modern author I see nature left as it were behind, and borrowed description and allusion made use of, I have ever found my mind, instead of being gratified, cheated of that pleasure which it wished to enjoy. The delusion in which I was fond to indulge has been removed, and fanciful conceit has usurped the place of nature, Another bad consequence of this servile imitation of the ancients, of this borrowing what was natural in them, but which is no longer so in us, has been to prevent modern authors from studying nature as it is, from attempting to draw it as it really appears; and, instead of giving genuine descriptions, it leads them to give those only which are false and arti- . ficial. Every reader acquainted with our modern authors will easily recal a variety of passages to illustrate these remarks. To take an instance from the works of an author who does the highest honour to this country, what can be more absurd than the following lines as a description of Windsor Forest? See Pan with flocks, with fruits Pomona crown'd, And nodding tempt the jovial reapers' hand. This is surely not a description of Windsor Forest. In like manner, the description in the same poem, of Thames shedding tears for Cowley's death, must surpass all modern credulity; and of an equally unnatural kind is the transformation of Lodona, the daughter of father Thames. In the Pastorals of the same author, what strange effects are produced by the mourning of a shepher boy along the side of the Thames ! There while he mourn'd, the streams forgot to flow, The Naiads wept in ev'ry wat'ry bow'r, And Jove consented in a silent show'r. The same shepherd thus describes the effects of his numbers: And yet my numbers please the rural throng, Rough satyrs dance, and Pan applauds my song. It is unnecessary to multiply examples; the descriptive poems of the moderns are full of them. One author deserves to be excepted, an author who has been justly deemed an original, and whose character of originality is in a great measure owing to his having painted nature as it is, and laid aside the mythological allusions of antiquity.-Thomson, in his Seasons, may be styled the great poet of Nature. In that poem he has described the whole varied year, and the different scenes which its variations produce. This author,' says a distinguished critic, 'is entitled to one praise of the highest kind: his mode of thinking and of expressing his thoughts is original. He thinks in a peculiar train, and he thinks always as a man of genius; he looks round on nature and on life with the eye which Nature bestows only on a poet; the eye that distinguishes, in every thing presented to its view, whatever there is on which imagination can delight to be detained, and VOL. I. X with a mind that at once comprehends the vast, and attends to the minute. The reader of the Seasons wonders that he never saw before what Thomson shows him, and that he never yet has felt what Thomson expresses.' Great part of this high praise appears to me to have arisen from what has been observed, of Thomson's having studied nature, and painted it as it is. Hardly, and with very few exceptions, will he be found endeavouring to adorn or heighten his descriptions with the religious fictions of antiquity. As this author has drawn his pictures of nature from nature itself, so the nearer we bring his pictures to the originals from which he draws, the more will we admire them; the nearer our examination is, the more will our mind be filled and kindled with those sentiments which his descriptions produce. They resemble those striking likenesses, those highly finished portraits, which we examine by the side of the persons who sit for them. I am never more delighted with Thomson's Winter, the best of his Seasons, than when I read it in the month of December, and listen to the 'savage howl of the blast,' and see the 'sky saddened with the gather'd storm.' A. No. 38. SATURDAY, OCTOBER 22, 1785. I HAPPENED, a few evenings ago, to have an appointment with a friend of mine, a gentleman of the law, which some particular business prevented him from keeping with his usual punctuality. While I waited for him in his study, I took down from one of his shelves a book at random, to amuse myself with till he should come in. In my character of Lounger, I have learned never to put back a book because its subject promises to be a dull one. Though this was a law folio, therefore, I sat down contentedly to peruse it; having often experienced, that, in books where I looked for the least entertainment, I have unexpectedly met with the most. So it happened in this law treatise; where, on the chapter of Marriage, which chanced to turn up to me, I found the nice distinctions and subtleties of legal investigation so illuminated with a variety of interesting cases, that I shall certainly recommend the book, and particularly the above-mentioned chapter of it, to all my young friends who are engaged in the study of that dry and intricate science. I am persuaded their imaginations will not be less exercised than their judgments, in following the learned author through the numerous pointed illustrations which he gives of the doctrines there laid down. Of those doctrines the abstract seems to be, that though certain smaller deceptions are not sufficient for setting aside a matrimonial engagement; yet a very high degree of de-. ceit made use of by one of the parties to influence and inveigle the other will render the marriage void and null ab initio, as if no such contract had ever been made. I was deeply engaged in those speculations, when my friend cut them short by entering the room; and, as his time is precious, we had no leisure to follow them together; though I had much inclination to have asked his assistance in clearing up some legal doubts which the author's reasoning had created in my mind. When I got home at night, the subject recurred to my memory; but, beside a warm fire in a cold evening, even the thoughts of marriage will not keep a man awake. I insensibly fell asleep |