790

And Nature moved complete. With inward view,
Thence on the ideal kingdom swift she turns
Her eye; and instant, at her powerful glance,
The obedient phantoms vanish or appear;
Compound, divide, and into order shift,
Each to his rank, from plain perception up
To the fair forms of fancy's fleeting train;
To reason then, deducing truth from truth,
And notion quite abstract; where first begins
The world of spirits, action all, and life
Unfettered and unmixed. But here the cloud,
So wills Eternal Providence, sits deep.
Enough for us to know that this dark state,
In wayward passions lost and vain pursuits,
This infancy of being, cannot prove
The final issue of the works of God,

By boundless love and perfect wisdom formed,
And ever rising with the rising mind.

1800

inflected 1727.

1794,

1788 moved complete . . inward] circled 1790 virtual glance 1727-38. 1791 or] and 1727. 1795 These lines were added, the former in ed. 1744, the latter in ed. 1746. They are not in any of the earlier edd. And] To 1727-38. 1798 Unfettered] Immediate 1727-38. to know] we know 1727-38.

pressive formed 1727-38.

1796

1800

1804 By love and wisdom inex

NOTES TO SUMMER

The general scheme of this part of The Seasons is the description (with digressions) of a typical summer's day from dawn to midnight.

LINE 29. George Bubb Dodington, born 1691, entered Parliament 1715, Member for Bridgewater 1722-54; he was a Lord of the Treasury when Thomson first knew him, in 1726 or 1727. He took the name of Dodington with the fine estate of Eastbury in 1720, inherited from his maternal uncle. In 1761 he was raised to the peerage as Lord Melcombe: he died the year after.

He has been called 'the last of the Patrons'. Thomson's eulogy of him is very extravagant; but there is no doubt that the poet felt honoured by intimacy with him,—an intimacy which he long retained.

96. After this line came in the first ed. (1727) the following passage, dropped in 1730:

Who would the blessings first and last recount

That in a full effusion from thee flow

As soon might number at the height of noon
The rays that radiate from thy cloudless sphere,
An universal glory darting round.

113-35.

The original text (first ed., 1727) was as follows:-
Parent of Seasons! from whose rich-stained rays,
Reflected various, various colours rise:

The freshening mantle of the youthful year;
The wild embroidery of the watery vale;

With all that chears the eye and charms the heart.

The branching grove thy lusty product stands,
To quench the fury of thy noon-career;
And crowd a shade for the retreating swain,
When on his russet fields you look direct.
Fruit is thy bounty too, with juice replete,
Acid or mild; and from thy ray receives
A flavour pleasing to the taste of man;
By thee concocted, blushes; and, by thee
Fully matured, into the verdant lap
Of Industry the mellow plenty falls.
Extensive harvests wave at thy command,
And the bright ear, consolidate by thee,
Bends, unwithholding, to the reaper's hand.

IO

Even Winter speaks thy power, whose every blast
O'ercast with tempest, or severely sharp

20

With breathing frost, is eloquent of thee,

And makes us languish for thy vernal gleams.

Shot to the bowels of the teeming earth,

The ripening oar (sic) confesses all thy flame.
[The unfruitful rock itself, impregned &c.].

The text of edd. 1730-38 differed only slightly from this: they gave for 1. 7—

Diffused and deep, to quench the summer noon;

and for 'flame' at the end of 1. 24 they substituted 'power'. 287-317. The substance of this passage originally appeared in

Spring (1728-38), from which it was transferred (with alterations) in 1744 the original text was as follows:

These are not idle philosophic dreams;

Full nature swarms with life. The unfaithful fen
In putrid steams emits the living 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 unnumbered 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,
Milky, or strong, 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 pushed to light,
Seen by his sharpened 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 stunned with noise. 457. Here followed in the first ed. (1727) a passage of seven lines, viz. :

Who shall endure !-The too resplendent scene

Already darkens on the dizzy eye;

And double objects dance: unreal sounds

Sing round the ears: a weight of sultry dew

Hangs, deathful, on the limbs: shiver the nerves:

The supple sinews sink; and on the heart,
Misgiving, Horror lays his heavy hand.

This passage was continued in edd. 1730-38 with the following alterations:-Line 1, shall became can; line 2, eye became sight; line 4, round the ears became deep around. The passage was dropped in 1744.

564. Elizabeth Stanley, died 1738, at the age of eighteen. Thomson wrote the verses for her epitaph, which will be found among his miscellaneous pieces. The prose part of the epitaph, in Holyrood Church, Southampton, informs the reader that she joined to beauty, modesty, and gentleness all the fortitude, elevation, and vigour of mind that ever exalted the most heroical man'. Her mother, the daughter of Sir Hans Sloane, was an early friend of Thomson's.

591-606. The text of the earliest ed. (1727) is as follows :— Rolls unsuspecting, till surprised 'tis thrown In loose meanders through the trackless air; Now a blue watery sheet, anon dispersed A hoary mist, then gathered in again A darted stream aslant the hollow rock, This way and that tormented, dashing thick From steep to steep with wild infracted course, And restless roaring to the humble vale. The following alterations appear in edd. 1730-38 :In line 1, Rolls fair and placid; till collected all. For line 2, the following:

In one big glut, as sinks the shelving ground, The impetuous torrent, tumbling down the steep, Thunders, and shakes the astonished country round. 641. The general breeze. Which blows constantly between the tropics from the east, or the collateral points, the north-east and south-east; caused by the pressure of the rarefied air on that before it, according to the diurnal motion of the sun from east to west.-T.

645. Returning suns and double seasons. In all places between the tropics the sun, as he passes and repasses in his annual motion, is twice a year perpendicular, which produces this effect.-T.

710. Behemoth. The hippopotamus, or river-horse.—T.

738. But, if she bids them shine. In all the regions of the torrid zone the birds, though more beautiful in their plumage, are observed to be less melodious than ours.-T.

827. Menam's orient stream. The river that runs through Siam: on whose banks a vast multitude of those insects called fireflies make a beautiful appearance in the night.-T.

840. The mighty Orellana. The river of the Amazons.-T.

6

912-38. This passage, beginning There sublimed', is an expansion of the original (1727) text, which stood as follows:Here the savage race

Roam, licensed by the shading hour of blood
And foul misdeed, when the pure day has shut
His sacred eye. The rabid tiger, then,
The fiery panther, and the whiskered pard,
Bespeckled fair, the beauty of the waste,
In dire divan surround their shaggy king
Majestic stalking o'er the burning sand
With planted step, while an obsequious crowd
Of grinning forms at humble distance wait.
These, all together joined, from darksome caves
Where o'er gnawed bones they slumbered out the day,
By supreme hunger smit, and thirst intense,

At once their mingling voices raise to heaven;
And, with imperious and repeated roars
Demanding food, the wilderness resounds

From Atlas eastward to the frighted Nile.

The alteration of this text (which remained verbally unchanged from 1727 down to 1738) was made for the ed. of 1744.

984. The circling typhon; 986 And dire ecnephia. Terms for particular storms or hurricanes known only between the tropics.-T. 987. a cloudy speck. Called by sailors the ox-eye, being in appearance at first no bigger.-T.

1001. the daring Gama. Vasco de Gama, the first that sailed round Africa, by the Cape of Good Hope, to the East Indies.-—T.

1010. The Lusitanian Prince. Don Henry, third son to John the First, King of Portugal. His strong genius to the discovery of new countries was the source of all the modern improvements in navigation.-T.

1055. Ethiopia's poisoned woods. These are the causes supposed to be the first origin of the Plague, in Doctor Mead's elegant book on that subject.-T.

1071-88. The original text (1727) was as follows:

And ranged at open noon by beasts of prey
And birds of bloody beak: while, all night long,

In spotted troops the recent ghosts complain.
Demanding but the covering grave.

Meantime

Locked is the deaf door to distress; even friends,
And relatives endeared for many a year,

Savaged by woe, forget the social tie,

The blest engagement of the yearning heart,
And sick in solitude successive die

Untended and unmourned. And to complete, &c.