SPECIMEN OF THE ALTERATIONS MADE BY THOMSON IN THE EARLY EDITIONS OF THE SEASONS. 'Tis done! - dread Winter has subdu'd the Year, And reigns, tremendous, o'er the desart plains! How dead the Vegetable Kingdom lies! How dumb the tuneful! Horror wide extends His solitary empire-now, fond Man! Behold thy pictur'd life: Pass some few Years, Thy flowering Spring, thy short-liv'd Summer's strength, Thy sober Autumn, fading into age, And pale, concluding Winter shuts thy scene, And shrouds Thee in the Grave. Where now are fled His Guide to Happiness on high- and see! Untry'd, unbounded. VOL. II. Ye vain learned! see, 15 And, prostrate in the Dust, adore that Power, In Palaces, lay prompting her low thought Life undecaying, Love without Allay, Pure flowing Joy, and Happiness sincere. The concluding lines of Winter, taken from the 2d Edit. 1726,- those words printed in italic show how much has been altered by the author. THE CASTLE OF INDOLENCE. THIS poem being writ in the manner of Spenser, the obsolete words, and a simplicity of diction in some of the lines, which borders on the ludicrous, were necessary to make the imitation more perfect. And the style of that admirable poet, as well as the measure in which he wrote, are, as it were, appropriated by custom to all allegorical Poems writ in our language; just as in French, the style of Marot, who lived under Francis the First, has been used in tales, and familiar epistles, by the politest writers of the age of Louis the Fourteenth. CANTO I. The castle hight of Indolence, Where for a little time, alas! I. O MORTAL man, who livest here by toil, wail, And curse thy star, and early drudge and late; Withouten that would come a heavier bale, Loose life, unruly passions, and diseases pale. II. In lowly dale, fast by a river's side, With woody hill o'er hill encompass'd round, A most enchanting wizard did abide, Than whom a fiend more fell is no where found. It was, I ween, a lovely spot of ground; |