This case appears to bear strongly against us—­but we must distinguish between wonder and legitimate admiration.  The subject of the work is the changes produced in the appearances of nature by the revolution of the year:  and, by undertaking to write in verse, Thomson pledged himself to treat his subject as became a Poet.  Now, it is remarkable that, excepting the nocturnal Reverie of Lady Winchelsea, and a passage or two in the Windsor Forest of Pope, the poetry of the period intervening between the publication of the Paradise Lost and the Seasons does not contain a single new image of external nature; and scarcely presents a familiar one from which it can be inferred that the eye of the Poet has been steadily fixed upon his object, much less that his feelings had urged him to work upon it in the spirit of genuine imagination.  To what a low state knowledge of the most obvious and important phenomena had sunk, is evident from the style in which Dryden has executed a description of Night in one of his Tragedies, and Pope his translation of the celebrated moonlight scene in the Iliad.  A blind man, in the habit of attending accurately to descriptions casually dropped from the lips of those around him, might easily depict these appearances with more truth.  Dryden’s lines are vague, bombastic, and senseless;[9] those of Pope, though he had Homer to guide him, are throughout false and contradictory.  The verses of Dryden, once highly celebrated, are forgotten; those of Pope still retain their hold upon public estimation,—­nay, there is not a passage of descriptive poetry, which at this day finds so many and such ardent admirers.  Strange to think of an enthusiast, as may have been the case with thousands, reciting those verses under the cope of a moonlight sky, without having his raptures in the least disturbed by a suspicion of their absurdity!—­If these two distinguished writers could habitually think that the visible universe was of so little consequence to a poet, that it was scarcely necessary for him to cast his eyes upon it, we may be assured that those passages of the elder poets which faithfully and poetically describe the phenomena of nature, were not at that time holden in much estimation, and that there was little accurate attention paid to those appearances.

Wonder is the natural product of Ignorance; and as the soil was in such good condition at the time of the publication of the Seasons the crop was doubtless abundant.  Neither individuals nor nations become corrupt all at once, nor are they enlightened in a moment.  Thomson was an inspired poet, but he could not work miracles; in cases where the art of seeing had in some degree been learned, the teacher would further the proficiency of his pupils, but he could do little more; though so far does vanity assist men in acts of self-deception, that many would often fancy they recognized a likeness when they knew nothing of the original.  Having