And hark how blithe the throstle sings;
He, too, is no mean preacher.
Come forth into the light of things,
Let nature be your teacher.

So Wordsworth was to write in Lyrical Ballads, with a perception of the possibilities of nature as teacher far different from anything ever hinted by Thomson. Wordsworth's "nature" taught by working on the emotions; Thomson's did nothing so undignified. The eighteenth-century poet, in his concern with morality, falls in many ways into the typical pattern of his time, defined by Lovejoy more than a quarter of a century ago.¹ He looked to the "pure light of nature" for authority; gradually, as nature became less and less important to him, he turned to presenting the rules of morality without feeling the need for any explicit authority behind them.

I

An effective method of justifying his interest in nature, to himself and to his public, was, Thomson discovered, to insist on the relation between nature and human morality. Shaftesbury had long since exploited this relationship when Thomson began writing The Seasons; in this area especially it is easy to see his influence on the poet.²

Shaftesbury's basic principle of the divine perfection of "Nature," the whole order of creation, led him easily into consideration of human nature, which must, like the rest of creation, be essentially good. It was for his moral teachings that Thomson specifically praised him, in lines first added in 1730 to the catalogue of the great in "Summer."

The generous Ashley thine, the friend of man,
Who scan'd his nature with a brother's eye,
His weakness prompt to shade, to raise his aim,
To touch the finer movements of the mind,
And with the moral beauty charm the heart.
("Summer" B, 11. 611-615)

The physical and moral worlds, affirmed Shaftesbury in his revelation of moral beauty, are two expressions of the same cosmic order; both should be guides and objects of study for man. And both are quite sufficient guides. The physical universe, naturally harmonious and good in every detail, offers adequate evidence for the existence of a Deity. Its evils can never be real, only apparent. The nature of man is likewise good and harmonious; man is naturally virtuous and naturally social, Hobbes to the contrary notwithstanding. This is not to say that the Golden Age must be past. The natural condition of man is not necessarily his original one; it is rather the state in which he realizes most fully his inner intention or individuating principle. In "Advice to an Author," Shaftesbury explains, somewhat confusingly, that the person taught by Nature alone is generally less "natural" than those who have progressed "by reflection and the assistance of art."³ He admits, patronizingly, that in some instances the person formed by Nature may be so fortunate as to possess some of the valuable "natural" virtues, but this sort of person can only be an exception. Natural good is not, after all, necessarily related to Nature. The inconsistency is disturbing.

It does not, however, appear to disturb Shaftesbury. He proceeds to advocate that human beings follow nature, in an effort to reproduce within themselves the harmony of the external world. Beauty and goodness are essentially the same: beauty, external; goodness, internal. The virtuous man recognizes what is good by its beauty. Man has a natural "moral sense," but this must be improved by training, and it may be injured by various sources of error, including orthodox religion. Belief in future rewards and punishments robs our actions of moral value. The truest incentive to virtue is actually self-love, for self-love and social love are essentially the same. The greatest pleasure for the individual is to be obtained by the exercise of virtue in the form of benevolence to others. "To possess the social affections full and entire … is 'to live according to Nature, and the Dictates and Rules of supreme Wisdom. This is Morality, Justice, Piety, and natural Religion.'"⁴ Shaftesbury feels, finally, that one can arrive at a scheme of moral arithmetic, by which happiness can be shown in detail to be directly proportionate to virtue.⁵

Such a satisfactorily ordered scheme of things could not but appeal to Thomson: the Shaftesburian influence shows itself more or less blatantly throughout his work. In the early stages of The Seasons, especially, there is no apparent conflict between the Shaftesburian moralizing and the poet's basic theme of nature. Yet the direction of emphasis necessarily changes with the introduction of material implicitly concerned with the human rather than with the universal, and Thomson's use of nature undergoes some interesting modifications as a result.

The tendency, in the Shaftesburian sections, is for nature to lose importance as self-existent reality and to become symbolically or allegorically significant—as material for analogy, for example. Thus, in the 1727 version of "Summer" appears a passage on the joys of benevolence as opposed to the horrors of wickedness ("Summer" A, 11. 949-963). The setting of the sun provides the pretext for this digression, and also forms the basis for the analogy which justifies it: the rapid disappearance of the day, "illusive, and perplext" (1. 949), is like the review of the day's events for "The Hard, the Lewd, the Cruel, and the False" (1. 955). The possessor of Shaftesbury's "harmonious Mind" (1. 958), on the other hand, who diffuses beneficence "Boastless, as now descends the silent Dew" (1. 961), finds in the review of the day's events or of his life's, only "inward Rapture" (1. 963). There is considerable skill in the interweaving of natural metaphor with direct moralistic statement, although the passage is weakened by the poet's failure to exploit fully the value of his images, and by overstatement—the wicked men, for example, are described (11. 957-958) as having spent the day snatching the morsel from the orphan's mouth to give their dogs.

More unqualifiedly successful in the use of natural analogy is the 1730 revision of the conclusion to "Winter," which also involves a disquisition on the superiority of virtue to vice. In its original form, this passage, which begins with consideration of the obvious analogy between the course of the seasons and the course of human life, weakens seriously toward the end because the analogy, never developed, is abandoned in favor of strictly human emphasis. The second birth of heaven and earth is to bring with it full understanding of "th' Eternal Scheme" ("Winter" A, 1. 380). But that scheme has nothing to do, apparently, with the cosmos—only with the seeming ills of humanity. And despite the fact that similar statements of the same theme are common in the eighteenth century, appearing in the works of thinkers as diverse as John Locke and the Reverend Samuel Clarke, poets from Pope to Akenside—or perhaps because of that fact—it is disturbing to find such a passage standing as conclusion to a poem profoundly concerned with nature.

In 1730, the single change which makes the greatest difference in the effect of the concluding passage is the introduction of another simple natural analogy, a logical extension of the original one. Thomson's consideration of eternity (which, incidentally, contains more explicit emphasis on the theme of natural order than before) now concludes—and "Winter" likewise—with

The storms of Wintry time will quickly pass,
And one unbounded Spring encircle all.
("Winter" C, ll. 780-781)

The idea is common enough—it occurs, for example, in John Armstrong's "Winter," published soon after Thomson's first version—but this particular metaphorical use of it is brilliant indeed. By providing a symbolic link between the disparate themes of nature and human morality, it unifies two topics that were beginning to conflict in Thomson's work, and provides for "Winter" a conclusion of great connotative force.

All too often, however, reflection on Shaftesbury's themes seems to lead Thomson into using nature merely as a minor pretext for digression, or even into neglecting it altogether, as in the passage on the noble work of the 1729 Jail Committee ("Winter" C, ll. 334-364). The famous description of the country man dying in the snow, for example, loses impact by being used simply as an excuse to urge careless city-dwellers to think of all the suffering in the world:

Ah little think they, while they dance along,
How many feel this very moment, death
And all the sad variety of pain.
("Winter" C, ll. 300-302)

A detailed exposition of possible varieties of human suffering leads to the highly predictable moral:

Such lines might have been written by any number of eighteenth-century poets. Although in the moralistic sections, as in the ones on nature, Thomson's diction is adjusted to its purpose, such passages have retained little force. In the sections on nature, the poet, trying to say something specific and often fresh, uses conventional diction to add to his newer purpose the weight of tradition. In the more extraneous lines on benevolence, however, he is saying something as conventional as his diction. Far lesser poets said precisely the same thing in almost the same way. Take, for example, the long-forgotten James Harris:

Thomson's verse is more expert, but not essentially a great deal better.

Two of his three narrative additions, dominated by the Shaftesburian principle that virtue equals happiness and incorporating many of Shaftesbury's precepts, also use na-ture simply as pretext, implicitly rejecting its importance. The tale of Palaemon and Lavinia, which first appeared in the 1730 "Autumn," begins with exhortations to benevolence:

As usual, looseness of logic is paralleled by looseness of diction: the precise function of "faint" in the last line would be difficult to define. The real explanation of this passage lies in the moral story to which it is an appropriate introduction.

The plot of this episode is a sentimental perversion of the Biblical tale of Ruth and Boaz. Lovely young Lavinia and her widowed mother, reduced to poverty, live in a poor cottage. Lavinia goes to glean the fields of rich young Palaemon, who succumbs immediately to her charms, but will not own his love because the world would laugh at him for choosing a poor gleaner. He is not, however, punished for snobbish scruples. When he discovers that Lavinia is actually the daughter of his former patron, Acasto, all is well: love combines with benevolence, and he acquires a sense of virtue by proposing to the woman he wanted all along. So, of course, they

The facile sentimentality of all this suggests Tennyson at his worst—describing, for example, in "The Lord of Burleigh," the lady who

Shaped her heart with woman's meekness
To all duties of her rank;
And a gentle consort made he,
And her gentle mind was such
That she grew a noble lady,
And the people loved her much.

The sentimentality of this poem, indeed, exceeds that of the Lavinia tale. Tennyson's country girl who marries a nobleman sickens and dies in her newly exalted rank; Lavinia gets along quite well. Thomson is like the Victorian poet, however, in his serene assurance that wealth and rank may be equivalent to virtue. Like Tennyson, too, he seems sometimes convinced that the expression of fine sentiments relieves him of the obligation to think.

The edition of 1730 also contained, in the second version of "Summer" (ll. 980-1037), the new story of Damon and Musidora. With its slightly prurient atmosphere and fervid description, this is probably to modern readers the most offensive of Thomson's narratives. That its salacious aspects did not decrease its attraction for nineteenth-century readers, however, is suggested by Wordsworth's remark that all well-thumbed copies of The Seasons opened at this tale.⁷ In its original form, the version of 1730, the story describes Damon as a young man devoted to false philosophy and scornful of the force of beauty. While he was sitting in the woods one day, he spied three young ladies, Sacharissa, Amoret, and Musidora. Despite all the classical allusions invoked to elevate the succeeding scene, the point of the thirty-nine lines of adolescently salacious description is that the girls undressed and swam, while Damon watched, enthralled. The moral?

The intellectual content of this story offers a dramatic contrast to Thomson's earlier views. "Summer," which presents the long, impassioned praise of philosophy, now contains, also, an episode the point of which is that it is better to devote one's attention to man—or woman—than to philosophy. To be sure, Damon is described as a devotee of false philosophy. But the ardent search for the secrets of true philosophy, the efforts of a Locke or a Newton, would be equally incompatible with sitting in the woods watching naked women. The tale suggests once again that Thomson's sense of values had changed, and with it his convictions about the proper study of mankind. Even more clearly, it indicates his concern with popular appeal: this story would surely attract many whose interest in nature was slight. It is significant that in the frontispiece to "Summer" in the subscription quarto of 1730, William Kent chose to direct his efforts to illustration of this tale: indeed, he added a fourth naked lady for good measure.

The story was successful enough to make Thomson want to expand it for the third edition of "Summer" in 1744. In the new version, its theme is altogether changed. No longer is there the slightest attempt to relate the episode to nature or even philosophy. Now it is simply a story in itself, its salacious aspects emphasized, although the virtue-equals-happiness theme remains. Damon, it seems, is already in love with Musidora. He is sitting in the woods musing on his love when she comes, alone, to swim. As she undresses, he watches, panting ("not Paris on the shady Top / Of Ida panted stronger"; ll. 1296-1297), despite the fact that a delicate refinement known to few urges him to retire. Finally he retreats, leaving a note explaining to the young lady that he is guarding her so that no one else can peek. Feeling shame void of guilt, admiration of her lover's flame, and a sense of self-approving beauty, she leaves Damon a note saying that the time may come when he need not fly. The relation of this episode to the theme of man is far more apparent than its relevance to the poet's original concern with nature.

Both the tale of Lavinia and that of Damon originate in material vaguely related to nature. Lavinia and her mother are simple country folk, in close contact with the natural world; Damon wanders in the woods and his realization takes place in the surroundings of nature. But the major changes in the account of Damon and the minor ones of 1744 in the story of Lavinia alike stress the human, providing evidence of how complete Thomson's essential disregard for the theme of nature could be—even when nature was his pretext.

II

It was not Shaftesbury's influence alone, naturally, that drew Thomson away from his original concerns. The moralistic passages which seem attributable to no single influence show a similar chronological development from early attempts to combine the themes of nature and of man to later concentration almost entirely on the human.

Some of Thomson's early moralistic passages seem direct outgrowths of his original preoccupation, with natural order and harmony. Beginning with "Summer," in 1727, the poet introduced various discussions of possible ways in which nature might influence man. "Summer," for example, expresses the poet's desire to repair to a dark grove, the haunt of meditation. There, he maintains, people of ancient times have been inspired toward virtue and poetry by "Angels, and immortal Forms, / On heavenly Errands bent" ("Summer" A, ll. 412-413), which perform the "Offices of Love" (l. 423) for virtuous men of all sorts. When they speak to him, however, they deal with subjects more clearly related to nature. First they announce their participation in the universal pattern; then they admonish the poet to retire to the dim recesses they haunt and "Of Nature sing with Us, and Nature's God" (ll. 439-442). The idea of nature as escape from the evils of the world thus emerges again, this time combined with a variation on the theme of man as leader of the universal chorus of praise for the natural order.

The mysterious "forms" of this passage appear also in Mallet; again, the difference between "Summer" and The Excursion is illuminating. In Mallet's poem, the angels lend their good influence through whispers which

Inspire new vigour, purer light supply,
And kindle every virtue into flame.

This is apparently the extent of their mission, and the poet's reflection upon their inspiration is interesting:

For Thomson, the mysterious forms may provide inspiration and release in their reminder of the great pattern of nature; for Mallet, with his more conventional pose, they represent a means of avoiding altogether the tumult of the world. Mallet thus allies himself with the most common attitude toward nature in his time, an attitude which led men to seek and praise nature for the most classical of reasons: as a source of tranquility for meditation. As George Williams put it, "Nature is a place where a good Augustan may learn to know himself and may cultivate his soul."⁹

Examples of glorification of nature for this sort of reason were abundant in Thomson's time, and they offer a partial explanation for the statement that "romanticism is not a reaction away from neo-classicism, but is a growth out of it."¹⁰ Thomson's vision of nature, however, with its more broadly philosophic implications, carries far more emotional weight. When he is true to it, he seems perhaps more essentially a forerunner of the nineteenth-century nature poets than any of his contemporaries.

We see this attitude toward the cosmos implicit in the description of the "immortal Forms"; the lines are redeemed by the clear attempt to relate them to the primary concept of natural order, whereas in The Excursion, since they have no really integral function, they are merely one more fragment in a poem of fragments. Although the two works belong to the same verse tradition, Thomson's is the more successful mainly because of the essential unity of conception behind it.

In Thomson's later years, however, his discussions of the effects of nature on man tended to place more emphasis on man, less on nature. In his own explanation of the organization of "Spring," the poet states, "This Season is described as it affects the various parts of Nature, ascending from the lower to the higher; … Its influence on inanimate Matter, on Vegetables, on brute Animals, and last on Man."¹¹ The poet also mentions his "concluding with a Dissuasive from the wild and irregular passion of love." His increasing emphasis on human morality is here apparent; the poem makes it even clearer.

For the long section dealing with the influence of spring on human love is completely dominated by the view that nature is important because it is meaningful to man. There is the account of how spring makes the virgin's bosom heave, the adjuration to watch out for "betraying Man" ("Spring" A, ll. 877-895). More important, however, is the passage (ll. 896-1024) dealing with the effects of love on young men.

For the man, too, should beware of love. Once it strikes, an image is fixed in his mind which drives out all else. From this image he attempts in vain to flee: nature is now first significantly introduced.

'Tis nought but Gloom around. The darken'd Sun
Loses his Light. The rosy-bosom'd Spring
To weeping Fancy pines; and yon bright Arch
Of Heaven low-bends into a dusky Vault.
All Nature fades extinct.
("Spring" A, ll. 912-916)

Man, in other words, can influence the very forms of nature. Thomson had previously (ll. 426-440) rejected the imagination as unequal to imitating nature; now he seems to imply that the imagination—at least when stimulated by lovesickness—modifies human perceptions of nature to the extent that nature itself seems actually changed.

This is not the only possibility which Thomson explores. The presence of sympathy in the natural world is next suggested, as the lover

In the lover's dreams, the most skillfully handled part of the passage (and a part which seems to owe an obvious debt to Pope's "Eloisa to Abelard"), natural scenes become symbols for mental and emotional states. The lover wanders "Thro' Forests huge, and long untravel'd Heaths / With Desolation brown" (ll. 973-974); he wades a turbid stream, trying in vain to reach his loved one on the far shore, and is borne away by the flood or sunk beneath the water. Beds of roses are symbols of joy (l. 993); a storm represents the chaos of the lover's mind (ll. 1015-1017); he is led by love into thorny wilds "Thro' flowery-tempting Paths" (l. 1021).

All of this represents what must have been a conscious and careful effort to relate to the primary theme of The Seasons a passage dangerously close to irrelevance. Yet nature is, after all, simply an embellishment in these sections: man is the primary subject, his difficulties and values the true object of emphasis.

It is an easy step from passages in which nature is a decorative object to those in which it disappears altogether; the two sorts exist side by side in "Spring."

This may be a universal lover, deliberately nonindividualized, but the generalized abstractions seem so devoid of conviction as to lack even emblematic force. There is an atmosphere of exaggeration, or turgidity, about this; the lines represent a total rejection of the valuable discipline implicit in the acceptance of nature as theme, the discipline which, as we have seen, so often produces a fruitful tension between diction and content in Thomson's best work.

It comes as no surprise that the conclusion of "Spring" also concentrates on the human, but the contrast between the use of the seasons in symbolic relation to man here and in the conclusion of "Winter" is significant. After more elaborate consideration of love's evils, Thomson finally contemplates the ideally happy couple, possessed of "Truth, Goodness, Honour, Harmony and Love" (l. 1055), and their ideal offspring. He concludes:

And thus their Moments fly; the Seasons thus,
As ceaseless round a jarring World they roll,
Still find Them happy; and consenting Spring
Sheds her own rosy Garland on their Head:
Till Evening comes at last, cool, gentle, calm;
When after the long vernal Day of Life,
Enamour'd more, as Soul approaches Soul,
Together, down They sink in social Sleep.
("Spring" A, ll. 1075-1082)

Instead of making any effort to work out an analogy between the seasons and human life, Thomson is here content to describe the course of life—with amazing superficiality—as one long vernal day. Nature is reduced to a trivial image. The seasons are significant because they find the lovers happy; spring is useful in shedding garlands to reward them. How different from the view at the end of "Winter," when winter becomes an image of time to contrast with spring-eternity! There is a serious loosening of intellectual fiber here, a tendency to relax the diction as the content becomes more conventional—the proper study of mankind.

III

Examples of Thomson's gradual turning away from nature to man could be multiplied in many directions. One area in which the resultant confusion appears clearly, however, is in his passages of explicit moral injunction and teaching, some of which have already been discussed in relation to Shaftesbury. Such moralistic passages may use nature as starting point; they frequently involve the poet in tangled intellectual positions.

Sometimes, when the moralistic sections come in close conjunction with lines of brilliant description, the contrast points up vividly the difference in poetic quality between Thomson the nature lover and Thomson the moralist. In "Summer," for example, a diatribe against late sleeping grows directly from some delicately lovely natural description:

Blue, thro' the Dusk, the smoaking Currents shine;
And, from the bladed Field, th'unhunted Hare
Limps aukward: while along the Forest-Glade,
The wild Deer trip, and, often turning, gaze
At early Passenger.
("Summer" A, ll. 43-47)

The description may encourage early rising; the moralizing certainly does the reverse:

Falsely luxurious, will not Man awake,
And starting from the Bed of Sloth, enjoy
The cool, the fragrant, and the silent Hour, …
And is there ought in Sleep can charm the Wise?
To lie in dead Oblivion …

Or else to feaverish Vanity alive,
Wilder'd, and tossing thro' distemper'd Dreams.
("Summer" A, ll. 54-56, 57-58, 62-63)

A sense of artifice dominates this, in contrast to the profound originality and sincerity of the description.

The same sort of pattern appears in the other moralistic sections: in all of them, the poet seems self-conscious; in many, ridiculous. Swimming is justified because it is "the purest Exercise of Health" ("Summer" A, l. 927); because it is a good thing to know how to swim in case a life needs saving; because Caesar learned to "subdue the Wave" (l. 936) when he was very young; finally, because the mind, closely allied to the body, receives a secret aid from the body's purity. Vegetarianism is justified because man is formed by nature "of milder Clay" ("Spring" A, l. 394) than wild animals, which are stung to carnivorousness by hunger and necessity, and incapable of pity. But the discussion of vegetarianism incorporates its own denial:

As in his treatment of the Golden Age, Thomson would have us believe finally that he is merely versifying the views of another: we sense that the poem is being padded. There seems no intellectual or poetic content in this discussion, for which the poet explicitly disclaims responsibility. Moreover, he destroys the argument he has advanced without appearing to recognize that he is doing anything of the sort. The principal objection to the carnivorous habits of man throughout the discussion has been that it lowers man to the status of beasts; yet at the end Thomson implies, with his reference to the Great Chain of Being, that it is, after all, in the nature of the human animal to be carnivorous. This basic inconsistency emphasizes the sense of inconsequence which a modern reader is likely to derive from the moralizing of The Seasons.

In his treatments of hunting and fishing we may see the clearest examples of Thomson's moralizing. The denunciation of hunting also demonstrates a certain wavering of position. At the beginning of the long passage on hunting (which, including the description of the after-hunt feast, occupies "Autumn" A, ll. 357-558), we see a hint of the sportsman's zest as Thomson confesses that he is tempted to deal with the scenes of the hunt. He recovers after twenty lines, however, with the affirmation that "These are not subjects for the peaceful muse" (l. 376), which prefers everything to be alive and happy. To support his advocacy of animal harmony, the poet then describes the hunt from the point of view of the hare and of the fleeing stag, who sobs as he runs through the woods and finally stands at bay with "the big round tears" (l. 451) running down his face. (Yet in "Spring," previously, Thomson had pointed out—line 396—that man is the only animal enabled by nature to weep.)

But Thomson cannot give up hunting quite so easily. He decides next to find some rationalization for it: hunting is all right, he maintains, as long as its object is bloodthirsty and destructive animals—the lion, the wolf, and the boar. These, to be sure, do not exist in England; but Britons may be permitted to hunt the fox.

In its morality, this position is fairly typical of eighteenth-century poetizing on hunting. William Somerville, for example, says approximately the same thing, although with different emphasis:

Ye proud oppressors, whose vain hearts exult
In wantonness of power, 'gainst the brute race,
Fierce robbers like yourselves, a guiltless war
Wage uncontrol'd: here quench your thirst of blood;
But learn from Aurengzebe to spare mankind.¹²

It was possible thus to have it both ways: to indulge oneself in the joys of hunting without pangs of conscience, while still demonstrating a proper softness of heart by objecting to the pursuit of gentle animals, who are not "fierce robbers." Thomson feels himself on safer ground, obviously, and presents his position more enthusiastically, when he denounces hunting of any kind as a pursuit for women: he does so at some length.

Such passages of direct moralizing are interspersed, in this lengthy treatment of hunting, with enthusiastic descriptions of the hunt itself and of the later festivities—descriptions sometimes impenetrable in syntax, though not lacking in vigor.

But first the fuel'd chimney blazes wide;
The tankards foam; and the strong table groans
Beneath the smoaking sirloin, stretch'd immense
From side to side; on which, with fell intent,
They deep incision make, and talk the while
Of England's glory, ne'er to be defac'd,
While hence they borrow vigour: or amain
Into the pasty plung'd, at intervals,
If stomach keen can intervals allow,
Relating how it ran, and how it fell.
Then sated Hunger bids his brother Thirst
Produce the mighty bowl; the mighty bowl,
Swell'd high with fiery juice, steams liberal round
A potent gale.
("Autumn" A, ll. 498-511)

Exactly what was plunged into the pasty, and, for that matter, what was the "it" which ran and fell, remains obscure until later revisions. Moreover, Thomson's approval of meat eating, including the consumption of a pasty (traditionally made with venison from innocent animals) is somewhat surprising in view of his condemnation of hunting the gentle beasts and his support of vegetarianism. Neither the grammatical nor the logical haziness of these lines destroys the sense of gusto which animates them, but both weaknesses are likely to contribute to a reader's feeling that the poet is not thoroughly at home in this particular mode of expression. In its excursions into the mock-heroic, its personifications, its combination of the comparatively trivial ("the smoaking sirloin") with the important ("England's glory, ne'er to be defac'd"), the passage is characteristic of much eighteenth-century poetry—but certainly not of Thomson's early work. Its method, like its material, stresses the human. The fact that Thomson could include, so early as 1730, a single section of more than two hundred lines dealing entirely with the affairs of men, is itself significant; the sense of unsureness combined with conventionality that the passage conveys makes it even more glaring.

Our poet's reflections on trout fishing also project a certain atmosphere of confusion. Added to the 1744 version of "Spring," the lines exemplify both the poet's pleasure in the spectacle of man in action and his delight in extracting sentimental reflections from the most unlikely material.

But let not on thy Hook the tortur'd Worm,
Convulsive, twist in agonizing Folds,
Which by rapacious Hunger swallow'd deep
Gives, as you tear it from the bleeding Breast
Of the weak, helpless, uncomplaining Wretch,
Harsh Pain and Horror to the tender Hand.
("Spring" C, ll. 386-391)

First, it seems, one is to pity the worm. Then, somehow, the same worm is to cause pain and horror to the hand when that hand tears it from the bleeding breast of an uncomplaining wretch who can only be the trout. Yet the poet proceeds to a detailed and enthusiastic description of the technique and joys of fly-fishing, with not the slightest evidence of any more pity for the weak, helpless, uncomplaining wretch who is no less hooked because hooked with a fly. Having given a sop to his humanitarian instincts, the poet is free to enjoy the sport; the process is essentially the same as the one he goes through before the description of the fox hunt. His unsureness and lack of authority in dealing with narrow and sentimental moralizing have been communicated once again.

IV

A more significant, because more extensive, area of intellectual confusion produced by Thomson's shifts of emphasis has been touched upon by many commentators. This is the dilemma about primitivism and progress, which caused the poet many shifts in point of view, many reversals of emphasis.

Lovejoy pointed out some time ago that the basic principles of the Enlightenment, which shaped deism and the neoclassic theory of literature, included rationalistic primitivism—a belief that the earliest men, uncorrupted by tradition, were in the best position to understand universal truths—and a negative philosophy of history which maintained that all apparent progress is really change for the worse.¹³ Such primitivism, such an attitude toward history, appear in Thomson's presentation of the Golden Age in the 1728 "Spring." Emphasis here, in accordance with the poet's early philosophy, is on the beneficence of nature, combined with man's acceptance of this beneficence and his harmonious participation in the natural order.

Many of the details of the description are derived from Dryden's version of Virgil's fourth "Eclogue," in which the Golden Age is in the future; but Thomson's is emphatically in the past. Indeed, when he turns to the present he labels it "these Iron Times, / These Dregs of Life" ("Spring" A, ll. 326-327), in which the human mind "Has lost that Harmony ineffable, / Which forms the Soul of Happiness" (ll. 328-329). He follows Bishop Burnet in the subsequent presentation of the idea that nature is fallen with fallen man, and that only after the deluge which punished man's sins did seasons develop.

So it seems that the natural man, whose untrained grapes burst automatically "into Floods of Wine" (l. 304) and whose sheep came already dyed (ll.313-317), was a more virtuous specimen than his civilized successor, dweller in a fallen world, and in less intimate communication with nature. Thomson uses secondhand material expertly here—perhaps because he remains conscious of its relevance to the whole problem of the relation between man and nature. The discussion of the Golden Age, however, might well have embarrassed the poet later. Indeed, in 1744 he eliminated the section ("Spring" A, ll. 296-323) which implied the glories of being without commerce or industry, and increased his emphasis on modern times by the addition of fourteen new lines and the changing of several others.

Two years after the publication of the passage on the Golden Age (in "Spring" A, 1728), in the first edition of "Autumn" Thomson returned to the theme of the natural man in a different way: the poet's primitivism was no longer simply chronological. This time his subject was the good life: the passage ("Autumn" A, ll. 1131-1247) defines and praises it, and contrasts it with the evil alternative modes of conduct. The ideal state of existence, it seems, is that of the retired man, who dwells deep in the vale and "Drinks the pure pleasures of the rural Life" (l. 1134). He lacks the crowd of flatterers, the glittering robes, the rare foods and wines, the sleepless nights, and the hollow moments which attend a more civilized way of life. Instead, he is rich in nature's bounty: the aesthetic pleasures of nature, the nourishment of natural food, the truth and innocence which nature encourages, and nature's ever-blooming health, unambitious toil, calm contemplation, and poetic ease. Others may choose to roam the seas, sack cities, explore, use legal methods to perpetrate various undefined evils, lead political uprisings, enjoy the intrigue of courts, or "tread the weary labyrinth of state" (l. 1194). The country man is unmoved by political upheavals. He attends only to Nature's voice, feels her fine emotions, takes what she gives and wants no more. He enjoys reading what the muse has sung of the progress of the seasons (an ingenious bit of self-encouragement, this) or, perhaps, even writing of such subjects. He is happy in all the seasons; he possesses imaginative power and heroic virtue, and enjoys the blessings of love and parenthood. Nor does he scorn amusement, for happiness and true philosophy "Still are, and have been of the smiling kind" (l. 1243). His life is that

Led by primaeval ages, incorrupt,
When God himself, and Angels dwelt with men!
("Autumn" A, ll. 1246-1247)

For this sort of thing, too, Thomson had classical precedent, nor was he alone in his own time. An expressed desire to cultivate rural virtue was not uncommon in eighteenth-century poetry. John Langhorne, to take a minor example, produced a charming poem on the good life in the country:

Virtue dwells in Arden's vale;
There her hallow'd temples rise,
There her incense greets the skies,
Grateful as the morning gale….
There the fountains clearer flow,
Flowers in brighter beauty blow;
For, with Peace and Virtue, there
Lives the happy villager.
Distant still from Arden's vale
Are the woes the bad bewail….¹⁴

And Virgil had done almost the same thing; in, for example, Georgics II. 458-474.

But the very fact that Thomson could depend so closely on a Virgilian model seems to have led him into a presentation marked by dictional and logical ambiguities.

The "brighter gems" at the beginning of these lines are somewhat obscure; it is difficult to decide what the gems are and what they are brighter than. The verb "depriv'd," in connection with the status of the retired man, implies that there is something to be desired in the joys of the rich, even though they are only "fantastic." Even more disturbing is the structure of the last two lines, in which the possessor of the face of pleasure and the heart of pain is obscure and the reference of "their" seems cloudy: it is presumably to the "wanton," but there seems to be only one of him.

Thomson himself came to recognize some of the difficulties in the passage. His 1744 revision ("Autumn" B) eliminates the "brighter gems" and clarifies both the opening lines and some of the later ones. The fact remains, however, that this section, with its stress on human values, lacks the tightness and power of many of the passages more closely concerned with nature.

Its difficulties, however, come not from the fact that its governing concept is weak or faulty. The central idea of the passage is the precise sort of harmony between man and nature that is envisioned in most of "Autumn." Man is the master, nature exists mainly for his sake. There are emotional possibilities in this concept; if it is not so moving or so imaginatively presented as the earlier idea that man is a part of nature; it is none the less pleasant. It is agreeable, though not altogether convincing to a generation that has read Tobacco Road, to think of the farmer enjoying "still retreats, and flowery solitudes" (l. 1201), as it is agreeable to contemplate Langhorne's happy villager who dwells far from all the woes the bad bewail. The real weakness of the passage comes from its suggestion of a sense of unsureness in the author. We do not really believe that Thomson believes it. There can be no doubt about the poet's sincerity in the passages on natural harmony in "Winter" and "Summer," but one can easi-ly doubt his sincerity in the later passages on the joys of the natural man. The fact that most of the material in these passages is secondhand is itself significant. Thomson is versifying views which at the moment appear to him respectable or convenient, not necessarily those which move him most deeply. The results, inevitably, are wavering of diction, weakness of emotion.

In 1744, returning to the theme of the virtuous natural man in the present, Thomson introduced into "Winter" more secondhand material: an account of the residents of Lapland, who provide a sharp contrast to civilized man. They

Despiseth' insensate barbarous Trade of War;
They ask no more than simple Nature gives,
They love their Mountains and enjoy their Storms.
No false Desires, no Pride-created Wants,
Disturb the peaceful Current of their Days.
("Winter" E, ll. 844-848)

Their wives are kind and unblemished; they themselves seem ideal:

Thrice happy Race! By Poverty secur'd
From legal Plunder and rapacious Power:
In whom fell Interest never yet has sown
The Seeds of Vice; whose spotless Swains ne'er knew
Injurious Deed, nor, blasted by the Breath
Of faithless Love, their blooming Daughters Woe.
("Winter" E, ll. 881-886)

The simple fact that Thomson looked on the Laplanders' state as rosy is not itself so significant as the fact that their specific virtues all appear to be conceived as the opposites of civilized vices. The implication is that the dweller in Lapland is far more to be envied than the resident of London, who might have to cope with legal plunder or faithless love. The poet has already placed his Golden Age in the past, describing the present as the dregs of life. Now he emphasizes his aversion to war, pride-created wants (those admirable fosterers of commerce), and civilized vice in general.

It comes as something of a shock, after this, to discover Thomson uncritically absorbing more travel-book material, this time explaining that it is also in the northern regions that "the last of mankind live" ("Winter" C, l. 688) in an environment where "Human Nature just begins to dawn" (l. 691)—or, to follow a later edition, where human nature "wears it's rudest Form" ("Winter" E, l. 940). The grossness of this race, who dwell by "the wild Oby" ("Winter" E, l. 937) of Russia, may be accounted for by the fact that the sun scarcely penetrates to this area and Winter reigns alone. Of course, precisely the same might be said of Lapland—but in his discussion of Lapland Thomson has only praise for the wonders of moon and stars. It seems strange to find the idea of the disastrous effects of eternal winter in a poem that explicitly remarks on the renovating force of Winter, commenting ("Winter" C, ll. 561-563) that desolation is visible only to the thoughtless eye.

These Russians are not the only primitive people who turn out to be the reverse of virtuous. The revisions of 1744 introduce a new passage on African savages, described as an "Ill-fated Race" because

The passage goes on to point out that all gentle virtues seek milder climates, where there are fewer ruthless deeds, less mad jealousy and blind rage. Like Tennyson, Thomson, even when lured into temporary enchantment with the wonders of the tropics (in the same edition he refers to tropic isles as the seat of blameless Pan, "yet undisturb'd / By Christian Crimes and Europe's cruel Sons"; "Summer" C, ll. 846-847), feels obliged to insist that he counts the gray barbarian lower than the Christian child.

His attitude toward natural man, in short, is by no means constant. Nor is his attitude toward modern civilization, which, as we have seen, he explicitly rejects in connection with his excursions into primitivism. Often, on the other hand, he seems totally convinced of its glories. In the first edition of "Summer," for example, occurs a lengthy passage of praise for modern Britain. The attitudes represented by it also occur rather frequently in eighteenth-century poetry; Oliver Goldsmith, for example, is, like Thomson, capable of lumping together a variety of attributes under the general classification of British virtue, in "The Traveler."

Compare Thomson:

In tone, in atmosphere, the two passages are almost identical. It is an atmosphere compounded of emotional catchwords, a tone which demands nothing of the reader except complacency. Completely appropriate to Goldsmith's purposes, it is less easily acceptable in Thomson—and the poet feels obliged to apologize:

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.
("Summer" A, ll. 610-615)

The fact that the digression was "noble," and that it was undoubtedly agreeable to Thomson's contemporaries, in no way lessens its digressiveness or the sense of inappropriateness with which one plods through it. The scheme of values upon which the passage is based has virtually no relation to the scheme underlying most of the rest of the poem. It is a conventional set of moral standards, and the conventional language the poet uses in dealing with it suggests that he was writing off the surface of his mind, confident of acceptance because his sentiments were so correct, feeling no obligation to precision of diction because this was a sort of poetry in which content was far more important than style.

Indeed, lack of dictional control is characteristic of the sections of The Seasons which place their emphasis on such concerns. Let us examine in more detail a few lines of the digression on England's glories:

Full are thy Cities with the Sons of Art;
And Trade, and Joy, in every busy Street,
Mingling, are heard: even Drudgery, Himself,
As at the Car He sweats, or, dusty, hews
The Palace-Stone, looks gay. Thy crowded Ports,
Where rising Masts an endless Prospect yield,
With Labour burn, and eccho to the Shouts
Of hurry'd Sailour.
("Summer" A, ll. 513-520)

In sentiment, this is irreproachable by eighteenth-century standards. It is, as a matter of fact, an excellent example of a certain sort of manifestation of Augustan optimism. The enthusiasm for Britain's industrial progress, the feeling that commercial activity of any sort is admirable per se, the simple equation of trade with joy: these are characteristic of the time.

But the terms in which Thomson chooses to communicate this vision of progress are actually extremely ambiguous. An audience of his own time, sharing his convictions, might accept the import intended without recognizing a contradictory substratum, but the twentieth-century reader is not so automatically on the poet's side. Perusing an account of Drudgery, sweating and dusty, laboring on the stones of others' palaces, we do not necessarily accept the simple assertion that he "looks gay" as adequate counterbalance to the negative aspects of his situation already introduced. The whole section, positive in intent, is full of negative implications, the result of poorly disciplined diction. Britain's ports burn with labor. Burning implies energy and heat; energy, at least, is a desirable connotation in the circumstances, and heat not a particularly undesirable one. But burning also implies destruction. The result of a fire is ashes; men burn themselves out: the verb suggests the unpleasant aspects of the scene more strongly than the pleasant ones. The ports are crowded—a disagreeable state of affairs, if a commercially promising one; the sailor is hurried—we sense the tremendous pressure behind the façade of success. The ambiguities of the poet's diction work against him rather than for him, because the idea he attempts to present is simple, not complex, and words of complex import destroy, not strengthen it. The same sort of weakness may be found in most of the long praise of Britain, emphasizing the debilitating effect that too close attention to man can have in such a poem as The Seasons. Conventional diction in conjunction with conventional ideas unredeemed by the sense of deep personal participation by the author: the result is a flabby sort of poetry, interesting only historically.

Another passage founded on the same sort of assumptions as the long one on England, although apparently far more closely related to nature, is the glorification of plowing in the "Spring" of 1728. Again, the digression originates in contemplation of a natural scene. It attempts, however, to justify a human pursuit closely related to nature by reference to standards divorced from nature: allusions to famous historical figures. We are told, by way of reassurance, that Virgil sang about plowing; that great men in the past devoted themselves to the "sacred Plow" ("Spring" A, l. 57); that classical heroes, after performing their heroic feats, were willing to seize the plow and live "greatly independent" (l. 64). In the second section of the passage, Britons are urged to cultivate the plow as a means of increasing the dominance of man over nature and of Britain over the world. England is already the mistress of the seas, Thomson points out; why should she not control the land as thoroughly? If Britons will only plow, their country may be "th'exhaustless Granary of the World" (l. 75) and clothe less fortunate naked nations. Thomson's expressed reason for cultivating the ground, in other words, has to do only with the affairs of men: man is to exercise control over nature for the sake of other men. John Dyer said the same thing. Britain's delight, he observed, is

To fold the world with harmony, and spread
Among the habitations of mankind,
The various wealth of toil, and what her fleece,
To clothe the naked, and her skilful looms,
Peculiar give.¹⁵

Or there is Robert Dodsley, who shares Thomson's enthusiasm for the plow:

Of these, the honour'd plough claims chief regard,
Hence bread to man, who heretofore on mast
Fed with his fellow-brute, in woods and wilds,
Himself uncultur'd as the soil he trod.¹⁶

Dodsley's praise of the plow, however, also suggests a problem latent in all this glorification of agriculture, commerce, naval supremacy. Implicit in the high regard for civilized human accomplishment is condemnation of man in his natural state. Dodsley makes it explicit enough, in the lines just quoted. Thomson does the same, but not until 1730, in the first edition of "Autumn." Here occur more than a hundred lines on the glories of industry in the standard mode of eighteenth-century panegyric verse.¹⁷ Thomson's patriotism betrayed him here, as it did often, into a discussion based on assumptions far different from those which underlay the earlier parts of The Seasons

For now Thomson allies himself with the poets of his century whose concerns were entirely with the affairs of men, not at all with nature or metaphysics. Consider, for example, Richard Glover's poem, "London: Or, the Progress of Commerce." In it we find this glorification of personified Commerce:

Other gifts of Commerce listed by Glover include law, learning, wisdom, the revelation of nature's works, music, virtue, and poetry.

In Glover, whose title reveals his theme, this is the sort of thing we expect. But should we find the same sentiments in James Thomson, praiser of a Golden Age in which the original state of man was a beneficiary of the benevolence of nature? In the "Autumn" section on Industry (version A, ll. 43-157), the resemblance to Glover's ideas is startling—the sole difference is that Industry instead of Commerce is glorified. The passage has already been discussed in chapter iii, as an example of the weakness of certain parts of The Seasons in the final version of the poem. The praise of industry took exactly the same form, however, in the first edition of "Autumn," insisting that the great achievement of man is the control of nature, not harmonious participation in the natural pattern, making clear Thomson's new attitude toward the position of man, and asserting serenely, in language much like Glover's, that

All is the gift of Industry; whate'er
Exalts, embellishes, and renders life
Delightful.
("Autumn" A, ll. 148-150)

Similar in implication and method is the long passage on sheepshearing and the glories of England derived therefrom added to the third edition of "Summer" ("Summer" C, 11. 371-431), which can hardly fail to recall Dr. Johnson's comment on Dyer's "Fleece": "The woolcomber and the poet appear to me such discordant natures, that an attempt to bring them together is to couple the serpent with the fowl."¹⁹

The accomplishments of Peter the Great become an important theme in the 1744 "Winter" (E, ll. 950-987), in a section in praise of government, which lifts men from savage stupor. This follows immediately the lines on the woes and evils of the last of mankind who dwell beside the Oby; its sentiments are a logical consequence of condemnation of man in a state of nature.

But these lines occur in the same part of The Seasons as those praising the noble residents of Lapland. Primitive stoicism and love were there the criteria of virtue; navies and cities have now become the standards of accomplishment. And "Autumn," which contains the lengthy section praising industry, has also the passage (version A, ll. 1131-1247; some of these lines were quoted earlier) fervently glorifying the rural life. In the former passage, cities are held up as the proud achievement of industry in contrast with the original brutish state of man. The glorification of the rural life, however, assumes that cities are "guilty" per se ("Autumn" A, l. 1245); the picture of city life in the third edition of "Winter" (ll. 528-542) suggests that cities are primarily the haunts of vanity and vice, to be contrasted with the sincerity of simple villages and their pleasures (ll. 515-527). The merchant's achievements, the ships that sail the oceans and assure Britain's dominion of the seas, are praised when industry is praised. But toward the end of "Autumn" (A, ll. 1174-1179) Thomson places those who brave the flood in the same class as those who exult in the widow's wail and the virgin's shriek when cities are sacked.

The inconsistencies in Thomson's attitude toward progress and civilization, then, correspond exactly to the inconsistencies in his attitude toward the state of natural man. They are, of course, connected with his difficulty in deciding whether primitivism or the idea of progress appealed to him more. R. D. Havens, recognizing this dichotomy in Thomson's thought, suggests that it "sprang from a cleavage in his life" which "led to one in his work, in his taste, and in his sense of values."²⁰ The cleavage in the poet's life, Havens feels, was between his boyhood love of nature and the country and his more mature conviction of the glories of progress, trade, and patriotism, fostered by his association with the rich and powerful. The same conflict by which Havens attempts to account for the poet's wavering between adherence to primitivism and to progress might also help to explain his apparent difficulty in deciding whether he was really more interested in nature or in men.

It might be possible to reconcile glorification of cities or trade with denunciation of them, and Thomson probably went through thought processes intended to achieve such a reconciliation. He does not, however, indicate them to his reader. Thought has no apparent place in the catalogues of fine feelings into which the poet falls so easily. He seems to be led by the mood of the moment, and by a sense of the fitness of things dictated increasingly by consciousness of tradition rather than by his own perceptions. The model of the Georgics, of course, was enough to inspire such digressions as those on patriotism, and patriotism in the eighteenth century implied a conviction of progress. In the second edition of "Winter," Thomson had given evidence of his devotion to Virgil and the Georgics by including in his preface his own translation of a passage from that poem. In the early years of The Seasons, the georgic inspiration seemed to mean mainly devotion to the wonders of nature and their implications. The lines Thomson chose to translate indicate the primary area of his youthful interest: they are concerned with the wonders of the universe, and an appeal to the muses to reveal these wonders to the poet. As the years went on, however, one suspects that the Georgics began more consistently to mean to Thomson what they meant to his contemporaries. Christopher Smart could give instructions on the growing of hops, John Philips on the production of cider; Thomson turned to the plow and the glories of industry, and became more and more the child of his century.

…..

The course of Thomson's gradual shift in emphasis from nature to man, in short, was marked by the development of emotional and intellectual confusion. The revisions of The Seasons reflect, as we have seen, widely diverse and contradictory attitudes about the significance of nature to man: nature might influence man; man might influence nature; nature might be important simply in providing analogies, metaphors, poetic decoration. The revisions indicate the poet's wavering about various moral questions—the joy of trout fishing versus its cruelty, for example. And they suggest a complete ambiguity in his position about the relative virtue of natural and civilized man.

Such confusion in the poet made for weakness in the poetry. Although it is far too simple to say that Thomson was always good when writing about nature, always bad when writing about man, the fact remains that the general trend was for his poetry dominated by a unified view of nature to be superior …

Notes

¹ A. O. Lovejoy, "The Parallel of Deism and Classicism," Modern Philology, 29 (1931), 281-299.

² For an extreme statement of the theory that Shaftesbury was the primary influence on Thomson's philosophy, see C. A. Moore, "Shaftesbury and the Ethical Poets in England, 1700-1760," PMLA, 21 (1916), 264-325; and "The Return to Nature in English Poetry," Studies in Philology, 14 (1917), 243-291.

³ Shaftesbury, Characteristics, "Advice to an Author," I, 125.

⁴ Basil Willey, The Eighteenth-Century Background (London, 1949), p. 73.

⁵ For a fuller discussion of Shaftesbury's views, see: J. M. Robertson's introduction to his edition of Shaftesbury (Shaftesbury, Characteristics, I, ix-xlv); Moore's article in PMLA (cited in n. 2, above); and Willey, op. cit., chap. iv, "Natural Morality—Shaftesbury," pp. 57-75.

⁶ James Harris, "Concord" (1751). Quoted in Moore's PMLA article (see n. 2, above), p. 295.

⁷ See Douglas Grant, James Thomson (London, 1951), p. 103.

⁸ David Mallet, The Excursion, Chalmers, XIV, 18. The preceding quotation from Mallet is from the same source.

⁹ George G. Williams, "The Beginnings of Nature Poetry in the Eighteenth Century," Studies in Philology, 27, (1930), p. 596.

¹⁰Ibid., p. 584.

¹¹ "The Argument," prefaced first to the version of "Spring" in the 1730 quarto.

¹² William Somerville, "The Chase," Chalmers, XI, 162.

¹³ Lovejoy, op.cit. (in n. 1, above), pp. 288-290.

¹⁴ John Langhorne, "The Happy Villager," Chalmers, XVI, 460-461.

¹⁵ John Dyer, "The Fleece," Chalmers, XIII, 249.

¹⁶ Robert Dodsley, "Agriculture," Chalmers, XV, 352.

¹⁷ The passage occupies "Autumn" A, ll. 43-157. For a discussion of other practitioners in this genre see C. A. Moore, "Whig Panegyric Verse, 1700-1760," PMLA, 41 (1926), 362-401.

¹⁸ Richard Glover, "London: Or, the Progress of Commerce," Chalmers, XVII, 19.

¹⁹ Samuel Johnson, Lives of the English Poets, ed. G. B. Hill (Oxford, 1905), II, 387.

²⁰ R. D. Havens, "Primitivism and the Idea of Progress in Thomson," Studies in Philology, 29 (1932), p. 41.