94 LANDSCAPE AND LITERATURE 



of England, and must have seen in that time much 

 variety of weather and many different watercourses, 

 it is still from the north that he draws his sketches. 

 When, for instance, he tells how in autumn, 



'Red from the hills, innumerable streams 

 Tumultuous roar,' 1 



the colour of his torrents betrays their Scottish origin. 

 He was thinking of the spates in his native streams 

 which sweep across tracts of Old Red Sandstone, and 

 come down almost brick-red in hue. There are no 

 red rocks, and therefore no red brooks in Middlesex 

 and the surrounding districts. 



But before the completion of the Seasons the influ- 

 ence of English lowland scenery had begun to impress 

 itself on Thomson's imagination. The softer and 

 ampler landscape of fruitful plains, with its richer 

 agriculture and fuller population, its farms, villages, 

 and country houses, filled his mind with a new plea- 

 sure. Some trace of this widened experience may be 

 seen in the additions successively made to the earlier 

 poems, such as the picture of Hagley Park introduced 

 into the poem on Spring. But it was in his last 

 effusion, The Castle of Indolence, that this English 

 influence gained entire sway, and the Scottish memories 

 faded into the background. Here we find ourselves 

 amid the typical landscapes of the south of England 

 — landscapes, however, so transfused by poetic genius 

 as to acquire an individuality of their own. We are 

 led into ' a lowly dale fast by a river's side ' ; we 

 wander through ' sleep-soothing groves and quiet lawns 



l Juiumn, 337. 



