A GOOD WORD FOR WINTER. 33 



"Whilst we together jovial sit 

 Careless, and crowned with mirth and wit, 

 Where, though bleak winds confine us home 

 Our fancies round the world shall roam." 



Thomson's view of Winter is also, on the whole, a hostile 

 one, though he does justice to his grandeur. 



" Thus Winter falls, 



A heavy gloom oppressive o'er the world, 

 Through Nature shedding influence malign." 



He finds his consolations, like Cotton, in the house, 



though more refined : 



" While without 



The ceaseless winds blow ice. be my retreat 

 Between the groaning forest and the shore 

 Beat by the boundless multitude of waves, 

 A rural, sheltered, solitary scene, 

 Where ruddy fire and beaming tapers join 

 To cheer the gloom. There studious let me sit 

 And hold high converse with the mighty dead." 



Doctor Akenside, a man to be spoken of with respect, 

 follows Thomson. With him, too, "Winter desolates 

 the year," and 



"How pleasing wears the wintry night 



Spent with the old illustrious dead ! 



While by the taper's trembling light 



I seem those awful scenes to tread 



Where chiefs or legislators lie," &c. 



Akenside had evidently been reading Thomson. He 

 had the conceptions of a great poet with less faculty than 

 many a little one, and is one of those versifiers of whom 

 it is enough to say that we are always willing to break 

 him off in the middle with an <fec., well knowing that 

 what follows is but the coming-round again of what went 

 before, marching in a circle with the cheap numerosity 

 of a stage-army. In truth, it is no wonder that the short 

 days of that cloudy northern climate should have added 

 to winter a gloom borrowed of the mind. We hardly 

 know, till we have experienced the contrast, how sensibly 

 our winter is alleviated by the longer daylight and the 



