POPE. 387 



nature. What Thomson's poetical creed was may be 

 surely inferred from his having modelled his two prin- 

 cipal poems on Milton and Spenser, ignoring rhyme 

 altogether in the " Seasons," and in the " Castle of 

 Indolence " rejecting the stiff mould of the couplet. 

 In 1744 came Akenside's "Pleasures of Imagination," 

 whose very title, like a guide-post, points away from the 

 level highway of commonplace to mountain-paths and 

 less domestic prospects. The poem was stiff and unwil- 

 ling, but in its loins lay the seed of nobler births, and 

 without it the " Lines written at Tintern Abbey " might 

 never have been. Three years later Collins printed his 

 little volume of Odes, advocating in theory and ex- 

 emplifying in practice the natural supremacy of the 

 imagination (though he called it by its older name of 

 fancy) as a test to distinguish poetry from verse-making. 

 The whole Romantic School, in its germ, no doubt, but 

 yet unmistakably foreshadowed, lies already in the 

 "Ode on the Superstitions of the Highlands." He 

 was the first to bring back into poetry something of the 

 antique fervor, and found again the long-lost secret of 

 being classically elegant without being pedantically cold. 

 A skilled lover of music,* he rose from the general 

 sing-song of his generation to a harmony that had been 

 silent since Milton, and in him, to use his own words, 



" The force of energy is found, 

 And the sense rises on the wings of sound. 1 ' 



But beside his own direct services in the reformation 

 of our poetry, we owe him a still greater debt as the 

 inspirer of Gray, whose " Progress of Poesy," in reach, 

 variety, and loftiness of poise, overflies all other Eng- 

 lish lyrics like an eagle. In spite of the dulncss of con- 

 temporary ears, preoccupied with the continuous hum 



* Milton, Collins, and Gray, our three great masters of harmony,, 

 were all musicians. 



