HOMER A SPORTSMAN. 209 



was no winter, and consequently no thaw, could 

 describe the spring-time change as Thomson has done 

 by " the frost resolves into a trickling thaw," or have 

 told how, over the pool, the icy gale " breathes a blue 

 Jilm.^^ Here not even genius would have supplied the 

 place of personal observation. And when we read his 

 account of the hare, 



*' Scar'd from the corn, to some lone seat retired, 



Of tlie same friendly hue, the wither d fern ; " 



and now on 



" The fallow ground laid open to the snn," 

 with 



*'Head couch'd close between her hairy feet. 

 In act to spring away," 



we at once feel certain that he well knew the animal, 

 and wrote from personal experience.* 



^ How different his accounts of matters which he knew only by hear- 

 say, and which he had no opportunity of seeing ! Fancy then has to 

 lend her aid ; and the result is a bit of painting quite satisfactory to 

 those who know nothing about the matter, but which in reality is no 

 picture, only a daub. Speaking of the wild boar, he says, — 



" Or, growling horrid, as the brindled boar 

 Grins fell destruction." 



Here all the epithets which are meant to be characteristic and conse- 

 quently effective, are powerless, because incorrect. The boar does not 

 "growl;" he generally is not "brindled" but black; and at no mo- 

 ment the features of the boar could warrant the expression "grin." 



In the account of a stag hunt, the incidents he had seen are alluded 

 to ■with all that felicity of epithet, which we find eyer}"svhere in "The 



P 



