NATURE IN THE NATURE POETS. 
45 
enough to show that some love for this beautiful world is to 
be found even in the great satirist of society, that Pope was 
not like the nature-despiser, the fortune-hunting husband 
of the unhappy Miss Kilmansegg, of whom it is said : 
"To tel], indeed, the true extent 
Of his rural bias, so far it went 
As to covet estates in ring fences : 
And for rural lore he had learned in town 
That the country was green, turned up with brown, 
And garnished with trees that a man might cut down, 
Instead of his own expenses." . 
To Pope, at any rate, we owe the line : 
"And look thro' nature up to nature's God." 
In the year 172G the first part of Thomson's Seasons — 
Winter " — was published. It has been well observed : 
So true and beautiful are the descriptions in the poem, and 
so entirely do they harmonise with those fresh feelings and 
glowing impulses which all would wish to cherish, that 
a love of nature seems to be synonymous with a love of 
Thomson." 
We may indeed, if we will, call Thomson the father of the 
modern natural school of English poetry — the school of poets 
who loved nature for her own dear sake, who loved, not 
because they wrote, but who wrote because they loved. And 
not only wrote, but looked upward as they did so. Witness 
the Hymn on the Seasons " : 
" These as they change, Almighty Father, these 
Are but the varied God. The rolling year 
Is full of Thee. Forth in the pleasing Spring 
Thy beauty walks, Thy tenderness and love. 
"Wide flush the fields ; the softening air is balm. 
. . . Then comes Thy glory in the Summer months, 
With light and heat refulgent. Then Thy sun 
Shoots full perfection through the swelling year ; 
