IWatuve IRotes : 
tEbe Sclbotiie Societ^j’s flDagasine. 
No. 89. 
MAY, 1897. 
VoL. VIII. 
NATURE - POETRY. 
{Concluded from p. 71.) 
tarirrtT is well to bear in mind that, while the author was 
S 3 revising his poem, Pope, whose friendship Thomson 
had gained before he came to Richmond, was a fre- 
' quent visitor at our poet’s house, while Thomson was 
an equally frequent ^^sitor to Pope at Twickenham. This 
intimacy shows Pope at his best, welcoming his brother bard 
with the new style, and actually writing for him in that style 
the only pieces of blank verse that he ever wrote. Now and 
then Pope would suggest a felicitous line or epithet, which 
Thomson, no slavish follower, did not always accept ; and once, 
in the story of Lavinia, Pope (in his sole bit of blank verse) 
wrote this lovely simile, which our poet wisely adopted : — 
“ As in the hollow breast of Appennine, 
Beneath the shelter of encircling hills, 
A myrtle rises far from human eye 
And breathes its balmy fragrance o’er the wild, 
So flourished blooming and unseen by all 
The sweet Lavinia ; till, at length compelled 
By strong necessity’s supreme command. 
With smiling patience in her looks, she went 
To glean Palemon’s field.” 
From Pope our poet acquired the habit of labouring over his 
poems to bring them into their best form ; and in this good habit 
he has been followed by most of our Nature- poets, notably by 
Wordsworth, Shelley and Tennyson. In one of the many 
editions of “ The Seasons,” issued by Thomson while Pope was 
lying, in 1744, on what proved to be his death-bed, he pays his 
friend a well-deserved tribute in the following fine passage of 
Nature-poetry, delineating the scenery around the dwelling-places 
of both poets : — 
