Savage was indignant because the queen did not give him a handsome pension, sufficient for his support; arguing that since she had saved his life, it was her duty to preserve it.

James Thomson (1700-48), the son of a Scotch Presbyterian minister, went, at the age of twenty-five, to seek his fortune in London. He was handicapped from the start by the failure of remittances which he expected from home, and by losing all his letters of introduction, which were stolen from his pocket as he was carrying them along the street carefully tied up in a corner of his handkerchief. His first paying occupation seems to have been teaching a child to read. His poem of "Winter" was sold to a bookseller for three guineas; and Thomson, having had the worldly wisdom to dedicate it to Sir Spencer Compton (one of George I.'s ministers), received a present of twenty guineas more. The reading world at once perceived the merit of "Winter," and in the course of two or three years the poem received the addition of Summer, Spring, and Autumn, and became the fine completed poem called "The Seasons." He was the first poet in whom love of nature overshadowed interest in man, and many of his descriptions of natural scenery are exquisite. The "Hymn to the Seasons," appended to the longer poem, is an epitome of the whole. The line to Spring:

Come, gentle Spring, ethereal mildness come,

is very often quoted; sometimes in serious delight at the season's beauties; oftener in sarcastic allusion to its trying and afflicting vagaries. In one canto occur the famous lines: Delightful task! to rear the tender thought,

To teach the young idea how to shoot.

Thomson, of course, tried his hand at dramatic writing. Almost everybody did so in those days. His tragedy of "Sophonisba," founded on the old Numidian-Roman story, was marred by one unlucky line:

O Sophonisba! Sophonisba O!

Upon hearing which, some wag in the gallery called out: O Jemmy Thomson! Jemmy Thomson, O!

and roars of laughter turned the tragedy into a farce. The objectionable line was afterward altered to:

O Sophonisba! I am wholly thine.

but the play was voted better for reading than for acting, and for burlesquing than either.

Thomson was incurably lazy, but his poetic gifts stood him in good stead, and he obtained from time to time such employment as was well paid and at the same time left him leisure for literary work. At one time he lost a sinecure office which yielded him a comfortable income, because his indolence prevented him from making the necessary application for its renewal. Poets, however, were scarce in those days, and he soon obtained another office, that of Surveyor General of the Leeward Islands, for the duties of which he employed a deputy, pocketing £300 per annum-at least $3,000 of our present money— in addition to what he paid the deputy.

His "Castle of Indolence" is his finest and most artistic poem. This, however, has never attained the popularity of the "Seasons." The former has an admirable moral, well worked out in Spenserian verse. Here is one stanza:

I care not, Fortune, what you me deny;

You can not rob me of free nature's grace;

You can not shut the windows of the sky,

Through which Aurora shows her brightening face;
You can not bar my constant feet to trace
The woods and lawns, by living stream, at eve;
Let health my nerves and finer fibres brace,

And I their toys to the great children leave;

Of fancy, reason, virtue, naught can me bereave. *

*It is worth while to observe, here, the extra metrical foot which iengthens the final line from a pentameter to a hexameter. This, which is the kind of line called "Alexandrine," gives a much admired variation to the stanzas where it occurs.

John Dyer (1700-59), a Welshman, wrote a pretty descriptive poem called "Grongar Hill," in the octosyllabic metre made afterward so popular by Scott. A longer poem, "The Fleece," about sheep and their products, is, from the prosaic nature of the subject, unattractive.

Robert Blair (1700-46), a Scottish clergyman, was the author of "The Grave," which has been called, by high critical authority, an imitation of Young's "Night Thoughts." Of this charge it is a sufficient refutation to say that "The Grave" was written before "Night Thoughts," and has no other resemblance to that poem than being long, written on a serious subject, and in the form of blank verse. It is well sustained, and has some noble passages; for instance: Sure, the last end

Of the good man is peace! How calm his exit!
Night - dews fall not more gently to the ground,

Nor weary, worn out winds expire so soft.
Behold him! In the evening tide of life,

A life well spent, whose early care it was
His riper years should not upbraid his green:
By unperceived degrees he wears away,

Yet, like the sun, seems larger at his setting.

Robert Blair must not be confounded with Dr. Hugh Blair (1718-1800), a well-known critic and writer on Rhetoric.

William Shenstone (1714-63) was the author of "The Schoolmistress," a really bright and readable sketch of the old-time "dame" school - teacher, but disfigured by an affectation of archaisms. His "Pastoral Ballad" is much more agreeable reading:

My banks they are furnished with bees,
Whose murmur invites one to sleep;
My grottos are shaded with trees,

And my hills are white over with sheep.

And so one is rocked, as it were, by the soft swaying of the verse, and almost ready to weep with the shepherd when his Phyllis turns out to be faithless.

CHAPTER XXXI.

EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY POETS CONTINUED.

ITH the name of Thomas Gray (1716–71), a host of tender associations press upon us. We find ourselves, in fancy, in the "Country Churchyard," looking on the scene of the "Elegy." The glimmering landscape fades upon our sight; we hear the drowsy tinkling of the sheep-bells; the heaving turf reminds us. of the generations gone before whom no cheerful sound shall ever more rouse from their lowly bed. Then we think

of Wolfe, on his last night, as the boat dropped softly, with muffled oars, down the St. Lawrence, and hear him repeat to a brother-officer,

The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power,

And all that beauty, all that wealth e'er gave,
Await alike the inevitable hour;

The paths of glory lead but to the grave:

and say that he would rather be the author of that poem than to take Quebec-he at the moment on a path of glory that led him on the morrow to the grave.

We are surprised to read that the father of young Gray was of a harsh and violent disposition, and made his wife's life so wretched that she was obliged to separate from him and support herself and her son by keeping a shop in Cornhill, London. By his mother's efforts Thomas received a university education at Cambridge, though he left college without a degree. While there he formed a friendship with Horace Walpole, and the two set out for a tour on the continent, Walpole paying all expenses. They turned out to be uncongenial companions, and after a quarrel in Italy, for which Walpole at a later day took all the blame upon himself, Gray returned to England. Soon after this his father died, leaving some property, but not enough to

enable the son to enter the law, as he had proposed doing. He therefore settled down for life at Cambridge, where he would have the best opportunities for study. It was while he was here that most of his poems were written, though the first one of importance, the "Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College," (where Gray was prepared for Cambridge), he kept by him five years before he gave it to the public. He became a proficient in every branch of learning he undertook (he did not study mathematics), was a fine Latin and Greek scholar, was familiar with the literature of several modern languages, and was profoundly versed in the natural sciences, as well as in architecture, archæology and music. And from all this, the only benefit we of the nineteenth century have is a halfdozen exquisite poems, a dozen or so of others of less merit, though all carefully finished, and a volume of delightful letters; for, like others of that leisurely time, Gray was an admirable letter - writer. It is pleasant to think that his devoted mother lived to read the Elegy and to enjoy the appreciation which the public gave it. It instantly became popular and has stood the test of time, being felt to this day, by perhaps a majority of readers, to be the most perfect poem in the language.

Three years before Gray's death, the professorship of modern history at Cambridge was bestowed upon him; a tardy recognition of his great claims. This made him easy as to money matters (he had always before been poor), but his health was beginning to fail and he had not much enjoyment of the new distinction. He died of gout, the same disease which had carried off both his father and mother; and was buried at Stoke Pogis, the churchyard of the "Elegy," in the same tomb with his mother. His epitaph on her is touching in its simplicity. It runs thus:

Beside her friend and sister here sleep the remains of Dorothy Gray, widow, the careful mother of many children, one of whom alone had the misfortune to survive her.