difficult to discover, in many landscapes, a point from which the description commences better than from another. The episodes are frequently interesting, and arise naturally from the description; but they sometimes attract our attention too much from the principal subject. The influence of the central fire, to use the expression of Laharpe[1], which ought to pervade the poem, to combine its different episodes in one general design, and to predominate in all its parts, is not always perceptible in the various digressions. The historical allusions refer to the Scotish history, as detailed by Fordun, Boethius, Major, and Buchanan. In this edition of Clyde, the topics of general description are more skilfully connected with particular scenery than in that of 1764, and blend more easily with the localities of the poem. His descriptions of rural scenes and occupations are always true to nature, and often diversified by striking and picturesque touches. He never appears as a servile imitator, though several of his topics had been anticipated by Somerville and Thomson; as fox-hunting, stag-hunting, hay-making, reaping, the music of birds, and the production of insects. In various other topics he may be advantageously compared with later descriptive poets.
- ↑ Laharpe's Lycée, Vol. VIII. p. 317.
