and unremitting vigour. Autumn, which while it bestows the rich products of full maturity, is yet ever hastening to decline, has been aptly compared to that period, when the man, mellowed by age, yields the most valuable fruits of experience and wisdom, but daily exhibits increasing symptoms of decay. The cold, cheerless, and sluggish Winter has almost without a metaphor been termed the decrepid and hoary old age of the year, pursued through its changing seasons, is that of an individual, whose existence is marked by a progressive course from its origin to its termination. It is thus represented by our Poet; this idea preserves an unity and connexion through his whole work; and the accurate observer will remark a beautiful chain of circumstances in his description, by wich the birth, vigour, decline, and extinction of the vital principle of the year are pictured in the most lively manner.
This order and gradation of the whole runs, as has been already hinted, through each division of the poem. Every season has its incipient, confirmed, and receding state, of which its historian ought to give distinct views, arranged according to the succession in which they appear. Each, too, like the prismatic colours, is indistinguishably blended in its origin and termination with that which precedes, and which follows it; and it may be expected from the pencil of an artist to hit off these mingled shades so as to produce a pleasing and picturesque effect. Our Poet has not been inattentive to these circumstances in the conduct of his plan. His Spring begins with a view of the season as yet unconfirmed, and partaking of the roughness of Winter;[1] and it is not till after several steps in gradual progression, that it breaks forth
in
- ↑ A descriptive piece, in which this very interval of time is represented, with all the accuracy of a naturalist, and vivid colouring of a poet, has lately appeared in a poem of Mr. Warton's, entitled the first of April.
