No More Learning

Dumas and Fouquier had but too well understood it.
necessary, however, to find pretexts for immolating so many vic-
tims. What crime could be imputed to them, when most of them


## p. 14837 (#411) ##########################################

ADOLPHE THIERS
14837
were peaceful, unknown citizens, who had never given any sign
of life to the State? It was conceived that being confined in
the prisons, they would think how to get out of them; that their
number was likely to inspire them with a feeling of their strength,
and to suggest to them the idea of exerting it for their escape.
The pretended conspiracy of Dillon was the germ of this idea,
which was developed in an atrocious manner. Some wretches
among the prisoners consented to act the infamous part of in-
formers. They pointed out in the Luxembourg one hundred and
sixty prisoners who, they said, had been concerned in Dillon's
plot. Some of these list-makers were procured in all the other
places of confinement; and they denounced in each, one or two
hundred persons as accomplices in the "conspiracy of the prisons. "
An attempt at escape made at La Force served but to authorize
this unworthy fable; and hundreds of unfortunate creatures be-
gan immediately to be sent to the Revolutionary tribunal. They
were transferred from the various prisons to the Conciergerie,
to be thence taken to the tribunal and to the scaffold. In the
night between the 18th and 19th of Messidor (June 6th), the one
hundred and sixty persons denounced at the Luxembourg were
transferred. They trembled on hearing themselves called: they
knew not what was laid to their charge, but they regarded it as
most probable that death was reserved for them. The odious Fou-
quier, since he had been furnished with the law of the 22d, had
made great changes in the hall of the tribunal. Instead of the
seats for the advocates and the bench, which would hold eighteen
or twenty persons and had been appropriated to the accused, an
amphitheatre for the accused was constructed by his order, with
a capacity of one hundred or one hundred and fifty at a time.
This he called his "little seats. " Carrying his atrocious activ-
ity still further, he had even caused a scaffold to be erected in
the very hall of the tribunal; and he proposed to have the one
hundred and sixty accused in the Luxembourg, tried at one and
the same sitting.
The Committee of Public Welfare, when informed of the kind.
of mania which had seized its public accuser, sent for him, ordered
him to remove the scaffold from the hall in which it was set up,
and forbade him to bring sixty persons to trial at once. "What! "
said Collot-d'Herbois in a transport of indignation: "wouldst thou
then demoralize death itself? " It should however be remarked
that Fouquier asserted the contrary, and maintained that it was


## p. 14838 (#412) ##########################################

14838
ADOLPHE THIERS
he who demanded the trial of the one hundred and sixty in
three divisions. Everything proves, on the contrary, that it was
the Committee which was less extravagant than their minister,
and checked his mad proceedings. They were obliged to repeat
the order to Fouquier-Tinville to remove the guillotine from the
hall of the tribunal.
The one hundred and sixty were divided into three companies,
tried and executed in three days. The proceedings were as expe-
ditious and as frightful as those adopted in the Abbaye on the
nights of the 2d and 3d of September. Carts ordered for every
day were waiting from the morning in the court of the Palace of
Justice, and the accused could see them as they went up-stairs to
the tribunal. Dumas the president, holding sessions like a maniac,
had a pair of pistols on the table before him. He merely asked
the accused their names, and added some very general question.
In the examination of the one hundred and sixty, the president
said to one of them, Dorival, "Do you know anything of the
conspiracy? " "No. "—"I expected that you would give that
answer; but it shall not avail you. Another. " He addressed a
person named Champigny, "Are you not an ex-noble? " "Yes. "
"Another. " To Gudreville, "Are you a priest? " "Yes —
but I have taken the oath. "-"You have no right to speak.
Another. " To a man named Menil, "Were you not servant to
the ex-constituent Menou ? » "Yes. "—"Another. " To Vely,
"Were you not architect to Madame? -"Yes; but I was dis-
missed in 1788. " — "Another. " To Gondrecourt, "Had you not
your father-in-law at the Luxembourg? " "Yes. " — "Another. "
To Durfort, "Were you not in the life-guard? " — "Yes; but I
was disbanded in 1789. "-
» — "Another. "
-
-
Such was the summary mode of proceeding with these unfor-
tunate persons. According to the law, the testimony of witnesses
was to be dispensed with only when there existed material or
moral proofs; nevertheless no witnesses were called, as it was
alleged that proofs of this kind existed in every case. The
jurors did not take the trouble to retire to the consultation room.
They gave their opinions before the audience, and sentence was
immediately pronounced. The accused had scarcely time to rise
and to mention their names. One day there was a prisoner whose
name was not upon the list of the accused, and who said to the
Court, "I am not accused; my name in not on your list. " "What
signifies that? " said Fouquier, "give it quick! " He gave it, and
-
-
>>
-
―
-
.


## p. 14839 (#413) ##########################################

ADOLPHE THIERS
14839
was sent to the scaffold like the others. The utmost negligence
prevailed in this kind of barbarous administration. Sometimes,
owing to the extreme precipitation, the acts of accusation were
not delivered to the accused till they were before the tribunal.
The most extraordinary blunders were committed. A worthy old
man, Loizerolles, heard along with his own surname the Christ-
ian names of his son called over: he forebore to remonstrate,
and was sent to the scaffold. Some time afterward the son was
brought to trial; it was found that he ought not to be alive,
since a person answering to all his names had been executed:
it was his father. He was nevertheless put to death. More than
once victims were called long after they had perished. There
were hundreds of acts of accusation quite ready, to which there
was nothing to add but the designation of the individuals.
The trials were conducted in like manner. The printing-office
was contiguous to the hall of the tribunal: the forms were kept
standing, the title, the motives, were ready composed; there was
nothing but the names to be added. These were handed through
a small loophole to the overseer. Thousands of copies were im-
mediately printed, and plunged families into mourning and struck
terror into the prisons. The hawkers came to sell the bulletin
of the tribunal under the prisoners' windows, crying, "Here are
the names of those who have gained prizes in the lottery of
St. Guillotine. " The accused were executed on the breaking-up
of the court; or at latest on the morrow, if the day was too far
advanced.
Ever since the passing of the law of the 22d of Prairial, vic-
tims perished at the rate of fifty or sixty a day. "That goes
well," said Fouquier-Tinville: "heads fall like tiles. " And he
added, "It must go better still next decade: I must have four
hundred and fifty at least. " For this purpose there were given.
what were called orders to the wretches who undertook the office
of spies upon the suspected. These wretches had become the
terror of the prisons. Confined as suspected persons, it was not
exactly known which of them it was who undertook to mark
out victims; but it was inferred from their insolence, from the
preference shown them by the jailers, from the orgies which
they held in the lodges with the agents of the police. They fre-
quently gave intimation of their importance, in order to traffic
with it. They were caressed, implored, by the trembling prison-
ers; they even received sums of money not to put their names


## p. 14840 (#414) ##########################################

14840
ADOLPHE THIERS
upon their lists. These they made up at random: they said of
one, that he had used aristocratic language; of another, that he
had drunk on a certain day when a defeat of the armies was
announced: and their mere designation was equivalent to a
death-warrant. The names which they had furnished were in-
serted in so many acts of accusation; these acts were notified in
the evening to the prisoners, and the latter were removed to the
Conciergerie. This was called in the language of the jailers
"the evening journal. " When those unfortunate creatures heard
the rolling of the tumbrils which came to fetch them, they were
in an agony as cruel as that of death. They ran to the gates,
clung to the bars to listen to the list, and trembled lest their
name should be pronounced by the messenger. When they were
named, they embraced their companions in misfortune, and took
a last leave of them. Most painful separations were frequently
witnessed, a father parting from his children, a husband from
his wife. Those who survived were as wretched as those who
were conducted to the den of Fouquier-Tinville. They went back
expecting soon to rejoin their relatives. When the fatal list was
finished, the prisoners breathed more freely, but only till the fol-
lowing day. Their anguish was then renewed, and the rolling of
the carts brought fresh terror along with it.
The public pity began to be expressed in a way that gave
some uneasiness to the exterminators. The shopkeepers in the
Rue St. Honoré, through which the carts passed every day, shut
up their shops. To deprive the victims of these signs of mourn-
ing, the scaffold was removed to the Barrière du Trone; but not
less pity was shown by the laboring people in this quarter than
by the inhabitants of the best streets in Paris. The populace, in
a moment of intoxication, may have no feeling for the victims
whom it slaughters itself; but when it daily witnesses the death
of fifty or sixty unfortunate persons against whom it is not ex-
cited by rage, it soon begins to be softened. This pity, however,
was still silent and timid. All the distinguished persons confined
in the prisons had fallen,- the unfortunate sister of Louis XVI.
had been immolated in her turn; and Death was already descend-
ing from the upper to the lower classes of society. We find at
this period on the list of the Revolutionary tribunal, tailors,
shoemakers, hair-dressers, butchers, farmers, publicans, nay, even
laboring men, condemned for sentiments and language held to be
counter-revolutionary. To convey in brief an idea of the num-
―


## p. 14841 (#415) ##########################################

ADOLPHE THIERS
14841
ber of executions of this period, it will be sufficient to state that
between the month of March 1793, when the tribunal commenced
its operations, and June 1794 (22d Prairial, year II), 577 persons
had been condemned; and that from the 10th of June (22d Prai-
rial) to the 17th of July (9th Thermidor) it condemned 1,285: so
that the total number of victims up to the 9th of Thermidor
amounts to 1,862.
Translation of Frederic Shoberl.
THE POLICY OF NAPOLEON IN EGYPT
From the History of the French Revolution'
THE
HE Arabs were struck by the character of the young con-
queror. They could not comprehend how it was that a
mortal who wielded the thunderbolt should be so merciful.
They called him the worthy son of the Prophet, the Favorite of
the great Allah. They sang in the great mosque the following
litany:
:-
"The great Allah is no longer wroth with us. He hath forgotten
our faults: they have been sufficiently punished by the long oppres-
sion of the Mamelukes. Let us sing the mercies of the great Allah!
"Who is he that hath saved the Favorite of Victory from the
dangers of the sea and the rage of his enemies? Who is he that
hath led the brave men of the West safe and unharmed to the banks
of the Nile?
"It is the great Allah, the great Allah, who hath ceased to be
wroth with us. Let us sing the mercies of the great Allah!
"The Mameluke beys had put their trust in their horses; the
Mameluke beys had drawn forth their infantry in battle array.
"But the Favorite of Victory, at the head of the brave men of the
West, hath destroyed the footmen and the horsemen of the Mam-
elukes.
"As th vapors which rise in the morning from he Nile are scat-
tered by the rays of the sun, so hath the army of the Mamelukes
been scattered by the brave men of the West; because the great
Allah is now wroth with the Mamelukes, because the brave men of
the West are as the apple of the right eye of the great Allah. "
Bonaparte, in order to make himself better acquainted with
the manners of the Arabs, resolved to attend all their festivals.
He was present at that of the Nile. which is one of the greatest


## p. 14842 (#416) ##########################################

14842
ADOLPHE THIERS
in Egypt. The river is the benefactor of the country. It is, in
consequence, held in great veneration by the inhabitants, and is
the object of a sort of worship. During the inundation, its water
is introduced into Cairo by a great canal: a dike prevents it from
entering the canal until it has attained a certain height; the dike
is then cut, and the day fixed for this operation is a day of
rejoicing. The height to which the river has risen is publicly
proclaimed, and when there are hopes of a great inundation,
general joy prevails, for it is an omen of abundance.
It is on the 18th of August (1st of Fructidor) that this fes-
tival is held. Bonaparte had ordered the whole army to be
under arms, and had drawn it up on the banks of the canal. An
immense concourse of people had assembled, and beheld with
joy the "brave men of the West" attending their festival. Bona-
parte, at the head of his staff, accompanied the principal authori-
ties of the country. A sheik first proclaimed the height to which
the Nile had risen. It was twenty-five feet, which occasioned
great joy. Men then fell to work to cut the dike. The whole
of the French artillery was fired at once, at the moment when
the water of the river poured in. According to custom, a great
number of boats hastened to the canal, in order to obtain the
prize destined to that which should first enter. Bonaparte deliv-
ered the prize himself. A multitude of men and boys plunged
into the waters of the Nile, from a notion that bathing in them
at this moment is attended with beneficial effects. Women threw
into them hair and pieces of stuff. Bonaparte then ordered the
city to be illuminated, and the day concluded with entertain-
ments.
The festival of the Prophet was celebrated with not less pomp.
Bonaparte went to the great mosque; seated himself on cushions,
cross-legged like the sheiks; and repeated with them the litanies.
of the Prophet, rocking the upper part of his body to and fro,
and shaking his head. All the members of the holy college were
edified by his piety. He then attended the dinner given by the
Grand Sheik elected in the course of the day.
It was by such means that the young general, as profound a
politician as he was a great captain, contrived to ingratiate him-
self with the people. While he flattered their prejudices for the
moment, he labored to diffuse among them some day the light of
science, by the creation of the celebrated Institute of Egypt. He
collected the men of science and the artists whom he had brought


## p. 14843 (#417) ##########################################

ADOLPHE THIERS
14843
with him; and associating with them some of the best educated
of his officers, established that institute, to which he appropriated
revenues and one of the most spacious palaces in Cairo. Some
were to occupy themselves in preparing an accurate description
and a map of the country, comprehending the most minute de-
tails; others were to explore its ruins, and to furnish history with
new lights; others, again, were to study the productions, to make
observations useful to natural philosophy, natural history, and
astronomy; while others were to employ themselves in inquiries.
concerning the ameliorations that might be made in the condition
of the inhabitants,- by machines, canals, works upon the Nile,
and processes adapted to a soil so singular and so different from
that of Europe. If Fortune did subsequently wrest from us that
beautiful country, at any rate she could not deprive us of the
conquests which science was about to make in it. A monument
was preparing which was destined to reflect not less honor on
the genius and the perseverance of our men of science, than the
expedition on the heroism of our soldiers.
Monge was the first who obtained the presidency. Bonaparte
was only the second. He proposed the following subjects: To
inquire the best construction of wind and water mills; to find a
substitute for the hop (which does not grow in Egypt) for the
making of beer; to determine the sites adapted to the cultivation
of the vine; to seek the best means of procuring water for the
citadel of Cairo; to dig wells in different spots in the desert;
to inquire the means of clarifying and cooling the water of the
Nile; to devise some useful application of the rubbish with which
the city of Cairo- and indeed all the ancient towns of Egypt-
was incumbered; and to find out materials requisite for the manu-
facture of gunpowder in Egypt. From these questions, the reader
may judge of the bent of the general's mind. The engineers,
the draughtsmen, and the men of science, immediately dispersed
themselves throughout all the provinces, to commence the de-
scription and the map of the country. Such were the first pro-
ceedings of this infant colony, and the manner in which its
founder directed the operations.
Translation of Frederic Shoberl.


## p. 14844 (#418) ##########################################

14844
ADOLPHE THIERS
NAPOLEON'S ADDRESS TO HIS ARMY AFTER THE DISASTER
OF ABOUKIR
N the festival of the foundation of the republic, celebrated
ON on the 1st of Vendémiaire, he strove to give a new stim-
ulus to their imagination: he had engraven on Pompey's
Pillar the names of the first forty soldiers slain in Egypt.
They were the forty who had fallen in the attack on Alexandria.
These forty names of men sprung from the villages of France
were thus associated with the immortality of Pompey and Alex-
ander. He issued this grand and extraordinary address to his
army, in which was recorded his own wonderful history:-
"Soldiers:
"We celebrate the first day of the year VII. of the republic.
"Five years ago the independence of the French people was
threatened: but you took Toulon; this was an omen of the
destruction of your enemies.
"A year afterwards you beat the Austrians at Dego.
"The following year you were on the summits of the Alps.
"Two years ago you were engaged against Mantua, and you
gained the famous victory of St. George.
"Last year you were at the sources of the Drave and the
Isonzo, on your return from Germany.
"Who would then have said that you would be to-day on the
banks of the Nile, in the centre of the Old World?
*
"From the Englishman, celebrated in the arts and commerce,
to the hideous and ferocious Bedouin, all nations have their eyes
fixed upon you.
"Soldiers, yours is a glorious destiny, because you are worthy
of what you have done and of the opinion that is entertained of
you. You will die with honor, like the brave men whose names
are inscribed on this pyramid, or you will return to your country
covered with laurels and with the admiration of all nations.
"During the five months that we have been far away from
Europe, we have been the object of the perpetual solicitude of
our countrymen. On this day, forty millions of citizens are cele-
brating the era of representative governments; forty millions of
citizens are thinking of you. All of them are saying, 'To
their labors, to their blood, we are indebted for the general peace,
for repose, for the prosperity of commerce, and for the blessings
of civil liberty. " "


## p. 14845 (#419) ##########################################

14845
EDITH MATILDA THOMAS
(1854-)
HE poetical work of Edith Matilda Thomas is chiefly remark-
able for its sustained literary quality. While it is never
lacking in spontaneity, it always shows conscientious work-
manship, and strict fidelity to a high ideal of the requirements of
Its subject-matter evidences a thoughtful, sensitive, and oft-
times passionate spirit in the author, governed however by that spirit
of asceticism which is the distinguishing mark of the true artist. Miss
Thomas's self-restraint is commensurate with her inspiration.
verse.
She was born in 1854 in Chatham, Ohio;
was educated at the Normal Institute at
Geneva, in the same State. While she was
yet a girl, she began writing for the maga-
zines. In 1885 she published a volume of
verse entitled 'A New-Year's Masque,' and
in the following year a volume of prose
with the title The Round Year. ' Her
prose is no less excellent than her verse,
being always strong, simple, and direct.
'The Round Year' is a kind of continuous
essay on the various aspects of the seasons.
The author's love of nature is not that bred
in the town, through long deprivation of its
refreshment. She has the intimate acquaint-
ance with it which does not deal in generalities, but lingers with
discerning affection over the beauties of certain flowers and way-
side bushes, of elusive changes in the sky, of the impalpable essences
of natural things felt rather than seen even with the inner eye.
This friendly love for the outside world informs many of her most
beautiful poems. The volumes entitled 'Lyrics and Sonnets,' 'A
Winter Swallow,' 'Fair Shadow Land,' 'A New-Year's Masque,' con-
tain not a few of these poems of the sky and earth. In one of them,
'Half Sight and Whole Sight,' she expresses the spirit in which she
herself looks upon the God-made world:-

—
VWJ
EDITH M.
THOMAS
"Thou beholdest, indeed, some mystical intimate beckoning
Out of the flower's honeyed heart, that passeth our reckoning;
Yet when hast thou seen, or shalt see,
With the eye of yon hovering bee? »


## p. 14846 (#420) ##########################################

14846
EDITH MATILDA THOMAS
Miss Thomas's poems of love and life are more remote in their
spirit than her poems of nature; yet in a time of feverish erotic
verse their apparent coldness is welcome. She has drunk too deep,
it may be, at the fountain-head of Greek poetry to share the modern
extravagance of thought and feeling. Her poems on classical sub-
jects show no small degree of comprehension of the Greek spirit. She
makes use oftenest of the sonnet and lyric forms in her poetry, han-
dling them with delicate skill. The sense of her verse is never sacri-
ficed to its music; and in her preservation of the fine balance between
the two elements, she gives clearest evidence of the genuineness of
her poetical gifts.
SYRINX
From A New-Year's Masque, and Other Poems. ' Copyright 1884, by Edith
M. Thomas. Houghton, Mifflin & Co. , publishers
OME forth, too timid spirit of the reed!
Leave thy plashed coverts and elusions shy,
And find delight at large in grove and mead.
No ambushed harm, no wanton's peering eye,
The shepherd's uncouth god thou needst not fear,-
Pan has not passed this way for many a year.
CON
'Tis but the vagrant wind that makes thee start,
The pleasure-loving south, the freshening west;
The willow's woven veil they softly part,
To fan the lily on the stream's warm breast:
No ruder stir, no footstep pressing near,—
Pan has not passed this way for many a year.
Whether he lies in some mossed wood, asleep,
And heeds not how the acorns drop around,
Or in some shelly cavern near the deep,
Lulled by its pulses of eternal sound,
He wakes not, answers not, our sylvan cheer,-
Pan has been gone this many a silent year.
Else we had seen him, through the mists of morn,
To upland pasture lead his bleating charge;
There is no shag upon the stunted thorn,
No hoof-print on the river's silver marge;
Nor broken branch of pine, nor ivied spear,—
Pan has not passed that way for many a year.


## p. 14847 (#421) ##########################################

EDITH MATILDA THOMAS
14847
O tremulous elf, reach me a hollow pipe,
The best and smoothest of thy mellow store!
Now I may blow till Time be hoary ripe,
And listening streams forsake the paths they wore:
Pan loved the sound, but now will never hear,-
Pan has not trimmed a reed this many a year!
And so, come freely forth, and through the sedge
Lift up a dimpled, warm, Arcadian face,
As on that day when fear thy feet did fledge,
And thou didst safely win the breathless race. —
I am deceived: nor Pan nor thou art here,-
Pan has been gone this many a silent year.
LETHE
-
From Fair Shadow Land. ' Copyright 1893, by Edith M. Thomas. Houghton,
Mifflin & Co. , publishers
SUNSET
EMEMBRANCE followed him into the skies.
R
They met. Awhile mute Sorrow held him thrall.
Then broke he forth in spirit words and sighs:-
"Great was my sin, but at my contrite call
Came pardon and the hope of Paradise;
If this be Heaven, thy blessing on me fall! »
She looked. Peace filled her unremembering eyes;
She knew him not-she had forgotten all.
-
From A Winter Swallow: With Other Verse. Copyright 1896, by Charles
Scribner's Sons
WHA
HAT pageants have I seen, what plenitude
Of pomp, what hosts in Tyrian rich array,
Crowding the mystic outgate of the day:
What silent hosts, pursuing or pursued,
And all their track with wealthy wreckage strewed!
What seas that roll in waves of gold and gray,
What flowers, what flame, what gems in blent display,—
What wide-spread pinions of the phoenix brood!


## p. 14848 (#422) ##########################################

14848
EDITH MATILDA THOMAS
Give me a window opening on the west,
And the full splendor of the setting sun.
There let me stand and gaze, and think no more
If I be poor, or old, or all unblest;
And when my sands of life are quite outrun,
May my soul follow through the day's wide door!
CYBELE AND HER CHILDREN
From Fair Shadow Land. ' Copyright 1893, by Edith M. Thomas. Houghton,
Mifflin & Co. , publishers
THE
HE Mother has eternal youth;
Yet in the fading of the year,
For sake of what must fade, in ruth
She wears a crown of oak-leaves sear.
By whistling woods, by naked rocks,
That long have lost the summer heat,
She calls the wild, unfolded flocks,
And points them to their shelter meet.
In her deep bosom sink they all;
The hunter and the prey are there;
No ravin-cry, no hunger-call:
These do not fear, and those forbear.
The winding serpent watches not;
Unwatched, the field-mouse trembles not;
Weak hyla, quiet in his grot,
So rests, nor changes line or spot.
For food the Mother gives them sleep,
Against the cold she gives them sleep,
To cheat their foes she gives them sleep,
For safety gives them death-like sleep.
The Mother has eternal youth,
And therefrom, in the wakening year
Their life revives; and they, in sooth,
Forget their mystic bondage drear.


## p. 14849 (#423) ##########################################

EDITH MATILDA THOMAS
14849
THE GRASSHOPPER
From A New-Year's Masque, and Other Poems.
M. Thomas. Houghton, Mifflin & Co. , publishers
Copyright 1884, by Edith
SH
HUTTLE of the sunburnt grass,
Fifer in the dun cuirass,
Fifing shrilly in the morn,
Shrilly still at eve unworn;
Now to rear, now in the van,
Gayest of the elfin clan:
Though I watch their rustling flight,
I can never guess aright
Where their lodging-places are:
'Mid some daisy's golden star,
Or beneath a roofing leaf,
Or in fringes of sheaf,
Tenanted as soon as bound!
Loud thy reveille doth sound.
When the earth is laid asleep,
And her dreams are passing deep,
On mid-August afternoons;
And through all the harvest moons,
Nights brimmed up with honeyed peace,-
Thy gainsaying doth not cease.
When the frost comes thou art dead:
XXV-929
We along the stubble tread,
On blue, frozen morns, and note
No least murmur is afloat;
Wondrous still our fields are then,
Fifer of the elfin men.
WINTER SLEEP
From A Winter Swallow. ' Copyright 1896, by Charles Scribner's Sons
I
KNOW it must be winter (though I sleep) —
I know it must be winter, for I dream
I dip my bare feet in the running stream,
And flowers are many and the grass grows deep.
I know I must be old (how age deceives! ) -
I know I must be old, for, all unseen,
My heart grows young, as autumn fields grow green
When late rains patter on the falling sheaves.


## p. 14850 (#424) ##########################################

14850
EDITH MATILDA THOMAS
I know I must be tired (and tired souls err) —
I know I must be tired, for all my soul
To deeds of daring beats a glad faint roll,
As storms the riven pine to music stir.
I know I must be dying (Death draws near) -
I know I must be dying, for I crave
Life life, strong life, and think not of the grave
And turf-bound silence in the frosty year.
-


## p. 14851 (#425) ##########################################

14851
JAMES THOMSON
1
(1700-1748)
AMES THOMSON occupies a significant position among English
poets, less by virtue of his poetical gifts-although these
are of no mean order-than by the wholesome influence of
his recognition of nature in an artificial age. He was a contemporary
of Pope, yet he struck a note in his poems which was to be ampli-
fied later in the works of Wordsworth and Coleridge, of Shelley and
Keats. He was the father of the natural school, as opposed to the
pseudo-classical school of which Pope was the complete embodiment.
When Thomson was growing up amid
the wild scenery of the Scottish Border
country, literary England was dominated by
an ideal of, verse in contrast to which even
Shakespeare's measures were held to be
barbarous. The rhyming iambic pentame-
ter, the favorite verse form, had been devel-
oped by Pope to such a point of polished
perfection that imitation alone was possible.
Moreover, it was employed only on a lim-
ited range of subjects. These might be
either classical or urbane: nothing so vul-
gar as nature or the common people was
worthy of the Muse. The genius of poetry
had been brought from the fresh air of the
fields into the vitiated air of the drawing-rooms; had been laced and
powdered and encased in stiff brocades, which hindered all freedom
of motion.
JAMES THOMSON

But of this Thomson knew nothing. It was his good fortune to
have been born far from London, and to have been brought up amid
the simple influences of country life. He was born in 1700 in the
parish of Ednam, in Roxburghshire, of which his father was minister.
He received his early education at Jedburgh school. It was at Jed-
burgh that he met a Mr. Riccalton, who was accustomed to teach
the boys Latin in the aisle of his church. He had written a poem
on 'A Winter's Day,' from which Thomson obtained his first idea for
the 'Seasons. ' The future poet's education was received more from
nature than from books. The magnificent panorama of the year
was unrolled continually before him, and he was not indifferent


## p. 14852 (#426) ##########################################

14852
JAMES THOMSON
to its beauties. It was with reluctance that he left his country
home for Edinburgh, where he remained five years as a student of
divinity. The ministry, however, had few attractions for him: in 1725
he abandoned his studies, and followed a fellow-student, Mallet, to
London, to seek his fortune there. Through the influence of a friend,
Lady Baillie, he obtained a tutorship in the family of Lord Binning;
but he held this position only a short time. The following winter
found him without money, without prospects, and almost without
friends. The death of his mother had plunged him into deep melan-
choly he gave vent to his feelings at the approach of the unfriendly
winter, by writing the first of his poems on the seasons. For several
weeks after its publication no notice was taken of it; then a gentle-
man of some influence in the London world of letters ran across it,
and immediately proclaimed its value in the coffee-houses.
(Winter)
began to be widely read: its popularity was soon established.
Thomson enjoyed all the prestige of a man who has struck a new
vein in literature. It is easy to understand how the jaded palates
of the London circles, surfeited with Popian classicism, were re-
freshed by this simple poem of winter in the country. To the gener-
ations which know Wordsworth, Thomson's song of the bleak season
seems well-nigh artificial; but it was Nature herself to the coffee-
house coteries who had forgotten her existence. It contains indeed
much that is sincere, wholesome, and beautiful. The pretty picture
of bright-eyed robin-redbreast hopping across the cottage floor in
quest of crumbs, the pathetic description of the peasant-shepherd
dying in the snow, while his wife and children wait for him in vain,
must have stirred unwonted emotions in the hearts of a generation
accustomed to the jeweled artificialities of the Rape of the Lock. '
Thomson's conception of nature was in no sense like that of Words-
worth: he never disassociated it from human interests; it is always
the background for the human drama: but for this reason it was
popular, and will always remain popular, with a class of persons to
whom the Wordsworthian conception seems cold and unsympathetic.
'Winter' was also significant because it was written in blank
verse of a noble order.
The rhyming couplets of the classicists, the
rocking-horse movement of their verse, had done much to destroy
the exquisite musical sense which had reached its perfection in the
Elizabethans. It was the mission of Thomson to revive this sense
through his artistic use of blank verse.
'Summer' was published not long after 'Winter. ' It was followed
by an Ode to the Memory of Sir Isaac Newton. ' 'Spring' was pub-
lished in 1728, and 'Autumn' in 1730. In this same year, the play of
'Sophonisba' also appeared; but Thomson never succeeded as a play-
wright. His 'Agamemnon,' his Tancred and Sigismunda,' his masque
of 'Alfred,' which contains the song 'Rule, Britannia,' are stilted and


## p. 14853 (#427) ##########################################

JAMES THOMSON
14853
dreary compositions. He had written 'Alfred' in conjunction with
his friend Mallet. His poem 'Liberty,' published the first part in
1734 and the second in 1736, was of no higher order of merit. It
would seem that after writing the 'Seasons,' Thomson's energies
declined, not again to be revived in full force until he wrote the
Castle of Indolence,' shortly before his death. His income during
these years was obtained partly from his books, and partly from
sinecure positions. In 1744 he was appointed Surveyor-General of
the Leeward Islands, a position which he held until his death in
1748.
In the year of his death The Castle of Indolence' was published.
It is a poem of great beauty and charm, whose richness of diction
is suggestive of Keats. The sensuous Spenserian stanza employed
is well adapted to the subject. The false enchanter, Indolence,
holds many captive in his castle by his magic arts; but he is at last
conquered by the Knights of the Arts and Industries. The slum-
berous atmosphere of the Castle and its environment is wonderfully
communicated in the opening stanzas; and the poem in its entirety
is worthy of the author of the 'Seasons' at his best.
What Wordsworth is to the nineteenth century, Thomson was to
the eighteenth. With him began that outpouring of the true poetical
spirit which was to culminate one hundred years later.
RULE, BRITANNIA!
From the Masque of Alfred'
WH
HEN Britain first, at Heaven's command,
Arose from out the azure main,
This was the charter of the land,
And guardian angels sung this strain:-
"Rule, Britannia, rule the waves;
Britons never will be slaves. "
-
The nations not so blest as thee,
Must in their turns to tyrants fall;
While thou shalt flourish great and free,
The dread and envy of them all.
"Rule, Britannia, rule the waves;
Britons never will be slaves. "
Still more majestic shalt thou rise,
More dreadful from each foreign stroke;


## p. 14854 (#428) ##########################################

14854
JAMES THOMSON
As the loud blast that tears the skies
Serves but to root thy native oak.
"Rule, Britannia, rule the waves;
Britons never will be slaves. "
Thee haughty tyrants ne'er shall tame;
All their attempts to bend thee down
Will but arouse thy generous flame,
But work their woe, and thy renown.
"Rule, Britannia, rule the waves;
Britons never will be slaves. "
To thee belongs the rural reign;
Thy cities shall with commerce shine;
All thine shall be the subject main,
And every shore it circles thine.
"Rule, Britannia, rule the waves;
Britons never will be slaves. "
The Muses, still with freedom found,
Shall to thy happy coast repair;
Blest isle! with matchless beauty crowned,
And manly hearts to guard the fair.
"Rule, Britannia, rule the waves;
Britons never will be slaves. "
APRIL RAIN
From the Seasons- Spring
C
OME, gentle Spring; ethereal mildness, come:
And from the bosom of your dropping cloud,
While music wakes around, veiled in a shower
Of shadowing roses, on our plains descend.
O Hertford, fitted or to shine in courts
With unaffected grace, or walk the plain
With innocence and meditation joined
In soft assemblage, listen to my song,
Which thy own season paints; when Nature all
Is blooming and benevolent, like thee.
And see where surly Winter passes off,
Far to the north, and calls his ruffian blasts:
His blasts obey, and quit the howling hill,
The shattered forest, and the ravished vale;
While softer gales succeed, - at whose kind touch,


## p. 14855 (#429) ##########################################

JAMES THOMSON
14855
Dissolving snows in livid torrents lost,
The mountains lift their green heads to the sky.
As yet the trembling year is unconfirmed,
And Winter oft at eve resumes the breeze,
Chills the pale morn, and bids his driving sleets
Deform the day delightless: so that scarce
The bittern knows his time with bill ingulphed
To shake the sounding marsh; or from the shore
The plovers when to scatter o'er the heath,
And sing their wild notes to the listening waste.
The northeast spends his rage, he now shut up
Within his iron cave; the effusive south
Warms the wide air, and o'er the void of heaven
Breathes the big clouds with vernal showers distent.
At first a dusky wreath they seem to rise,
Scarce staining ether; but by fast degrees,
In heaps on heaps, the doubling vapor sails
Along the loaded sky, and mingling deep,
Sits on the horizon round a settled gloom:
Not such as wintry storms on mortals shed,
Oppressing life; but lovely, gentle, kind,
And full of every hope and every joy,
The wish of Nature. Gradual sinks the breeze
Into a perfect calm; that not a breath
Is heard to quiver through the closing woods,
Or rustling turn the many twinkling leaves
Of aspen tall. The uncurling floods, diffused
In glassy breadth, seem through delusive lapse
Forgetful of their course. 'Tis silence all,
And pleasing expectation. Herds and flocks
Drop the dry sprig, and mute-imploring, eye
The fallen verdure. Hushed in short suspense,
The plumy people streak their wings with oil,
To throw the lucid moisture trickling off;
And wait the approaching sign to strike, at once,
Into the general choir. Even mountains, vales,
And forests seem, impatient, to demand
The promised sweetness. Man superior walks
Amid the glad creation, musing praise,
And looking lively gratitude. At last
The clouds consign their treasures to the fields;
And softly shaking on the dimpled pool
Prelusive drops, let all their moisture flow
In large effusion o'er the freshened world.


## p. 14856 (#430) ##########################################

14856
JAMES THOMSON
THE LOST CARAVAN
From the Seasons- Summer
REATHED hot
B
From all the boundless furnace of the sky,
And the wide glittering waste of burning sand,
A suffocating wind the pilgrim smites
With instant death. Patient of thirst and toil,
Son of the desert! even the camel feels,
Shot through his withered heart, the fiery blast.
Or from the black-red ether, bursting broad,
Sallies the sudden whirlwind. Straight the sands,
Commoved around, in gathering eddies play;
Nearer and nearer still they darkening come;
Till with the general all-involving storm
Swept up, the whole continuous wilds arise;
And by their noonday fount dejected thrown,
Or sunk at night in sad disastrous sleep,
Beneath descending hills, the caravan
Is buried deep. In Cairo's crowded streets
The impatient merchant, wondering, waits in vain,
And Mecca saddens at the long delay.
THE INUNDATION
From The Seasons-Autumn
EFEATING oft the labors of the year,
DⓇ
The sultry south collects a potent blast.
At first the groves are scarcely seen to stir
Their trembling tops, and a still murmur runs
Along the soft-inclining fields of corn;
But as the aerial tempest fuller swells,
And in one mighty stream, invisible,
Immense, the whole excited atmosphere
Impetuous rushes o'er the sounding world,
Strained to the root, the stooping forest pours
A rustling shower of yet untimely leaves.
High-beat, the circling mountains eddy in,
From the bare wild, the dissipated storm,
And send it in a torrent down the vale.
Exposed and naked to its utmost rage,


## p. 14857 (#431) ##########################################

JAMES THOMSON
14857
Through all the sea of harvest rolling round,
The billowy plain floats wide; nor can evade,
Though pliant to the blast, its seizing force-
Or whirled in air, or into vacant chaff
Shook waste. And sometimes too a burst of rain,
Swept from the black horizon, broad, descends
In one continuous flood. Still overhead
The mingling tempest weaves its gloom, and still
The deluge deepens; till the fields around
Lie sunk and flatted in the sordid wave.
Sudden, the ditches swell; the meadows swim.
Red, from the hills, innumerable streams
Tumultuous roar; and high above its bank
The river lift: before whose rushing tide,
Herds, flocks, and harvests, cottages and swains,
Roll mingled down; all that the winds had spared,
In one wild moment ruined, the big hopes
And well-earned treasures of the painful year.
Fled to some eminence, the husbandman
Helpless beholds the miserable wreck
Driving along; his drowning ox at once
Descending, with his labors scattered round,
He sees; and instant o'er his shivering thought
Comes Winter unprovided, and a train
Of clamant children dear. Ye masters, then,
Be mindful of the rough laborious hand
That sinks you soft in elegance and ease;
Be mindful of those limbs, in russet clad,
Whose toil to yours is warmth and graceful pride;
And oh, be mindful of that sparing board
Which covers yours with luxury profuse,
-
Makes your glass sparkle, and your sense rejoice!
Nor cruelly demand what the deep rains
And all-involving winds have swept away.
THE FIRST SNOW
From the Seasons'- Winter
TH
HE keener tempests come; and fuming dun
From all the livid east, or piercing north,
Thick clouds ascend,- in whose capacious womb
A vapory deluge lies, to snow congealed.


## p. 14858 (#432) ##########################################

14858
JAMES THOMSON
Heavy they roll their fleecy world along;
And the sky saddens with the gathered storm.
Through the hushed air the whitening shower descends;
At first thin wavering, till at last the flakes
Fall broad and wide and fast, dimming the day
With a continual flow. The cherished fields
Put on their winter robe of purest white.
'Tis brightness all; save where the new snow melts
Along the mazy current. Low the woods
Bow their hoar head; and ere the languid sun
Faint from the west emits his evening ray,
Earth's universal face, deep-hid and chill,
Is one wild dazzling waste that buries wide
The works of man. Drooping, the laborer ox
Stands covered o'er with snow, and then demands
The fruit of all his toil. The fowls of heaven,
Tamed by the cruel season, crowd around
The winnowing store, and claim the little boon
Which Providence assigns them. One alone,
The redbreast, sacred to the household gods,
Wisely regardful of the embroiling sky,
In joyless fields and thorny thickets leaves
His shivering mates, and pays to trusted man
His annual visit. Half afraid, he first
Against the window beats; then, brisk, alights
On the warm hearth; then, hopping o'er the floor,
Eyes all the smiling family askance,
And pecks, and starts, and wonders where he is-
Till, more familiar grown, the table crumbs
Attract his slender feet. The foodless wilds
Pour forth their brown inhabitants. The hare,
Though timorous of heart, and hard beset
By death in various forms, dark snares, and dogs,
And more unpitying men, the garden seeks,
Urged on by fearless want. The bleating kind
Eye the black heaven, and next the glistening earth,
With looks of dumb despair; then, sad dispersed,
Dig for the withered herb through heaps of snow.


## p. 14859 (#433) ##########################################

JAMES THOMSON
14859
THE SHEEP-WASHING
From the Seasons'- Summer
HE meek-eyed morn appears, mother of dews,
THE At first faint gleaming in the dappled east;
Till far o'er ether spreads the widening glow,
And from before the lustre of her face,
White break the clouds away. With quickened step
Brown night retires. Young day pours in apace,
And opens all the lawny prospect wide.
The dripping rock, the mountain's misty top,
Swell on the sight and brighten with the dawn.
Roused by the cock, the soon-clad shepherd leaves
His mossy cottage, where with peace he dwells;
And from the crowded fold, in order, drives
His flock to taste the verdure of the morn.
Now swarms the village o'er the jovial mead:
The rustic youth, brown with meridian toil,
Healthful and strong; full as the summer rose
Blown by prevailing suns, the ruddy maid,
Half naked, swelling on the sight, and all
Her kindled graces burning o'er her cheek;
Even stooping age is here; and infant hands
Trail the long rake, or with the fragrant load
O'ercharged, amid the kind oppression roll.
Wide flies the tedded grain; all in a row
Advancing broad, or wheeling round the field,
They spread their breathing harvest to the sun,
That throws refreshful round a rural smell;
Or as they rake the green-appearing ground,
And drive the dusky wave along the mead,
The russet hay-cock rises thick behind,
In order gay: while heard from dale to dale,
Waking the breeze, resounds the blended voice
Of happy labor, love and social glee.
Or rushing thence in one diffusive band,
They drive the troubled flocks, by many a dog
Compelled to where the mazy-running brook
Forms a deep pool; this bank abrupt and high,
And that fair-spreading in a pebbled shore.
Urged to the giddy brink, much is the toil,
The clamor much of men and boys and dogs,
Ere the soft fearful people to the flood


## p. 14860 (#434) ##########################################

14860
JAMES THOMSON
Commit their woolly sides. And oft the swain,
On some, impatient, seizing hurls them in:
Emboldened then, nor hesitating more,
Fast, fast they plunge amid the flashing wave,
And panting, labor to the farther shore.
Repeated this, till deep the well-washed fleece
Has drunk the flood, and from his lively haunt
The trout is banished by the sordid stream.
Heavy and dripping, to the breezy brow
Slow move the harmless race: where as they spread
Their swelling treasures to the sunny ray,
Inly disturbed, and wondering what this wild.
Outrageous tumult means, their loud complaints
The country fill; and tossed from rock to rock,
Incessant bleatings run around the hills.
At last of snowy white, the gathered flocks
Are in the wattled pen, innumerous pressed,
Head above head; and ranged in lusty rows
The shepherds sit, and whet the sounding shears.
The housewife waits to roll her fleecy stores,
With all her gay-drest maids attending round.
One, chief, in gracious dignity enthroned,
Shines o'er the rest, the pastoral queen, and rays
Her smiles, sweet-beaming, on her shepherd-king;
While the glad circle round them yield their souls
To festive mirth, and wit that knows no gall.
Meantime their joyous task goes on apace:
Some mingling stir the melted tar, and some,
Deep on the new-shorn vagrant's heaving side,
To stamp his master's cypher ready stand;
Others the unwilling wether drag along;
And glorying in his might, the sturdy boy
Holds by the twisted horns the indignant ram.
Behold where, bound and of its robe bereft
By needy man,- that all-depending lord,—
How meek, how patient, the mild creature lies!
What softness in its melancholy face,
What dumb complaining innocence appears!
Fear not, ye gentle tribes,-'tis not the knife
Of horrid slaughter that is o'er you waved;
No, 'tis the tender swain's well-guided shears,
Who having now, to pay his annual care,
Borrowed your fleece, to you a cumbrous load,
Will send you bounding to your hills again.