  IN the long and terrible series of the Ages the distinguishing glory of the eighteenth century is its Humanitarianism—not visible, indeed, in legislation or in the teaching of the ordinarily-accredited guides of the public faith and morals, but proclaimed, nevertheless, by the great prophets of that era. As far as ordinary life was concerned, the last age is only too obnoxious to the charge of selfishness and heartlessness. Callousness to suffering, as regards the non-human species in particular, is sufficiently apparent in the common amusements and “pastimes” of the various grades of the community. Yet, if we compare the tone of even the common-place class of writers with that of the authors of quasi-scientific treatises of the preceding century—in which the most cold-blooded atrocities on the helpless victims of human ignorance and barbarity are prescribed for the composition of their medical nostrums, &c., with the most unconscious audacity and ignoring of every sort of feeling—considerable advance is apparent in the slow onward march of the human race towards the goal of a true morality and religion. To the author of The Seasons belongs the everlasting honour of being the first amongst modern poets earnestly to denounce the manifold wrongs inflicted upon the subject species, and, in particular, the savagery inseparable from the Slaughter-House—for Pope did not publish his Essay on Man until four years after the appearance of Spring. James Thomson, of Scottish parentage, came to London to seek his fortune in literature, at the age of 25. For some time he experienced the poverty and troubles which so generally have been the lot of young aspirants to literary, especially poetic, fame. Winter—which inaugurated a new school of poetry—appeared in March, 1726. That the publisher considered himself liberal in offering three guineas for the poem speaks little for the taste of the time; but that a better taste was coming into existence is also plain from the fact of its favourable reception, notwithstanding the obscurity of the author. Three editions appeared in the same year. Summer, his next venture, was published in 1727, and the (Four) Seasons in 1730, by subscription—387 subscribers enrolling their names for copies at a guinea each. Natural enthusiasm, sympathy, and love for all that is really beautiful on Earth (a sort of feeling not to be appreciated by vulgar minds) forms his chief characteristic. But, above all, his sympathy with suffering in all its forms (see, particularly, his reflections after the description of the snowstorm in Winter), not limited by the narrow bounds of nationality or of species but extended to all innocent life—his indignation against oppression and injustice, are what most honourably distinguish him from almost all of his predecessors and, indeed, from most of his successors. The Seasons is the forerunner of The Task and the humanitarian school of poetry. The Castle of Indolence in the stanza of Spenser, has claims of a kind different from those of The Seasons; and the admirers of The Faerie Queen cannot fail to appreciate the merits of the modern romance. Besides these chefs-d’oeuvre Thomson wrote two tragedies, Sophonisba and Liberty, the former of which, at the time, had considerable success upon the stage. In the number of his friends he reckoned Pope and Samuel Johnson, both of whom are said to have had some share in the frequent revisions which he made of his principal production. It is with his Spring that we are chiefly concerned, since it is in that division of his great poem that he eloquently contrasts the two very opposite diets. Singing the glories of the annual birth-time and general resurrection of Nature, he first celebrates “The living Herbs, profusely wild, O’er all the deep-green Earth, beyond the power Of botanist to number up their tribes, (Whether he steals along the lonely dale In silent search, or through the forest, rank With what the dull incurious weeds account, Bursts his blind way, or climbs the mountain-rock, Fired by the nodding verdure of its brow). With such a liberal hand has Nature flung Their seeds abroad, blown them about in winds, Innumerous mixed them with the nursing mould, The moistening current and prolific rain. But who their virtues can declare? Who pierce, With vision pure, into those secret stores Of health and life and joy—the food of man, While yet he lived in innocence and told A length of golden years, unfleshed in blood? A stranger to the savage arts of life— Death, rapine, carnage, surfeit, and disease— The Lord, and not the Tyrant, of the world.” And then goes on to picture the feast of blood:— “And yet the wholesome herb neglected dies, Though with the pure exhilarating soul Of nutriment and health, and vital powers Beyond the search of Art, ’tis copious blessed. For, with hot ravin fired, ensanguined Man Is now become the Lion of the plain And worse. The Wolf, who from the nightly fold Fierce drags the bleating Prey, ne’er drank her milk, Nor wore her warming fleece; nor has the Steer, At whose strong chest the deadly Tiger hangs, E’er ploughed for him. They, too, are tempered high, With hunger stung and wild necessity, Nor lodges pity in their shaggy breast. But Man, whom Nature formed of milder clay, With every kind emotion in his heart, And taught alone to weep; while from her lap She pours ten thousand delicacies—herbs And fruits, as numerous as the drops of rain Or beams that gave them birth—shall he, fair form, Who wears sweet smiles and looks erect on heaven, E’er stoop to mingle with the prowling herd And dip his tongue in gore? The beast of prey, Blood-stained, deserves to bleed. But you, ye Flocks, What have you done? Ye peaceful people, what To merit death? You who have given us milk In luscious streams, and lent us your own coat Against the winter’s cold? And the plain Ox, That harmless, honest, guileless animal, In what has he offended? He, whose toil, Patient and ever ready, clothes the land With all the pomp of harvest—shall he bleed, And struggling groan beneath the cruel hands E’en of the clowns he feeds, and that, perhaps, To swell the riot of the autumnal feast Won by his labour?” And again in denouncing the amateur slaughtering (euphemised by the mocking term of Sport) unblushingly perpetrated in the broad light of day:— “When beasts of prey retire, that all night long, Urged by necessity, had ranged the dark, As if their conscious ravage shunned the light, Ashamed. Not so [he reproaches] the steady tyrant Man, Who with the thoughtless insolence of Power, Inflamed beyond the most infuriate wrath Of the worst monster that e’er roamed the waste, For Sport alone pursues the cruel chase, Amid the beamings of the gentle days. Upbraid, ye ravening tribes, our wanton rage, For hunger kindles you, and lawless want; But lavish fed, in Nature’s bounty rolled— To joy at anguish, and delight in blood— Is what your horrid bosoms never knew.” We conclude these extracts from The Seasons with the poet’s indignant reflection upon the selfish greed of Commerce, which barbarously sacrifices by thousands (as it does also the innocent mammalia of the seas) the noblest and most sagacious of the terrestrial races for the sake of a superfluous luxury:— “Peaceful, beneath primeval trees, that cast Their ample shade o’er Niger’s yellow stream, And where the Ganges rolls his sacred waves; Or mid the central depth of blackening woods, High raised in solemn theatre around, Leans the huge Elephant, wisest of brutes! O truly wise! with gentle might endowed: Though powerful, not destructive. Here he sees Revolving ages sweep the changeful Earth, And empires rise and fall: regardless he Of what the never-resting race of men Project. Thrice happy! could he ’scape their guile Who mine, from cruel avarice, his steps: Or with his towering grandeur swell their state— The pride of kings!—or else his strength pervert, And bid him rage amid the mortal fray, Astonished at the madness of mankind.” |
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