"I know no subject more elevating, more amazing, more ready to the poetical enthusiasm, the philosophical reflection, and the moral sentiment than the works of nature. Where can we meet such variety, such beauty, such magnificence?"

"Come then, expressive silence, muse His praise."

"From seeming evil still educing good."

"Shade, unperceiv'd, so softening into shade."

"These as they change, Almighty Father! these Are but the varied God. The rolling year Is full of Thee."

"When 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, never, never shall be slaves.'"

"O Sophonisba! Sophonisba, O!"

"Whoe'er amidst the sons Of reason, valour, liberty, and virtue Displays distinguish'd merit, is a noble Of Nature's own creating."

"Forever, Fortune, wilt thou prove An unrelenting foe to love, And, when we meet a mutual heart, Come in between and bid us part?"

"The Seasons, and still more the Castle of Indolence, entitle Thomson to be ranked among the good English Poets: nor should it be forgotten that the song of Rule Britannia is his, a song which will be the political hymn of this country as long as she maintains her political power."

"Amongst the latest of Mr. Thomson's productions is his Castle of Indolence, a poem of so extraordinary merit, that perhaps we are not extravagant, when we declare, that this single performance discovers more genius and poetical judgment, than all his other works put together."

"Hazlitt and Coleridge, two very safe guides, regard Thomson as pre-eminently ‘the born poet.’ Dr. Johnson (to whom as an unorthodox Scot of liberal opinions Thomson was by no means dear) admitted that ‘he could not have viewed two candles burning but with a poetical eye.’ In this respect, in the possession of the true poetic temperament, he has been surpassed not even by Tennyson. Unfortunately, unlike his successor, he allowed the false taste of the day to intercept his utterance before it was complete. In addition to the poet's vision he had the poetic gift of observation at first hand, but in giving expression to these faculties he was content to employ the right phrase relatively to his time, and so the absolutely right eluded him. That a true poet should have been so content may be attributed in part to the sensitiveness of a provincial to the imputation of rudeness, in part to his kindly, sociable, and easy-going temperament, and the predominant influence of his much-esteemed ‘Mr. Pope.’ The result is that ‘The Seasons,’ which ‘gave the signal for a revolution destined to renew European literature,’ yet comes short in itself of being a perfect masterpiece."

"In France ‘The Seasons’ proved no less ‘a revelation’ than in England... Voltaire, in his amiable mood, spoke highly of its simplicity and the love of mankind which it exhibited. Montesquieu raised a sylvan monument to Thomson, whose poem contributed materially to the ‘rural delirium’ of Rousseau."

"‘The Seasons’ may be regarded as inaugurating a new era in English poetry."

"His faults were those of his style—of the author and the man; but the original genius of the poet, the pith and marrow of his imagination, the fine natural mould in which his feelings were bedded, were too much for him to counteract by neglect, or affectation, or false ornaments. It is for this reason that he is, perhaps, the most popular of all our poets, treating of a subject that all can understand, and in a way that is interesting to all alike, to the ignorant or the refined, because he gives back the impression which the things themselves make upon us in nature. "That," said a man of genius, seeing a little shabby soiled copy of Thomson's Seasons lying on the window-seat of an obscure country alehouse—"That is true fame!""

"Nature in his descriptions is seen growing around us, fresh and lusty as in itself. We feel the effect of the atmosphere, its humidity or clearness, its heat or cold, the glow of summer, the gloom of winter, the tender promise of the spring, the full overshadowing foliage, the declining pomp and deepening tints of autumn. He transports us to the scorching heat of vertical suns, or plunges us into the chilling horrors and desolation of the frozen zone. We hear the snow drifting against the broken casement without, and see the fire blazing on the hearth within. The first scattered drops of a vernal shower patter on the leaves above our heads, or the coming storm resounds through the leafless groves. In a word, he describes not to the eye alone, but to the other senses, and to the whole man. He puts his heart into his subject, writes as he feels, and humanises whatever he touches. He makes all his descriptions teem with life and vivifying soul."

"Thomson is the best of our descriptive poets: for he gives most of the poetry of natural description. Others have been quite equal to him, or have surpassed him, as Cowper for instance, in the picturesque part of his art, in marking the peculiar features and curious details of objects;—no one has yet come up to him in giving the sum total of their effects, their varying influences on the mind."

"Ah! what avail the largest gifts of Heaven, When drooping health and spirits go amiss? How tasteless then whatever can be given! Health is the vital principle of bliss, And exercise, of health."

"I care not, Fortune, what you me deny; You cannot rob me of free Nature's grace, You cannot shut the windows of the sky, Through which Aurora shows her brightening face; You cannot 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."

"Their only labour was to kill the time; And labour dire it is, and weary woe, They sit, they loll, turn o'er some idle rhyme, Then, rising sudden, to the glass they go, Or saunter forth, with tottering steps and slow."

"A little, round, fat, oily man of God."

"A bard here dwelt, more fat than bard becomes Who void of envy, guile and lust of gain, On virtue still and nature's pleasing themes Poured forth his unpremeditated strain."

"But what most showed the vanity of life Was to behold the nations all on fire."

"Scoundrel maxim."

"Plac'd far amid the melancholy main."

"O fair undress, best dress! it checks no vein, But every flowing limb in pleasure drowns, And heightens ease with grace."

"He ceased; but still their trembling ears retained The deep vibrations of his witching song."

"The best of men have ever loved repose: They hate to mingle in the filthy fray; Where the soul sours, and gradual rancour grows, Imbitter'd more from peevish day to day."

"They who are pleased themselves must always please."

"Or where the Northern ocean, in vast whirls, Boils round the naked melancholy isles Of farthest Thulè, and th' Atlantic surge Pours in among the stormy Hebrides."

"Chivalry!-why, maiden, she is the nurse of pure and high affection-the stay of the oppressed, the redresser of grievances, the curb of the power of the tyrant-Nobility were but an empty name without her, and liberty finds the best protection in her lance and her sword."

"You have power, rank, command, influence; we have wealth, the source both of our strength and weakness; the value of these toys, ten times multiplied, would not influence half so much as your slightest wish."

"The happy combination of fortuitous circumstances."

"But with the morning cool reflection came."

"As old as the hills."

"Within that awful volume lies The mystery of mysteries!"

"And better had they ne'er been born, Who read to doubt, or read to scorn."

"Spur not an unbroken horse; put not your ploughshare too deep into new land."

"Meat eaten without either mirth or music is ill of digestion."

"I am she, O most bucolical juvenal, under whose charge are placed the milky mothers of the herd."

"The stores of history are accessible to every one, and are no more exhausted or impoverished by the hints thus borrowed from them than the fountain is drained by the water which we subtract for domestic purposes. And in reply to the sober charge of falsehood against a narrative announced positively to be fictitious, one can only answer by Prior's exclamation - 'Odzooks, must one swear to the truth of a song?'"

""Lambe them, lads! lambe them!" a cant phrase of the time derived from the fate of Dr. Lambe, an astrologer and quack, who was knocked on the head by the rabble in Charles the First's time."

"The pith of conversation does not consist in exhibiting your own superior knowledge on matters of small consequence, but in enlarging, improving, and correcting the information you possess, by the authority of others."

"It is a strong castle, and strongly guarded; but there is no impossibility to brave men."