His verse is much more compact than Thomson's, whom he resembles most in
the turn of the expression; although he has aimed now and then, but with
an ill-assured and timid hand, at a Miltonic boldness in the numbers or
the phrase. When he takes occasion to speak of the river with which his
remembrances in early life were associated, he has, contrary to his
usual custom, indulged himself with enlarging on his prototype.

Thomson had mentioned incidentally the Tweed and the Jed:

--The Tweed, pure parent stream,
Whose pastoral banks first heard my Doric reed,
With sylvan Jed! thy tributary brook.--_Autumn_, 889.

He has thus expanded it:--

--Such the stream,
On whose Arcadian banks I first drew air,
Liddal; till now, except in Doric lays
Tun'd to her murmurs by her love-sick swains,
Unknown in song: though not a purer stream,
Through meads more flowery, or more romantic groves,
Rolls towards the western main. Hail, sacred flood!
May still thy hospitable swains be blest
In rural innocence; thy mountains still
Teem with the fleecy race; thy tuneful woods
For ever flourish; and thy vales look gay
With painted meadows, and the golden grain!
Oft with thy blooming sons, when life was new,
Sportive and petulant, and charm'd with toys,
In thy transparent eddies have I lav'd;