Oft trac'd with patient steps thy fairy banks,
With the well-imitated fly to hook
The eager trout, and with the slender line
And yielding rod, solicit to the shore
The struggling panting prey; while vernal clouds
And tepid gales obscur'd the ruffled pool,
And from the deeps call'd forth the wanton swarms.

B. iii. v. 96.

What he has here added of his love of fishing is from another passage
in the Seasons [3].

But his imitations of other writers, however frequent, have no semblance
of study or labour. They seem to have been self-suggested, and to have
glided tacitly and insensibly into the current of his thoughts. This is
evinced by the little pains he took to work upon and heighten such
resemblances. As he did not labour the details injudiciously, so he had
a clear conception of his matter as a whole. The consequence is, that
the poem has that unity and just subordination of parts which renders it
easy to be comprehended at one view, and, on that account, more
agreeable than the didactic poems of his contemporaries, which having
detached passages of much more splendour, are yet wanting in those
recommendations. One objection to his subject is, that it is least
pleasing at that period of life when poetry is most so; for it is not
till the glow of youth is gone by, and we begin to feel the infirmities
and the coldness of age, that we are disposed to bestow much attention
on the Art of Preserving Health.

His tragedy is worth but little. It appears from his Essays, that he had