denied. He is allowed by sportsmen to write with great intelligence
of his subject, which is the first requisite to excellence; and
though it is impossible to interest the common readers of verse in
the dangers or pleasures of the chase, he has done all that
transition and variety could easily effect; and has with great
propriety enlarged his plan by the modes of hunting used in other
countries.

With still less judgment did he choose blank verse as the vehicle of
"Rural Sports." If blank verse be not tumid and gorgeous, it is
crippled prose; and familiar images in laboured language have
nothing to recommend them but absurd novelty, which, wanting the
attractions of nature, cannot please long. One excellence of the
"Splendid Shilling" is, that it is short. Disguise can gratify no
longer than it deceives.



THOMSON.



James Thomson, the son of a minister well esteemed for his piety and
diligence, was born September 7, 1700, at Ednam, in the shire of
Roxburgh, of which his father was pastor. His mother, whose name
was Hume, inherited as co-heiress a portion of a small estate. The
revenue of a parish in Scotland is seldom large; and it was probably
in commiseration of the difficulty with which Mr. Thomson supported
his family, having nine children, that Mr. Riccarton, a neighbouring
minister, discovering in James uncommon promises of future