'Tell us, ye dead! will none of you, in pity To those you left behind, disclose the secret? Oh! that some courteous ghost would blab it out,-- What 'tis you are and we must shortly be. I've heard that souls departed have sometimes Forewarned men of their death. 'Twas kindly done To knock and give the alarm. But what means This stinted charity? 'Tis but lame kindness That does its work by halves. Why might you not Tell us what 'tis to die? Do the strict laws Of your society forbid your speaking Upon a point so nice?--I'll ask no more: Sullen, like lamps in sepulchres, your shine Enlightens but yourselves. Well, 'tis no matter; A very little time will clear up all, And make us learn'd as you are, and as close.' Blair, who was a Scotch clergyman, wrote also an _Elegy in Memory of William Law_, a Professor of Moral Philosophy in Edinburgh, whose daughter he married. He writes in a masculine and homely style. His imagery is often more powerful than pleasing, but some of his similes win attention by their beauty. For example: "Look how the fair one weeps! the conscious tears Stand thick as dewdrops on the bells of flowers." Among the victims claimed by the grave is 'The long demurring maid, Whose lonely unappropriated sweets Smiled, like yon knot of cowslips on the cliff, Not to be come at by the willing hand.' And the death of a good man is pictured in this musical couplet: 'Night dews fall not more gently to the ground Nor weary worn out winds expire so soft.' Cowper, referring to the poets of his century, said that every warbler had Pope's tune by heart. But if they had the tune by heart, many of them did not make it a vehicle for their verse, and among these are poets of the weight and worth of Thomson and Young, of Gray and Collins. Poets of a minor order, too, such as Somerville, Armstrong, Glover, Shenstone, Akenside, and John Dyer, either did not use the heroic distich which Pope crowned with such honour, or used it in their least significant poems. [Sidenote: James Thomson (1700-1748).] Thomson's influence, though less visible than Pope's, was probably as great. It was felt by the poets who loved Nature, and had no turn for satire. To pass to him from Prior, Gay, and Young is to leave the town for the country. English poetry owes much to the author of _The Seasons_, who was the first among the poets of his century to bring men back to 'Nature, the Vicar of the Almighty Lord.' He could not, indeed, shake off altogether the fetters of the conventional diction current in his day, and his style is often turgid and verbose. But Thomson had, to use a phrase of his own, 'a fine flame of imagination,' and when brought face to face with Nature he has the inspiration of a poet who discerns the lessons which Nature is ready to teach.