The most epigrammatic, and one of the most elegant, of poets. He was also one of the most precocious. His first production of importance was his _Essay on Criticism_, written at the age of twenty-one, although not published until two years later. But he had composed, we are assured, several verses of an Epic at the age of twelve; and his _Pastorals_ was given to the world by a youth of sixteen. Its division into the Four Seasons is said to have suggested to Thomson the title of his great poem. The MS. passed through the hands of some distinguished persons, who loudly proclaimed the merits of the boy-poet. In the same year with his fine mock-heroic _Rape of the Lock_ (1712) appeared _The Messiah_, in imitation of Isaiah and of Virgil (in his well-known _Eclogue_ IV.), both of whom celebrate, in similar strains, the advent of a “golden age” to be. The “Sybilline” prophecy, which Pope supposes the Latin poet to have read, existed, it need scarcely be added, only in the imagination of himself and of the authorities on whom he relied. _Windsor Forest_ (1713) deserves special notice as one of the earliest of that class of poems which derive their inspiration directly from Nature. It was the precursor of _The Seasons_, although the anti-barbarous feeling is less pronounced in the former. We find, however, the germs of that higher feeling which appears more developed in the _Essay on Man_; and the following verses, descriptive of the usual “sporting” scenes, are significant:-- “See! from the brake the whirring Pheasant springs, And mounts exulting on triumphant wings: Short is his joy; he feels the fiery wound, Flutters in blood, and panting beats the ground. Ah, what avail his glossy, varying dyes, His purple crest and scarlet-circled eyes-- The vivid green his shining plumes unfold, His painted wings, and breast that flames with gold? * * * * * To plains with well-breathed beagles they repair, And trace the mazes of the circling Hare. Beasts, urged by us, their fellow-beasts pursue, And learn of man each other to undo. With slaughtering guns the unwearied fowler roves, When frosts have whitened all the naked groves, Where Doves, in flocks, the leafless trees o’ershade, And lonely Woodcocks haunt the watery glade-- He lifts the tube, and level with his eye, Straight a short thunder breaks the frozen sky. Oft, as in airy rings they skim the heath, The clamorous Lapwings feel the leaden death: Oft, as the mounting Larks their notes prepare, They fall and leave their little lives in air.”