Riccaltoun’s “A Winter’s Day” is chiefly remarkable because its author was a friend of Thomson in his boyhood and doubtless helped to cultivate his taste for Nature; because it was this poem that suggested Thomson’s descriptions of winter; and because winter was at that time a new poetic theme. The “masterly touches” of which Thomson speaks are hard to find unless he referred merely to the rough truth in the catalogue-like summaries of natural facts. A discussion of Thomson’s “Winter” will come more naturally in the next section. In this study of the period preceding Thomson we have still to notice the indications that even Pope and Addison were not left untouched by the new spirit. Such indications, however, show but faintly in their poetry. Addison’s “Cursus Glacialis” (1699) was written in Latin, and the few descriptive lines are purely conventional. It is simply an attempt to show that the vigorous sports of winter “New brace the nerves, and active life supply.” Pope’s “Pastorals” appeared in Tonson’s “Miscellany” in 1709. They were enthusiastically received, and apparently considered a charmingly natural presentation of country life. Wycherley called Pope’s Muse “a sprightly lass of the plains,” and said, that “in her modest and natural dress she outshone all Apollo’s court ladies in their more artful, laboured, and costly finery.”[254] But no assemblage of such contemporary judgments could convince a modern reader that these poems show any real traces of a conception of the outer world unlike that of the classicists. “Windsor Forest” (1713) must be more carefully noted, both because of Wordsworth’s implied commendation[255] in his reference to the “passage or two” that contain new images of external Nature, but chiefly because it is, as Courthope observes, the first “professed composition on local scenery” since Denham, and Marvell.[256] The poem was written at two different times. The first 290 lines have to do with the country. They were written in 1704, at about the same time as the “Pastorals.” Although this part of the poem purported to be the outcome of daily rides in Windsor Forest, the descriptions are so vague and general that most of them would fit any other spot as well. The lines that show personal observation are certainly few. What passages Wordsworth meant can only be surmised. He may have had in mind the description of the pheasants. But more exact observation is shown in the references to the doves flocking on the naked, frosty trees, the flight of the clamorous lapwing, the trembling of trees reflected in a stream, and the purple heather.[257] That Pope had some desire to conform to the truth in representing English scenery is indicated by his doubt as to the advisability of referring to the vintage in describing an English autumn.[258] And when he revised his poems he omitted “blushing,” as not being applicable to violets,[259] and “wolves,” as not belonging to England.[260] Warton points out, also,