Or as Hazlitt has it: 'Thomson is the best of our descriptive poets: for
he gives most of the poetry of natural description. Others have been quite
equal to him, or have surpassed him, as Cowper for instance, in the
picturesque part of his art, in marking the peculiar features and curious
details of objects; - no one has yet come up to him in giving the sum
total of their effects, their varying influences on the mind. He does not
go into the minutiae of a landscape, but describes the vivid impression
which the whole makes upon his own imagination; and thus transfers the
same unbroken, unimpaired impression to the imagination of his readers'.
On Tue, 17 Apr 2007 22:47:06 +0000, Edmund Hardy <[log in to unmask]>
wrote:
Perhaps where Thomson is most innovative is the lighting of a way to
bounce a perceiving, (rational) self off the landscape,- The
first "object" of youth.
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