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- Seasons -- Poetry (x)
- Original Leaves from Famous Books
Original Leaves from Famous Books
Show more"James Thomson, like Virgil, with leisure assured by patrons and political pension, had unusual opportunities to observe nature and to write and rewrite his poems. The various parts of The Seasons first appeared between the years 1726 and 1730 and in their final polished form in 1744. With their swelling phrases and Latinized diction, these poems of Thomson are superficially Miltonic. Dr. Johnson wrote of Thomson, "The reader of The Seasons wonders that he never saw before what Thomson shows hum that he never felt what Thomson impresses". Today we still enjoy the sensitiveness to light and movement, the ultimate knowledge of the ways of animals and birds, and the ability of Thomson in his Seasons to lure us from a real world to imaginative reverie. With a subtle appreciation of quiet rural life is coupled a conception of a God in nature, as well as an unquestioning in the God of orthodox Christianity, and there is also an apparently unrelated enthusiasm for economic progress in Britain. "It seems paradoxical that Bodoni, the founder of "classic" formalism in printing, chose to print Thomson's romantic Seasons in sumptuous format and to include the following in the dedication to his patron, David Steuart, of Edinburgh: "If I particularly wish immortality to any of my works it is to this, that the testimony of my respect and gratitude for a person of so much worth and eminence may be handed down to future ages". Bodoni is often called "The King of Typographers and the Typographer of Kings". According to Peddie, Bodoni "incontestably represents the highest point of aestheticism that can be reached by typography." (Ege, Otto F.)
Original Leaves from Famous Books
Otto F. Ege Collection
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