Page:Rural Hours.djvu/286

Rh One never thinks of gleaning without remembering Ruth. How wholly beautiful is the narrative of sacred history in which we meet her! One of the most pleasing pictures of the ancient world preserved to our day, it is at the same time delightful as a composition. Compare it for a moment with the celebrated episode in the “Seasons,” and mark how far above the modern poet stands the ancient Hebrew writer. Undoubtedly, Thomson's imitation is an elegant, graceful, polished pastoral, in charmingly flowing verse, but, as Palemon himself expresses it, the tale is rather “romantic.” Lavinia, though “beauty's self,” and charmingly modest, is yet, alas! rather doll-like; one doubts if she really suffered very much, with that “smiling patience” in her look, and those “polished limbs,” “veiled in a simple robe.” And Palemon, “pride of swains,” “who led the rural life in all its joy and elegance,” “amusing his fancy with autumnal scenes”—we have always had certain misgivings that he was quite a commonplace young squire. It is unwise to be very critical in reading, for one loses much pleasure and instruction by being over-nice and fault-finding in these as in other matters; but really, it was such a bold step in Thomson to remind one of Ruth, that he himself is to blame if the comparison inevitably suggests itself, and as inevitably injures his pretty little English lass. We never look into the Seasons, without wishing that Crabbe had written the gleaning passages.

As for Ruth, the real Ruth, her history is all pure simplicity, nature and truth, in every line. Let us please ourselves by dwelling on it a moment. Let us see Naomi, with her husband and sons, driven by famine into the country of the Moabites; let us hear that the two young men married there, and that, at the end