There Was
Brown's Philosophy, For Example; And Brown Loved To Illustrate
His Point With Endless Poetic Quotations, The Only Drawback
In
my case being that they were almost exclusively drawn from
Akenside, who was not "rural." But there were other
Books in
which other poets were quoted, and of all these the passages
which invariably pleased me most were the descriptions of
rural sights and sounds.
One day, during a visit to the city of Buenos Ayres, I
discovered in a mean street, in the southern part of the town,
a second-hand bookshop, kept by an old snuffy spectacled
German in a long shabby black coat. I remember him well
because he was a very important person to me. It was the
first shop of the kind I had seen - I doubt if there was
another in the town; and to be allowed to rummage by the hour
among this mass of old books on the dusty shelves and heaped
on the brick floor was a novel and delightful experience. The
books were mostly in Spanish, French, and German, but there
were some in English, and among them I came upon Thomson's
Seasons. I remember the thrill of joy I experienced when I
snatched up the small thin octavo in its smooth calf binding.
It was the first book in English I ever bought, and to this
day when I see a copy of the Seasons on a bookstall, which is
often enough, I cannot keep my fingers off it and find it hard
to resist the temptation to throw a couple of shillings away
and take it home.
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