THE LIFE OF JAMES THOMSON, With a Criticism on his Poetry. 66 SAMES THOMSON, the great author of the Seasons," was the eldest son of the Rev. Thomas Thomson, minister of the parish of Ednam, Roxburghshire, and was born there on the 11th of September 1700. His father was of good birth, and seems to have been a man of excellent character and respectable talents. His mother was Beatrix Trotter, daughter and heiress to Mr Trotter, proprietor of Fogo, a small estate near Greenlaw in Berwickshire. The year after the Poet's birth his father was translated to Southdean, near Jedburgh. Thomson was thus from his birth fortunately situated in point of scenery. He was brought up near the banks of the Tweed, the Teviot, and the Jed, in the neighbourhood of the ancient ruins of Jedburgh, Dryburgh, Kelso, and Melrose, and with the blue Cheviots bounding the horizon. It was a country not only of beautiful landscapes, but teeming with romantic memories, and echoing with the songs afterwards destined to form the "Minstrelsy of the Border." It was fit that Thomson, who has best described the sublimer glories of nature, should be born, and that Scott, the best painter of its more picturesque aspects, should be buried, in the centre of Scotland's richest and most varied scenery. Indeed, the Earl of Buchan assures us that it was in Dryburgh Abbey that Thomson first tuned his "Doric reed." At an early age, Thomson's promise attracted the notice of Mr Riccaltoun, minister of the neighbouring parish of Hobkirk, who volunteered to superintend his education. To this his father consented, and he was placed at a school in Jedburgh, which was at that time taught in the aisle of the church. Here he pursued his studies so successfully, that Sir William Bennet of Chesters, near Jedburgh, a gentleman noted for his wit, and Sir Gilbert Eliott of Minto, whose gardener was Thomson's uncle, took a kindly interest in him, invited him to their seats, and encouraged the first buddings of his poetic genius. He began early to write verses, but was so ill satisfied with them, that on the first day of each January he proceeded, with a mixture of judicial gravity and sly humour, to commit them to the flames, having first recorded the reasons of the condemnation in a copy of humorous verses. We do not wish for the revival of the criminals thus summarily disposed of, but we wish that some of the clever doggerel of the sentences they received had been preserved. Two of these boyish compositions have escaped the burning, and are inserted in some editions of his works—one on his sister Lizzy parting with her cat, and another addressed in his fourteenth year to Sir W. Bennet. We quote the latter, as the shortest of the two literary curiosities: "My trembling Muse your honour does address, But if upon my flight your honour frowns, The Muse folds up her wings, and dying-justice owns." What a vast way he had to travel between this and the "Seasons"-a work which now contests the palm with the Georgics of the "divine Virgil" himself! In the year 1715, he was sent to the University of Edinurgh, to pass through the curriculum of study necessary to prepare for the Divinity Hall, he being destined for the Church. Of his progress or proficiency during the first four years we know nothing. In the year 1718 he lost his father, under strange and painful circumstances. A place called Woolie, in the parish of Southdean, was said to be haunted by a ghost. In an evil hour Mr Thomson consented to try his clerical power in laying it. He had commenced the act of exorcism when, in the middle of his prayer, he was struck on the head by a ball of fire, which he attributed to diabolic agency. He fell down stunned and helpless, and was carried home, where he languished for a few days, and then expired. This event deeply impressed the Poet's mind. He became nervously apprehensive of supernatural agency, and afraid even to sleep alone. One night, his fellow-student and bedfellow, as an experiment on his fears, walked quietly out, leaving Thomson asleep. He was soon recalled by the voice of the future author of the "Castle of Indolence," who had awaked, found himself alone, and ran out calling for help in great terror. After his father's death, his mother, who was left with nine children but slenderly provided for, effected a mortgage on her little hereditary estate, and removed with all her family to Edinburgh. With her James resided till the completion of his university studies. In 1719 Thomson entered the Divinity Hall, and the records prove him to have performed the usual exercises three times, February 1720, February 1722, and May 1724, when his name disappears from the books. He obtained no bursary, he took no prizes, and left Edinburgh College, as Johnson after him left Oxford, without a degree. From a few letters of that period still extant, he seems to have spent his time partly in the harmless merriment and convivialities of the then Edinburgh student life, with David Mallet, and Cranstoun, and Patrick Murdoch, "the round, fat, oily man of God" he afterwards so picturesquely described, and partly in poetical efforts and aspirations. Poetry, not divinity, was his study; and an occasional visit to a "tippenny cell" seems to have been his sole relaxation. He contributed three articles to a volume entitled "The Edinburgh Miscellany," which must have been an anticipation of the albums and annuals which have since appeared in such crowds. One of them is on "Country Life, by a Student of the University," and is interesting, as containing the germ and earnest of the "Seasons." During his attendance at the Divinity Hall, too, he seems to have written a number of poetical pieces, some of which, of no great merit, are still extant. His genius continued to trifle, like a babe in a meadow, "plucking witless the weak flowers,' till it encountered the stormy theme of "Winter," and rose instantly, as if on the wings of the blast, to the full altitude, both of the subject and of his own powers. Our readers all remember the story of Hamilton the divinity professor having given Thomson a Psalm to paraphrase as an exercise, and of the reception it received at his hands. He is said to have told his student that, if he expected to be useful in the ministry, he must restrain his imagination, and, while giving it considerable praise, to have censured some expressions in it as too flowery, and others as unbecoming, or even profane; and this is reported to have determined him to forsake his original intention of entering the Church. The story is founded on fact; the Psalm was a portion of the 119th, and his explanation of it may easily be supposed to have been too luxuriant for a divinity class, where cold exposition is generally in more request than eloquence or genius. But it is not true that Hamilton's criticism finally altered Thomson's views; as we find from his letters, that even after he went to London he still intended to be ordained. No doubt, however, he felt temporary chagrin. One is reminded of the analogous instance of the poet Pollok, whose first sermon in the United Secession Hall, which was filled with glowing and somewhat bombastic descriptions of the supposed effects of sin and the fall of man upon the material creation, and particularly of the "blowing of the first Monsoon," convulsed his fellowstudents with laughter, created a smile where smiles were rarely seen, on the dry and lofty brow of the excellent Dr Dick, elicited from the poet the indignant interjected sentence, "And but for sin the smile of folly would not have been seen on the forehead of wisdom," and gained him for a season the |