JAMES THOMSON. JAMES THOMSON, a distinguished British poet, born at Ednam, near Kelso, in Scotland, in 1700, was one of the nine children of the Rev. Mr. Thomson, minister of that place. James was sent to the school of Jedburgh, where he attracted the notice of a neighbouring minister by his propensity to poetry, who encouraged his early attempts, and corrected his performances. On his removal from school, he was sent to the university of Edinburgh, where he chiefly attended to the cultivation of his poetical faculty; but the death of his father, during his second session, having brought his mother to Edinburgh for the purpose of educating her children, James complied with the advice of his friends, and entered upon a course of divinity. Here, we are told, that the explanation of a psalm having been required from him as a probationary exercise, he performed it in language so splendid, that he was reproved by his professor for employing a diction which it was not likely that any one of his future audience could comprehend. This admonition completed the disgust which he felt for the |