JAMES THOMSON.

More we perceive by dint of thought alone;

we have a poetical subject poetically treated-filled The rich must labour to possess their own,

to overflowing with the richest materials of poetry, To feel their great abundance, and request

and the emanations of benevolence. In the Castle Their humble friends to help them to be blest; of Indolence we have the concentration of essence To see their treasure, hear their glory told,

of those materials applied to a subject less poetical, And aid the wretched impotence of gold.

but still affording room for luxuriant fancy, the But some, great souls ! and touched with warmth most exquisite art, and still greater melody of divine,

numbers. Give gold a price, and teach its beams to shine; JAMES THOMSON was born at Ednam, near Kelso, Al hoarded treasures they repute a load,

county of Roxburgh, on the 11th of September, 1700. Nor think their wealth their own, till well bestowed. His father, who was then minister of the parish of Grand reservoirs of public happiness,

Ednam, removed a few years afterwards to that of Through secret streams diffusively they bless, Southdean in the same county, a primitive and And, while their bounties glide, concealed from view, retired district situated among the lower slopes of Relieve our wants, and spare our blushes too. the Cheviots. Here the young

poet spent his boyish years. The gift of poesy came early, and some lines written by him at the age of fourteen, show

how soon his manner was formed : The publication of the Seasons was an important

Now I surveyed my native faculties, era in the history of English poetry. So true and

And traced my actions to their teeming source : beautiful are the descriptions in the poem, and so

Now I explored the universal frame, entirely do they harmonise with those fresh feelings

Gazed nature through, and with interior light and glowing impulses which all would wish to

Conversed with angels and unbodied saints cherish, that a love of nature seems to be synony

That tread the courts of the Eternal King! mous with a love of Thomson. It is difficult to con

Gladly I would declare in lofty strains ceive a person of education in this country, imbued

The power of Godhead to the sons of men,
But thought is lost in its immensity:
Imagination wastes its strength in vain,
And fancy tires and turns within itself,
Struck with the amazing depths of Deity!
Ah! my Lord God ! in vain a tender youth,
Unskilled in arts of deep philosophy,
Attempts to search the bulky mass of matter,
To trace the rules of motion, and pursue
The phantom Time, too subtle for his grasp :
Yet may I from thy most apparent works
Form some idea of their wondrous Author.1

a

In his eighteenth year, Thomson was sent to Edinburgh college. His father died, and the poet proceeded to London to push his fortune. His college friend Mallet procured him the situation of tutor to the son of Lord Binning, and being shown some of his descriptions of Winter,' advised him to connect them into one regular poem. This was done, and • Winter' was published in March 1726, the poet having received only three guineas for the copyright. A second and a third edition appeared the same year. 'Summer' appeared in 1727. In 1728 he issued proposals for publishing, by subscription, the Four Seasons ;' the number of subscribers, at a

guinea each copy, was 387; but many took more James Thomson.

than one, and Pope (to whom Thomson had been

introduced by Mallet) took three copies. The with an admiration of rural or woodland scenery, tragedy of Sophonisba was next produced; and in not entertaining a strong affection and regard for 1731 the poet accompanied the son of Sir Charles that delightful poet, who has painted their charms Talbot, afterwards lord chancellor, in the capacity with so much fidelity and enthusiasm. The same of tutor or travelling companion, to the continent. features of blandness and benevolence, of simplicity They visited France, Switzerland, and Italy, and it of design and beauty of form and colour, which we is easy to conceive with what pleasure Thomson recognise as distinguishing traits of the natural must have passed or sojourned among scenes which landscape, are seen in the pages of Thomson, con- he had often viewed in imagination. In November veyed by his artless mind as faithfully as the of the same year the poet was at Rome, and no lights and shades on the face of creation. No criti- doubt indulged the wish expressed in one of his cism or change of style has, therefore, affected his letters, to see the fields where Virgil gathered his popularity. We may smile at sometimes meeting immortal honey, and tread the same ground where with a heavy monotonous period, a false ornament, men have thought and acted so greatly. On his reor tumid expression, the result of an indolent mind turn next year he published his poem of Liberty, and working itself up to a great effort, and we may wish obtained the sinecure situation of Secretary of Briefs the subjects of his description were sometimes more in the Court of Chancery, which he held tilt the select and dignified; but this drawback does not death of Lord Talbot, the chancellor. The succeedaffect our permanent regard or general feeling; our first love remains unaltered ; and Thomson is still

1 This curious fragment was first published in 1841, in a life the poet with whom some of our best and purest of Thomson by Mr Allan Cunningham, prefixed to an illusassociations are indissolubly joined. In the Seasons trated edition of the Seasons.'

ENGLISH LITERATURE.
ing chancellor bestowed the situation on another, refinement of taste. The natural fervour of the
Thomson not having, it is said, from characteristic man overpowered the rules of the scholar. The
indolence, solicited a continuance of the office. He first edition of the Seasons' differs materially from
again tried the stage, and produced Agamemnon, the second, and the second still more from the third.
which was coldly received. Edward and Eleonora Every alteration was an improvement in delicacy of
followed, and the poet's circumstances were bright- thought and language, of which we may mention
ened by a pension of L.100 a-year, which he ob- one instance. In the scene betwixt Damon and
tained through Lyttelton from the Prince of Wales. Musidora— the solemnly-ridiculous bathing,' as
He further received the appointment of Surveyor Campbell has justly termed it-the poet had origi-
General of the Leeward Islands, the duties of which nally introduced three damsels! Of propriety of

he was allowed to perform by deputy, and which language consequent on these corrections, we may
brought him L.300 per annum. He was now in cite an example in a line from the episode of La-
comparative opulence, and his residence at Kew-vinia-
lane, near Richmond, was the scene of social enjoy-
ment and lettered ease. Retirement and nature

And as he viewed her ardent o'er and o'er,
became, he said, more and more his passion every stood originally
day. I have enlarged my rural domain," he
writes to a friend: 'the two fields next to me, from

And as he run her ardent o'er and o’er.
the first of which I have walled—no, no-paled in,

One of the finest and most picturesque similes in
about as much as my garden consisted of before, so the work was supplied by Pope, to whom Thomson
that the walk runs round the hedge, where you had given an interleaved copy of the edition of 1736.
may figure me walking any time of the day, and The quotation will not be out of place here, as it is
sometimes at night. His house appears to have honourable to the friendship of the brother poets,

and tends to show the importance of careful revision,
without which no excellence can be attained in
literature or the arts. How deeply must it be re-
gretted that Pope did not oftener write in blank
verse! In autumn, describing Lavinia, the lines of
Thomson were-
Thoughtless of beauty, she was Beauty's self,
Recluse among the woods ; if city dames
Will deign their faith: and thus she went, compelled
By strong necessity, with as serene
And pleased a look as Patience e'er put on,
To glean Palemon's fields.
Pope drew his pen through this description, and
supplied the following lines, which Thomson must
have been too much gratified with not to adopt
with pride and pleasure—and so they stand in all
the subsequent editions :-

Thoughtless of beauty, she was Beauty's self,
Recluse among the close-embowering woods.
As in the hollow breast of Apennine,
Beneath the shelter of encircling hills
A myrtle rises, far from human eyes,
And breathes its balmy fragrance o'er the wild ;
So flourished blooming, and unseen by all,
The sweet Lavinia ; till at length compelled
By strong Necessity's supreme command,
With smiling patience in her looks, she went
To glean Palemon's fields.*

That the genius of Thomson was purifying and working off its alloys up to the termination of his existence, may be seen from the superiority in style

and diction of the Castle of Indolence.' "Between Thomson's Cottage.

the period of his composing the Seasons and the

Castle of Indolence,' says Mr Campbell, he wrote been elegantly furnished: the sale catalogue of his several works which seem hardly to accord with the effects, which enumerates the contents of every improvement and maturity of his taste exhibited in room, prepared after his death, fills eight pages of the latter production. To the Castle of Indolence print, and his cellar was stocked with wines and he brought not only the full nature, but the perfect Scotch ale. In this snug suburban retreat Thomson art of a poet. The materials of that exquisite poem now applied himself to finish the Castle of Indo- are derived originally from Tasso ; but he was more lence, on which he had been long engaged, and a immediately indebted for them to the Faery Queen : tragedy on the subject of Coriolanus. The poem and in meeting with

the paternal spirit of Spenser, was published in May 1748. In August following, he seems as if he were admitted more intimately

he took a boat at Hammersmith to convey him to to the home of inspiration. If the critic had gone Kew, after having walked from London. He caught cold, was thrown into a fever, and, after a short ill

* The interleaved copy with Pope's and Thomson's alteraness, died (27th of August 1748). No poet was ever tions is in the possession of the Rev. J. Mitford. See that more deeply lamented or more sincerely mourned.

gentleman's edition of Gray's works, vol. ii. p. 8, where other Though born a poet, Thomson seems to have instances are given. All Pope's corrections were adopted by advanced but slowly, and by reiterated efforts, to Thomson.

13

over the alterations in the 'Seasons,' which Thomson only strikes us by its unwieldy difference from the had been more or less engaged upon for about six- common costume of expression.' Cowper avoided teen years, he would have seen the gradual improve this want of keeping between his style and his subment of his taste, as well as imagination. So far as jects, adapting one to the other with inimitable ease, the art of the poet is concerned, the last corrected grace, and variety; yet only rising in one or two edition is a new work. The power of Thomson, instances to the higher flights of Thomson. however, lay not in his art, but in the exuberance of In 1843, a Poem to the Memory of Mr Congreve, his genius, which sometimes required to be dis- Inscribed to her Grace Henrietta, Duchess of Marlciplined and controlled. The poetic glow is spread borough, was reprinted for the Percy Society (under over all. He never slackens in his enthusiasm, nor the care of Mr Peter Cunningham) as a genuine tires of pointing out the phenomena of nature which, though unacknowledged production of Thomson, indolent as he was, he had surveyed under every first published in 1729. We have no doubt of the aspect, till he had become familiar with all. Among genuineness of this poem as the work of Thomson. the mountains, vales, and forests, he seems to realise it possesses all the characteristics of his style-its his own words

exaggeration, enthusiasm, and the peculiar rhythm

of his blank verse. The poet's praise of Congreve Man superior walks

is excessive, and must have been designed rather to Amid the glad creation, musing praise

gratify the Duchess of Marlborough than to record And looking lively gratitude.

Thomson's own deliberate convictions. Jercniy But he looks also, as Johnson has finely observed, such a tribute as the following:

Collier would have started with amazement from • with the eye which nature bestows only on a poet —the eye that distinguishes, in everything presented to its view, whatever there is on which imagination What art thou, Death! by mankind poorly feared, can delight to be detained, and with a mind that at Yet period of their ills. On thy near shore once comprehends the vast, and attends to the Trembling they stand, and see through dreaded mists minute. He looks also with a heart that feels for The eternal port, irresolute to leave all mankind. His sympathies are universal. His This yarious misery, these air-fed dreams touching allusions to the condition of the poor and which men call life and fame. Mistaken minds! suffering, to the hapless state of bird and beast in Tis reason's prime aspiring, greatly just; winter; the description of the peasant perishing in In quest of nobler worlds ; to try the deeps

'Tis happiness supreme, to venture forth the snow, the Siberian exile, or the Arab pilgrims, of dark futurity, with heaven our

guide, all are marked with that humanity and true feeling The unerring Hand that led us safe through time : which shows that the poet's virtues “formed the That planted in the soul this powerful hope, magic of his song. The genuine impulses under This infinite ambition of new life, which he wrote he has expressed in one noble stanza And endless joys, still rising, ever new. of the Castle of Indolence:'

These Congreve tastes, safe on the ethereal coast, I care not, Fortune, what you me deny;

Joined to the numberless immortal quire You cannot rob me of free Nature's grace,

Of spirits blest. High-seated among these, You cannot shut the windows of the sky,

He sees the public fathers of mankind,
Through which Aurora shows her brightening face; Who drew the sword or planned the holy scheme,

The greatly good, those universal minds,
You cannot bar my constant feet to trace
The woods and lawns, by living stream, at eve:

For liberty and right ; to check the rage
Let health my nerves and finer fibres brace,

Of blood-stained tyranny, and save a world. And I their toys to the great children leave;

Such, high-born Marlbro', be thy sire divine Of fancy, reason, virtue, nought can me bereave.

With wonder named ; fair freedom's champion he,

By heaven approved, a conqueror without guilt ; * The love of nature,' says Coleridge, ‘seems to have And such on earth his friend, and joined on high led Thomson to a cheerful religion ; and a gloomy By deathless love, Godolphin's patriot worth, religion to have led Cowper to a love of nature. The Just to his country's fame, yet of her wealth one would carry his fellow-men along with him into With honour frugal; above interest great. nature; the other flies to nature from his fellow- Hail men immortal! social virtues hail! men. In chastity of diction, however, and the har- First heirs of praise! But I, with weak essay, mony of blank verse, Cowper leaves Thomson im- Wrong the superior theme; while heavenly choirs, measurably below him; yet, I still feel the latter to in strains high warbled to celestial harps, have been the born poet.' The ardour and fulness Resound your names; and Congreve's added voice of Thomson's descriptions distinguish them from In heaven exalts what he admired below. those of Cowper, who was naturally less enthusias- With these he mixes, now no more to swerve tic, and who was restricted by his religious tenets, From reason's purest law; no more to please, and by his critical and assically formed taste. The Borne by the torrent down a sensual age. diction of the Seasons is at times pure and musical; Pardon, loved shade, that I with friendly blame, it is too elevated and ambitious, however, for ordi- Slight note thy error ; not to wrong thy worth, nary themes, and where the poet descends to minute Or shade thy memory (far from my soul description, or to humorous or satirical scenes (as Be that base aim), but haply to deter, in the account of the chase and foxhunters' din- From flattering the gross vulgar, future pens ner in Autumn), the effect is grotesque and absurd. Powerful like thine in every grace, and skilled Mr Campbell has happily said, that as long as To win the listening soul with virtuous charms. Thomson dwells in the pure contemplation of nature, and appeals to the universal poetry of the human The gentle and benevolent nature of Thomson is breast, his redundant style comes to us as something seen in this slight shade of censure. He, too, flatvenial and adventitious--it is the flowing vesture of tered the 'gross vulgar,' but it was with adulation, the Druid ; and perhaps to the general experience, not licentiousness. is rather imposing ; but when he returns to the We subjoin a few of the detached pictures and familiar narrations or courtesies of life, the same descriptions in the "Seasons, and part of the diction ceases to seem the mantle of inspiration, and I • Castle of Indolence.'

14

She sends on earth; then that of deeper dye

Haply some widowed songster pours his plaint, Steals soft behind; and then a deeper still,

Far, in faint warblings, through the tawny copse; In circle following circle, gathers round,

While congregated thrushes, linnets, larks, To close the face of things. A fresher gale

And each wild throat, whose artless strains so late Begins to wave the wood, and stir the stream, Swelled all the music of the swarming shades, Sweeping with shadowy gust the fields of corn : Robbed of their tuneful souls, now shivering sit While the quail clamours for his running mate. On the dead tree, a dull despondent flock: Wide o'er the thistly lawn, as swells the breeze, With not a brightness waving o'er their plumes, A whitening shower of vegetable down

And nought save chattering discord in their note. Amusive floats. The kind impartial care

O let not, aimed from some inhuman eye,
Of nature nought disdains: thoughtful to feed The gun the music of the coming year
Her lowest sons, and clothe the coming year,

Destroy; and harmless, unsuspecting harm,
From field to field the feathered seeds she wings. Lay the weak tribes a miserable prey
His folded flock secure, the shepherd home

In mingled murder, fluttering on the ground ! Hies merry-hearted; and by turns relieves

The pale descending year, yet pleasing still, The ruddy milkmaid of her brimming pail;

A gentler mood inspires; for now the leaf The beauty whom perhaps his witless heart

Incessant rustles from the mournful grove; Unknowing what the joy-mixed anguish means Oft startling such as studious walk below, Sincerely loves, by that best language shown

And slowly circles through the waving air. Of cordial glances, and obliging deeds.

But should a quicker breeze amid the boughs Onward they pass o'er many a panting height, Sob, o'er the sky the leafy deluge streams; And valley sunk, and unfrequented; where

Till choked, and matted with the dreary shower, At fall of eve the fairy people throng,

The forest walks, at every rising gale, In various game and revelry, to pass

Roll wide the withered waste, and whistle bleak. The summer night, as village stories tell.

Fled is the blasted verdure of the fields; But far about they wander from the grave

And, shrunk into their beds, the flowery race Of him whom his ungentle fortune urged

Their sunny robes resign. E'en what remained Against his own sad breast to lift the hand

Of stronger fruits falls from the naked tree; Of impious violence. The lonely tower

And woods, fields, gardens, orchards all around, Is also shunned ; whose mournful chambers hold- The desolated prospect thrills the soul. So night-struck fancy dreams—the yelling ghost. The western sun withdraws the shortened day, Among the crooked lanes, on every hedge,

And humid evening, gliding o'er the sky, The glowworm lights his gem; and through the dark In her chill progress, to the ground condensed A moving radiance twinkles. Evening yields The vapour throws. Where creeping waters ooze, The world to night; not in her winter robe

Where marshes stagnate, and where rivers wind, Of massy Stygian woof, but loose arrayed

Cluster the rolling fogs, and swim along, In mantle dun. A faint erroneous ray,

The dusky-mantled lawn. Meanwhile the moon, Glanced from the imperfect surfaces of things, Full-orbed, and breaking through the scattered Flings half an image on the straining eye;

clouds, While wavering woods, and villages, and streams, Shows her broad visage in the crimsoned east. And rocks, and mountain-tops, that long retained Turned to the sun direct her spotted disk, The ascending gleam, are all one swimming scene, Where mountains rise, umbrageous dales descend, Uncertain if beheld. Sudden to heaven

And caverns deep as optic tube descries, Thence weary vision turns; where, leading soft A smaller earth, gives us his blaze again, The silent hours of love, with purest ray.

Void of its flame, and sheds a softer day. Sweet Venus shines ; and from her genial rise, Now through the passing clouds she seems to When daylight sickens till it springs afresh,

stoop, Unrivalled reigns, the fairest lamp of night.

Now up the pure cerulean rides sublime.
Wide the pale deluge floats, and streaming mild

O'er the skied mountain to the shadowy vale, [Autumn Evening Scene. ]

While rocks and floods reflect the quivering gleam; But see the fading many-coloured woods,

The whole air whitens with a boundless tide Shade deepening over shade, the country round Of silver radiance trembling round the world. Imbrown; a crowded umbrage dusk and dun,

The lengthened night elapsed, the morning shines Of every hue, from wan declining green

Serene, in all her dewy beauty bright,
To sooty dark. These now the lonesome muse, Unfolding fair the last autumnal day.
Low whispering, lead into their leaf-strown walks, And now the mounting sun dispels the fog ;
And give the season in its latest view.

The rigid hoar-frost melts before his beam;
Meantime, light shadowing all, a sober calm And hung on every spray, on every blade
Fleeces unbounded ether: whose least wave

Of grass, the myriad dew-drops twinkle round. Stands tremulous, uncertain where to turn The gentle current: while illumined wide, The dewy-skirted clouds imbibe the sun,

[Episode of Lavinia.] And through their lucid veil his softened force

The lovely young Lavinia once had friends ;
Shed o'er the peaceful world. Then is the time, And Fortune smiled, deceitful, on her birth;
For those whom virtue and whom nature charm, For, in her helpless years deprived of all,
To steal themselves from the degenerate crowd, Of every stay, save innocence and heaven,
And soar above this little scene of things :

She, with her widowed mother, feeble, old,
To tread low-thoughted vice beneath their feet; And poor, lived in a cottage, far retired
To soothe the throbbing passions into peace ;

Among the windings of a woody vale;
And woo lone Quiet in her silent walks.

By solitude and deep surrounding shades, Thus solitary, and in pensive guise,

But more by bashful modesty, concealed. Oft let me wander o'er the russet mcad,

Together thus they shunned the cruel scorn And through the saddened grove, where scarce is Which virtue, sunk to poverty, would meet heard

From giddy passion and low-minded pride: One dying strain, to cheer the woodman's toil. Almost on Nature's common bounty fed ;