JAMES THOMSON. 1700-1748. JAMES THOMSON, the author of "The Seasons," was the son of a Scotch clergyman, and was born in the year 1700. After completing his academic education at the University of Edinburgh, he entered upon the study of divi nity; but a paraphrase of one of the Psalms having been given, by the professor of divinity, to the class, Thomson's exercise was in so poetical and figurative a style as to astonish all who heard it. This incident made him resolve to quit divinity for poetry, and, after some time, he went to London, poor and friendless, to try his fortune, with the manuscript of "Winter" in his pocket. It was with difficulty he found a purchaser for it, and the price given was trifling. It was published in 1726, and after a period of neglect,1 was admired and applauded, and a number of editions speedily followed. His "Summer" appeared in 1727, "Spring" in 1728, and "Autumn" in 1730. After the publication of the Seasons, he travelled on the continent with the son of the Lord Chancellor Talbot, and on his return employed himself in the composition of his various tragedies, and his poem on " Liberty." These are by no means equal to his other performances, and are now but little read. In May, 1748, he finished his "Castle of Indolence," upon which he had been laboring for years. This is the noblest effort of his genius. "To it," says Campbell, "he brought not only the full nature, but the perfect art of a poet. The materials of that exquisite poem are derived originally from Tasso; but he was more immediately indebted for them to the Faerie Queene." Indeed, of all the imitations of Spenser, it is the most spirited and beautiful, both for its moral, poetical, and descriptive power. He did not long survive its publication. A violent cold, through inattention, terminated in a fever, and carried him off on the 27th of August, 1748. In nature and originality, Thomson is superior to all the descriptive poets except Cowper, and few poems in the English language have been more popular than the "Seasons." "It is almost stale to remark," observes Campbell, “the beauties of a poem so universally felt; the truth and genial interest with which he carries us through the life of the year; the harmony of succession which he gives to the casual phenomena of nature; his pleasing transition from native to foreign scenery; and the soul of exalted and unfeigned benevolence which accompanies his prospects of the creation. It is but equal justice to say that, amidst the feeling and fancy of the Seasons,' we meet with interruptions of declamation, heavy narrative, and unhappy digression.”2 But though Thomson's merits as a descriptive poet are of the first order; though "he looks with the eye which nature bestows only on a poet, and with a mind that at once comprehends the vast, and attends to the minute," yet his greatest charm, and that which makes him so popular with all classes, is, that he looks also with a heart that feels for all mankind. As has been well said, "his sympathies are universal." His touching allusions to the con 1 "When Thomson published his "Winter," it lay a long time neglected, till Mr. Spense made honorable mention of it in his "Odyssey," which, becoming a popular book, made the poem universally known."- Warton. 2 "Thomson was blessed with a strong and copious fancy: he hath enriched poetry with a variety of new and original images, which he painted from nature itself, and from his own actual observa tions: his descriptions have therefore a distinctness and truth which are utterly wanting to those of poets who have only copied from each other, and have never looked abroad on the objects them selves."- Warton's Pope, i. 42. ditions of the poor and suffering; to the hapless state of bird and beast in winter; the description of the peasant perishing in the snow; the Siberian exile, or the Arab pilgrims, all are marked with that humanity and true feeling which show that the poet's virtues "formed the magic of his song." The genuine impulses under which he wrote, he has expressed in one noble stanza in the "Castle of Indolence:" I care not, Fortune, what you me deny; Through which Aurora shows her brightening face; THE LOVES OF THE BIRDS. When first the soul of love is sent abroad, In gallant thought to plume the painted wing, And wood-lark, o'er the kind-contending throng Of pleasing teaches. Hence the glossy kind Try every winning way inventive love A SUMMER SCENE. Spring, 579, Around th' adjoining brook, that purls along A various group the herds and flocks compose; Half in the flood, and, often bending, sip The circling surface. In the middle droops The strong laborious ox, of honest front, Which incomposed he shakes; and from his sides Slumbers the monarch-swain; his careless arm Summer, 480. A THUNDER-SHOWER. "Tis listening fear and dumb amazement all; Summer, 1128. SUMMER EVENING. Confess'd from yonder slow-extinguish'd clouds, Her wonted station in the middle air; Begins to wave the wood, and stir the stream, Is also shunn'd; whose mournful chambers hold- THE SPRINGS OF RIVERS. Summer, 1646 Say then, where lurk the vast eternal springs, And all the dreadful mountains, wrapt in storm, That ever works beneath his sounding base, Deep, deep I hear them, laboring to get free! Autumn, 773. A MAN PERISHING IN THE SNOWS OF WINTER. As thus the snows arise, and foul and fierce All Winter drives along the darken'd air; In his own loose-revolving fields, the swain Disaster'd stands; sees other hills ascend, Of unknown joyless brow; and other scenes, Of horrid prospect, shag the trackless plain; Nor finds the river, nor the forest, hid Beneath the formless wild; but wanders on From hill to dale, still more and more astray; Impatient flouncing through the drifted heaps, Stung with the thoughts of home; the thoughts of home Rush on his nerves, and call their vigor forth In many a vain attempt. How sinks his soul! What black despair, what horror fills his heart! When for the dusky spot, which fancy feign'd His tufted cottage rising through the snow, He meets the roughness of the middle waste, Far from the track, and blest abode of man: While round him night resistless closes fast, And every tempest, howling o'er his head, Renders the savage wilderness more wild. Then throng the busy shapes into his mind, Of cover'd pits, unfathomably deep, A dire descent! beyond the power of frost; Of faithless bogs; of precipices huge, Smooth'd up with snow; and, what is land unknown, What water of the still unfrozen spring, In the loose marsh or solitary lake, Where the fresh fountain from the bottom boils. These check his fearful steps; and down he sinks |