Thomas Thomson

“ In 1796 he became tutor to the sons of John Stirling of Kippendavie, and resigned his post on the ‘Encyclopædia Britannica’ to his younger brother, Thomas Thomson (1773–1852) [q. v.] Both brothers were constant contributors to the ‘Literary Journal’ founded in 1803 by James Mill [q. v.] , James Thomson contributing the philosophic articles. On 26 Aug. 1805 Thomson was ordained minister of Eccles, Berwickshire. In his country life he devoted himself to the study of the Bible in the original tongues, and to the careful editing of his discourses on St. ”

“ He was always fertile in expedients, and audacious in proffering his petitions for mercy. During his father's life, a petition in the form of a letter, written by Thomas of Beaufort, and signed by seven Frasers, had been addressed to the Duke of Argyle, appealing to his aid at Court, upon the plea of that "entire friendship which the family of Lovat had with, and dependence upon, that of Argyle, grounded upon an ancient propinquity of blood, and zealously maintained by both through a tract and series of many ages." ”

“ The fresh treatment of a simple theme, the warm poetical colouring of commonplace incidents, the freedom and irregularity of the plan, the boldness of the descriptions, the manly and sincere sentiment, the rough vigour of the verse, took by surprise a generation accustomed to witty satire and burlesque, refined diction, translations from the classics, themes valued in proportion to their remoteness from vulgar life. Thomson at once became famous, and, his naturally easy temper roused to full exertion, vigorously followed up his success with Summer and an Ode to the Memory of Sir Isaac Newton. ”

“ During the four years of misery and peril in which the Master of Lovat continued to evade justice, his father died, among his relations in the island of Skye. His decease was caused, according to the representation of his son, by a hasty march made to escape the King's troops, who, he heard, were coming to the islands to pursue him. Among the few humane traits [Pg 247] in the character of Simon Fraser, the habitual respect and affection borne by the Highlanders to parents appears to have been perceptible. He speaks of Thomas of Beaufort in his Life with regret and regard ”

“ I understand, sir, you knew Thomson long?
I became acquainted with him in the year 1726, when he published his poem of Winter. He lived opposite to me, in Lancaster-court, in the Strand. I went to the East Indies soon after, which caused a chasm in our acquaintance; but, on my return, our intimacy was strengthened, and continued to the hour of his death. I do not know any man, living or dead, I ever esteemed more highly, and he was attached to me. I had once a complaint of a consumptive nature, which confined me much at home, and he was so good as to come often from Kew-lane to sit with me. ”

“ In physique, intellect, and morale, Thomson was an ideal explorer. At first sight he did not impress the observer as peculiarly muscular or robust; but there was an almost boyish ease in his gait, and his powers of endurance were often without parallel. Seventy miles was no infrequent record at the end of a day's march. While his work was mainly that of a geographical pioneer, yet in his most rapid passages through a country he had such a genius for observing that his notebooks were filled with material that most men would have taken months to collect. ”

“ Objects so vast and magnificent as planets rolling with even pace through their orbits, comets rushing along their devious track, light springing from its unexhausted source, mighty rivers formed in their subterranean beds, do not require, or even admit, a heightening from the fancy. The most faithful pencil here produces the noblest pictures; and Thomson, by strictly adhering to the character of the poet of Nature, has treated all these topics with a true sublimity, which a writer of less knowledge and accuracy could never have attained. ”

“ Had he followed those practices of healthy activity so finely described in his poem, how much longer and more useful might his life have been! Yet it must be a fact unquestionable, that Thomson, as a boy, rose early, saw both sunrises and all the glories of nature, plunged into the summer flood, and braved the severity of winter. No man could so vividly or so accurately describe what he had not experienced, and they who know best the country know how exact is his knowledge of it. ”

“ Even persons somewhat hard of hearing, are not deaf to her waterfalls. In the sublime invocation to Winter, which we have quoted—we hear Thomson recording his own worship of nature in his boyish days, when he roamed among the hills of his father's parish, far away from the manse. In those strange and stormy delights did not thousands of thousands of the Scottish boyhood familiarly live among the mists and snows? Of all that number he alone had the genius to "here eternise on earth" his joy—but many millions have had souls to join religiously in the hymns he chanted. ”

“ Fancy having to stand for an hour and a half bowing, and then to sit with one's cocked hat on, receiving addresses.' In person Thomson was small, slight, elegant, fragile-looking, with a notably handsome face. He was one of those clever, agreeable, plausible, managing little men who seem always to get their own way. They are very adroit and not too scrupulous about the means they use to attain their ends. ”

“ In his lifetime, Thomson's friends were ready to bestow upon him immortal honors—they declared that his system must finally supersede all other medical means, and live to bless the world forever, and carry the name of its founder in a halo of glory down to the end of time. ”

“ He also took a lively interest in the classics, in music, and in general literature; but the real love, the central passion of his intellectual life, was the pursuit of science. The study of mathematics, physics, and in particular, of electricity, had captivated his imagination, and soon engrossed all the teeming faculties of his mind. At the age of seventeen, when ordinary lads are fond of games, and the cleverer sort are content to learn without attempting to originate, young Thomson had begun to make investigations. ”

“ Henceforth his residence at St. Paul's brought him still more continually into the world, which he delighted by his 'wise wit.' Most London dinners, he declared, evaporated in whispers to one's next neighbours. He never, however, spoke to his neighbour, but 'fired' across the table. One day, however, he broke his rule, on hearing a lady, who sat next him, say in a sweet low voice, 'No gravy, sir.'—'Madam!' he cried, 'I have all my life been looking for a person who disliked gravy, let us swear immortal friendship.' She looked astonished, but took the oath, and kept it. ”

“ He does not search for any resemblances that are not palpable, and founded in the nature of things. All similes and metaphors which serve to express his own emotions are carefully avoided. The whole is picturesque and life-like in the highest degree, yet every circumstance is mentioned in the cool, unimpassioned way in which we mention any common occurrence.
Thomson accomplishes his purpose by portraying his own feelings; not indeed in so many words, but by the use of those expressions, and by those transitions of thought, which mark a state of emotion. ”

“ Thomson was extremely beloved by his acquaintance. He was of an open generous disposition; and was sometimes tempted to an excessive indulgence of the social pleasures: A failing too frequently inseparable from men of genius. His exterior appearance was not very engaging, but he grew more and more agreeable, as he entered into conversation: He had a grateful heart, ready to acknowledge every favour he received, and he never forgot his old benefactors, notwithstanding a long absence, new acquaintance, and additional eminence ”

“ A learned man writing to another learned man, says, in honest blunt vernacular, “Have you seen Mr Thomson?” and passes on to other matter. Is the heart of an editor to beat within him till he has discovered who this Thomson was, and everything discoverable about him—what house he lived in, and whom he quarrelled with? This Thomson is mentioned only once, and we have nothing of him but his name. The more mysterious, seems the indefatigable editor to think; and the more meritorious, if from so slight a clue he can succeed in identifying this defunct Thomson. ”

“ But if Thomson sometimes lacks the true vision for things human, he retains it always for things mute and material, and whilst the critical estimate of his powers and influence will vary from age to age, all who have read him will concur in the colloquial judgment which only candour could have extorted from the prejudice of Dr Johnson—“Thomson had as much of the poet about him as most writers. ”

“ At the age of twenty-five, Thomson, like many of his countrymen during his century and the previous one, came fortune-hunting to London, and the next year, 1726, while Pope was issuing his translation of 'The Odyssey,' he published a blank-verse poem of several hundred lines on 'Winter.' Its genuine though imperfect appreciation and description of Nature as she appears on the broad sweeps of the Scottish moors, combined with its novelty, gave it great success, and Thomson went on to write also of Summer, Spring and Autumn, publishing the whole work as 'The Seasons' in 1730. ”

“ Heaps pour'd on Heaps, and yet they slip'd along
In silent Ease: as when beneath the Beam
Of Summer-Moons, the distant Woods among,
Or by some Flood all silver'd with the Gleam,
The soft-embodied Fays through airy Portal stream.
XXI.
By the smooth Demon so it order'd was,
And here his baneful Bounty first began:
Though some there were who would not further pass,
And his alluring Baits suspected han.
The Wise distrust the too fair-spoken Man.
Yet through the Gate they cast a wishful Eye:
Not to move on, perdie, is all they can ”

“ The bare enumeration of these several occasions of introducing draughts of human life and manners, will be sufficient to call to mind the admirable use which Thomson throughout his whole poem has made of them. He, in fact, never appears more truly inspired with his subject, than when giving birth to those sentiments of tenderness and beneficence, which seem to have occupied his whole heart. An universal benevolence, extending to every part of the animal creation, manifests itself in almost every scene he draws ”

“ He thinks in a peculiar train, and he thinks always as a man of genius; he looks round on Nature and on Life with the eye which Nature bestows only on a poet; the eye that distinguishes, in every thing presented to its view, whatever there is on which imagination can delight to be detained, and with a mind that at once comprehends the vast, and attends to the minute. The reader of the "Seasons" wonders that he never saw before what Thomson shews him, and that he never yet has felt what Thomson impresses. ”

“ In Germany, the authority of wise men is supreme. Their words, when they speak, are heard with reverence and attention. In America, wisdom is not wisdom till the common man has examined it and pronounced it to be such. The conclusions of the scholar are revised by the daily newspaper. The readers of these papers care little for messages from Utopia.
No college opened its doors to Thomson, and he saw with dismay that the life before him was one of discomfort and insignificance, his ideals having no exchangeable value in luxuries or comforts. ”

“ He learnt there some Latin, but with, difficulty, and the earliest recorded utterance of the future poet was " Confound the building of Babel." He began very soon to write verses, and we are told that every January he destroyed almost all the productions of the preceding year. And this was just as well, for the little that has escaped the fire contains no promise of his future powers. In 1715 he went to the university of Edinburgh. ”

“ CHAPTER XVI LORD KELVIN IN HIS CLASS-ROOM AND LABORATORY
It is impossible to convey to those who never studied at Glasgow any clear conception of Thomson as he appeared to students whom he met daily during the session. ”

“ First of all, a "fine fat fellow" from Scotland, who had derived inspiration from the breezes of the Tweed and the Jed, wrote that noble strain, "The Seasons," with its daguerreotypic painting of nature, and its generous, healthy enthusiasm, and the "Castle of Indolence," with its exquisite sketches of character and scenery, and its rich reproduction of an antique style of poetry. Thomson's voice did not, indeed, produce a revolution in taste, but it obtained an audience for a species of writing entirely different from what then prevailed. ”

“ His Excursion, an imitation of Thomson, was pub. in 1728. At the request of the Prince of Wales, whose sec. he had become, he wrote with Thomson a masque, Alfred (1740) , in which Rule Britannia first appeared, which, although he claimed the authorship, is now generally attributed to Thomson. He also wrote a Life of Bacon; and on Bolingbroke bequeathing to him his manuscripts and library, he pub. an ed. of his works (1754) . On the accession of George III., M. became a zealous supporter of Lord Bute, and was rewarded with a sinecure. ”

“ With a wild curse, Thomson sprang off the ledge. A fearfully quiet moment followed. Judah did not move. There came a crashing of underbrush, a sound of rolling rocks and gravel, a plash of water—silence.
A superb, masterful smile played over the ebon visage of the now solitary figure upon the mountainside. In his face shone a glitter of the untamable torrid ferocity of his tribe not pleasing to see. The first act in his bold and sagacious plans was successful; once free, it only remained for him to carry them out with the same inexorable energy. ”