Thomson

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Thomson, a man who had, by large promises, and free censures of the common practice of physick, forced himself up into sudden reputation. Thomson declared his distemper to be a dropsy, and evacuated part of the water by tincture of jalap; but confessed that his belly did not subside. Thomson had many enemies, and Pope was persuaded to dismiss him.
While he was yet capable of amusement and conversation, as he was one day sitting in the air with lord Bolingbroke and lord Marchmont, he saw his favourite Martha Blount at the bottom of the terrace, and asked lord Bolingbroke to go and hand her up. ”

“ 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. ”

“ ON THOMSON AND COWPER Thomson, the kind-hearted Thomson, was the most indolent of mortals and of poets. But he was also one of the best both of mortals and of poets. Dr. Johnson makes it his praise that he wrote ‘no line which dying he would wish to blot.’ Perhaps a better proof of his honest simplicity, and inoffensive goodness of disposition, would be that he wrote no line which any other person living would wish that he should blot. ”

“ Thomson’s blank verse is not harsh, or utterly untuneable; but it is heavy and monotonous; it seems always labouring up-hill. The selections which have been made from his works in Enfield’s Speaker, and other books of extracts, do not convey the most favourable idea of his genius or taste ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Just at this moment Judah came up and touched his hat respectfully to the group of men.
“Don’t shoot him yet, sir; I can tame that horse and win your bet for you,” he said to Thomson.
It would be difficult to describe the effect produced on the group by those few cool, daring words—a breathless pause, each looking at the other in incredulous amazement; then a murmur of admiration for the speaker went from man to man, Thomson himself, who had recoiled from the boy, staring in open-eyed wonder at his cool assertion.
“You go near the beast! What do you know about breaking hosses? ”

“ 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. ”

“ Was more sufficient for itself than thou.
Thomson.
For the strong spirit will at times awake,
Piercing the mists that wrap her clay abode;
And, born of thee, she may not always take
Earth’s accents for the oracles of God;
And ev’n in this—O dust, whose mask is power!
Reed, that wouldst be a scourge thy little hour!
Spark, whereon yet the mighty hath not trod,
And therefore thou destroyest,—where were flown
Our hope, if man were left to man’s decrees alone.
Mrs. Hemans.
O put away thy pride,
Or be ashamed of power,
That cannot turn aside
The breeze that waves a flower. ”

“ My name is Richard Thomson."
"A very excellent name," Leonard murmured.
"A more than excellent cigarette," I echoed.
"You are the gentleman who sat in the three-shilling seats," Rose remarked, looking at him curiously.
Mr. Richard Thomson bowed.
"I was there last night and the night before," he acknowledged. "On each occasion I found with regret that I was alone."
No one likes to be reminded of failure. I answered a little hastily.
"You have established your position, sir, as a patron of our ill-omened enterprise. May I ask to what we are indebted for the honour of this visit?" ”

“ Bradlaugh, the man of action and enterprise, ever striving for practical ends, yet loving a contest, whether physical or mental, as much for its own sake as for any advantage it might bring him: of firm and inflexible determination, who, when he has once resolved to attain an object, never rests until that object is achieved. Thomson, the student, the idealist and poet, or say the dreamer, who shrank with almost morbid dislike from the noise and tumult of publicity, and who, like Hamlet, was fitted rather for contemplation than for action. ”

“ So charming Thomson wrote from his lodgings at a milliner's in Bond-street, whence he seldom rose early enough to see the sun do more than glisten on the opposing windows of the street: but genius, like truth, cannot be kept down. So he wrote, and so they painted! Ut pictura poesis.
The music is not in a state so capital as we left it in the north of Italy; we regret Nardini of Florence, Alessandri of Venice, and Ronzi of Milan; and who that has heard Signior Marchesi sing, could ever hear a successor (for rival he has none) , without feeling total indifference to all their best endeavours? ”

“ 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. ”

“ CHAPTER XX. THE ROOTS OF THE HILLS. In the poems of James Thomson, we find two hymns to the God of Creation—one in blank verse, the other in stanzas. They are of the kind which from him we should look for. The one in blank verse, which is as an epilogue to his great poem, The Seasons, I prefer.
We owe much to Thomson. Born (in Scotland) in the year 1700, he is the leading priest in a solemn procession to find God—not in the laws by which he has ordered his creation, but in the beauty which is the outcome of those laws. I do not say there is much of the relation of man to nature in his writing ”

“ Thomson had thus the merit of representing a growing sentiment—and yet he has not quite solved the problem. His philosophy is not quite fused with his observation. To make 'Nature' really interesting you must have a touch of Wordsworthian pantheism and of Shelley's 'pathetic fallacy.' Thomson's facts and his commentary lie in separate compartments. To him, apparently, the philosophy is more important than the simple description. His masterpiece was to be the didactic and now forgotten poem on Liberty. It gives an interesting application ”

“ Thomson, however, had seen quite enough, when in England, to convince him, that, meanly as they were esteemed by his countryfolks, they might be rendered the staple of a profitable trade; and, removing to the vicinity of Cromarty, for the facilities it afforded in trading to the capital, he launched boldly into the speculation. He erected his two wears with his own hands; built himself a cottage of sods on the gorge of a little ravine, sprinkled over with bushes of alder and hazel; entered into correspondence with a London merchant, whom he engaged as his agent ”

“ Thomson said no more for the moment, but hit his ball hard and straight along the ground.
"It's perfectly absurd," he said with a shrug; "I shan't be able to give you a game at all. Well, if you don't mind playing a sick man——"
"Not if you don't mind being one," I replied, and drove a ball which also went along the ground, but not so far as my opponent's. "There! I'm about the only man in England who can do that when he's quite well." ”

“ 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. ”

“ The greater portion of the stock of Thomson's Works was, as is well known, destroyed by fire, so that this collection of his writings in verse is timely and welcome. Thomson's reputation (as his editor observes) is of the kind whose steady, if slow, growth makes for permanent endurance. ”

“ About 1812 the family removed to London, and young Thomson was placed at a boarding-school near Barnet. Having contracted a bronchial affection, he was sent to his uncle's house in Ayrshire, and in October 1813 he entered the university of Glasgow as ‘Thomas Thomson,’ having dropped the ‘Napier’ owing to a disagreement with the Napier family. Thomson was a distinguished student. In 1818 he published a volume, ‘The Immortality of the Soul, and other Poems,’ his only publication in verse. ”

“ Mrs. Thomson came out of the dining-room and helped her husband to take off his coat.
"You're home, Papa," she said, "and in nice time, too. Now we'll all get our tea comfortable in the parlour before we change our clothes. (Jessie tell Annie Papa's in.) Your things are all laid out on the bed, John, and I've put your gold studs in a dress shirt—but whit's that you're carrying, John?"
John Thomson regarded his parcel rather shame-facedly. "It's a pine-apple for your party, Mamma. I was lookin' in a fruit-shop when I was waitin' for ma car and I just took a notion to get it. ”