JAMES THOMSON.

JAMES THOMSON was born at Ednam, in the county of Roxburgh, in 1700 — the year of Dryden's death. He studied at the University of Edinburgh in a somewhat desultory fashion, and in 1725 went to seek his fortune in London. Thanks to influential friends and to good letters of introduction, Thomson, though sometimes pressed for money, seems to have escaped the starveling period incident to poets. In 1726 he published the Winter. Sir Spencer Compton, Speaker of the House of Commons, to whom it was dedicated, gave Thomson twenty guineas; the friendly exertions of Aaron Hill, once manager of Drury Lane Theatre, and a favorable notice by Spence in his Essay on the Odyssey, assisted to bring Thomson's work prominently before the public. The popularity which he then attained he has never lost; his occasional Latinisms, his ponderosities and his mannerisms are easily forgotten in the delight we feel in his keen observation of Nature, in his sympathy with all that is charming in her sights and sounds, in his power of putting together a landscape and bringing it vividly before us, and in the melodious roll of his easy blank verse. The Winter was published when Pope was at the height of his fame; a greater contrast than that between him and Thomson it would be hard to imagine, or a more striking proof of the intellectual versatility of an age that could appreciate them both. In his Summer, Spring and Autumn, Thomson never quite reached the level he attained in the Winter; his Ode on Liberty and his plays are distressing performances. In the first canto of the Castle of Indolence (1746), written with a sincere love of the subject, he is at his best again; its dreamy gorgeousness reminds us of Spenser and foreshadows Keats.

Personally, Thomson was a good-natured, lazy creature, of indifferent morals, with a fondness for a lord that would have entitled him to the distinction of a long chapter in Thackeray's Book of Snobs. Before his death (1748) he had had the pleasure of seeing his character happily idealized in this flattering stanza by his friend, Lord Lyttelton:

A bard here dwelt more fat than bard beseems;
Who, void of envy, guile, and lust of gain,
On virtue still, and nature's pleasing themes,
Pour'd forth his unpremeditated strain;
The world forsaking with a calm disdain,
Here laugh'd he careless in his easy seat;

Here quaff'd, encircled with the joyous train,
Oft moralizing sage: his ditty sweet

He loathed much to write, ne cared to repeat.

Castle of Indolence, I. 6$.

BIBLIOGRAPHY.

LIFE AND TIMES. - A conscientious and thoroughly dull Life of Thomson by Sir Harris Nicholas will be found prefixed to Little, Brown & Co.'s edition of Thomson (Boston, 1865). For further references, see Bibliography on Pope. TEXT. · Child's, in the edition above referred to.

CRITICISM. - Johnson, in his Lives of the Poets, is almost the earliest critic of Thomson, and there have been few better.

Hazlitt, in his Thomson and Cowper (Lectures on the English Poets), has some acute remarks put in his own dogmatic way.

Christopher North, in A Few Words on Thomson, lets his sympathy run into enthusiasm, sometimes into over-praise, of a fellow-countryman. Incidentally he shows up the absurdity of Wordsworth's criticism on Thomson. North's comment on the opening of Thomson's Spring is, 'Never had a poem a more delightful beginning.' This is in amusing contrast with Hazlitt, who calls the same opening 'flimsy, round-about, unmeaning.'

Saintsbury, in the second volume of Ward's English Poets, has the best short criticism of Thomson from a modern point of view.

WINTER.

1-53. Capricorn. The sun enters the sign of Capricorn (Goat's Horn) on the 21st of December. The sign immediately preceding Capricorn is Sagittarius or the Archer, often represented on celestial maps by a Centaur with bow and arrow. Following Capricorn comes Aquarius, or the Water-Bearer, which the sun enters about the 21st of January. Consult your dictionary under the word 'Zodiac.' the inverted year; the time of year in which there seems to be neither growth nor life in Nature, but rather decay and death. long, dark night. In the latitude of Thomson's birth-place (about 55° 30′), on December 21st, the sun sets at 3.29 P.M., and on December 22d rises at 8.31 A.M.; i.e., the night is seventeen hours long. broad. What makes the sun look broad'? Verify, from your own observation, the points in this description of the winter sun. 54-71. crop the wholesome root. This is a decided anticlimax, weakening instead of strengthening our impression of the severity of winter. Genius of the coming storm. Compare Il Penseroso Fancy; thus characterized by Milton, in

154 and Lycidas 183.

the Par. Lost, v. 103-105.

of all external things

Which the five watchful senses represent,

She forms imaginations, aery shapes.

For 'Imagination' see the Midsummer Night's Dream, v. 1. 14-17:

as imagination bodies forth

The form of things unknown, the poet's pen

Turns them to shapes and gives to airy nothing

A local habitation and a name.

Lowell gives an admirable concrete illustration of the difference between Fancy and Imagination when he says that Ariel is a creation of the Fancy and Prospero of the Imagination.

72-105. The vigor of this description of the rain-storm is somewhat impaired by the poet's occasional lapses into stilted phraseology. What do you think, for instance, of household feathery people' (87)? Can you imagine Chaucer or Milton writing this? Compare the latter's description of country sights and sounds in L'Allegro, 49–68. There you see what Swift meant when he said that a good style consists in proper words in proper places. Perhaps you can find other places in these lines (72-105) where you can better the phraseology?

223-275. With this description of the snow-storm compare the beautiful opening of Whittier's Snow-Bound. Until that was written, there was nothing better on the subject than these lines of Thomson's. Both the Scotchman and the New Englander are able to interest us because their treatment is based upon Vision - that is, upon clear view and close observation. But Thomson is far inferior to Whittier in Imagination and in Human Sympathy. There is nothing in the Winter that can compare with Snow-Bound 41-65 and 100-115. the laborer ox demands The fruit of all his

toils (239-241). This line, which has been severely criticised (why?), is almost paralleled by Whittier's

The oxen lashed their tails and hooked,

And mild reproach of hunger looked.

In lines 261-263 the poet attributes to the bleating kind' an emotion of his own which they are incapable of feeling; moreover, were they in ‘despair' (= utter lack of hope or expectation) they would not 'dig,' but would lie down and die. You will find this passage (223-275) furnishes an excellent Study in Epithet.

276-321. In this incident of the cottager lost in the snow we have a bit of genuine pathos, - a recollection, perhaps, of some tale that Thomson had heard when a boy among the Roxburgh hills. Deftly as the touches are laid on, we can hardly, with Christopher North, attribute sublimity (!) to the poet who introduced them, nor can we declare with that enthusiastic fellow-Scot that in this description not a word could be altered for the better. Such laudation argues a provincialism that British critics have been fond of pointing to

in the United States.

Disastered. Look up the etymology of this word. shag= to roughen. This word is not uncommon in Milton and Spenser. In lines 297-302 the syntax is muddy, but you can clarify it by a careful study of the punctuation here given. 424-497. This enumeration of Greek Worthies is an evident imitation of Il Penseroso, 85-120. There is always danger for a man of talent when he tries to imitate a man of genius; Thomson's thought seems diffuse and his diction pedantic when put beside Milton's. His characterizations read like articles from the Classical Dictionary, with which they may profitably be compared. Line 456 refers to Leonidas; the haughty rival of 464 is Themistocles. The Theban pair = Epaminondas and Pelopidas. By comparing this passage (424-497) with the one immediately preceding (276– 321) you will perceive the difference between Poetry and Versified History. Thomson's sense of humor developed late in life or he might have perceived it himself.

Steamed

691-759. With this description of Frost, compare that in Cowper's Winter Morning Walk, 104-168. ethereal nitre frost. Nitre crystallizes in six-sided prisms. In the East Indies it is found on the surface of the ground. Compare lines 717-720. (721). We must not read into this word our modern and unpoetic notions of steam as associated with intense heat and whirling engines. 'To steam' in Spenser and Thomson means only to rise in vapor.' But it must be confessed that in any correct sense 'steamed' goes badly with icy gale (723). the distant waterfall Swells in the breeze (735-6). This admirable poetic touch is but one of many in this description that it will repay you to study and verify, remembering that Poetry describes things as they seem, Science as they are.

760-777. Batavia (Holland), so called from the Batavi, a Keltic tribe who inhabited the regions around the mouth of the Rhine in the time of Cæsar.

For a

988-1023. This description of the Thaw is quite as good as that of the Frost, omitting Leviathan and his unwieldy train, whose clumsy gambols add nothing to the horror of the scene. really poetical description of the Leviathan, see Job xli. 18–34. 1024-1046. The transition is awkward from the description of the Thaw to the Concluding Moral. Following the effects of the Thaw we should expect some reflections upon the newly awakened life of the Spring, such, for instance, as are introduced in 1041 et sqq.; instead of this we are suddenly jerked back to Mid-Winter. 'Tis done! What is done? The Thaw? 'No,' says the poet; 'not the thaw, but the work of dread Winter.' Then, in 1041, we are shot

go.

back into Spring again. The force of dislocation could no further Disregarding the defective arrangement, we must confess that the portion of the conclusion here given contains some excellent lines; among these the best seems to be,

And reigns tremendous o'er the conquered year.

This is, perhaps, as fine a line as Thomson ever wrote, and is one we may be glad to remember him by. Peace be to his ashes! He has shown us that in that 18th Century, so much abused for its Materialism, there lived at least one poet who was near to Nature's heart.