JAMES THOMSON.

THE parish of Ednam, in Roxburghshire, has the honor of having given birth to the poet of the Seasons. He was the son of the Rev. Thomas Thomson, minister of that parish, and was born on the 11th of September, 1700. His mother's name was Beatrix Trotter, the co-heiress of a small estate, called Widhope. Young James is said to have very soon given marks of extraordinary genius; and it is certain, that from his infancy, he attracted more of the notice of the friends and visitors of his father, than is usual with boys at so early an age. Among these, Mr. Riccarton, a neighbouring clergyman, a man of penetration, and somewhat of a poet, took particular interest in his welfare; and contributed greatly, both by his lessons and his benefactions of books, to expand those seeds of genius which he thought he discerned in the mind of his young favorite. After the usual course of school education at the neighbouring school of Jedburgh, Thomson was sent to Edinburgh, with a view of being reared to his father's. profession.

Thomson was even now a writer of verses; but according to the opinion of many under whose eyes they fell, of verses in which there was little poetry, and little promise of any. He half thought so himself; and every new-year's day was wont to commit

all the pieces which he had written, during the preceding twelve months, to the flames, in their due order, crowning the solemnity with a copy of verses, in which were humorously recited the several grounds of their condemnation. His chief encourager was still the worthy Mr. Riccarton, who urged the young poet to go on writing and burning, in the confidence that from the ashes of sterility might yet spring a harvest of rich vegetation. He had also the honor of being noticed and countenanced in his poetical perseverance by Sir William Bennet, a gentleman of some eminence among the amateur literati of the early part of the eighteenth century, who frequently invited Thomson to pass his periods of vacation at his country seat; a kindness which Thomson always remembered with peculiar pleasure.

In the second year of his attendance at the university, his father died. He left a numerous family, not well provided for, to the care of their mother; but with the aid of some money, raised on her patrimonial property, she was shortly after enabled to remove with her children to Edinburgh, where, by her frugal management, she contrived to support them in a respectable manner, while James, her favorite son, pursued his studies at college.

When he had completed the requisite preparatory course of humanity and philosophy, Thomson, agreeably to his original destination to the church, entered himself of the Divinity Hall. He had not, however, continued his attendance here more than a year, when a circumstance occurred which, awakening all his early prepossessions, gave a complete change to his views in life. Mr. Hamilton, the professor of

divinity, happened to prescribe, for the subject of an exercise, a psalm, in which the glory and power of God are celebrated. Of this psalm, Thomson gave a paraphrase in a style so extremely poetical, that the professor, while he praised it highly, was pleased to remark, that, if the author thought of being useful in the ministry, he must keep a stricter rein upon his imagination, and express himself in language more suited to ordinary understandings. Thomson, not illpleased to be reproved for an excellence to which the natural bias of his mind had led him, and for which it had been the earliest object of his ambition to be distinguished, was stirred by this admonition to reflect more seriously than he had yet done on his qualifications for the church; and feeling, perhaps willingly, conscious, that his call was not to the sacred function, he resolved, at once, to abandon it, and to throw himself on the many other chances which the world affords to every new man of ordinary capacity, to rise to fame and fortune.

With a pocket scantily supplied with money, but amply filled with certificates and letters of recommendation, Thomson set off for London. It is said,* that a day or two after his arrival his budget of credentials was stolen from him, as he was passing along the street with the gaping curiosity of a new-comer. The fact may have been so, and the loss he suffered not very great. He appears, with or without them, to have found his way to Mr. Mallet, by whom he was

* Johnson.

introduced to the sons of the Duke of Montrose; to Mr. Forbes, afterwards Lord President of the Court of Session; to Mr. Aikman, the painter; and through Mr. Aikman, after a short time, to the greatest man in point of influence, at that time, in England, Sir Robert Walpole; but that Thomson obtained any thing but good wishes from any of these introductions, has never appeared. There is great truth in what Dr. Johnson says, that London is a place "where merit may soon become conspicuous, and will find friends as soon as it becomes reputable to befriend it;" or, in other words, where merit, when it has made its own way, but not till then, will find many ambitious enough to be thought among the number of its patrons. London is nothing, and to the honour of Scotsmen be it said, never to them was any thing more. To be recommended as 66 a young person of merit," or, in the more cant phrase, as "a very deserving young man," has rarely been of any other use, than to procure the individual the pain of a supercilious, perhaps expensive, acquaintance; and, generally speaking, it is not till a young Scotsman has got rid of all his letters of recommendation,whether by losing or delivering them is matter of indifference, not till he has made himself of value by the spontaneous and active exertion of his abilities in some way or other, that he has any chance of rising above obscurity and misery. Nor is it any reproach to England, or to the Scotsmen resident in England, that such should be the case. It is but right, that a man should give severe proof of superior talent, before he is encouraged to eat the bread of

strangers. The adage, that no man is a prophet in his own country, was never meant to be a passport from it, to all the fools in it.*

Johnson, in his life of Thomson, says, that "his first want was a pair of shoes," and that "for the support of all his necessities, his whole fund was his Winter." This statement must have proceeded from very erroneous information, and for the credit of the "Lives of the English Poets" ought to be expunged. His "Winter" was not written till after he was in London some time; and so far from being in want of a pair of shoes, he appears to have wanted nothing

* Some member of the society has made on this passage the following note: "Considerable deductions must surely be made from these statements. While the satire of Ben Jonson and the invectives of Junius are remembered, it will be difficult to make the world believe, that Scotsmen have never been favorites at St. James's, except for merit's sake. And, on the other hand, it ought not to be forgotten, that by the removal of the court from Edinburgh to London, the latter became a common field for honest ambition to Scotsmen as well as Englishmen, and where the one had as little reason to be regarded as "strangers" as the other."

The writer of the memoir, it may be observed, speaks of the man who has no other recommendation than his personal merit, and no family interest to secure his advancement, in spite of the want of it. Of such individuals, he has probably said no more than the truth.

A. S.