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Mr. JAMES THOMSON.
This celebrated poet, from whom his country has derived the most distinguished honour, was son of the revd. Mr. Thomson, a minister of the church of Scotland, in the Presbytery of Jedburgh.
He was born in the place where his father was minister, about the beginning of the present century, and received the rudiments of his education at a private country school. Mr. Thomson, in the early part of his life, so far from appearing to possess a sprightly genius, was considered by his school master, and those which directed his education, as being really without a common share of parts.
While he was improving himself in the Latin and Greek tongues at this country school, he often visited a minister, whose charge lay in the same presbytery with his father's, the revd. Mr. Rickerton, a man of such amazing powers, that many persons of genius, as well as Mr. Thomson, who conversed with him, have been astonished, that such great merit should be buried in an obscure part of the country, where he had no opportunity to display himself, and, except upon periodical meetings of the ministers, seldom an opportunity of conversing with men of learning.
Though Mr. Thomson's schoolmaster could not discover that he was endowed with a common portion of understanding, yet Mr. Rickerton was not so blind to his genius; he distinguished our author's early propension to poetry, and had once in his hands some of the first attempts Mr. Thomson ever made in that province.
It is not to be doubted but our young poet greatly improved while he continued to converse with Mr. Rickerton, who, as he was a philosophical man, inspired his mind with a love of the Sciences, nor were the revd. gentleman's endeavours in vain, for Mr. Thomson has shewn in his works how well he was acquainted with natural and moral philosophy, a circumstance which, perhaps, is owing to the early impressions he received from Mr. Rickerton.
Nature, which delights in diversifying her gifts, does not bestow upon every one a power of displaying the abilities she herself has granted to the best advantage. Though Mr. Rickerton could discover that Mr. Thomson, so far from being without parts, really possessed a very fine genius, yet he never could have imagined, as he often declared, that there existed in his mind such powers, as even by the best cultivation could have raised him to so high a degree of eminence amongst the poets.
When Mr. Rickerton first saw Mr. Thomson's Winter, which was in a Bookseller's shop at Edinburgh, he stood amazed, and after he had read the lines quoted below, he dropt the poem from his hand in the extasy of admiration. The lines are his induction to Winter, than which few poets ever rose to a more sublime height[1].
After spending the usual time at a country school in the acquisition of the dead languages, Mr. Thomson was removed to the university of Edinburgh, in order to finish his education, and be fitted for the ministry. Here, as at the country school, he made no great figure: his companions thought contemptuously of him, and the masters under whom he studied, had not a higher opinion of our poet's abilities, than their pupils. His course of attendance upon the classes of philosophy being finished, he was entered in the Divinity Hall, as one of the candidates for the ministry, where the students, before they are permitted to enter on their probation, must yield six years attendance.