JAMES THOMSON.

(1700-1748.

WHEN Pope died he left a school of poetry but no successor able to wield the mighty wand which he laid down. The nearest approach to it was made by Samuel Johnson in his two poems, "London" and "The Vanity of Human Wishes." The first was published in 1738 and the other in 1748, and they have the merit of being the best poems in Pope's manner published up to that time. But it was a dark day for poets, and particularly for those who were imitators of Pope, for he had exhausted all the resources of the heroic couplet, and the world was now ready to listen to some other form of song, though not yet ready to pay for it.

The first poet to break away from the rigid formula in which English poesy then seemed to be irrevocably locked was James Thomson, who sought freedom in the earlier forms of Milton and Spenser. He returned to nature and by appealing to the universal consciousness found a

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response in the hearts of the multitude. quote the following stanzas from "The Castle of Indolence," a poem not so much read as it once was, but still worthy of every reader's attention :

A pleasing land of drowsyhed it was,

Of dreams that wave before the half-shut eye;
And of gay castles in the clouds that pass,

Forever flushing round a summer sky;
There eke the soft delights, that witchingly
Instil a wanton sweetness through the breast,
And the calm pleasures always hovered nigh;
But whate'er smack'd of noyance, or unrest,
Was far, far off expell'd from this delicious rest.

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
Poured forth his unpremeditated strain ;
The world forsaking with a calm disdain.
Here laughed he careless in his easy seat;
Here quaff'd, encircled with the joyous train
Of moralizing sage; his ditty sweet

He loathed much to write, ne, cared to repeat.

I care not, Fortune, what you me deny,

You can not rob me of free nature's grace;

You can not shut the windows of the sky,

Through which Aurora shows her brightening face;

You can not bar my constant feet to trace

The woods and lawns, by living stream, at eve;
Let health my nerves and finer fibers brace,

And I their toys to the great children leave ;
Of fancy, reason, virtue, naught can me bereave.

The poem is in the Spenserian stanza and is full of an opulent luxury and dreamy repose, for the "Valley of Indolence" is in the land of the lotus eaters where poets love to dwell.

Byron greatly admired this poem and placed it above "The Seasons," and it was from this he learned to use the Spenserian stanza in his own poetry.

There is no English poet whose actual rank is so little disputed as that of James Thomson. No one has ever dreamed of placing him in the first flight of poets. He has no such range as Dryden or Pope, Shelley or Byron, Keats or Tennyson, but he has always been popular. It is safe to say that Thomson's volume forms a part of every household library, the one book of poetry that everybody reads. It seems to have been the first book of poetry known to Tennyson, who toward the close of his life wrote to his son: "According to the best of my recollection, when I was about eight years old, I covered two sides of a slate with Thomsonian blank verse in praise of flowers for my brother Charles, who was a year older than I was, Thomson being the only poet I knew."

James Thomson was born near Kelso, in Scotland, Sept. 11, 1700. He was the son of a clergyman, and was himself destined for the same career, but his poetic instinct led him to the path of letters. In Thomson's day it was not a particularly attractive path. The day of patrons was disappearing and the day of the public had not yet arrived. A poet had to depend upon a patron or starve. Johnson and Savage starved. Thomson was fortunate enough to find patrons, and by the help of a public sinecure was enabled to live.

In 1725 he went to London with a poem in his pocket. It was the "Winter" of "The Seasons." At first he suffered a good deal of privation, but after a time he prospered better through the help of a few persons of rank, to whom he commended himself by dedications and flattering letters. But for some years his living was somewhat precarious. The poem of "Winter appeared in 1726, and against the natural order proved to be the harbinger of "The Seasons." It brought him fame and but little else. Nevertheless, it was widely read and obtained for the struggling poet the acquaintance of Pope and other celebrities of the day. The next year "Summer was written and published; in 1728 part of "Spring" followed, and in 1730 the

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entire poem was completed by the addition of the "Autumn." Meantime he had written other poems and some plays, which were acted at Drury Lane, but met with little success. Last of all, in 1746 he published "The Castle of Indolence,” which he had been at work on for many years, having bestowed on it an amount of labor that he gave to no other of his works. His death followed in 1748. A monument was erected to his memory in Westminster Abbey in 1762.

In one of his outdoor rhapsodies Christopher North says: "Thomson poured his genius over a subject of universal interest and The Seasons from that hour to this-then, now and forever— have been, are and will be loved and admired by all the world. All over Scotland 'The Seasons' is a household book. It lies in many thousand cottages." Coleridge once saw a copy of the poem torn and dog's-eared on the window seat of an alehouse and exclaimed: "This is fame!” There is probably no English poet whose merits are so little disputed as Thomson and he probably has hundreds of readers where Milton has This is not saying that he is a greater poet than Milton, for he does not stand even in the second rank of poets, but his theme is one that appeals to the universal consciousness. All men

one.