Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 9.djvu/295

Rh are nourished; and had he seen, not starveling threadbare authors, but high-born dames and mighty earls, haggling about the price of their productions, and stickling upon a few shillings more or less per sheet, against the calculating and demurring publisher; he would have learned, that even poetry has its price, and that a Milton himself might exact it to the last doit, without impinging upon his dignity.

Of these matchless contributions which Burns transmitted to Thomson, it is enough to state, that during the course of four short years, they amounted to more than 120. He also fully empowered Mr. Thomson to make use of all the songs he had written for Johnson's "Scots Musical Museum." But during the lifetime of Burns, only six of his productions appeared in Thomson's collection. On the death of the poet, Mr. Thomson, had he been avaricious, might have turned the rich contributions which he had on hand to his own account, by publishing them as a separate work; for they had been unreservedly given to him, and were his own unquestionable property. But on learning that the poetical works of his friend were about to be republished in behalf of the poet's family, he transmitted the whole of these contributions to Dr. Currie, as well as the correspondence, by which the value of the publication was immeasurably enhanced, and ample profits realized for the bereaved survivors. Little, indeed, did Burns imagine, that such a controversy would ever have been raised; and still less would he have thanked the ill-advised zeal of those who endeavoured to heighten the public sympathy in behalf of his memory, by traducing the character of a man whom he had so highly and justly esteemed.

After the completion of his great national work, little remains in the life of George Thomson that is of public interest. He left the Trustees' office in 1838, after a long course of usefulness in that department; and on the September of that year he went to London, where he took up his residence, and after- wards to Brighton. In June, 1845, he returned to Edinburgh, and three years afterwards went again to the British metropolis; but after little more than a year of residence there, he came back at the close of 1849 to the city in which all his early affections were enshrined. He was now so old that it seemed as if the day of his death could not be distant; and as he trode the streets of Edinburgh, now one of the oldest of its inhabitants, he must have felt that this was no longer the world in which he had once lived. But still his cheerfulness was unbroken, and his enjoyment of happiness undiminished, and his letters of this period, written in the regular formal text-like hand of our great grandfathers, are as juvenile and buoyant as his productions of a former century. In this way the "time-honoured" lived till the 16th of February, 1853, when he was gathered to his fathers after a few days' illness, and with a gentle departure, in which he suffered little pain, and enjoyed the full possession of all his faculties to the last. Independently of his invaluable services to Scottish Song, his name will go down to posterity from being associated with that of Burns, whose memory ages will continue to cherish.

THOMSON, .—The title of the Scottish Claude Lorrain which this reverend candidate for distinction acquired, at once announces the walk in which he excelled, and the progress he attained in it. He was born in Dailly, Ayrshire, on the 1st of September, 1778, and was the fourth and youngest son of the Rev. Thomas Thomson, minister of the parish of Dailly. As he was destined by his father at an early age for the ministry, John's studies in boyhood were directed with a reference to this sacred calling; but already, he