Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 56.djvu/258

 was interpenetrated with the spirit and feeling of ‘The Seasons,’ and it is related in a pathetic passage how in the last ‘glimmerings of cheerfulness’ before his final collapse he walked in the moonlight in St. Neots churchyard and spoke earnestly of Thomson's ‘Seasons,’ and the circumstances under which they were probably written (July 1795).

From 1750 to 1850 Thomson was in England the poet, par excellence, not of the eclectic and literary few, but of the large and increasing cultivated middle class. ‘Thomson's “Seasons” looks best (I maintain it) a little torn and dog's-eared’ (, Detached Thoughts on Books and Reading). When Coleridge found a dog-eared copy of ‘The Seasons’ in an inn, and remarked ‘That is fame,’ Thomson's popularity seemed quite as assured as Milton's. Royal academicians quoted him to illustrate their landscapes, and Haydn made a grand oratorio of ‘The Seasons.’ As late as 1855 remarked that Thomson's popularity seemed ever on the increase. The date may be taken to mark the turning-point in his fame, for since about 1850 he has been unmistakably eclipsed on his own ground, in the favour of the class to whom he was dear, by Tennyson, while in Scotland the commemorative rites which were zealously performed in his honour at Ednam and Edinburgh between 1790 and 1820 (when an obelisk, in the erection of which Scott took a leading part, was erected at the poet's native place) have been supplanted by the cult of Burns. Burns's own ‘Address’ to the bard of Ednam, ‘Sweet poet of the year,’ was written for the Thomson celebration at Dryburgh on 22 Sept. 1791, at which the Earl of Buchan presided. Burns also wrote some fine extempore verses in dialect upon ‘Some Commemorations of Thomson’ (Life and Works, 1896, iii. 277, 387). In the Dunlop-Burns ‘Correspondence’ (1898, pp. 4, 297, 368) Mrs. Dunlop exhorts ‘the exciseman’ to ‘emulate the chaste pen of Thomson.’

In France ‘The Seasons’ proved no less ‘a revelation’ than in England (, Littérature du XVIIIme Siècle). Voltaire, in his amiable mood, spoke highly of its simplicity and the love of mankind which it exhibited. Montesquieu raised a sylvan monument to Thomson, whose poem contributed materially to the ‘rural delirium’ of Rousseau. Madame Roland repeated verses of it in prison, and Xavier de Maistre found an epigraph from it for his pathetic ‘Lépreux d'Aoste.’ Taine complained of its sentimental vapidities, but these are characteristic not so much of the original poet as of his French adapters St. Lambert and Madame Bontems, or his numerous sentimental imitators such as Bernis, Dorat, Delille, Roucher, Lemierre, and Léonard, who is called by St. Beuve ‘the diminutive of Thomson’ (cf., Origins of English Romantic Movement; , Cosmopolitisme Littéraire). Thomson's influence is also traceable in Spain, especially in the pastoral poetry of Melendez Valdés. Klopstock and Lessing praised it highly, while to Schlegel it seemed the prototype of all continental descriptive poetry.

Hazlitt and Coleridge, two very safe guides, regard Thomson as pre-eminently ‘the born poet.’ Dr. Johnson (to whom as an unorthodox Scot of liberal opinions Thomson was by no means dear) admitted that ‘he could not have viewed two candles burning but with a poetical eye.’ In this respect, in the possession of the true poetic temperament, he has been surpassed not even by Tennyson. Unfortunately, unlike his successor, he allowed the false taste of the day to intercept his utterance before it was complete. In addition to the poet's vision he had the poetic gift of observation at first hand, but in giving expression to these faculties he was content to employ the right phrase relatively to his time, and so the absolutely right eluded him. That a true poet should have been so content may be attributed in part to the sensitiveness of a provincial to the imputation of rudeness, in part to his kindly, sociable, and easy-going temperament, and the predominant influence of his much-esteemed ‘Mr. Pope.’ The result is that ‘The Seasons,’ which ‘gave the signal for a revolution destined to renew European literature,’ yet comes short in itself of being a perfect masterpiece.

Byron perversely held that ‘The Seasons’ would have been better in rhyme, though even then inferior to the ‘Castle of Indolence.’ The majestic use of blank verse by a contemporary of Pope is certainly one of Thomson's chief claims to respect. He was avowedly influenced to some extent in this by John Philips [q. v.], who had chosen the metre for ‘Cyder’ in 1706, and possibly also by the reflection that the couplet had been brought to the utmost polish of which it was susceptible by Pope. Tennyson's earliest essays in poetry were made in ‘Thomsonian blank verse.’ Though a descriptive poet, Thomson is not adequately represented by selections, few long poems being so well sustained, or having their beauties so well diffused as ‘The Seasons.’ Among the turns of speech to which that poem has given currency may be mentioned ‘to look unutterable