CHRONOLOGY TO ELUCIDATE THE

LIFE OF THOMSON.

1692. In July, Mr. Thomas Thomson, son of a gardener in the employment of Mr. Edmonston of Ednam, is appointed-being then

about twenty-five years of age-minister of the parish of Ednam, in the north-east of Roxburghshire.

1693. In October, marries Beatrix, one of the daughters of Mr. Alexander Trotter of Widehope, in the parish of Morebattle, Roxburghshire.

1700. Their fourth child, who was also their third son, JAMES, born (it is believed) on the 7th, baptized on the 15th September. In the November following, the Rev. Thomas Thomson inducted into the parish of Southdean, in the south of Roxburghshire, his son James being then just two months old. [This year Dryden died.]

1712. Young Thomson in attendance at a Grammar School kept in the aisle of Jedburgh Abbey, some eight miles or so distant from his home at Southdean. His acquaintance with Mr. Robert Riccaltoun, farmer at Earlshaugh, begins about this time. First attempts at poetizing a year or two later.

1715. Towards the end of the year Thomson becomes a student at Edinburgh University. Still writing verse-blank, and heroic couplets, on the model of Dryden.

1716. Unexpected death of his father, on 9th February. Home transferred to Edinburgh some time after.

1720. Now a student of Divinity. Continues to write verse, chiefly on rural subjects contributed to The Edinburgh Miscellany. 1724. Still at college. Adverse criticism, by the Professor of Divinity,

of one of his college exercises. The turning-point and middle of his life. [This year Allan Ramsay published his Evergreen, and his Tea-Table Miscellany.]

20

CHRONOLOGY TO ILLUSTRATE THE

1725. In March Thomson embarks at Leith for London, not again to see Scotland. In May, death of his mother. In July, tutor to Lord Binning's son, at Barnet, near London. Composition of Winter. [The Gentle Shepherd in complete form was published this year.]

1726. In March, publication of Winter. Thomson acting as tutor in an academy in London. Acquaintance with Aaron Hill.

1727. Poem To the Memory of Sir Isaac Newton.

Summer published.

Wrote Britannia, A Poem. Relying on literature for his

support.

1728. Publication of Spring. [Goldsmith born.]

1729. In January, Britannia published. A poem To the Memory of Congreve also published, anonymously, but undoubtedly Thomson's.

1730. In February, Sophonisba produced at Drury Lane.

Publication

of The Seasons (including Autumn and The Hymn for the first time). Appointed travelling tutor to Charles Richard Talbot, eldest son of the Solicitor-General, with whom he visits France and Italy.

1731. Correspondence with Dodington.

projected poem on Liberty.

Collecting material for his Returns from the Continent at

the close of the year. [Birth of Cowper.]

1733. In September, death of Mr. C. R. Talbot. In November, Thomson appointed Secretary of Briefs in the Court of Chancery.

1734. In December, publication of Liberty, Part First.

1735. Liberty, Parts Second and Third. Death of a brother in September.

1736. Liberty, Parts Fourth and Fifth. In May, Thomson settles in a garden-house in Kew-foot Lane, Richmond. Sends assistance to his sisters in Edinburgh.

1737. In June, poem to The Memory of Lord Chancellor Talbot. Loss of Secretaryship. Acquaintance with George (afterwards Lord) Lyttelton. Pension of £100 a year from the Prince of Wales, about this time. [Shenstone's The Schoolmistress appeared this year; in its complete form in 1742.]

1738. Agamemnon at Drury Lane, in April. A new edition of The Seasons published.

1739. Tragedy of Edward and Eleanora suppressed on account of its political allusions.

1740. Preface to Milton's Areopagitica. Conjointly with Malloch, The Masque of Alfred-performed 1st August, in Clifden gardens, before the Prince of Wales-containing the lyric, 'Rule, Britannia,' by Thomson.

1743. In August, visits the Lytteltons at Hagley, in Worcestershire. 1744. Appointed to the sinecure office of Surveyor-General of the Leeward Islands, through Lyttelton's influence. A new edition

of The Seasons. [Armstrong's Art of Preserving Health published in this year. Death of Pope.]

1745. Tancred and Sigismunda at Drury Lane, with Garrick as Tancred. Spends part of the summer at Hagley.

1746. Thomson makes way for his friend and deputy, Paterson, in the office of Surveyor-General. Part of the autumn at Hagley.

Publication of the last of the author's editions of The

Seasons.

1747. Thomson at Hagley in the autumn.

Visits Shenstone at the

Leasowes, probably not for the first time.

1748. Pension of £100 discontinued, early in this year. The Castle of Indolence, in May. Death, in his house at Richmond, on the

27th of August. Buried at Richmond. [Collins's Ode on Thomson's Death.]

1749. Coriolanus produced—the prologue by Lyttelton.

1762. Monument in Westminster Abbey, between those of Shakespeare

and Rowe.

1791. In the autumn of this year Burns wrote his Address to the Shade of Thomson.

GENERAL INTRODUCTION TO

'THE SEASONS.'

WHEN Thomson came up to London from Scotland in March 1725, he brought with him no MS. poetry of his own composition—at least none that was of sufficient value for publication. All his published poems of any merit, including of course The Seasons, from beginning to end, were planned and produced in England. What he did bring with him was a consciousness of poetical power, a strong ambition to manifest it, and a predilection for some great and serious subject which should involve a description of the works of nature. He had not been many months in England when he found such a subject in Winter. His management of this stormy theme was his warrant for the opinion he had formed of his poetical genius, and justified the ambition which had brought him to London. He encountered Winter in the course of an exercise in blank verse, and-in the words of Cowden Clarke-'rose instantly as if on the wings of the blast' to his full altitude. It looked at first, indeed, as if the subject was to have no better fate at his hands than its predecessors1, which had only served him for the exercise of rhyming. In September, when he had already made some progress in the work, he could still only speak of it as a study in blank verse, which was amusing him, but which he might drop at any moment. Erelong, as he was drawn into living touch with his subject, he perceived its magnitude and capabilities; the memories of Scottish winters rose up in dread magnificence before him; he

1 Such as the verses On a Country Life, written before he was twenty, and of no great interest in respect of matter or style. The subject, however, was significant.