Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets Volume 3; With Critical Observations on Their Works (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1854 Excerpt: ...the gay Seasons suit not, and who shuns The glare of Summer. Welcome, kindred glooms Drear, awful, wintry horrors, welcome all &c. " Mr. Rickleton's poem on Winter, which I still have, first put the design into my head. In it are some masterly strokes that awakened me."--Thomson to Cranston (cir. Sept. 1725). VOl. III. Q common promises of future excellence, undertook to superintend his education and provide him books. He was taught the common rudiments of learning at the school of Jedburgh, a place which he delights to recollect in his poem of ' Autumn;' but was not considered by his master as superior to common boys, though in those early days he amused his patron and his friends with poetical compositions; with which, however, he so little pleased himself, that on every newyear's day he threw into the fire all the productions of the foregoing year. From the school he was removed to Edinburgh, where he had not resided two years when his father died, and left all his children to the care of their mother, who raised upon her little estate what money a mortgage could afford, and, removing with her family to Edinburgh, lived to see her son rising into eminence/ The design of Thomson's friends was to breed him a minister. He lived at Edinburgh, as at school, without distinction or expectation, till, at the usual time, he performed a probationary exercise by explaining a psalm.5 His diction was so poetically splendid that Mr. Hamilton, the Professor of Divinity, reproved him for speaking language unintelligible to a popular audience; and he censured one of his expressions as indecent, if not profane. This rebuke is reported to have repressed his thoughts of an ecclesiastical character, and he probably cultivated with new diligence his blossoms o...