The poetical works of James Thomson ...

ME31OIR OF THO031SON. Xiii
by a club called the Athenian Society. One of
them, "On a Country Life, by a Student of the
University," and signed with the ifiitial "of his
name, shows how early the love of rural scenery
and pursuits took possession of his mind, and may
be deemed the first conceptions of " The Seasons."
His productions were rather severely treated by
some learned persons into whose hands they fell;
and one of his biographers has laboured to prove
the want of taste of his judges. This charge is
probably unjust, for early pieces afford slight indication of his future powers; and the criticism was
far from destroying his attachment to the Muses.
It is said that Mr. Hamilton, the Divinity Professor of Edinburgh, having given Thomson a
Psalm as an exercise, he made so poetical a paraphrase of it, that the professor and the audience
were equally surprised; that after complimenting
the writer, Mr. HIamilton told him that if he expected to be useful in the Ministry he must restrain his imagination, and adopt language more
suited to a country congregation; and, according
to Dr. Johnson, one of the expressions was indecent if not profane. This story, though not without some foundation, inasmuch as Thomson did
write a paraphrase of the 104th Psalm, is disproved by incontrovertible facts. No paraphrase
in verse of a Psalm could possibly have been
admitted as an exercise at the University; and
the subject referred to was., a prose lecture, or
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