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 but he afterwards rejoined it. In his later years he chiefly devoted his attention to educational questions; he was vice-chancellor of Sydney University from 1862 to 1865, and was elected chancellor annually from 1866 to 1878.

He died at Sydney on 16 July 1879. He had been made C.B. in 1856, and K.C.M.G. in 1874. Thomson was president of the Australian jockey club and of the Sydney Infirmary. A portrait of him by Capalti hangs in the hall of Sydney University, and a bust by Fantacchioti is in the library.

Thomson married, in 1833, Anna Maria, second daughter of Sir Richard Bourke, and left two sons and five daughters.

THOMSON, GEORGE (fl. 1643–1668), parliamentarian, was the son of Robert Thomson of Watton, Hertfordshire, by his wife Elizabeth, daughter of John Harsflet or Halfehead of the same place. The family were staunch parliamentarians, and early in 1643 George held the commission of captain of a troop of horse under William Russell, fifth earl of Bedford. In the following year he served under Sir [q. v.] in his western campaign, and about the same time attained the rank of colonel; but, losing his leg in action, he retired from military service (Cal. State Papers, Dom. 1644, pp. 33, 102, 107, 108, 136, 153). He was returned to parliament for the borough of Southwark, probably in August 1645, and on 18 Feb. 1650–1 was appointed a member of the council of state (ib. 1651, p. 45). On 8 April following he became a commissioner of customs, and in 1652 he was sent to the fleet as a commissioner to consult with Blake and report the condition of affairs to the council (ib. 1651–2, passim; Journals of the House of Commons, vii. 118). On 2 Dec. 1652 he was appointed to the committee for the admiralty, the committee for the ordnance, and the committee for trades, plantations, and foreign affairs (Cal. State Papers, 1652–3, p. 2). But in April 1653 the differences between Cromwell and the Long parliament came to a head, and the parliament was dissolved. On 18 May Thomson was dismissed from his posts of commissioner of the customs and of the army and navy, as well as from his other offices (ib. p. 335). Released from active employment, he occupied his leisure with the mystical speculations of the Fifth-monarchy men, whose opinions he embraced.

He returned to Westminster on 7 May 1659 with the remainder of the Long parliament. On 16 May he was appointed a member of the council of state, and on 8 July he was added to the committee for intelligence (ib. 1658–9 p. 349, 1659–60 p. 11). On 18 Aug. he was appointed colonel of a regiment of volunteers to be raised in London (ib. pp. 124, 563).

After the Restoration Thomson took refuge at the residence of his brother Morris at Lee in Kent, and occupied himself in anti-royalist intrigues (ib. 1661–2, pp. 97, 122, 125). On 31 Oct. 1661 a warrant was issued for his apprehension. For some time he remained in obscurity, but about the beginning of 1668 he was nominated to the commission of accounts (, Diary, ed. Braybrooke, iv. 285, 287, 355, v. 67). The date of his death is unknown. He married Elizabeth, daughter of James Brickland of Thorncliff in Cheshire.

THOMSON, GEORGE (fl. 1648–1679), medical writer, born about 1620, served under Prince Maurice in the civil war. After the overthrow of the royalists he proceeded to Leyden University, where he graduated M.D. on 15 June 1648, submitting as his thesis ‘Disputatio de Apoplexia,’ Leyden, 1648 (, Index of English-speaking Students at Leyden University, s.v. ‘Tomsonus’). During the plague of 1665 he resided in London, and made an especial study of the symptoms. In 1665 he published ‘Loimologia: a Consolatory Advice, and some brief Observations concerning the present Pest,’ London, 4to, in which he reflected on the conduct of those members of the College of Physicians who left the city during the plague. This pamphlet drew a furious reply from John Heydon [q. v.], entitled ‘Psonthonphanchia, or a Quintuple Rosiecrucian Scourge for the due Correction of that Pseudo-chymist and Scurrilous Emperick, Geo. Thomson’ (London, 1665, 4to). In the same year Thomson also published a work of some ability, entitled ‘Galeno-pale, or a chymical Trial of the Galenists, that their Dross in Physick may be discovered’ (London, 1665, 8vo), in which he protested against the contempt of English practitioners for experience, and their implicit reliance on theory. He also argued with considerable force against the excessive bleeding and purging in vogue, and against the method of attempting to cure diseases by contraries. A reply by William Johnson, entitled


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 ‘Aγυρτο-Mαστιξ,’ provoked ‘Πλανο-Πνιγμος, or a Gag for Johnson, that published Animadversions upon Galeno-pale, and a Scourge for that pitiful Fellow Mr. Galen, that dictated to him a Scurrilous Greek Title’ (London, 1665, 8vo), which was published, together with a eulogy of ‘Galeno-pale,’ by George Starkey [q. v.] In the following year Thomson pursued the subject in ‘Λοιτομία, or the Pest anatomised’ (London, 8vo), which was translated into Latin by his assistant, Richard Hope, in 1680 (London, 8vo), and into German by Joachim Biester (Hamburg, 1713, 4to).

In 1670 he published a treatise against blood-letting under the title of ‘Haimatiasis, or the true Way of preserving the Bloud’ (London, 8vo), which plunged him into a new controversy with Henry Stubbe (1631–1676) [q. v.], who replied in ‘The Lord Bacon's Relation of the Sweating-Sickness examined, in a Reply to George Thomson, Pretender to Physick and Chymistry, together with a Defence of Phlebotomy’ (London, 1671), 8vo. Thomson rejoined in ‘Mισοχυμίας Ἔλεγχος, or a check given to the insolent garrulity of H. Stubbe’ (London, 1671, 8vo). Letters were interchanged and published by Thomson in the following year (London, 4to). In 1673 he published ‘Epilogismi Chymici Observationes necnon Remedia Hermetica Longa in Arte Hiatrica exercitatione constabilita’ (London, 8vo), and in 1675 ‘Oρθο-μέθοδος ἰατρο-χυμική, or the direct Method of Curing Chymically’ (London, 8vo), which was translated into Latin by Gottfried Hennicken, and published at Frankfort-on-Maine in 1686 with a preface by Thomson dated 1684. If this date be correct, he was then living, though there are some grounds for believing that he died before 1680. His portrait, engraved from life in 1670 by William Sherwin, is prefixed to several of his works.

Thomson was twice married: first, on 2 Nov. 1667, to Abigail, daughter of Hugh Nettleshipp, salter, of Wandsworth, Surrey; and secondly, on 31 Oct. 1672, to Martha Bathurst of Battersea, Surrey.

[Thomson's Works; Granger's Biogr. History of England, iv. 21; Chester's London Marriage Licences, col. 1331.]

THOMSON, GEORGE (1782?–1838), tutor in the household of Sir Walter Scott and supposed original of ‘Dominie Sampson,’ son of George Thomson (1758–1835), by his wife Margaret, daughter of Robert Gillon of Lessudden, Roxburghshire, was born about 1782. The father was licensed by the presbytery of Dunblane on 4 July 1786, and was called to Melrose about two years later. He caused the church to be moved from the abbey and a new building erected near at hand in 1810. Like his son, he was distinguished by his independence and his simplicity. His stipend being extremely small, a substantial subscription was raised for him during the high price of provisions in 1798, but he firmly declined eleemosynary aid from any of his friends. On another occasion he employed a casual stranger, whom he met upon the high road, as a messenger to take his watch into the neighbouring town to be repaired, with the result that might have been anticipated. He died at Melrose on 22 Nov. 1835.

The eldest son, George, from a lad did his utmost to relieve the necessities of his family, not only educating himself with the aid of a bursary, but taking upon himself the education of two brothers out of his small pittance. About 1811 he became domesticated at Abbotsford as librarian and ‘grinder’ of Scott's boys. Scott had a special kindness for him, which was strengthened by Thomson's mishap—he had lost a leg owing to some rough play when a boy, and had refused to utter the name of the companion who had occasioned the accident. Tall, vigorous, an expert fencer, and a dashing horseman, despite his infirmity, Thomson formed ‘a valuable as well as a picturesque addition to the tail of the new laird’ of Abbotsford. Scott often said ‘In the “Dominie,” like myself, accident has spoiled a capital lifeguardsman.’ His upright life and his sound learning were set off by a number of oddities which increased as he grew older. One of the least amiable was after a hard day's hunting to keep the company waiting while he extemporised what he deemed an appropriate form of grace. Scott was the last man to caricature a friend or dependent, but he certainly embodied some of the tutor's traits in Dominie Sampson in ‘Guy Mannering,’ and Thomson seems himself to have encouraged a belief that he was the original of that remarkable character. Scott frequently tried, though without success, to get him a permanent post. Writing in 1819 to the Duke of Buccleuch, he says, ‘He is nearer Parson Adams than any living creature I ever saw—very learned, very religious, very simple, and extremely absent.’ He added that he was a very fair preacher and a staunch anti-Gallican. In 1820 he left Scott to coach the sons of Mrs. Dennistoun of Colgrain, but Scott still hoped to procure him a ‘harbour on his lee.’ He went to see Scott at Christmas 1825, when his kind heart and incorrigible eccentricities

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 were again noted in the ‘Journal.’ He died at Edinburgh on 8 Jan. 1838. His only literary production seems to have been an ‘Account of the Parish of Melrose’ contributed to Sir John Sinclair's ‘Statistical Account of Scotland.’

THOMSON, GEORGE (1757–1851), collector of Scottish music, son of Robert Thomson, schoolmaster, was born at Limekilns, Fifeshire, on 4 March 1757. His family removed to Banff, and afterwards to Edinburgh, where he was apprenticed to the law. In 1780, through the influence of John Home, author of ‘Douglas,’ he entered the Board of Trustees for the Encouragement of Manufactures in Scotland as junior clerk. Soon afterwards he became principal clerk, and retained that post till his retirement in 1839. In 1840 he removed to London, but returned to Edinburgh in 1845. In 1847 his friends presented him with a silver vase, when his character and work were praised by Lord Cockburn. He died at Leith on 18 Feb. 1851, and was buried at Kensal Green cemetery. In 1781 he married a daughter of Lieutenant Miller, of the 50th regiment, by whom he had two sons and six daughters. One daughter, Georgina, became the wife of [q. v.], whose daughter Catherine was the wife of Charles Dickens. His wife was buried at Kensal Green in 1841, ‘on the spot next to that which belongs to Charles Dickens, esq.’ (cf., Dickens, i. 264).

Thomson was an enthusiastic amateur musician. He was one of the directors of the first Edinburgh musical festival (1815). He played the violin, and took an active part in the Edinburgh St. Cecilia concerts of his day. It was from hearing Tenducci's rendering of Scottish songs at these concerts that he conceived the idea of making a collection of national airs. In the end he issued three separate (folio) collections: the Scottish in 6 vols. (1793–1841); the Welsh in 3 vols. (1809–1814); and the Irish in 2 vols. (1814–1816). A royal octavo edition in 6 vols., made up from all three collections, was published in 1822. Thomson's plan in regard to the music was original and bold. Before his time there were no introductory or concluding symphonies to the airs he collected, and the accompaniments were indicated by the uncertain system of ‘figured bass.’ He resolved to supply both deficiencies, and had his symphonies and accompaniments written in turn by Pleyel, Kozeluch, Haydn, Beethoven, Weber, Hummel, and Bishop, to whom he paid large sums. It was at his instigation that Bishop set Burns's ‘Jolly Beggars.’ He found many of the old airs associated with objectionable words, and with the view of procuring new words he corresponded with Burns, Scott, Hogg, Moore, Byron, Campbell, Joanna Baillie, and others. Burns began to write for him in 1792, and continued till his death in 1796, the collections from first to last containing about 120 of his songs. Thomson was attacked by Professor Wilson and others for his pecuniary treatment of Burns, but there is clearly no ground for the charge (cf., pp. 134–151). His correspondence with Burns was printed by Currie, and is found in several editions of the poet; that with Scott and the rest is given by Hadden from the originals in the hands of his descendants. The originals of the Burns letters were purchased by Lord Dalhousie in 1852 for 260 guineas. In 1802 Thomson edited the poems of Mrs. of Laggan [q. v.]; and in 1807 published under the pseudonym of ‘Civis’ a ‘Statement and Review of a recent Decision of the Judge of Police in Edinburgh, authorising his Officers to make Domiciliary Visits in Private to stop Dancing.’ This pamphlet arose out of an attempt to prevent dancing in Thomson's own house. Carlyle (Reminiscences) describes him as ‘a clean-brushed commonplace old gentleman, in a scratch wig.’ His portrait, painted by Raeburn, is at Dunbeath Castle, Caithness. Another portrait, by W. S. Watson, is in the National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh.

(d. 1815), a brother, was a landscape-painter and an amateur musician. He edited a collection of ‘The Melodies of different Nations,’ and a collection of Mozart's songs, set to verses of his own. Joanna Baillie speaks of ‘his worth and his various talents.’ Keith Thomson, a half-brother (d. 1855), was a leading teacher of music at Inverness. Paton Thomson, the engraver (cf. ), was probably a relative.

THOMSON, GEORGE (1799–1886), lieutenant-colonel Bengal engineers, second of six sons of George Thomson of Fairley, Aberdeenshire, was born at Fairley on 19 Sept.


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 CHAPTER VIII

American Political Writing, 1760–1789

MERICAN history between 1760 and 1789—from the end, that is, so far as military operations were concerned, of the Seven Years' War to the inauguration of the new government under the Federal Constitution—falls naturally into three well-marked periods. The first, comprising the development of the constitutional struggle with Great Britain over taxation and imperial control, reaches its culmination in the armed collision between the British and the patriot forces at Lexington, 19 April, 1775. The second period covers the eight years of war, ending with the peace treaty of September, 1783; while the third embraces the so-called "critical period" of the Confederation, and the formation and adoption of the Constitution.

Such a time of storm and stress, of revolution and evolution, is pretty certain, especially in a new country, if it bring forth literature at all, to bring forth such as is predominantly political in content, style, and purpose. The Revolutionary leaders who have left a large and permanent impress upon American literature were concerned chiefly with such weighty matters as the nature of the British constitution, the formulation of colonial rights, and the elaboration of schemes of government and administration; and it was of these things that they chiefly wrote. It is a striking tribute to the classical education of the age, to the moulding power of closely-reasoned theological and legal treatises on which ministers and lawyers fed, and to the subtle, pervasive influence of the English Bible, that the best political writing of the Revolutionary period attained a dignity and


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 Rh mid-course. It carried about with it that melancholy presentiment of dissolution which has come to be so characteristic of modern life, but of which scarce a trace exists in ancient times, and this feeling would always have made it different from that cheerful carelessness which so attracts us in the Greeks; but even that downcast brooding heart was capable of conceiving great and heroic thoughts, which it might have clothed in noble shapes and forms, had not the axe of Providence cut down the stately sapling in the North before it grew to be a tree, while it spared the pines of Delphi and Dodona's sacred oaks, until they had attained a green old age. And so this faith remained rude and rough; but even rudeness has a simplicity of its own, and it is better to be rough and true-hearted than polished and false. In all the feelings of natural affection, that faith need fear no comparison with any other upon earth. In these respects it is firm and steadfast as a rock, and pure and bright as a living spring. The highest God is a father, who protects his children; who gives them glory and victory while they live, and when they die takes them to himself; to those fatherly abodes Death was a happy return, a glorious going home. By the side of this great father stands a venerable goddess, dazzling with beauty, the great mother of gods and men. Hand in hand this divine pair traverse the land; he teaching the men the use of arms and all the arts of war,—for war was then as now a noble calling, and to handle arms an honourable, nay necessary, profession. To the women she teaches domestic duties and the arts of peace; from her they learn to weave, and sew, and spin; from her, too, the husbandman learns to till his fields. From


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 1799. Educated by a private tutor, he entered the military college of the East India Company at Addiscombe in 1814, and passed out as an engineer cadet for the Bengal service. He arrived at Calcutta on 18 Sept. 1818, and went to Cawnpore. In 1820 he joined the recently formed corps of Bengal sappers and miners, commanded by Major (afterwards Sir) Thomas Anburey, at Allahabad. On 28 Jan. 1821 he took command of the detachment of sappers at Asirgarh, and in March visited his eldest brother, Alexander, of the Bengal artillery, at Mhow. In the following year he was engaged in the construction of a road between Asirgarh and Nagpur, and later between Nagpur and Chapara. From March to June 1823 he was employed in dismantling and blowing up the fort of Mandla. He was appointed adjutant of the Bengal sappers and miners on 29 May of this year, and on 5 Sept. he was promoted to be lieutenant.

In March 1824 war was declared with Burma, and in the following September Thomson went to Calcutta to join the pioneer department, for active service under the orders of Captain Schalch. On 14 Dec. he left Calcutta for Chittagong, where a force of eleven thousand men, under Brigadier-general Morrison of the 44th foot, had been assembled to penetrate to Ava through Arakan. Thomson was appointed field-engineer to the force and placed in command of the pontoon train. On 10 Jan. 1825 he started with Morrison's force by a route along the sea-coast, and, after crossing the Mayu estuary, a little to the west of the modern port of Akyab, advanced north-east through a difficult country, and crossed the Kala-daing or Great Arakan river. Thomson was almost always in front on reconnaissance duty, and the forests being too thick and the rivers too deep to allow of any other way of travelling, he went on foot and suffered greatly from fatigue. The approach to Arakan lay across a narrow valley, bounded by a range of hills crowned with stockades and garrisoned by nine thousand Burmese. An attack on 29 March failed, but on 1 April Thomson assisted in the assault and capture of the stockades, and Arakan was taken.

Thomson was mentioned by Morrison in his despatch of 2 April 1825 (London Gazette, 1 Oct. 1825), for having ‘displayed zeal and practical proficiency in the performance of his duty.’ On 7 May 1825 he was appointed executive engineer, south-eastern division of the public works department, and he was busy with the erection of cantonments in Arakan at the close of the rainy season. The division suffered very heavily from the pestilential climate. Thomson was sent to survey and report upon the best situation in the islands near the mouth of the Beatong river for cantoning the division. He returned to Bengal in September 1826.

On 7 Oct. 1826 Thomson was appointed executive engineer in the public works department at Nimach, and was employed in building a fort there. He was promoted to be captain in the Bengal engineers on 28 Sept. 1827. On 6 Dec. he was appointed to the Bengal sappers and miners, and on 21 Feb. 1828 he returned to the public works department as executive engineer of the Rohilkhand division. In February 1829 Thomson took furlough to Europe, married, and returned to India in November 1831. On 9 Dec. 1831 he was appointed to survey the country between Bankura and Shirghatti, and to estimate the cost of the construction of a road from Jemor to the Karamnassa river. He was next placed in charge of the construction of the grand trunk road between Bardwán and Benares. In 1834 he had the additional duty of constructing barracks at Hazaribagh for a European regiment; in this work, despite occasional conflict with the authorities, he adopted successful methods of his own for the utilisation of convict labour.

In March 1837 Thomson was appointed to the command of the Bengal sappers and miners at Delhi, and to be at the same time executive engineer of the Delhi division of the public works department, a combination of duties which he did not think was for the good of the service. On 13 Sept. 1838 he was selected to be chief engineer of the army of the Indus assembling at Karnal for the invasion of Afghanistan. He marched from Delhi with two companies of sappers and miners on 20 Oct. to Karnal, thence on 9 Nov. to Firozpur, and on to Bhawalpur (230 miles), where he arrived on 29 Dec. Rohri, on the left bank of the Indus, was reached on 24 Jan. 1839, and the fort of Bakkar, on a rocky island between Rohri and Sakkar, on the right bank, was seized without opposition on 29 Jan., and preparations made by Thomson to bridge the river. The channel between Rohri and Bakkar is some 360 yards wide, and that between Bakkar and Sakkar about 130 yards, and in both the water ran like a millstream. Thomson had asked the political officer to collect beforehand at Rohri materials for bridging, but when he arrived none were there. By great exertion he procured boats, cut down and split palm trees, made grass cables, constructed anchors of small trees joined together and loaded with stone, made nails on


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The New International Encyclopædia/Fichte, Immanuel Hermann

FICHTE, fī K 'te, (1797-1879). A German philosopher, son of Johann Gottlieb Fichte. He early devoted himself to philosophical studies, being attracted by the later views of his father, which he considered essentially theistic. He also attended the lectures of Hegel, but felt averse to what he deemed to be his pantheistic tendencies. Occupied at first as a teacher, Fichte was appointed professor of philosophy in Bonn in 1836, and from 1842 to 1863 held a chair in the University of Tübingen. His chief works are: Beiträge zur Charakteristik der neuern Philosophie (1829; 2d ed. 1841); System der Ethik (1850-53); Anthropologie (1856). The great aim of his speculations was to find a philosophic basis for the personality of God, and for his theory on this subject he proposed the term concrete theism. The regeneration of Christianity, according to him, would consist in its becoming the vital and organizing power in the State, instead of being occupied solely, as heretofore, with the salvation of individuals.


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 the spot, and in eleven days completed a good military bridge. Sir Henry Durand wrote: ‘Thomson was justly praised for opening the campaign by a successful work of such ability and magnitude; for to have bridged the Indus was a fact at once impressive and emblematic of the power and resources of the army, which thus surmounted a mighty obstacle.’

Thomson's services were of value in the long march through the Bolan Pass to Kandahar, which was reached at the end of April. On 27 June the march was resumed. The accounts received of the weakness of Ghazni had induced the commander of the expedition, Sir John (afterwards Lord) Keane [q. v.] to leave his small battering train at Kandahar, but on arriving at Ghazni on 21 July it was found to be a formidable fortress, which could only be besieged by means of a regular battering train. Thomson proposed to storm it, make a dash at the Kabul gate, blow it in, and admit the storming party. This was successfully done on 23 July. In the assault after the gate was blown in Thomson had a narrow escape in the struggle within. Keane, in announcing the capture of Ghazni in his despatch of the following day, ascribed to Thomson ‘much of the credit of the success of this brilliant coup de main’ (London Gazette, 30 Oct. 1839). Thomson was promoted to be brevet major for this service, dating from the capture of Ghazni.

The march to Kabul was resumed on 30 July, and that city was occupied on 7 Aug. Thomson made an expedition over the mountains to Bamian to reconnoitre the route. In November he returned to India with some of the troops. For his services in the first Afghan war Thomson received the thanks of the government and was made a companion of the Bath, military division (London Gazette, 20 Dec. 1839). He was also awarded by Shah Shuja the second class of the order of the Durani empire, and was permitted to accept and wear it (London Gazette, 8 June 1841; General Orders, 8 Sept. 1841).

On his return to India he resumed the duties of the command of the Bengal sappers and miners, and of those of the public works department at Delhi; but, finding them incompatible, a warm correspondence ensued with the military board, which resulted in Thomson's retiring from the service on 25 Jan. 1841. Before leaving India he submitted to the government of India suggestions for the improvement of the corps of Bengal sappers and miners.

On his arrival in England Thomson joined a brother in business in Liverpool; but affairs did not prosper, and on 24 July 1844 he was glad to accept from the court of directors of the East India Company the appointment of Indian recruiting officer and paymaster of soldiers' pensions in the Cork district, with the local rank of major. The former post he held until the East India Company ceased to exist in 1861, and the latter until 1877, when he resigned and settled in Dublin. He was promoted to be brevet lieutenant-colonel on 28 Nov. 1854. He became a director of the Great Southern and Western Railway Company of Ireland in 1846, and was practically the inspecting director, actively superintending the completion of the southern portion of the line and of the tunnel into Cork. He died in Dublin in February 1886.

Thomson married, when on furlough in Scotland in 1830, Anna, daughter of Alexander Dingwall of Ramieston, Aberdeenshire. He left several children. His eldest son, Hugh Gordon, became major-general of the Indian staff corps. Thomson wrote an account of the ‘Storming of Ghazni,’ which appeared in vol. iv. 4to series, 1840, of ‘The Professional Papers of the Corps of the Royal Engineers.’ In the same volume is a description of his bridge across the Indus at Bakkar, by Lieutenant (afterwards Sir) H. M. Durand.

[India Office Record; Despatches; obituary notices and memoirs in the Times 15 Feb. 1886, in the Royal Engineers' Journal 1886, by Sir Henry Yule, and in Vibart's Addiscombe, its Heroes and Men of Note; Laurie's Our Burmese Wars and Relations with Burma, 1855; Snodgrass's Narrative of the Burmese War, 1827; Low's Afghan War, from the Journal and Correspondence of the late Major-general Augustus Abbott, 1879; Durand's First Afghan War and its Causes, 1879 (contains a sketch of the Kabul gate of Ghazni); Asiatic Journal, vol. xxx.; Kaye's History of the War in Afghanistan; Professional Papers of the Corps of Royal Engineers, 4to ser. vol. iv. 1840, and Occasional Papers Ser. vol. iii. 1879. See also art. .]  THOMSON, HENRY (1773–1843), painter, the son of a purser in the navy, was born at St. George's Square, Portsea, on 31 July 1773. He was at school for nearly nine years at Bishop's Waltham. In 1787 he went with his father to Paris, and returned to London on the breaking out of the revolution. He became a pupil of the painter John Opie [q. v.], and in 1790 entered the schools of the Royal Academy. In 1793 his father took him again to the continent to complete his studies, and he travelled in Italy till 1798, visiting Parma, Bologna, Florence, Rome, Naples, and Venice. He returned by


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 506 lyfe and death, in takeing of Journeyis, was exspect to be manifested by a holl of a round stone quherein they tried the entering of their heade, which (if they) could doe, to witt, be able to put in thair heade, they exspect thair returning to that place, and failing, they considered it ominous; and withall their adoring of wells and uther superstitious monuments and stones, tedious to rehearse, Have appoynted as followes—That quhosoever sail be found to commit such abhominations, especiallie Sacrifices of any kynd, or at any tyme, sail publickly appear and be rebuked." The opening of this minute specially mentions, among the "maine enormities" of the district, the "sacrificeing at certaine tymes at the Loch of Mourie", On the 9th September 1656: "The brethren, taking to their consideratione the abhominationes within the parochia of Garloch, in sacrificing of beasts upon the 25 August, as also in pouring of milk upon hills as oblationes, quhose names ar not particularly signified as yit, refers to the diligence of the minister to mak search of thease persons .......and withall that by his private dilligence he have searchers and tryers in everie corner of the country, especiallie about the Lochmourie ........and that such as are his elders be particularly poseit, concerning former practices in qwhat they knowe of these poore ones who are called Mourie his derilans, and ownes thease titles, quho receaves the sacrifices and offerings upon accompt of Mourie his poore ones; ........and such as heve boats about the loch to transport themselves or uthers to the He of Mourie, quherein ar monuments of Idolatrie, without warrand from the superiour and minister towards lawful ends The brethren heiring be report that Miurie has his monuments and remembrances in severall paroches within the province, but more particularly in the paroches of Loch canon. Loch alse, Kintaile, Contan, and Follertie and Lochbroome."

Both these records refer to strangers and "thease that comes from forren countreyes" as sharing in the


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CHAPTER I.

HORNCASTLE—ITS INFANCY.

N dealing with what may be called "the dark ages" of local history, we are often compelled to be content with little more than reasonable conjecture. Still, there are generally certain surviving data, in place-names, natural features, and so forth, which enable those who can detect them, and make use of them, to piece together something like a connected outline of what we may take, with some degree of probability, as an approximation to what have been actual facts, although lacking, at the time, the chronicler to record them.

It is, however, by no means a mere exercise of the imagination, if we assume that the site of the present Horncastle was at a distant period a British settlement. Dr. Brewer says, "nearly three-fourths of our Roman towns were built on British sites," (Introduction to Beauties of England, p. 7), and in the case of Horncastle, although there is nothing British in the name of the town itself, yet that people have undoubtedly here left their traces behind them. The late Dr. Isaac Taylor says, "Rivers and mountains, as a rule, receive their names from the earliest races, towns and villages from later colonists." The ideas of those early occupants were necessarily limited. The hill which formed their stronghold against enemies, or which was the "high place" of their religious rites, and the river which was so essential to their daily existence, of these they felt the value, and therefore naturally distinguished


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 Rh practices". The list of districts covers some fifty miles of the western coast.

In the second extract the "derilans" appear to receive the sacrifices. If this could be proved—the wording of the record is vague at the very point of interest—and if Mr. Dixon's suggested derivation from the Gaelic deireoil, "afflicted", is correct, the lunatics would seem to have served as priests to the grove—a completely primitive conception of the holiness of the possessed man—and to have received the gifts of ordinary sufferers, the "poor ones" of Mourie. More accurate information is greatly to be desired on this curious point.

Twenty years later, in 1678, the mystic healing powers of the island are thus acknowledged: "At Dingwall, 6 August 1678. Inter alia, that Mr. Roderick Mackenzie, minister of Gerloch … summoned by his officer to this prebrie day Hector Mackenzie ... in the parish of Gerloch, as also Johne Murdoch and Duncan Mackenzies, sons to the said Hector, as also Kenneth McKenzie his grandson, for sacrificing a bull in ane heathenish manner in the iland of St. Ruffus, commonly called Elian Moury ... for the recovering of the health of Cirstane Mackenzie, spouse to the said Hector Mackenzie, who was formerlie sicke and valetudinaire."

With so little definite knowledge, it is impossible to say whether the saint took over some powerful local cult with its many sanctuaries, or whether all the varying strands and relics of the primitive worship of local powers, approached on mountain-tops, or in sacred groves, or by holy wells, were gradually gathered up into his dominant name; but the power of one personality, the tendency to unify belief, seems strangely hinted at in these records of the tenacious worships of "Mourie".

The beautiful legend of the two graves marked with the


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Author:Isaac Taylor (1829-1901)

Works

 * Words and Places
 * Names and their Histories

title: Author:Isaac Taylor (1829-1901)


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Author:Isaac Taylor (1787-1865)

Works

 * Elements of thought; or, First lessons in the knowledge of the mind (1822)
 * History of the Transmission of Ancient Books to Modern Times (1827)
 * The process of historical proof; exemplified and explained (1828)
 * The Natural History of Enthusiasm (1829)
 * New model of Christian missions to Popish, Mahometan, and pagan nations explained in four letters to a friend (1830)
 * The temple of Melekartha (1831), in 3 volumes
 * Saturday Evening (1832)
 * Fanaticism (1833)
 * Spiritual Despotism (1835)
 * The Physical Theory of Another Life (1836)
 * Home Education (1838)
 * Ancient Christianity, and the doctrines of the Oxford tracts (1839-46), in 8 volumes
 * Loyola: and Jesuitism in its rudiments (1849)
 * Wesley, and Methodism (1851)
 * The Restoration of Belief (1855), in 3 volumes
 * The Spirit of the Hebrew Poetry (1861)

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 Vienna, Dresden, Berlin, and Hamburg in 1799. He found ‘Boydell's Shakespeare Gallery’ in course of active preparation, and contributed to it ‘Perdita’ and some subjects from ‘The Tempest.’ As early as 1792 he had exhibited a portrait at the Royal Academy, but he did not become a regular contributor till 1800, after his return to England. In 1801 he was elected an associate, and in 1802 an academician. From this time onwards he continued to exhibit many mythological and domestic subjects, as well as portraits, until 1825. Among his chief works were ‘Mercy interceding for a fallen Warrior,’ 1804; ‘Love Sheltered’ and ‘The Red Cross Knight,’ 1806 (both engraved in mezzotint by William Say); ‘Love's Ingratitude,’ 1808; ‘The Distressed Family,’ 1809; ‘Titania,’ 1810; ‘Peasants in a Storm,’ 1811; ‘The Infancy of Jupiter’ (engraved by Henry Meyer), and ‘Lavinia,’ 1812; ‘Eurydice’ (engraved by William Ward) and ‘Thais,’ 1814; ‘Cupid Disarmed’ and ‘Icarus,’ 1815; ‘Christ raising Jairus's Daughter,’ 1820; ‘Juliet,’ 1825. He designed a large number of small illustrations for Sharpe's ‘Poets’ and ‘British Classics,’ and other publications. In 1825 he was appointed keeper of the Royal Academy, in succession to Henry Fuseli [q. v.], but resigned the office after two years owing to a severe illness, from which he never recovered sufficiently to undertake any more work of importance. He retired to Portsea, where he died on 6 April 1843, and was buried in Portsmouth churchyard. Thomson's pictures were extremely popular in his own day, but they are now chiefly known by the good mezzotint engravings in which they were reproduced. A portrait of Thomson, by John Jackson, was engraved by Robert Cooper in 1817; another was painted by Sir Martin Archer Shee (Cat. Third Loan Exhib. No. 346).

[Gent. Mag. 1843, iii. 100; Redgrave's Dict. of Artists; Royal Academy Catalogues.]  THOMSON, HENRY WILLIAM (BYERLEY) (1822–1867), jurist, the son of Anthony Todd Thomson [q. v.], by his second wife, Katharine Byerley [see ], of an old Durham family (whence he assumed in later life a prefix to his surname), was born in May 1822. He was educated at University College, London, and at Jesus College, Cambridge, whence he graduated B.A. (as senior optime) in 1846, was called to the bar from the Inner Temple in May 1849, and practised on the northern circuit. He specialised in military and international law, and his useful little treatise on the ‘Laws of War affecting Commerce and Shipping’ went through two editions in 1854. It was followed in 1855 by ‘The Military Forces and Institutions of Great Britain and Ireland: their Constitution, Administration, and Government, Military and Civil,’ in which he endeavoured to galvanise a huge mass of unused material from parliamentary bluebooks and similar materials, and in 1857 by ‘The Choice of a Profession: a concise Account and comparative Review of the English Professions.’ Both works are well written, and should be of value to the sociologist. Thomson was living at this time at 8 Serjeant's Inn, Temple, but professional success seemed as distant as ever when, in May 1858, he was appointed by the colonial secretary, Lord Stanley [see, fifteenth ], queen's advocate in Ceylon. Three years later he was promoted puisne judge of the supreme court of Colombo. He lost no time in setting to work upon a digest of the law as administered in Ceylon, and in 1866 he was in London superintending the publication of his most permanent memorial, ‘Institutes of the Laws of Ceylon’ (London, 1866, 2 vols. large 8vo), which ranks as an authority together with the judgments of Sir Charles Marshall, and which, as the chief justice of Ceylon (Sir Edward Creasy) said at Thomson's death, ‘will long be cited with admiration and gratitude.’ Thomson died at Colombo, as the result of an apoplectic seizure, on 6 Jan. 1867. He married, in 1858, Mlle. Beaumont, and left two sons: Henry Byerley, who took orders in 1888, and Arthur Byerley.

The jurist's younger brother, (1834–1860), was born in London in 1834, and after studying at Bonn matriculated from Trinity College, Oxford, on 7 June 1852, graduating B.A. from St. Mary Hall in 1857. While at Oxford he worked at Sanskrit (in continuation of studies commenced at Munich) under Horace Hayman Wilson [q. v.], and before he took his degree, being then only twenty-one, he published ‘The Bhagavad-Gita; or a Discourse between Krishna and Arjuna on Divine Matters: a Sanskrit Philosophical Poem; translated [into English Prose] with copious Notes, an Introduction on Sanskrit Philosophy, and other Matter,’ Hertford, 1855, 2 vols. 16mo. The performance was praised not only by Wilson but by Garcin de Tassy, by Schliessen of Prague, by Spiegel of Erlangen, and other foreign savants; and it was used as a class-book in the East Indian College at Haileybury. Two years later the author gained the Boden Sanskrit


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Author:Isaac Taylor

 * Isaac Taylor (1730–1807), British engraver
 * Isaac Taylor (1787–1865), British philosophical and historical writer, artist, and inventor
 * Isaac Taylor (1829–1901), English cleric

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  at Oxford, and was presented with a gold medal by Maximilian of Bavaria. Upon Wilson's death in 1860 Thomson became a candidate for the librarianship at the India office, but he was accidentally drowned at Tenby on 26 May 1860. He had recently been appointed a member of the Asiatic Society of Paris, and of the Antiquarian Society of Normandy. Apart from his work in Sanskrit he was, under the pseudonym of Philip Wharton, joint author with his mother of ‘Queens of Society’ (1860) and ‘Wits and Beaux of Society’ (1860), two anecdotal volumes which were well received by the public.

THOMSON, JAMES (1700–1748), poet, was born in the pastoral village of Ednam in Roxburghshire in September 1700. The village retains, as outhouse of a farmsteading, the former manse (and later village school) in which the poet was born. He was baptised on 15 Sept., and the fact that the rite was usually administered by the Scottish church eight days after birth would refer his birth to the 7th, though an early biographer (Murdoch) gives the 11th. The poet's father, Thomas (1666–1716), also a native of Ednam, and the son of Andrew Thomson, a gardener, fulfilled the ambition of his parents by graduating M.A. at Edinburgh University in 1686, and obtaining five years later the license of a preacher in the kirk, being called to Ednam on 12 July 1692 (, Fasti, vol. i. pt. ii. 460). The minister married, on 6 Oct. 1693, Beatrix, daughter of Alexander Trotter of Fogo. Trotter's wife was Margaret, daughter of William Home or Hume, the progenitor of the Homes of Bassendean, and the brother of Sir James Home [see under, third ; and letter of Dr. John Mair, minister of Southdean, in ‘Times,’ 26 March 1894].

James was the fourth child. Of two elder brothers, Andrew and Alexander, little is heard, but there is evidence in his letters of the poet's solicitude for a younger brother, John, who died in 1735. Of the poet's sisters, one was married to Mr. Bell, minister of Strathaven; another (Mary) to William Craig, father of [q. v.], the architect of the New Town, Edinburgh, and another to Mr. Thomson, master of Lanark grammar school. Two months after the poet's birth, his father moved to Southdean, where the manse nestled at the foot of Southdean Law, and some of the scenes of Teviotdale and the valley of the ‘sylvan Jed’ were afterwards introduced by him into his poems (especially in ‘Winter;’ a Thomson window has recently been erected in Southdean church). After picking up the rudiments in the parish school he was sent to Jedburgh, where the classes, by which he benefited little, were held in the abbey (cf., Jedburgh Abbey, 1894, p. 93 n.). The boy attracted a good deal of attention from one of his father's friends, [q. v.] Riccaltoun introduced him to several of the neighbouring gentry, including Sir Gilbert Elliot of Minto, James Haliburton of New Mains, Dryburgh, where on the banks of the Tweed his ‘Doric reed’ was first exercised (Autumn, v. 890), and Sir William Bennet, bart. (d. 1729), of Grubit. From Jedburgh he passed in the summer of 1715 to Edinburgh University. There he was in mental revolt against the outworn classical curriculum. At this period, as Aikin notes, the Scots had lost their pre-eminence in Latin, and had not learned English; and the circumstance renders the more remarkable the purity of Thomson's style and its freedom from any admixture of provincial idiom. At home Thomson had written and burned a quantity of verse. At Edinburgh he joined a literary club, ‘The Grotesques,’ who were very critical of his performances; some three of his pieces, nevertheless, appeared in the ‘Edinburgh Miscellany’ of 1720. During these years he studied assiduously Spenser and Milton, and his first extant letter (to his friend William Cranstoun), dated 11 Dec. 1720, contains a reference to ‘As you like it.’ On 2 Nov. 1720 Thomson received a bursary from the presbytery of Jedburgh, and this was renewed on 1 Jan. 1724 for one year; but he took no steps to enter the ministry after, it is said, an unfavourable verdict had been passed by William Hamilton, the professor of theology, upon an exercise in the form of a prose dissertation on the tenth section of the 119th Psalm. He resolved to seek a literary career in London.

With letters of introduction to some of the powerful connections of his mother in the south, and with the nucleus of a great poem in his pocket, Thomson set sail from Leith in February 1725. His mother had a foreboding that she would never see her favourite son again (she died within a few weeks of his departure); nor did the poet ever revisit the scenes of his youth. According to Dr. Johnson, the lad was relieved of


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 his letters of introduction by a London pickpocket within a few days of his landing at Wapping (27 [?] Feb. 1725). The loss of the documents, tied, according to the traditional story, in a knotted handkerchief, would seem to have been promptly repaired, for Thomson very soon obtained a footing at the houses of Sir Gilbert Elliot, lord Minto [q. v.], and Duncan Forbes (1644?–1704) [q. v.] of Culloden, and also at Montrose House in Hanover Square. Unfortunately, however, his resources were too small to enable him to pay the assiduous court to these gentlemen that the situation required, and at the end of June he was glad to fall back upon the promised aid of a distant kinswoman, Lady Grizel Baillie [q. v.] of Jerviswood (the daughter of Sir Patrick Hume [q. v.]), who procured him a comfortable though unsalaried post as tutor to her grandson, Thomas Hamilton (afterwards seventh Earl of Haddington), the eldest boy of Charles, lord Binning [see, sixth ]. While under the roof of Lord Binning at East Barnet he began to combine some detached fragments of descriptive verse into what became his first notable poem.

The germ of ‘Winter’ may be found in the lines ‘On a Country Life’ written by Thomson before he was twenty, and contributed to the ‘Edinburgh Miscellany’ (see above). The outlines of the implied scheme may have been suggested by Pope's four ‘Pastorals,’ named after the respective seasons. More directly, however, as he himself states, he owed inspiration to a manuscript poem of his friend Riccaltoun on ‘Winter,’ which was published in 1726 in Savage's ‘Miscellany,’ and reprinted in the ‘Gentleman's Magazine’ of 1740 (p. 256), as corrected ‘by an eminent hand,’ that of Mallet. Subsequently, among other stray pieces of merit by obscure authors, Thomson's ‘Country Life’ was included in Mallet's ‘Works’ (cf. Gent. Mag. 1853, ii. 364–71;, ed. Bell, 1855, ii. 263–4).

As he progressed with his work, Thomson felt the desirability of getting nearer the booksellers and the patrons. His sojourn at East Barnet can have hardly exceeded four months. His desire for a wider circle of acquaintance in the capital was soon gratified. Duncan Forbes was prodigal of introductions to celebrities, including Arbuthnot, Gay, and Pope. Mallet took him into more bohemian circles, and presented him to the notorious Martha Fowke or Fowkes, known to poetical admirers indifferently as ‘Mira’ and as ‘Clio’ (see Bolton Corney in Athenæum, 1859, ii. 78). There is a story that Thomson dwelt with the bookseller John Millan (1702–1784) during 1725; a house numbered 30 Charing Cross is still pointed out as his home during part of the same year (it is figured in, Memorable London Houses, p. 22), while another tradition tells how he frequented the Doves tavern in Hammersmith Mall. In the winter of 1725–6 he paid a visit to Mallet at Twyford, the seat of the Duke of Montrose, in Hampshire. Thomson had been compelled during the summer to ask a loan of 12l. from Cranstoun, and he was again in want of money at Christmas, when he and Mallet induced John Millan to advance 3l. upon ‘Winter’ (cf., Orig. Letters, iii. 27).

In March 1726, under Millan's auspices, appeared ‘Winter, a poem by James Thomson, A.M.’ (London, folio; another edition with additions and commendatory verses by Aaron Hill, Mallet, and ‘Mira,’ 1726, 8vo; reprinted Dublin, 1726). The description of him as ‘A.M.’ was a mistake; the degree was seldom taken by arts students in Thomson's time (see, Hist. of Edinburgh Univ. ii. 238). The work was dedicated to Sir Spencer Compton (Lord Wilmington), who forwarded in the following June a tardy acknowledgment of twenty guineas.

In the meantime the success of the poem was assured. Men of discernment such as Robert Whatley (afterwards prebendary of York), Aaron Hill [q. v.], and that connoisseur of poets, Joseph Spence (see his Essay on the Odyssey), had sung its praises upon every opportunity, while Riccaltoun is stated to have ‘dropped the poem from his hands in an ecstasy of admiration.’ Especially loud in their applause were the two patronesses whom Thomson celebrated with so much warmth in later poems, Frances Seymour, the wife of Algernon, lord Hertford [see under, sixth ], and Sarah, eldest daughter of Sir Hans Sloane and mother of Hans Stanley [q. v.]; while among more influential admirers was soon numbered Thomas Rundle [q. v.] (afterbishop of Derry), who introduced Thomson to his own patron, Charles Talbot (afterwards lord chancellor).

Thomson needed little urging to repeat his experiment, and during 1726, though tied to the town (like a ‘caged linnet,’ as he expressed it) by an appointment as tutor to one of Montrose's sons at an academy in Little Tower Street, he worked hard at ‘Summer,’ which appeared early in 1727 with a dedication to Bubb Dodington (London, 8vo; 2nd edit. 1728). In the same year John Millan published one of the best of Thomson's minor


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The New International Encyclopædia/Fichte, Johann Gottlieb

FICHTE, (1762-1814). An illustrious German philosopher. He was born the son of a ribbon-weaver, at Rammenau, in Upper Lusatia, May 19, 1762. As a lad of promise he attracted the attention of a neighboring nobleman, Baron von Miltitz, who assisted him in his early education. In 1776 Fichte was placed at the gymnasium of Pforta, near Naumburg, and in 1780 he entered the University of Jena, where, as subsequently at Leipzig, he studied theology and philosophy. During the years 1784 to 1788 he supported himself in a precarious way as tutor in various Saxon families. From 1788 to 1790 he taught in private families at Zurich, where he became acquainted with Pestalozzi. He then returned to Leipzig and in 1791 obtained a tutorship at Warsaw, in the house of a Polish nobleman. The situation, however, proved disagreeable, and the philosopher next proceeded to Königsberg, where he had an interview with Kant, of whom he had become an ardent disciple. He submitted his Kritik aller Offenbarung (Critique of all Revelation) to that philosopher, who praised it highly, and advised him to publish it. The following year it appeared anonymously, and was credited to Kant, who then made known its authorship. This incident established Fichte's fame as a philosopher. In 1794 he was appointed to the chair of philosophy at Jena, where he commenced to expound with extraordinary zeal his system of ‘transcendental idealism.’ In 1795 he published

his Wissenschaftslehre (Doctrine of Science), in which he clearly broke away from Kant, whose speculations did not seem to him sufficiently thorough. In 1796 he published Grundlage des Naturrechts (Foundation of Natural Rights); in 1798, System der Sittenlehre (System of Ethics), and in the same year an article in a philosophical journal, which cost him dear. It was entitled “Ueber den Grund unsers Glaubens an eine göttliche Weltregierung” (The Basis of Our Belief in a Divine Government of the World). For views therein expressed he was charged with atheism, inasmuch as he had characterized God as the living moral order of the world. In vain did he deny the atheistic nature of this doctrine; the odium theologicum was too strong for him, and he was compelled to relinquish his chair. Fichte went to Berlin, where he delivered lectures to audiences composed of men of distinction, and where he made friends of such men as Schlegel, Schleiermaeher, and Tieck. In 1805 he was appointed to a professorship in Erlangen. The approach of the French army drove him in 1806 to Königsberg, and in 1807-08 he delivered his famous “Addresses to the German Nation” (“Reden an die deutsche Nation”) in Berlin. These addresses were full of the most exalted enthusiasm. The Prussian King appreciated the zeal of the eloquent metaphysician, and, on the restoration of peace, appointed him to a professorship in the newly founded University of Berlin. In 1810 the university was opened with a host of brilliant names — Fichte, Friedrich August Wolf, Wilhelm von Humboldt, DeWette, Schleiermacher, and Savigny. By the votes of his colleagues Fichte was unanimously elected rector. In 1813 the War of Liberation broke out, and the hospitals of the Prussian capital were soon crowded with patients. Fichte's wife was one of the first to offer her services as a nurse. For five months she tended the sick with all the patient tenderness and devotion of her nature. At last she was seized with typhoid fever, and after a fearful struggle she recovered; but her husband caught the infection, and died January 27, 1814.

The fundamental notion of the idealism set forth in Fichte's writings, at least in the earlier of them, is the sole reality of the conscious self or ego, which gives rise by its activity to the not-self or non-ego, inasmuch as self-knowledge is possible only in contrast with knowledge of a non-ego. The significance of this view in the history of philosophy can be understood only by comparing it with Kant's (q.v.), from which it was developed. Kant had taught that experience arose from the concurrent action of sensation and thought, sensation being the product of things in themselves as they affect the mind, while thought is the spontaneous activity of the conscious self. Thus, experience for Kant is dualistic. This dualism is what Fichte sought to overcome, and he set about it by denying that the sense element in experience is traceable to the action of objects independent of the percipient subject. The non-ego is the creation of the ego. This creation is not accomplished at the instigation of some external stimulus. It is an original, uncaused, free activity of the self. The first result of this activity is sensation. The act of giving rise spontaneously to sensation is an unconscious act; its effect is the first object of consciousness. Because the act is unconscious,

its result seems to be obtruded upon consciousness from without, a well-known characteristic of sensation. Why does the self create a sense object? In order in give free play to its activity. It sets up an object as a limit only to transcend this limit. This is done in the successive stages of knowledge, beginning with perception and ending with the categorical imperative, which is the termination of the process, because at this point the self is conscious of itself (not of some apparent alien obtrusion), as giving to itself all its determinations. The ego, in so far as it is determined by the knowledge, is the intelligent ego, and, as such, the subject of theoretical science; the ego, on the other hand, as determining the non-ego, is the subject of practical science. To recapitulate, Fichte makes that which, from the standpoint of ordinary consciousness, we call the world, merely a product of the ego; it exists only through the ego, for the ego, and in the ego. The ego, however, is not held by Fichte to be the phenomenal self — that is, the limited temporal self which each person takes himself to be. On the contrary, the creative ego is a universal self common to all finite selves. Abstraction must be made from the finitude of our individual selves, for the finitude is itself a self-imposed limit to he transcended. The universal self thus reached is God. A popular exposition of his philosophy is given in his Anweisung zum seligen Leben. It is set forth in a strictly scientific manner in the lectures published in the Nachgelassene Werke, edited by I. G. Fichte (3 vols., Bonn, 1834-35), in which his Speculative Logik and his revised theory of law and morals are particularly deserving of attention. Although Fichte never, strictly speaking, formed a school, and although his system has been adopted only by a few, such as J. B. Schad, Mehmel, Cramer, Schmidt, and Michaelis, his influence upon the subsequent development of German philosophy has been very important, especially through the influence he exerted upon Hegel (q.v.). Fichte's collected works were published by his son, I. H. Fichte (1845-46). His popular works have been translated into English. Their titles are: The Destination of Man; The Vocation of the Scholar; The Way to the Blessed Life, The Characteristics of the Present Age; and Outlines of the Doctrine of Knowledge. A. E. Kroeger translated The Science of Knowledge (1889); The Science of Rights (1869 and 1889); and The Science of Ethics as Based on the Science of Knowledge (1897). Some of the shorter works have appeared in translations from time to time in the Journal of Speculative Philosophy. Consult: Kuno Fischer, Geschichte der neuern Philosophie, vol. v. (Heidelberg, 1897 et seq.); id., Fichte's Leben, Werke und Lehre (ib., 1900); Adamson, Fichte (London, 1881); Everett, Fichte's Science of Knowledge: a Critical Exposition (Chicago, 1884); Schneider, Johann Gottlieb Fichte als Socialpolitiker (Halle, 1894); Lindau, Fichte und der neuere Socialismus (Berlin, 1900); Weber, Fichte's Socialismus und sein Verhältnis zur Marxschen Doktrin (Tübingen, 1900); and the leading histories of philosophy, such as Erdmann's, Ueberweg-Heinze's, Windelband's, and Falckenberg's.


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 pieces, ‘A Poem sacred to the Memory of Isaac Newton,’ with an extravagant dedication to Sir Robert Walpole. Next year the poet changed his publisher, and it was Andrew Millar (1707–1768) [q. v.] who in 1728 issued ‘Spring,’ dedicated to the Countess of Hertford. The first edition of ‘Autumn’ (inscribed to Arthur Onslow) was that which appeared in ‘The Seasons’ (London, 1730, 4to), of which some 454 copies were subscribed for at one guinea, among the subscribers being Arbuthnot, Bolingbroke, Pope, Somerville, Spence, and Young. Prefixed is an engraving after William Kent, the well-known gardener. The copy of this scarce edition in the university library at Edinburgh is that which was pompously crowned by the Earl of Buchan at Ednam on 22 Sept. 1791 [see, eleventh ]. ‘Autumn’ was subsequently issued separately (price one shilling) by Millan. The poems sold well in the separate form, and Thomson is said to have reaped over 1,000l. profit from them before he sold the copyright to Millar in 1729 (cf., pp. 46, 47; Speeches and Arguments before the Court of King's Bench, ‘Millar v. Taylor,’ 1771; , Copyright, 1896, p. 413). To the subscription volume of the ‘Seasons’ (1730), in addition to the fine ‘Hymn’ (which seems to adumbrate much of the pantheistic philosophy of Wordsworth), was appended a patriotic poem of considerable length, which had passed through two editions during 1729, under the title ‘Britannia, a Poem, written in 1719.’ The last date is a mistake apparently for 1727; ‘the most illustrious of patriots’ (as Walpole had formerly been styled) was now severely rebuked for submitting to the indignities of Spain; it contains a good deal of fustian.

In 1730 Thomson appealed to the public in another literary capacity. On 28 Feb. of that year his first play, ‘Sophonisba,’ was produced at Drury Lane. The curiosity of the public was powerfully roused, and many gentlemen are stated to have sought places in the footmen's gallery (cf., London in Jacobite Times). Mrs. Oldfield was especially fascinating in the title-part, and the piece was played ten times with success during the season. It was a poor imitation of Otway, and there was little opportunity in it for the display of the poet's characteristic excellences; it was nevertheless sold to Millar for 130 guineas, and went through four editions during the year (several translations appeared, a Russian one in 1786). One line of ‘Sophonisba’ at least has defied oblivion. Nat Lee had written ‘O Sophonisba, Oh!’ Thomson expanded the sentiment in the verse Oh! Sophonisba, Sophonisba, Oh! the inanity of which was pointed out, not at the theatre, as has generally been assumed, but in an envious little squib, called ‘A Criticism of the New Sophonisba’ (1730). The quick eye of Fielding soon detected the absurdity, which was paraded in his ‘Tom Thumb the Great,’ the line ‘Oh! Huncamunca, Huncamunca, Oh!’ appearing as a kind of refrain (act i. sc. v.). It is noticeable that the line ‘O Sophonisba, I am wholly thine,’ was not substituted by Thomson until after 1738.

In the autumn of 1730 Thomson announced to his friend Mallet that he was going to hang up his harp in the willows. His five years' sojourn in London had been eminently successful, and he was now appointed travelling tutor and companion to Charles Richard Talbot, the son of the future chancellor. In December 1730 he was at Paris. There he saw Voltaire's Brutus, and was amused by the old Roman's declamation on liberty before a French audience. The more he saw of foreign countries the more he became confirmed in the opinion that liberty was the monopoly of Great Britain. At Lyons he met his friendly critic Spence. Thence he proceeded to the Fontaine de Vaucluse (‘the shut valley of Petrarch’), of which he had promised Lady Hertford a poetical description. During his travels he received the high honour of a ‘poetical epistle’ from Pope, but he was probably deemed by the author to have undervalued the distinction, for the best part of the material was subsequently incorporated in the ‘Epistle to Arbuthnot.’ At Rome in November 1731 he was in correspondence with his old patron Lord Binning, who died two years later, and before the end of 1731 he was back again at Ashdown Park in Berkshire. His pupil died on 27 Sept. 1733; but Thomson retained the favour of the father, and he was at the end of the same year appointed to the sinecure office of secretary of briefs with an income of 300l. a year. Such a post brought perfect contentment to Thomson. In May 1736 he moved from a modest apartment in Lancaster Court to a cottage in Kew Foot Lane with a pretty garden, in which he subsequently employed a cousin Andrew as gardener. There he lived for the rest of his life. He was passionately fond of long walks, and among his pilgrimages the most frequent was probably that to Pope's house at Twickenham; he also went frequently to Mallet's


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 508 runic cross, round which the thickly-set tombs of the centre of the island cluster, is in itself worth quoting in full. I have no means of analysing the early and late, and the religious and secular elements, and therefore refrain from conjecture. The burying-ground covers the centre of the island; is deep in the damp profusion of grass and under-growth; and is surrounded by an oval dyke, now over-grown—in Pennant's time "a dyke of stones, with a regular, narrow entrance". Within the enclosure are two mounds, which would probably reward excavation.

I give Mr. Dixon's version of the legend, slightly condensed:—After the death of St. Maree, his cell on the island continued to be the resort of holy men. During the time of the Norwegian power in the district, a prince and princess of Norway were married by the island hermit, and here the prince left his bride when called away to war. Before parting they agreed that, when the prince returned, a white flag should be displayed from his barge if all was well, if not, a black flag; the princess was to meet her husband with like signals of good or evil fate. The prince remained away, and meanwhile jealousy and doubt entered the heart of the princess. She determined to test his constancy, and when the prince's barge, flying the white flag, at length entered the loch, she commanded her barge to be launched. A black flag hung from the stern, a bier was placed on the centre, on which she lay counterfeiting death, her maidens mourning round her, and the barge was rowed slowly down the loch to meet the prince. Seeing the black flag, he leapt from his own deck, and, raising the shroud, seemed to see the face of his dead bride. In an agony of grief he stabbed himself; and the princess, rising with a cry, drew the dagger from his heart and thrust it in her own. The two lovers were buried on the island, where their graves still lie, foot to foot, in the silence of the woodland, each marked by the runic cross.


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 at Strand-on-the-Green, to the Doves tavern at Hammersmith, and to visit his friends in town.

During this halcyon period Thomson was working at his most cherished poem. The first part of ‘Liberty’ was published in December 1734; it was followed in 1735 by the second and third, and in 1736 by the fourth and fifth parts. The whole appeared in 1736, together with ‘Sophonisba’ and ‘Britannia,’ forming a second octavo volume uniform with that containing ‘The Seasons.’ It was dedicated to Frederick, prince of Wales, and was well subscribed for by the booksellers; but the public, forewarned by Thomson's previous patriotic essay, ‘Britannia,’ took little interest in it.

The ease he anticipated at Richmond was of short duration. The death of Talbot on 14 Feb. 1737 deprived him of his sinecure. Lord Hardwicke, who succeeded to the woolsack, kept the office open for some time, expecting that Thomson would apply for it; but a combination of pride and indolence restrained him from doing so, and the post was given to another. Thomson may have found satisfaction in the composition of his fine panegyric ‘To the Memory of the Rt. Hon. Lord Talbot,’ in which he took occasion to vindicate his friend Dr. Rundle from the imputation of heresy. In the meantime his income was precarious, though it is probable that during 1738 his second play, ‘Agamemnon,’ brought him in a fair sum. It was acted at Drury Lane on 6 April 1738, with the author's good friend James Quin in the title-part; and two editions appeared during the year, while Thomson had three benefit nights—the third, sixth, and ninth. Pope appeared in a box on the first night, when he was recognised by a round of applause, and the Prince and Princess of Wales commanded the seventh night. The intrinsic merits of the piece hardly justified such attentions.

Fortunately for the poet a more satisfactory source of supplies was secured during 1738. A new but staunch friend and patron, George Lyttelton, first lord Lyttelton [q. v.], introduced Thomson to the Prince of Wales, and ‘his royal highness upon inquiry into the state of his affairs, being pleasantly informed that they were in a more poetical posture than formerly, granted him a pension of 100l. a year’. His connection with the prince involved the rejection of his play ‘Edward and Eleanora’ (founded on an apocryphal episode in the history of Edward I and owing something to Euripides's ‘Alcestis’) in 1739 by the newly appointed censor of plays (under 10 George II, c. 28). It was printed ‘as it was to have been acted’ (London, 1739, 8vo; two Dublin editions, and a French translation by De Barante), but the play was damned as effectually as if it had been performed. It found a vehement panegyrist in John Wesley, who had otherwise a ‘very low opinion of Mr. Thomson's poetical abilities’ (Journal, 1827, iii. 465).

From 1740 dates one of Thomson's most famous compositions—the noble ode known as ‘Rule Britannia,’ destined to be ‘the political hymn of this country as long as she maintains her political power’. It first appeared in ‘The Masque of Alfred,’ composed by Dr. Arne, written by Thomson and David Mallet, and performed in the gardens of Cliefden House, Buckinghamshire, at a fête given by Frederick, prince of Wales, on 1 and 2 Aug. 1740. It was already a celebrated song in 1745, when the Jacobites deftly altered the words to suit their own cause, and Handel made use of the air in 1746. ‘The Masque of Alfred,’ altered into an opera, was given at Covent Garden in 1745, and was entirely remodelled by Mallet for Drury Lane in 1751. Thomson's name, however, was retained upon the public advertisements of the opera as author of the ‘Ode’ (presumably ‘Rule Britannia’), and the song appeared with his initials attached to it in the second edition of a well-known song-book, ‘The Charmer’ (Edinburgh, 1752, p. 130). It was not until eleven years after Thomson's death that Mallet, in his collected works (1759, vol. iii.), in an advertisement to a reissue of ‘The Masque of Alfred,’ which included ‘Rule Britannia’ with three stanzas altered, as a note explains, ‘by the late Lord Bolingbroke in 1751,’ remarked with studied vagueness that he had discarded all his collaborator's share in the production with the exception of a few speeches and ‘part of one song’ (see art. ; Notes and Queries, 7th ser. vol. ii. passim; Saturday Review, 20 Feb. 1897). There is no just ground for doubting Thomson's exclusive responsibility for ‘Rule Britannia.’ M. Morel has demonstrated that it is in effect reconstructed from fragments and echoes of Thomson's previous patriotic poems ‘Britannia’ and ‘Liberty’ (, pp. 584–7).

During the six years from 1738 to 1744 the most serious of Thomson's occupations was the revision of ‘The Seasons.’ In addition to many verbal alterations, and the elimination of a few passages, he enlarged ‘Spring’ from 1087 to 1173 lines, ‘Summer’ from 1206 to 1796, ‘Autumn’ from 1269 to 1375, and ‘Winter’ from 787 to


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 1069. These corrections were embodied in the 1744 edition (inscribed to the Prince of Wales), to which were added two years later the final corrections made by the poet before his death. The British Museum possesses a copy of the 1738 edition of ‘The Seasons,’ with Thomson's own manuscript corrections, and also a number of interesting emendations in the handwriting (it is supposed) of Pope. It is curious to find Pope on one of the blank pages with which this copy is interleaved deleting the well-known ‘when unadorned, adorned the most;’ Thomson, who was generally mindful of his friend's suggestions, turned a deaf ear to this one. Much of the work of revision was impaired by a too conscious striving after a Virgilian veneer. (The responsibility of Pope for the ‘emendations,’ of which Mitford, Combe, and Ellis were convinced, has the support of Dr. Morel, but is disputed by Mr. Churton Collins, ‘Saturday Review,’ 31 July 1897; a verdict of non-proven is ably maintained by Mr. Tovey; cf. Athenæum, 1894, i. 131; Notes and Queries, 8th ser. xii. 389–9.). In July 1743 Thomson paid his first visit to Hagley, and there he seems to have made Lyttelton to some extent a partner in the work of textual revision. He was subsequently a frequent visitor there and at Shenstone's retreat, The Leasowes. In 1744 Lyttelton became one of the lords of the treasury, and promptly bestowed upon his friend the sinecure post of surveyor-general of the Leeward Islands, from which he drew a clear 300l. a year.

In the following year appeared the last but one of Thomson's plays, ‘Tancred and Sigismunda: a Tragedy’ (London, 8vo, 1752, 1766, and 1768; dedicated in epistolary form to the Prince of Wales), the plot of which was drawn from the novel in ‘Gil Blas.’ Pitt (who is said to have had ‘a sincere value for the amiable author’) and Lyttelton took upon themselves the patronage of this play, which had a far greater success than any other of Thomson's dramatic efforts. When it was produced at Drury Lane on 18 March 1745 Garrick played Tancred, and the part held the stage at intervals down to 1819 (, vol. v.; cf., Life of Garrick, i. 78); the play was translated into German in part by Lessing and by Schlegel, and imitated in 1761 by Saurin in his ‘Blanche et Guiscard.’

In 1736 the ‘Gentleman's Magazine’ printed Thomson's first poem ‘To Amanda’ (i.e. Elizabeth, daughter of Captain Gilbert Young, and sister-in-law of Thomson's friend James Robertson). Eight years elapsed without impairing in any way the poet's fidelity, but about 1744 the lady married Admiral John Campbell (d. 1790) [q. v.] The disappointment preyed upon his spirits, and even to a certain extent upon his health, and the amount of work completed under these conditions was small. Ever since he had been at Richmond Thomson had been engaged in a desultory way upon his second important poem, ‘The Castle of Indolence: an Allegorical Poem’ (London, 1748, 4to; 2nd edit. 1748, 8vo). Gray mentions it as containing ‘fine stanzas’ in a letter of 5 June 1748. It was first conceived in the form of a few detached stanzas in raillery of his own indolence, which he deemed to be well paralleled by that of his friends; among the traces of its origin there remains the autobiographical stanza commencing ‘A bard here dwelt more fat than bard beseems.’ Thomson had been an ardent admirer of Spenser from his youth, and it is noteworthy that in this noble specimen of art he has left the combined result of his earliest inspiration and his mature taste. In the soothing and drowsy effect which is suggested by the opening stanzas, Thomson proved himself as a master of onomatopœia worthy of comparison with the author of the ‘Lotos-Eaters.’

Among Thomson's later visitors at Richmond were Paterson and Collins, who introduced him to Warton, James Hammond, and Gilbert West. Collins in turn was introduced by him to the Prince of Wales, and was given a place in the ‘Castle of Indolence’ (stanzas 57–9). Lyttelton procured his friend a key to Richmond Park, and is even said to have written his ‘Observations upon the Conversion and Apostleship of St. Paul’ (1747), with a view to raising him from his apathy in regard to religion. ‘Had the poet lived longer,’ wrote Lyttelton, ‘I don't doubt he would have openly profest his faith’ (cf., Memoirs, i. 409). Early in 1748 Thomson's pension was stopped by the Prince of Wales, who had quarrelled with Lyttelton, but he was scarcely incommoded by the reduction of his income. Early in August, after a rapid walk from London, he stepped into a boat at Hammersmith Mall and was rowed to Kew. He caught a severe chill, and died at four o'clock in the morning of Saturday, 27 Aug. 1748, being not quite forty-eight years of age. He was buried near the font in Richmond parish church, where a brass tablet was erected to his memory by the Earl of Buchan in 1792. Armstrong, Andrew Reid, and James Robertson had attended him during his illness, and these, with Quin, Mallet, and Mitchell, followed him to the grave. The poet died intestate; but Lyttelton and Mitchell


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Tailboys, Sir Walter, 181.

Taillebois, family of, 206.

Tanning formerly chief trade of Horncastle, 53.

Tennyson, A., and brother married in Horncastle, 44, 162.

Thatched publichouse, by will, 164.

Theft from St. Mary's Church, 43 and note, 47, 48.

Theleby, 208.

Thief to catch thieves, 161.

Thimbleby, 165-176.

 „  church described, 175, 176.

 „   „  engraving of, 171.

Thornton-le-Fen, 210.

 „   „  Church, 210210. [sic]

 „   „  School, 210.

Thornton family, 210.

Three Maids' Inn, 164.

Thymelby family, 24, 25, 168, 181.

Tibetot, Robert, 12, 19, 20.

Tom Cat Inn, 164.

Toynton, High, 180-184.

 „   „  Church, 181, 182.

 „  Low, 184-188.

 „   „  Church, 184-186.

 „   „   „  engraving of, 185.

Trafford, W. H., Esq., 191, 202.

Train-bands, arms of, 14.

Trinity Church Horncastle, 57-60.

 „   „  engraving of, 59.

Trunyan's, light of, our Lady's light, &c., 44, 45.

Tumby Chase, 202.

Turner and Cato Street Conspiracy, 155, 156.

 „  Sir Edmund, 184.

Tymelby, Ivo de, 207.

Tyrwhitt, Douglas, a lady, 52.

 „  old county family, 29, 208.

Umfraville, Earl of Angus, 168, 181.

Union, the, or workhouse, 133-135.

Union, early laws concerning paupers, 133, 134.

Volunteers, history of, 145-148.

 „  Drill Hall, 148-150.

 „  practiced on Edlington Road, 162.

Walter, Rev. H., B.D., History of England, 64.

Waring, river name, meaning "rough," 22. [sic]

Watson's Free School, 108-111.

 „   „   „  property of, 110.

 „   „   „  Governors, original, 110 and note.

Well-syke, field and wood name, 190 and note.

Wesley, John, 65-67.

 „  Charles, 65.

Wesleyan, sect of, 64-71.

 „  Chapel, 70.

 „   „  engraving of, 65.

 „  circuits, 66.

 „  centenary, 71.

Whelpton Almshouses, 142-144.

Whichcote, Clinton, of Coningsby, 207.

Wildmore Fen added to Horncastle, 209209. [sic]

Wilksby, 207.

 „  Church, 208,. [sic]

Williams, Thomas, missionary, 69, 70.

Willoughby, William de, and family, 167.

 „  de Eresby, Lord, 204.

Winchester, Bishop of, held land in Coningsby, 206.

Wood Enderby, 201-203.

 „   „  Church, 201, 202202. [sic]

Workhouse, before Union, 134.

 „  village, 134.

Y

Young Churchmen's Union, 63.

Zouch, Eudo la, bequest to, 197.

Printed by W. K. Morton & Sons, Ltd., 27, High Street, Horncastle.


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 These, however, were among the less hardy of our sports. The good old Doctor's great aim was to get us healthily engaged in the country. With this object he would say on a Monday morning to the bigger boys of the two highest classes, "Now, lads, if you will translate this book of Virgil, or Homer, or this Greek play, as quickly as you can, you shall have the rest of the week to spend as you like." Put upon our mettle by such a challenge the work would be completed, by us perhaps on the Wednesday, and three days of varied

enjoyment in country rambles would follow. In these days, when bird-nesting is forbidden as being "cruelty to animals," it may horrify some of our readers to learn that the Doctor encouraged his pupils to collect eggs. On our excursions in early summer every hedge was carefully examined for many miles round, the tallest trees were climbed, or, as it was then called "swarmed," in search of the eggs of hawk, carrion crow, woodpecker, &c.; those of the


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 his estate in the interests of the relatives in Scotland.

The posthumous tragedy of ‘Coriolanus’ was presented at Covent Garden on 13 Jan. 1749, the chief part, which had formerly been claimed by Garrick, being conceded to the poet's friend Quin. The actor is said to have broken down in repeating Lyttelton's prologue when he came to the lines: Not one immoral, one corrupted thought, One line, which dying, he could wish to blot. The proceeds were sent to Thomson's sisters. ‘Coriolanus’ having been produced and printed (1749, 8vo; Dublin, 12mo), there seemed little left for a literary executor to do; but Lyttelton took an exceptional view of his responsibilities. He brought out an edition of Thomson's ‘Works’ in 1750 (London, 4 vols. 12mo), in which, in spite of the sentiment uttered in the prologue, he cut out two stanzas (55 and 56) from the ‘Castle of Indolence,’ fourteen hundred verses from ‘Liberty,’ and a number of minor ‘redundancies’ from ‘The Seasons.’ This, however, by no means exhausted his sense of obligation to his friend's memory. He prepared, but did not publish, an edition in which, apart from suppressions, the philosophy of the poet was ‘corrected,’ the deistic ‘Hymn’ bodily eliminated, and long passages modified and transposed ‘beyond recognition’ (the interleaved copy embodying these editorial changes is still preserved at Hagley). Happily Murdoch, with the support of Millar, energetically intervened, and for the quarto edition of 1762 the text adopted was practically that of 1750 (it was left for Bolton Corney in 1842 to restore the text as the poet left it in 1746). The superbly printed and illustrated edition of 1762 was published by subscription (London, 2 vols. 4to, with the memoir by Patrick Murdoch), the king heading the subscribers with ‘one hundred pounds,’ while the list includes most of the celebrities of the day, from Akenside to Wilkes (see, Libr. Comp. 1825, p. 740 n.) With the proceeds a cenotaph, designed by Robert Adam and executed by H. Spang, was erected between the monuments of Shakespeare and Rowe in Westminster Abbey. Other literary memorials were the ‘Musidorus’ of Robert Shiels, the graceful strophes of Shenstone (Verses to William Lyttelton, ad fin.), and the fine elegiac ‘Ode’ by Collins, ‘In yonder grave a druid lies’ (see Gent. Mag. 1843, i. 493, 602).

Thomson's cottage in Kew Foot Lane became after numerous accretions Rosedale House. In 1786 it became the residence of Mrs. Boscawen, the widow of the admiral, who treasured in the rooms formerly occupied by the poet a number of Thomson relics. What little remains of the old house after many changes is now incorporated in the Richmond Royal Hospital (see {sc|Thorne}}, Environs of London, 1876, p. 502;, Richmond, 1824; Addit. MS. 27578, ff. 120–7). Commemorative lines on Thomson may still be seen upon a board within the grounds of Pembroke Lodge in Richmond Park.

But a few stories remain to confirm the tradition of Thomson's indolence and epicureanism. The notion that he was extremely fat seems contradicted by his activity. He is said, however, to have risen habitually at noon, to have eaten the sunny side off the peaches in his garden with his hands in his pockets, and to have cut his books with the snuffers. He was especially careless about matters of attire, yet was a dandy in the matter of perukes. Like Cowley (between whom and Thomson Leigh Hunt, in his ‘Men, Women, and Books,’ works out with great ingenuity ‘a kind of identity’), he knew how to push the bottle, and his cellar was rich in old wines and Scotch ale. He also formed a fine collection of prints, and a library of from five to six hundred books. Like Addison, the author of ‘The Seasons’ is said to have been dull as a talker until excited by wine. His sensibility was great, so much so that in reading fine poetry he always lost control of himself. He generally composed in the deep silence of the night, and could be heard ‘walking in his library till near morning, humming over in his way what he was to correct and write out next day’. It is evident that he was liberal-minded, good-humoured, and free from any mean failings. He had a rare power of attaching friends; the way in which he captivated the good will of Pope is remarkable, and generous to a high degree was the sentiment that existed between him and James Quin.

‘The Seasons’ may be regarded as inaugurating a new era in English poetry. Lady Winchilsea and John Dyer, whose ‘Grongar Hill’ was published a few months before ‘Winter,’ had pleaded by their work for a truthful and unaffected and at the same time a romantic treatment of nature in poetry; but the ideal of artificiality by which English poetry was dominated under the influence of Cowley and Pope was first effectively challenged by Thomson. It was he who transmitted the sentiment of nature not only to imitators like Savage (cf. The Wanderer, 1729), Armstrong, Somerville, and Shenstone, but also to Gray and Cowper, and so indirectly to Wordsworth. Cowper in


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United States Code/Title 11/Chapter 5/Section 553

§ 553. Setoff

 * (a) Except as otherwise provided in this section and in sections 362 and 363 of this title, this title does not affect any right of a creditor to offset a mutual debt owing by such creditor to the debtor that arose before the commencement of the case under this title against a claim of such creditor against the debtor that arose before the commencement of the case, except to the extent that—
 * (1) the claim of such creditor against the debtor is disallowed;
 * (2) such claim was transferred, by an entity other than the debtor, to such creditor—
 * (A) after the commencement of the case; or
 * (B)
 * (i) after 90 days before the date of the filing of the petition; and
 * (ii) while the debtor was insolvent (except for a setoff of a kind described in section 362 (b)(6), 362 (b)(7), 362 (b)(17), 362 (b)(27), 555, 556, 559, 560, or 561); or
 * (3) the debt owed to the debtor by such creditor was incurred by such creditor—
 * (A) after 90 days before the date of the filing of the petition;
 * (B) while the debtor was insolvent; and
 * (C) for the purpose of obtaining a right of setoff against the debtor (except for a setoff of a kind described in section 362 (b)(6), 362 (b)(7), 362 (b)(17), 362 (b)(27), 555, 556, 559, 560, or 561).

 * (b)
 * (1) Except with respect to a setoff of a kind described in section 362 (b)(6), 362 (b)(7), 362 (b)(17), 362 (b)(27), 555, 556, 559, 560, 561, 365 (h), 546 (h), or 365 (i)(2) of this title, if a creditor offsets a mutual debt owing to the debtor against a claim against the debtor on or within 90 days before the date of the filing of the petition, then the trustee may recover from such creditor the amount so offset to the extent that any insufficiency on the date of such setoff is less than the insufficiency on the later of—
 * (A) 90 days before the date of the filing of the petition; and
 * (B) the first date during the 90 days immediately preceding the date of the filing of the petition on which there is an insufficiency.
 * (2) In this subsection, “insufficiency” means amount, if any, by which a claim against the debtor exceeds a mutual debt owing to the debtor by the holder of such claim.

 * (c) For the purposes of this section, the debtor is presumed to have been insolvent on and during the 90 days immediately preceding the date of the filing of the petition.


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 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


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 things,’ and ‘to teach the young idea how to shoot,’ while the ‘Castle of Indolence’ has the beautiful line ‘Placed far amid the melancholy main’ (cf., Highland Girl; , Wordsworthiana, pp. 331 sq.).

There are three portraits of Thomson—that by William Aikman (described by Pitt as ‘beastly like’), dated 1725, and now at Edinburgh (it was, like the Paton portrait, engraved by Basire for the edition of 1762); that of Slaughter, dated 1736, and now at Dryburgh Abbey; and that of Paton, painted in 1746, and presented to the National Portrait Gallery in 1857 by Miss Bell of Springhall, the grand-niece of the poet. Of this many engravings, mostly very indifferent likenesses, exist. A miniature, presented to the bygone Ednam Club by the Earl of Buchan, is still preserved at Ednam manse. In addition to the above, two oil portraits have been ascribed to William Hogarth; from one of these a good profile was lithographed in 1820 by M. Gauci (Brit. Mus. Print-room;, Hogarth, pp. 315, 350).

Between Thomson's death and the issue of the splendid quarto edition of 1762 (which was long exhibited in a show-case in the King's Library at the British Museum as an example of British typography), some eight editions of Thomson's works were issued. Subsequently to that date the following are the more important of the editions (I) of Thomson's ‘Works’ and (II) of ‘The Seasons.’

I. ‘The Works of James Thomson, with his last Corrections and Improvements,’ London, 1763, 2 vols. 12mo; 1768, 8vo (the British Museum copy has some of Lyttelton's manuscript corrections); Edinburgh, 1772, 4 vols. 8vo; London, 1773, 4 vols. 12mo; 1788, 3 vols. 8vo and 2 vols. 12mo; 1802, 3 vols. 8vo; ed. J. Nichols, 1849, 12mo; 1866, 8vo. A folio edition appeared at Glasgow in 2 vols. 1784. ‘Thomson's Poetical Works’ were edited by George Gilfillan for the Library edition of the ‘British Poets’ in 1853, Edinburgh, 8vo; by Sir Harris Nicolas for an American edition in 1854 (Boston, 2 vols. 8vo); by Robert Bell in 1855 (with useful notes and appendixes), London, 2 vols. 8vo; by W. M. Rossetti, with illustrations by T. Seccombe in 1873, London, 8vo, and 1879; by Gilfillan and Clarke, 1873, 1874, 1878, London, 8vo. The poems have also appeared in the ‘Collections’ of Johnson, Bell, Anderson, Park, Chalmers, Sanford, and in the Aldine edition of the ‘British Poets’ edited by Sir Harris Nicolas in 1830, reprinted 1862 with additions by Peter Cunningham, and revised throughout by D. C. Tovey in 1897.

II. ‘The Seasons, with Notes, Illustrations, and a complete Index by G. Wright,’ London [1770], 8vo. ‘The Seasons … with Britannia … to which is prefixed the Life and Literary Character of Thomson, with new Designs,’ Dublin, 1773, 12mo. ‘The Seasons,’ Amsterdam, 1775, 4to, with plates by Moreau and Cheffard (a copy sold in 1890 for 4l. 17s. 6d.). ‘The Seasons,’ Paris, 1780, 12mo. ‘The Seasons. New edition by J. J. C. Timæus. To which is prefixed … an Essay on the Plan and Character of the Poem by J. Aikin,’ Hamburg, 1791, 8vo. ‘The Seasons, with Engravings designed by C. Ansell,’ London, 1792, 8vo; new edition, with original engravings and Aikin's ‘Essay,’ London, 1792, 8vo (the British Museum copy has manuscript notes); new edition, ‘with original Life and Critical Essay by R. Heron,’ Perth, 1793, 4to; another edition, illustrated, with index, glossary, and notes, by P. Stockdale, F.P., London, 1793, 8vo; McKenzie's edition, with Johnson's ‘Life’ and new cuts, Dublin, 1793, 8vo. ‘The Seasons,’ Parma, 1794, 4to (a sumptuous edition printed by Bodoni). ‘The Seasons, illustrated with Engravings by F. Bartolozzi and S. W. Tomkins from original Pictures by W. Hamilton,’ London, 1797, folio (a copy of this edition with coloured plates fetched 54l. in 1893; much higher prices are occasionally obtained), and 1807, 4to. ‘The Seasons,’ Paris, 1800, sm. 8vo (printed by Egron). ‘The Seasons, with illustrative Remarks by J. Evans,’ London, 1802, 8vo; another edition, L.P. 1802, 8vo. ‘The Seasons, adorned with plates,’ 1802, 8vo. ‘The Seasons, with a Life of the Author by J. Evans,’ London, 1805, 8vo. ‘The Seasons,’ with engravings by Bewick from Thurston's designs, 1805, 8vo, two editions, one F.P. (sold for 5l. 10s. in 1895); another edition, Bordeaux, 1808, 12mo; with Bewick's cuts, Edinburgh, 1809, 8vo; another edition, Manchester [1810], 12mo; Boston, Mass., 1810, 12mo; Ludlow, 1815, 12mo; Leipzig, 1815, 8vo; with engravings from the designs of R. Westall, New York, 1817, 12mo; the same, London, 1824, 12mo; new edition, with notes, historical and explanatory, by Dingwell Williams, London, 1824, 8vo (the museum copy has manuscript notes and collations by the editor); Boston, 1833, 12mo; with a biographical and critical introduction by A. Cunningham, London, 1841, 8vo. ‘The Seasons … with engraved Illustrations from Designs by J. Bell, C. W. Cope, T. Creswick, R. Redgrave … and with the Life of the Author by P. Murdoch’ (a copy, with a few extra plates, fetched 8l. in 1891), edited by Bolton Corney, London, 1842, 4to (in this edition the text was for the first time carefully restored from the edition of