THOMSON, JAMES. - English poet, b. at Ednam, in Scotland, in Sept. 1700, d. at Richmond on 27 Aug. 1748.

In 1730 he accompanied to France and Italy, in the capacity of tutor (he had a few years earlier abandoned the plan of an ecclesiastical career), the son of Sir Charles Talbot, from whom he later obtained an important post. His most notable work is the short poem The Seasons (1725-30) in blank verse (and not in rhymed couplets, the metre then in vogue), in which he reveals a sensitivity to landscape and a taste for the picturesque that here and there, in certain respects, foreshadow the nature-inspired poetry of the pre-Romantics and even of Wordsworth.

Also remembered of his are The Castle of Indolence

(1748), inspired in him by his residence at Richmond, in melodious Spenserian stanzas, and the highly popular patriotic song Rule Britannia!, which cannot however be attributed to him with certainty, since it appears in a masque, Alfred (1740), which he composed in collaboration with David Mallet. T. influenced Keats and Tennyson.

Bibliography3 works

BIBL.: in addition to the contemporary essay by S. Johnson in the famous Lives of the Poets, modern critical ed. edited by G. B. Hill, Oxford 1905, cf.: L. Morel, J. T., London 1908; M. M. Cameron, L'influence des Saisons de T. sur la poésie descriptive en France, 1759-1810, Paris 1927; E. Mazzari, J. T. e Le stagioni, Palermo 1934.

Augusto Guidi

@incollection{ec12_thomson_james, author = {Guidi, Augusto}, title = {Thomson, james}, booktitle = {Enciclopedia Cattolica}, volume = {XII}, pages = {61--62}, note = {Cited by column}, publisher = {Ente per l’Enciclopedia Cattolica e per il Libro Cattolico}, address = {Città del Vaticano}, year = {1954}, url = {https://azioneromana.com/article/thomson-james} }

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Thomson, James

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