SOURCE: "The Castle of Indolence," in James Thomson, Oliphant Anderson, 1922, pp. 129-43.

In the following study, originally published in 1898, of The Castle of Indolence, Bayne places the poem between the tradition of Edmund Spenser, whose Faery Queen Thomson deliberately imitated, and poetic innovations that looked forward to Romanticism in general and John Keats in particular. Bayne examines both Thomson's aesthetic method and the strength of his poem as an allegorical narrative.

Spenser was a long-established favourite of Thomson's, and he therefore took up a very congenial piece of work when he began his Castle of Indolence, avowedly based upon the great epic narrative of the 'poet's poet.' The poem was begun, according to his own words, as early as 1733, and engaged his attention at intervals of more or less duration till its publication in 1748. It formed another 'departure' in his poetry. The intention of the writer obviously...