SOURCE: "The Castle of Indolence and the Opposition to Walpole," in The Review of English Studies, n.s. Vol. XLI, No. 161, February, 1990, pp. 45-64.

In the following excerpt, Gerrard reads The Castle of Indolence as a political poem which politely but firmly chastises the ineffectualness of political life in England during Robert Walpole's term as First Minister.

In May 1748, only weeks before his death, James Thomson's last and most enigmatic poem finally went to press: The Castle of Indolence. An Allegorical Poem. Written in Imitation of Spenser. In a literary era in which admiration for Spenser was becoming increasingly de rigueur, its popularity was assured. By the end of the century, Romantic critics and poets, with their taste for sensuous Spenserian stanzas, prized The Castle of Indolence almost as highly as The Seasons: Keats, Coleridge, Wordsworth, and later Tennyson all fell under its spell. Yet their admiration usually...