Nature, which delights in diversifying her gifts, does not bestow upon every one a power of displaying the abilities she herself has granted to the best advantage.  Though Mr. Rickerton could discover that Mr. Thomson, so far from being without parts, really possessed a very fine genius, yet he never could have imagined, as he often declared, that there existed in his mind such powers, as even by the best cultivation could have raised him to so high a degree of eminence amongst the poets.

When Mr. Rickerton first saw Mr. Thomson’s Winter, which was in a Bookseller’s shop at Edinburgh, he stood amazed, and after he had read the lines quoted below, he dropt the poem from his hand in the extasy of admiration.  The lines are his induction to Winter, than which few poets ever rose to a more sublime height[1].

After spending the usual time at a country school in the acquisition of the dead languages, Mr. Thomson was removed to the university of Edinburgh, in order to finish his education, and be fitted for the ministry.  Here, as at the country school, he made no great figure:  his companions thought contemptuously of him, and the masters under whom he studied, had not a higher opinion of our poet’s abilities, than their pupils.  His course of attendance upon the classes of philosophy being finished, he was entered in the Divinity Hall, as one of the candidates for the ministry, where the students, before they are permitted to enter on their probation, must yield six years attendance.

It was in the second year of Mr. Thomson’s attendance upon this school of divinity, whose professor at that time was the revd. and learned Mr. William Hamilton, a person whom he always mentioned with respect, that our author was appointed by the professor to write a discourse on the Power of the Supreme Being.  When his companions heard their task assigned him, they could not but arraign the professor’s judgment, for assigning so copious a theme to a young man, from whom nothing equal to the subject could be expected.  But when Mr. Thomson delivered the discourse, they had then reason to reproach themselves for want of discernment, and for indulging a contempt of one superior to the brightest genius amongst them.  This discourse was so sublimely elevated, that both the professor and the students who heard it delivered, were astonished.  It was written in blank verse, for which Mr. Hamilton rebuked him, as being improper upon that occasion.  Such of his fellow-students as envied him the success of this discourse, and the admiration it procured him, employed their industry to trace him as a plagiary; for they could not be persuaded that a youth seemingly so much removed from the appearance of genius, could compose a declamation, in which learning, genius, and judgment had a very great share.  Their search, however, proved fruitless, and Mr. Thomson continued, while he remained at the university, to possess the honour of that discourse, without any diminution.