Among those who have used the voice of poetry given them of God to rouse their fellow-men to a life of beneficence, none have done it more zealously or more eloquently than Thomson. For this we pass over here the mere charms of his poetic achievements; over those great pictures which he has painted of the world, and its elements of forests, tempests, plagues, earthquakes; of the views of active life at home and abroad; the hunter's perils and the hunter's carouse
"In ghostly halls of gray renown;"
of man roaming the forests of the tropics, or climbing the cliffs of the lonely Hebrides; to notice in this brief article those bursts of eloquent fire, in which he calls to godlike deeds—those of mercy and of goodness. In this respect, as well as in that of mere poetical beauty, his poem of the Castle of Indolence is pre-eminent. Thomson suffered from the seductions of the vile wizard of Indolence, and in his first canto he paints most effectively the horrors of that vice; in the second canto he shows that, though he had fallen into the net of sloth, it had not entirely conquered, and it could not corrupt him. He calls with the energy of a martyr on his fellow-men to assume the privileges and glories of men. The Castle of Indolence is as felicitous in its versification as in its sentiments; it is full of harmony, and the spirit of picturesque beauty pervades every line; there is a manliness of sentiment about it that is worthy of true genius. Such a stanza as this is the seed of independence to the minds of thousands:
"I care not, Fortune! what you me deny:
You can not rob me of free Nature's grace;
You can not shut the windows of the sky,
Through which Aurora shows her bright'ning face;
You can not bar my constant feet to trace
The woods and lawns, by living streams, at eve;
Let health my nerves and finer fibers brace,
And I their toys to the great children leave:
Of fancy, reason, virtue, naught can me bereave."
The address of the bard of active virtue is worthy of being listened to in every age:
"Ye hapless race!
Dire laboring here to smother Reason's ray,
That lights our Maker's image in our face,
And gives us wide o'er earth unquestioned sway:
What is the adored Supreme Perfection, say?
What but eternal, never-resting soul,
Almighty power, and all-directing day;
By whom each atom stirs, the planets roll:
Who fills, surrounds, informs, and agitates the whole.
"Come, to the beaming God your hearts unfold!
Draw from its fountain life! 'Tis thence alone
We can excel. Up from unfeeling mold
To seraphs burning round the Almighty's throne,
Life rising still on life, in brighter tone,
Perfection forms, and with perfection bliss.
In universal nature this clear shown
Not needeth proof; to prove it were, I wis,
To prove the beauteous world excels the brute abyss.
"It was not by vile loitering in ease
That Greece obtained the brighter palm of art;
That soft, yet ardent Athens learned to please,
To keen the wit, and to sublime the heart,
In all supreme, complete in every part!
It was not thence majestic Rome arose,
And o'er the nations shook her conquering dart:
For sluggard's brow the laurel never grows:
Renown is not the child of indolent repose.
"Had unambitious mortals minded naught
But in loose joy their time to wear away;
Had they alone the lap of dalliance sought,
Pleased on her pillow their dull heads to lay;
Rude Nature's state had been our state to-day;
No cities here their towery fronts had raised,
No arts had made us opulent and gay;
With brother brutes the human race had grazed;
None e'er had soared to fame, none honored been, none praised.
"Great Homer's song had never fired the breast
To thirst of glory and heroic deeds;
Sweet Maro's Muse, sunk in inglorious rest,
Had silent slept amid the Mincian reeds;
The wits of modern times had told their beads,
And monkish legends been their only strains;
Our Milton's Eden had lain wrapped in weeds;
Our Shakspeare strolled and laughed with Warwick swains;
Ne had my master, Spenser, charmed his Mulla's plains.
"Dumb, too, had been the sage historic Muse,
And perished all the sons of ancient fame;
Those starry lights of virtue that diffuse
Through the dark depths of time their vivid flame,
Had all been lost with such as have no name.
Who then had scorned his care for others' good?
Who then had toiled rapacious men to tame?
Who in the public breach devoted stood,
And for his country's cause been prodigal of blood?
* … * … * … *
"Heavens! can you then thus waste in shameful wise
Your few important days of trial here?
Heirs of eternity! yborn to rise
Through endless states of being, still more near
To bliss approaching and perfection clear;
Can you renounce a fortune so sublime—
Such glorious hopes, your backward steps to steer,
And roll with vilest brutes through mud and slime?
No! no! your heaven-touched hearts disdain the sordid crime!"
It is a pleasure to find that the spot where these noble sentiments were penned is still preserved sacred to the memory of the poet of truth and virtue. As far as the restless and rapid change of property would permit so near London, the residence of Thomson has been kept from destruction: changed it is, it is true, but that change has been made with a veneration for the Muse in the heart of the new inhabitant. The house of Thomson, in what is called Kew-foot Lane, at Richmond, as shown in the wood-cut at the head of this article, was a simple cottage; behind this lay his garden, and in front he looked down to the Thames, and on the fine