James Thomson and Eighteenth-Century Scottish Literary Identity

Summary

Eighteenth-century Scotland produced two poets of lasting influence: James Thomson and Robert Burns. Indeed, of all Scottish poets, these two are probably the most important in international terms. However, while Burns, elevated by both popular and critical accord, has endured as Scotland's national bard, Thomson has seen his poetic stock in his native country sharply decline since his lifetime. Through the eighteenth century, Scotland was as enthusiastic about Thomson as anywhere and, indeed, the country's penchant for public celebration of its poetic progeny was lavished upon him. In 1791 Burns penned his ‘Address, To the Shade of Thomson, on crowning his Bust, at Ednam, Roxburgh-shire, with Bays’ to be read at the event described in the poem's title which was sponsored by David Steuart Erskine, the eleventh earl of Buchan, a man who fancied himself a great patron of Scottish literature. Feeling oppressed by the pompous earl and his proposed occasion and having recently read, by way of preparation for his poetic task, William Collins's finely-crafted and intimate ‘Ode occasion'd by the death of Mr Thomson’ (1749), Burns sensed a disjunction between the set-piece ceremony and the payment of proper tribute to Thomson. As a result he produced a piece which, while sincere in its homage to a poet he read voraciously, is somewhat limp. It ends:

So long, sweet Poet of the Year,

Shall bloom that wreath thou well hast won;

While Scotia, with exulting tear,

Proclaims that Thomson was her son.