Thomson, the son of a Scottish clergyman, was educated for the ministry at Edinburgh University but went instead to London, where he joined Alexander Pope's literary circle. His boyhood in the country greatly influenced his mature poetry. The Seasons (1730), a series of nature poems, grew to more than 5,000 lines in its final version; it became the most popular poem of the eighteenth century and inspired Joseph Haydn's great musical setting. Thomson can justly be credited with undermining the supremacy of the couplet and with changing poetic taste. With Thomson, the center of poetic interest moved from the city to the country. Thomson was a deeply committed humanitarian poet, convinced that human nature was basically benevolent and that physical nature was a manifestation of the divine spirit. For this reason, he is often regarded as a "preromantic." He is also the author of the supremely famous song Rule, Britannia (1740).
020