ABSTRACT
Thomson’s great achievement is to have fashioned a conception which, by bringing nature to the forefront of his poem, became a new poetic way of defining human experience. Thomson was not the first nature poet to write in English, but he was the first to provide an effective idiom in which science, religion, natural description and classical allusion blended to describe the glory, baseness and uncertainty of man’s earthly environment, holding forth the hope of heavenly love and wisdom. Thomson did not deny the actuality of wickedness, the hunterkillers, the wealthy aristocrats disregarding human need and squandering their wealth, the religious exploiters and the brutal executors of injustice. Thomson’s own move from Scotland to London was a personal instance of the more general movement taking place in his society.
