While he was improving himself in the Latin and Greek tongues at this
country school, he often visited a minister, whose charge lay in the
same presbytery with his father's, the revd. Mr. Rickerton, a man of
such amazing powers, that many persons of genius, as well as Mr.
Thomson, who conversed with him, have been astonished, that such great
merit should be buried in an obscure part of the country, where he had
no opportunity to display himself, and, except upon periodical meetings
of the ministers, seldom an opportunity of conversing with men of
learning.

Though Mr. Thomson's schoolmaster could not discover that he was endowed
with a common portion of understanding, yet Mr. Rickerton was not so
blind to his genius; he distinguished our author's early propension to
poetry, and had once in his hands some of the first attempts Mr. Thomson
ever made in that province.

It is not to be doubted but our young poet greatly improved while he
continued to converse with Mr. Rickerton, who, as he was a philosophical
man, inspired his mind with a love of the Sciences, nor were the revd.
gentleman's endeavours in vain, for Mr. Thomson has shewn in his works
how well he was acquainted with natural and moral philosophy, a
circumstance which, perhaps, is owing to the early impressions he
received from Mr. Rickerton.

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,