d the poem of "Liberty," and a subsequent L300 a year as
non-resident Governor of the Leeward Islands, placed him in comparative
affluence; the "Masque of Alfred," with its popular song "Rule
Britannia," and his greatest work "The Castle of Indolence" (1748), were
the outcome of his later years of leisure; often tediously verbose, not
infrequently stiff and conventional in diction and trite in its
moralisings, the poetry of Thomson was yet the first of the 18th century
to shake itself free of the town, and to lead, as Stopford Brooke says,
"the English people into that new world of nature which has enchanted us
in the work of modern poetry" (1700-1748).

THOMSON, JAMES, the poet of pessimism, born, a sailor's son, at
Port-Glasgow, and brought up in an orphanage; was introduced to
literature by MR. BRADLAUGH (q. v.), to whose _National
Reformer_ he contributed much of his best poetry, including his gloomy
yet sonorous and impressive "The City of Dreadful Night," besides essays
(1834-1882).

THOMSON, JOHN, the artist minister of Duddingston, born at Dailly,
in Ayrshire; succeeded his father in the parish of Dailly (1800), and
five years later was transferred to Duddingston parish, near Edinburgh;
faithful in the discharge of his parochial duties, he yet found time to
cultivate his favourite art of painting, and in the course of his 35
years' pastorate produced a series of landscapes which won him wide
celebrity in his own day, and have set him in the front rank of Scottish
artists (1778-1840).

THOMSON, JOSEPH, African explorer, born at Thornhill, studied at
Edinburgh University, and in 1878 was appointed zoologist to the Royal
Geographical Society's expedition to Lake Tanganyika, which, after the
death of the leader, Keith Johnston, at the start, he, at the age of 20,
carried through with notable success; in 1882 explored with important
geographical results Massai-land, and subsequently headed expeditious up
the Niger and to Sokoto, and explored the Atlas Mountains; published
interesting accounts of his various travels (1858-1895).

THOMSON, SIR WILLIAM, LORD KELVIN, great physicist, born at Belfast;
studied at St. Peter's College, Cambridge; was senior wrangler in 1845,
and elected professor of Natural Philosophy in Glasgow in 1846; it is in
the departments of heat and electricity he has accomplished his greatest
achievements, and his best-known work is the invention of the
siphon-recorder for the Atlantic c