and the masters under whom he
studied, had not a higher opinion of our poet's abilities, than their
pupils. His course of attendance upon the classes of philosophy being
finished, he was entered in the Divinity Hall, as one of the candidates
for the ministry, where the students, before they are permitted to enter
on their probation, must yield six years attendance.

It was in the second year of Mr. Thomson's attendance upon this school
of divinity, whose professor at that time was the revd. and learned Mr.
William Hamilton, a person whom he always mentioned with respect, that
our author was appointed by the professor to write a discourse on the
Power of the Supreme Being. When his companions heard their task
assigned him, they could not but arraign the professor's judgment, for
assigning so copious a theme to a young man, from whom nothing equal to
the subject could be expected. But when Mr. Thomson delivered the
discourse, they had then reason to reproach themselves for want of
discernment, and for indulging a contempt of one superior to the
brightest genius amongst them. This discourse was so sublimely elevated,
that both the professor and the students who heard it delivered, were
astonished. It was written in blank verse, for which Mr. Hamilton
rebuked him, as being improper upon that occasion. Such of his
fellow-students as envied him the success of this discourse, and the
admiration it procured him, employed their industry to trace him as a
plagiary; for they could not be persuaded that a youth seemingly so much
removed from the appearance of genius, could compose a declamation, in
which learning, genius, and judgment had a very great share. Their
search, however, proved fruitless, and Mr. Thomson continued, while he
remained at the university, to possess the honour of that discourse,
without any diminution.

We are not certain upon what account it was that Mr. Thomson dropt the
notion of going into the ministry; perhaps he imagined it a way of life
too severe for the freedom of his disposition: probably he declined
becoming a presbyterian minister, from a consciousness of his own
genius, which gave him a right to entertain more ambitious views; for it
seldom happens, that a man of great parts can be content with obscurity,
or the low income of sixty pounds a year, in some retired corner of a
neglected country; which must have been the lot of Thomson, if he had
not extended his views beyond the sphere of a ministe