Literature as an art suffered by being pressed into the service of religious controversy; it became polemic or didactic, and its prevailing form was prose.
Its effect on the German language was enormous; the dialect in which it is written, a Middle German dialect used in the chancery of Upper Saxony, became gradually the norm for both Protestant and Catholic writers, and is thus the basis of the modern literary German.
Literature was devoid of originality and substance; the formal side absorbed the chief attention of the writers.
Educated at Edinburgh, he went to London, took a post as tutor, and became acquainted with such literary celebrities as Gay, Arbuthnot, and Pope.
In The Seasons, Thomson's faithful, sensitive descriptions of external nature were a direct challenge to the urban and artificial school of Pope and influenced the forerunners of romanticism, such as Gray and Cowper.
His other important poems are Liberty (1735–36), a tribute to Britain, and The Castle of Indolence (1748), written in imitation of Spenser and reflecting the poet's delight in idleness.
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