This amount of antiquarian labour indicates an extent of reading, a patience
of research, and a heroic pertinacity of purpose which it would be difficult fully
to estimate. And this, too, be it remembered, was in a department of literature in which little fame is to be won, and the achievements of which are so
often misprized and ridiculed. "No one," says Lord Cockburn, in his "Life of Lord Jeffrey" when speaking of Thomas Thomson "no one has done
nearly so much to recover, to arrange, to explain, and to preserve our historical muniments. He found them almost a chaos, and after bringing them into order, has left them on a system, of which the value will be felt the more every
day that they accumulate. His real merit, great as it may seem now, will seem still greater 500 years hence." Adverting to Mr. Thomson's capacity for legal study, and the disinterestedness with which it was kept in abeyance, for the
sake of that department in which he was so well qualified to excel, Lord Cockburn adds "Had he not allowed his taste for antiquarian research to allure him from the common drudgery of his profession, he would have stood high in
practice, as he always did in character, at the bar ; and would now have been
adorning the bench by his considerate wisdom and peculiar learning." In turning to Mr. Thomson's course as a barrister, we find his lordship's commendations fully borne out. His knowledge of ancient Scottish history and jurisprudence was so well known, even at the outset, that so early as 1805-7, he was employed in the famous Craigengillan case, in which a fair estate of about
£12,000 per annum depended upon the old marriage laws of Scotland, and the
kind of union that sufficed to establish a legal claim to legitimacy and inheritance. Another suit in which he was retained in 1816, was the case of Cranstoun versus Gibson, in which the principle of our northern elections had to be traced
to its fountain-head, inasmuch as the franchise of Scotland, as connected with
the valuation of old church lands, was involved in the result. While his
brethren of the long robe were utterly in the dark upon such questions of
mediæval and monastic lore, Mr. Thomson, as may easily be supposed, felt himself upon his own proper ground; he accordingly produced in one of his memorials, such a lucid account of the origin of the taxation of land in Scotland, that Lord Glenlee, the presiding judge, could not help exclaiming, "It is just delightful! It is like reading a lost decade of Livy!" Mr. Thomson,
indeed, did not secure a judge's gown, for that, as we have seen, was never at any time the mark of his ambition; but an office, not greatly inferior in
importance and emolument, was freely conceded to him in 1828, by his being appointed one of the principal clerks of Session an office which Sir Walter Scott himself held, and beyond which he sought no higher.
Amidst the various qualifications which Mr. Thomson possessed, we would greatly err if we confined the literary part of his character to his undoubted superiority in antiquities and black letter. On the contrary, his general knowledge, as well as his talents and taste, were so fully recognized, that at the creation of the "Edinburgh Review" in 1802, he was one of that illustrious coterie who were wont to meet in solemn secrecy for the purpose of commencing it, and by whose joint labours that critical tribunal was silently built up, before whose dread awards the whole literary world was so soon compelled to bow and tremble. For this journal he also wrote several articles, and, during the occasional absences of Mr. Jeffrey, took charge of its editorship.
Mr. Thomson married Anne, daughter of Thomas Reed, Esq., formerly army agent in Dublin. He died at his residence at Shrubhill, between Edinburgh
