[Thomas Cooper is reminiscing about his friend, the poet William Thom (1788–1848)]

Poor Willie Thom! how melancholy it seems to look back upon the close of the history of the weaver-poet of Inverary! especially when one calls to mind what his natural endowments were, despite his lowly condition.  Mr. Fox used to say that Willie Thom had the richest powers of conversation of any man he had ever known; […]

 And then he sang so sweetly!  We got up a weekly meeting, at one time, at the Crown Tavern, close to the church of St. Dunstan’s-in-the-West, Fleet Street; and it was chiefly that we might enjoy the society of Willie Thom.  Julian Harney, and John Skelton (now Dr. Skelton), and old Dr. Macdonald, and James Devlin, who wrote “The Shoemaker,” and Walter Cooper, and Thomas Shorter, and a few others were members of our weekly meeting.  Willie Thom usually sang us his “Wandering Willie,” or “My ain wee thing:” and sometimes I sang them my prison songs, “O choose thou the maid with the gentle blue eye,” and “I would not be a crowned king.”