it. In 1740 he wrote the masque of Alfred, which was acted before the prince at Cliefden-house. He rented about this time, a house at the upper end of Kew-lane. The Amanda, whom he has celebrated, was a Miss Young. In 1745 he brought upon the stage his Tancred and Sigismunda, the most succesful; of his dramatic pieces: the plot is taken from Gil Blas. The following letter, written by Thomson to his sister, Mrs. Jean Thomson, wife of Mr. Robert Thomson, master of the grammar school at Lanark, exhibits a pleasing instance of tender solicitude, and fraternal affection.

My dear Sister,

"HAGLEY in Worcestershire, October 4th, 1747.

I thought you had known me better than to interpret my silence into a decay of affection, especially as your behaviour has always been such as rather to increase than diminish it. Don't imagine, because I am a bad correspondent, that I can ever prove an unkind friend and brother. I must do myself the justice to tell you, that my affections are naturally very fixed and constant; and if I had ever reason of complaint against you (of which by the bye I have not the least shadow), I am conscious of so many defects in myself, as dispose me to be not a little charitable and forgiving. It gives me the truest heartfelt satisfaction to hear you have a good, kind husband, and are in easy, contented circumstances; but were they otherwise, that would only awaken and heighten my tenderness towards you. As our good and tender-hearted parents did not live to receive any material testimonies of that highest human gratitude I owed them (than which nothing could have given

me equal pleasure,) the only return I can make them now is by kindness to those they left behind them. Would to God poor Lizy had lived longer, to have been a farther witness of the truth of what I say, and that I might have had the pleasure of seeing once more a sister who so truly deserved my esteem and love! But she is happy, while we must toil a little longer here below: let us however do it cheerfully and gratefully, supported by the pleasing hope of meeting yet again on a safer shore, where to recollect the storms and difficulties of life will not perhaps be inconsistent with that blissful state. You did right to call your daughter by her name: for you must needs have had a particular friendship for one another, endeared as you were by nature, by having passed the affectionate years of your youth together; and by that great softener and engager of hearts, mutual hardship. That it was in my power to ease it a little, I account one of the most exquisite pleasures of my life.-But enough of this melancholy, though not unpleasing, strain. I esteem you for your sensible and disinterested advice to Mr. Bell, as you will see by my Letter to him; as I approve entirely of his marrying again, you may readily ask me why I don't marry at all. My circumstances have hitherto been so variable and uncertain in this fluctuating world, as induce to keep me from engaging in such a state: and now, though they are more settled, and of late (which you will be glad to hear) considerably improved, I begin to think myself too far advanced in life for such youthful undertakings, not to mention some other petty reasons that are apt to startle the delicacy of difficult old bachelors, I am, however, not a little suspicious that, was I to pay a visit to Scotland (which I have some thoughts

of doing soon), I might possibly be tempted to think of a thing not easily repaired if done amiss. I have always been of opinion, that none make better wives than the ladies of Scotland; and yet, who more forsaken than they, while the gentlemen are continually running abroad all the world over? Some of them, it is true, are wise enough to return for a wife. You see I am beginning to make interest already with the Scots ladies. But no more of this infectious subject. Pray let me hear from you now and then; and though I am not a regular correspondent, yet perhaps I may mend in that respect. Remember me kindly to your husband, and believe me to be,

Your most affectionate brother,
JAMES THOMSON."

(Addressed) "To Mrs. Thomson in Lanark."

The last piece that Thomson published was the Castle of Indolence, which he finished with great accuracy, and is the most perfect and pleasing of all his compositions. His friend Lyttelton, being now in power, he procured for our poet the place of Surveyor General of the Leeward Islands, an office performed by deputation. This sinecure, however, procured a nett £300 a year, after paying his deputy. This deputy was his friend Patterson, who lived to succeed Thomson in the office. Behold our author, then emancipated from narrow circumstances, and ultimately placed in those which were affluent. Such however, was his destiny that while grasping the cup of worldly happiness, and eagerly advancing it to his lips, it was dashed from him, with every expected sweet. A fever put an end to his life, August 27, 1748, in the 48th year of his age. He was buried in the church of Richmond,

under a plain stone without inscription; but a decent monument was erected to his memory in Westminster Abbey, in the year 1762, the expense of which was defrayed by the profits arising from a splendid edition of his Works, given by Millar. The earl of Buchan directed a Tablet, with an inscription, to be placed on the wall in Richmond church. Collins

stood alone in paying a tribute to our poet's memory. Langhorne, and others have since commemorated his genius, in strains the most pathetic. He left unpublished his tragedy of Coriolanus which was brought upon the stage in 1749, for the benefit of his family. A considerable sum was raised by this means, and appropriated to the discharge of his debts; the remainder was presented to his surviving sisters, Mrs. Jean Thomson and Mrs. Mary Craig. His Poems and Plays were collected and published by Mr. Millar, the bookseller, in two volumes 4to, 1762, to which was prefixed an account of his life by Dr. Murdoch. The subsequent editions, particularly of the Seasons, are too numerous to be specified. The edition in 8vo, 1768, is illustrated by an essay on the Seasons, by Dr. Aikin; that in 4to, Perth, 1793, by a critical essay on the poem, by Mr. Heron; and that in 8vo, 1794, with notes by Mr. Stockdale. Thomson was of a stature above the middle size, and "more fat than hard beseems;" of a dull countenance, and a gross, unanimated, uninviting appearance; silent in mingled company, but cheerful among select friends, and by those friends warmly and tenderly beloved. His benevolence was fervent but not active; he gave, on all occasions, the utmost his purse could supply; but as to offices of intervention and solicitation, they were what bis sluggishness prevented him from undertaking.

He was however consistent in neglecting his own affairs as much as those of others. He often had felt the inconveniencies of idleness, but he never undertook a cure. His articulation in reading was exceedingly unskilful, particularly in solemn compositions. He once read to Doddington, who was a reader eminently elegant, some of his own verses, who heard him fora while with some patience, but he could endure his barbarous recitations no longer; he rose, snatched the paper out of Thomson's hand, and reviled him with misunderstanding his own verses.

"As a writer," says Johnson "Thomson is entitled to one praise of the highest kind; his mode of thinking, and of expressing his thoughts, is original. His blank verse is no more the blank verse of Milton, or of any other poet, than the rhymes of Prior are the rhymes of Cowley. His numbers, his pauses, his diction, are of his own growth, without transcription, without imitation. He thinks in a peculiar train, and he thinks always as a man of genius: he looks round on naturę, and on life, with the eye which nature bestows only on a poet, the eye that distinguishes in every thing presented to it's view, whatever there is on which imagination can delight to be detained, and with a mind that at once comprehends the vast, and attends to the minute. The reader of the Seasons wonders that he never saw before what Thomson shews him, and that he never yet has felt what Thomson impresses. His diction is in the highest degree florid and luxuriant; such as may be said to be to his images and thoughts, both their lustre and their shade;' such as invest them with splendour through which perhaps they are not always easily discerned. It is too exuberant, and sometimes may be charged with filling the ear more than the mind.