Thomson, having been some time entertained in the family 15 of the lord Binning, was desirous of testifying his gratitude by making him the patron of his Summer; but the same kindness which had first disposed lord Binning to encourage him determined him to refuse the dedication, which was by his advice addressed to Mr. Doddington; a man who had more power to advance the reputation and fortune of a poet. Spring was published next year, with a dedication to the 16 countess of Hertford3, whose practice it was to invite every summer some poet into the country to hear her verses and assist her studies. This honour was one summer conferred on Thomson, who took more delight in carousing with lord Hertford and his friends than assisting her ladyship's poetical operations, and therefore never received another summons *. Autumn, the season to which the Spring and Summer are 17 preparatory, still remained unsung, and was delayed till he published (1730) his works collected 5. Sir Isaac Newton to Walpole, and two years afterwards his Sophonisba to the Queen. Eng. Poets, lv. 145; Works, iii. 1. 'He was Lady Grisell Baillie's sonin-law. See Morel's Thomson, and ante, THOMSON, 6 n. 2. 2 Afterwards Lord Melcombe. According to Mallet, 'he sent his services to Thomson by Dr. Young, and desired to see him.' Spence's Anec. p. 327. Hawkins had seen a letter from him to Johnson offering him his friendship. John. Misc. ii. 104. Pope satirized him under the name of Bubo. Moral Essays, iv. 19; Epil. Sat. i. 68, and also in the first draft of Prol. Sat. ll. 231-44, in a passage afterwards applied to Halifax (ante, HALIFAX, II). He is described as 'Fed with soft dedication all day long.' Pope's Works (E. & C.), iii. 258. Horace Walpole says of him (Works, i. 458): Ostentatious in his person, houses, and furniture, he wanted in his expence the taste he never wanted in his conversation.' According to Thomson he had By decency chastis'd.' Summer, 1. 24. Lamb, writing of Hogarth's Election 18 He produced in 1727 the tragedy of Sophonisba, which raised such expectation that every rehearsal was dignified with a splendid audience, collected to anticipate the delight that was preparing for the publick. It was observed, however, that nobody was much affected, and that the company rose as from a moral lecture 2. 19 20 It had upon the stage no unusual degree of success. Slight accidents will operate upon the taste of pleasure. There was a feeble line in the play: 'O Sophonisba, Sophonisba, O!' This gave occasion to a waggish parody: 'O, Jemmy Thomson, Jemmy Thomson, O!3, which for a while was echoed through the town. I have been told by Savage that of the Prologue to Sophonisba the first part was written by Pope, who could not be persuaded to finish it, and that the concluding lines were added by Mallet*. 21 Thomson was not long afterwards, by the influence of Dr. Rundle, sent to travel with Mr. Charles Talbot, the eldest son of the Chancellor 5. He was yet young enough to receive new announced 'The Seasons. A new Edition, corrected, in which are inserted above 1000 new Lines.' Lyttelton wrote on May 5, 1744:'Thomson's Seasons will be published in about a week's time, and a most noble work they will be.' Misc. Works, 1775, p. 704. For a translation into French prose by Madame Bontems see Gibbon's Autobiographies, p. 204. [The Tragedy of Sophonisba. A. Millar. 1730. It was first acted at Drury Lane on Feb. 28, 1729-30. Genest's Hist. of the Stage, iii. 255.] According to Davies (Dram. Misc. iii. 465) Mrs. Oldfield, as Sophonisba, produced a great effect in one passage. 3 According to Cibber's Lives, v. 209, 'a smart from the pit cried out: "Oh! Jemmy Thomson, Jemmy Thomson, Oh!"' Fielding, in 1730, ridiculed the line in The Life and Death of Tom Thumb (Act ii. sc. 5): 'Oh! Huncamunca, Huncamunca, Oh !' Works, 1806, i. 472. Thomson might have quoted from Shakespeare's Coriolanus (not his own), v. 3. 185: 'Oh my mother, mother! Oh!' Thomson's line is not in the published play. Works, 1775, iii. Oh! Sophonisba,' however, is exclaimed seven times. 'I think it may be observed that the particle O! used at the beginning of a sentence always offends.' Ante, POPE, 422. It might all be Mallet's. The most telling couplet in the first part is where the poet says of Britain :'When freedom is the cause, 'tis hers impressions, to have his opinions rectified, and his views enlarged; nor can he be supposed to have wanted that curiosity' which is inseparable from an active and comprehensive mind. He may therefore now be supposed to have revelled in all the joys of intellectual luxury; he was every day feasted with instructive novelties; he lived splendidly without expence, and might expect when he returned home a certain establishment. At this time a long course of opposition to Sir Robert Walpole 22 had filled the nation with clamours for liberty, of which no man felt the want, and with care for liberty, which was not in danger. Thomson, in his travels on the continent, found or fancied so many evils arising from the tyranny of other governments, that he resolved to write a very long poem, in five parts, upon Liberty. While he was busy on the first book Mr. Talbot died 3, and 23 Thomson, who had been rewarded for his attendance by the place of secretary of the Briefs, pays in the initial lines a decent tribute to his memory 5. Upon this great poem two years were spent, and the author 24 congratulated himself upon it as his noblest work'; but an author and his reader are not always of a mind 8. Liberty called in vain upon her votaries to read her praises and reward her encomiast: her praises were condemned to harbour spiders, and to gather dust; none of Thomson's performances were so little regarded 9. The judgement of the publick was not erroneous; the recur- 25 rence of the same images must tire in time; an enumeration of examples to prove a position which nobody denied, as it was from the beginning superfluous, must quickly grow disgusting. The poem of Liberty does not now appear in its original state, 26 but when the author's works were collected after his death was in Feb. 1735, ib. 1735, p. 111; the 9 Thomson wrote that he thought ' of annulling the bargain I made with my bookseller, who would else be a considerable loser.' Tovey's Thomson, Preface, p. 51. shortened by Sir George Lyttelton, with a liberty which, as it has a manifest tendency to lessen the confidence of society, and to confound the characters of authors by making one man write by the judgement of another, cannot be justified by any supposed propriety of the alteration or kindness of the friend'. -I wish to see it exhibited as its author left it 2. Thomson now lived in ease and plenty, and seems for a while to have suspended his poetry; but he was soon called back to labour by the death of the Chancellor3, for his place then became vacant, and though the lord Hardwicke delayed for some time to give it away, Thomson's bashfulness, or pride, or some other motive perhaps not more laudable, withheld him from soliciting 5; and the new Chancellor would not give him what he would not ask. * In the library at Hagley there is a copy of The Seasons, corrected by Lyttelton, with the following entry in his hand:-'In this edition, conformably to the intention and will of author, which [sic] have justly been thought too harsh or obscure, or not strictly grammatical, have been corrected, some lines transposed, and a few others left out.' Phillimore's Lyttelton, i. 319. Lyttelton told Samuel Rogers's elder brother that when 'a very young man' he heard Thomson read aloud to his father at Hagley 'what he had but just then written of his Autumn. On the first line I ventured to remark that "crown'd with the wheaten sheaf" was a beautiful image, but that I could not understand what was meant by "crown'd with the sickle.” Thomson was evidently confused, and said something, in no very clear manner, of a custom the reapers have in Scotland of putting their sickles round their heads in the intervals of labour.' H. D. Best's Memorials, p. 266. Autumn begins: 'Crown'd with the sickle and the While Autumn, nodding o'er the Comes jovial on.' 2 [This was done by Murdoch in the subscription quarto of 1762. Cunningham's Lives of the Poets, iii. 232. In Wool's Memoirs of Joseph Warton (p. 252) there is a letter to Millar, the publisher, in which Murdoch insists that Thomson's poems should be printed as the poet left them.] 3 He died on Feb. 14, 1737. Gent. Mag. 1737, p. 124. 4 He succeeded as Chancellor on Feb. 21. Parl. Hist. x. Table of Contents, p. 6. 5' He was so dispirited, so listless to every concern of that kind, that he never took one step in the affair.' Works, Preface, p. 21. For Smith's loss of a place by the same neglect see ante, SMITH, 48. In The Critical Review, 1765, xix. 141, it is stated that 'Thomson's place fell under the cognisance of a Commission of the Great Officers of State for enquiring into public offices. He made a speech explaining the duty, &c., of his place in terms that, though very concise, were so perspicuous and elegant, that Lord Chancellor Talbot publicly said he preferred that single speech to the best of his poetical compositions. The income of the place was by the Commissioners reduced from about £300 to £100 a year; but Mr. Thomson offered to resign it; nor did he ever receive a shilling from it during its reduced state. We have his own authority for saying that it was not optional to him whether he should He now relapsed to his former indigence; but the prince of 28 Wales was at that time struggling for popularity, and by the influence of Mr. Lyttelton professed himself the patron of wit to him Thomson was introduced, and being gaily interrogated about the state of his affairs, said 'that they were in a more poetical posture than formerly,' and had a pension allowed him of one hundred pounds a year 2. Being now obliged to write he produced (1738) the tragedy 29 of Agamemnon 3, which was much shortened in the representation. It had the fate which most commonly attends mythological stories, and was only endured, but not favoured. It struggled with such difficulty through the first night that Thomson, coming late to his friends with whom he was to sup, excused his delay by telling them how the sweat of his distress had so disordered his wig, that he could not come till he had been refitted by a barber 5. He so interested himself in his own drama that, if I remember 30 right, as he sat in the upper gallery he accompanied the players by audible recitation, till a friendly hint frighted him to silence". Pope countenanced Agamemnon by coming to it the first night, and was welcomed to the theatre by a general clap; he had much regard for Thomson, and once expressed it in a poetical Epistle sent to Italy, of which, however, he abated the value by transplanting some of the lines into his Epistle to Arbuthnot?. remain in the place after his patron's death.' 'Ante, POPE, 217; post, MALLET, 12; LYTTELTON, 6. Smollett describes him as 'a munificent patron of the arts, an unwearied friend to merit.' Hist. of Eng. iii. 307. Post, LYTTELTON, 6. In Britannia he had made the Queen of Nations,' speaking of the Prince, tell how 'Yon sail... wafts the Royal Youth A freight of future glory to my shore.' Eng. Poets, liv. 264. Shenstone, on his way to London, 'had taken a tailor of Hales Owen to carry his portmanteau. The trusty squire, having walked out to view the Thames at Maidenhead, returned saying, "Lord, Sir, what do you think? I have seen the Prince of Wales and all his nobles walking by |