reader. Only one gentleman, Mr. Collins, who had lived fome time at Richmond, but forfook it when Mr. Thomfon died, wrote an Ode to his memory. This, for the dirgelike melancholy it breathes, and the warmth of affection that seems to have dictated it, we fhall fubjoin to the present account. Our author himself hints, fomewhere in his works, that his exterior was not the most promifing; his make being rather robust than graceful: though it is known that in his youth he had been thought handfome. His worst appearance was, when you faw him walking alone, in a thoughtful mood: but let a friend accost him, and enter into converfation, he would inftantly brighten into a most amiable afpect, his features no longer the fame, and his eye darting a peculiar animated fire. The cafe was much alike in company; where, if it was mixed, or very numerous, he made but an indifferent figure: but with a few select friends, he was open, fprightly, and entertaining. His wit flowed freely, but pertinently, and at due intervals, leaving room for every one to contribute his fhare. Such was his extreme fenfibility, fo perfect the harmony of his organs with the fentiments of his mind, that his looks always announced, and half expreffed, what he was about to fay; and his voice correfponded exactly to the manner and degree in which he was affected. This fenfibility had one inconvenience attending it, that it rendered him the very worst reader of good poetry: a fonnet, or a copy of tame verfes, Mr. JAMES THOMSON. xxvii. he could manage pretty well; or even improve them in the reading: but a paffage of Virgil, Milton, or Shakespeare, would fometimes quite oppress him, that you could hear little elfe than fome illarticulated founds, rifing as from the bottom of his breast. He had improved his tafte upon the best originals, ancient and modern; but could not bear to write what was not ftrictly his own, what had not more immediately ftruck his imagination, or touched his heart: fo that he is not in the leaft concerned in that question about the merit or demerit of imitators. What he borrows from the ancients, he gives us in an avowed faithful paraphrafe or tranflation; as we fee in a few paffages taken from Virgil, and in that beautiful picture from Pliny the elder, where the course, and gradual increase, of the Nile are figured by the ftages of man's life. The autumn was his favourite season for poetical compofition, and the deep filence of the night, the time he commonly chofe for fuch studies; fo that he would often be heard walking in his library, till near morning, humming over, in his way, what he was to correct and write out next day. The amusements of his leisure hours were civil and natural history, voyages, and the relations of travellers, the most authentic he could procure: and, had his fituation favoured it, he would certainly have excelled in gardening, agriculture, and every rural improvement and exercise. Although he performed on no instrument, he was paffionately fond of mufic, and would fometimes liften a full hour at his window to the nightingales in Richmond gardens. While abroad, he had been greatly delighted with the regular Italian drama, fuch as Metaftafio writes; as it is there heightened by the charms of the best voices and inftruments; and looked upon our theatrical entertainments as, in one refpect, naked and imperfect, when compared: with the ancient, or with thofe of Italy; wishing fometimes that a chorus, at least, and a better recitative, could be introduced. Nor was his tafte less exquifite in the arts of painting, Sculpture, and architecture. In his travels he had feen all the most celebrated monuments of antiquity, and the best productions of modern art; and studied them so minutely, and with so true a judgment, that in fome of his defcriptions, in the poem of Liberty, we have the master-pieces there mentioned placed in a stronger light perhaps than if we faw them with our eyes; at least more justly delineated than in any other account extant: fo fuperior is a natural taste of the grand and beautiful, to the traditional leffons of a common virtuofo. His collection of prints, and fome drawings from the antique, are now in the poffeffion of his friend Mr. Gray of Richmond-Hill. As for his more diftinguishing qualities of mind and heart, they are better reprefented in his writ-" ings, than they can be by the pen of any biographer. There, his love of mankind, of his country and friends; his devotion to the Supreme Being, founded on the most elevated and just concep Mr. JAMES THOMSON. xxix tions of his operations and providence, fhine out These amiable virtues, this divine temper of mind, did not fail of their due reward. His friends loved him with an enthusiastic ardor, and lamented his untimely fate in the manner that is ftill fresh in every one's memory; the best and greatest men of his time honoured him with their friendship and protection; the applause of the Public attended every appearance he made; the actors, of whom the more eminent were his friends and admirers, grudging no pains to do justice to his tragedies. At present indeed, if we except Tancred, they are feldom called for; the fimplicity of his plots, and the models he worked after, not fuiting the reigning taste, nor the impatience of an English theatre. LIFE OF THOMSON. They may hereafter come to be in vogue: but we hazard no comment or conjecture upon them, or upon any part of Mr. Thomson's works; neither need they any defence or apology, after the reception they have had at home, and in the foreign languages into which they have been tranflated. We fhall only fay, that, to judge from the imitations of his manner, which have been following him close, from the very first publication of Winter, he feems to have fixed no inconfiderable æra of the English poetry. A |