"Yet when, at last, thy toils but ill apaid

"Shall dead thy fire and damp it's heavenly spark,
"Thou wilt be glad to seek the rural shade,
"There to indulge the Muse and nature mark;
"We then a lodge for thee will rear in Hagley Park.”’

Here whilom ligg'd th' Esopus of the age;
But call'd by Fame, in soul ypricked deep,
A noble pride restored him to the stage,

And roused him like a giant from his sleep.
Even from his slumbers we advantage reap:
With double force th' enliven'd scene he wakes,

Yet quits not nature's bounds. He knows to keep Each due decorum: now the heart he shakes,

And now with well-urged sense th' enlighten'd judgement takes.

A bard here dwelt, more fat than bard beseems,
Who void of envy, guile, and lust of gain,
On virtue still and nature's pleasing themes
Pour'd forth his unpremeditated strain.
The world forsaking with a calm disdain,
Here laugh'd he, careless in his easy seat;

Here quaff'd, encircled with the joyous train
Of moralising sage: his ditty sweet
He lothed much to write, ne cared to repeat.

Full oft by holy feet our ground was trod:
Of Clerks good plenty here you mote espy.
A little, round, fat, oily man of God

Was one I chiefly mark'd among the fry:
He had a roguish twinkle in his eye,
And shone all glittering with ungodly dew,
If a tight damsel chanced to trippen by;
Which when observed, he shrunk into his mew,
And straight would recollect his piety anew.'

Lyttelton was now in power, and procured him the place of Surveyor General of the Leeward Islands, from which after his deputy was paid, he received about 300l. per ann. That deputy was his friend Paterson, whose tragedy of Arminius' had been prohibited by the Lord Chamberlain soon after the pub

lication of

Edward and Eleonora,' and who succeeded him shortly afterward as principal.

This was the last work, which he lived to publish ;* his 'Coriolanus' being only just completed, when a violent fever occasioned by a neglected cold prematurely deprived his country of the author. His death happened August 27, 1748. His executors were Sir George Lyttelton, and Mr. afterward Sir Andrew Mitchel, by whose interest the orphan tragedy was brought forward: and from it's profits, combined with the sale of his manuscripts and other effects, they were enabled not only to liquidate all his debts, but also to remit a handsome surplus to his two surviving sisters Mrs. Jean Thomson and Mrs. Mary Craig.† Lyttelton‡ supplied the prologue; and Quin, who had long

* It is said, on the authority of Floyer Sydenham, the translator of Plato, that Thomson was the author of a version of the work of the Emperor Marcus Antoninus, published in 8vo. in 1747. (Gent. Mag. lxxxvi. Feb. 1816, p. 104.)

+ Of these, the first died in 1782 without issue; and the latter in 1792 leaving a son, Mr. James Craig, the ingenious architect who drew the plan of the new town of Edinburgh. His other sister, Mrs. Bell, left two children; and a brother, who had followed him to England, and lived with him as his amanuensis, being seized with a consumption returned to Scotland, and died. there.

Lyttelton, who was pardonably ambitious of being transmitted to posterity as the friend of genius, and who had consecrated an urn

ALEXANDRO POPE,

Poetarum Anglicanorum
Elegantissimo dulcissimoque,
Vitiorum castigatori acerrimo,
Sapientiæ doctori suavissimo,
Sacra esto.

Ann. Dom. M DCC XLIV.

now inscribed on an a handsome building, called Thomson's

Seat,'

lived with Thomson in fond intimacy,* did it true justice in the delivery of it. As it contains a vivid sketch of his character, it is here inserted:

'I come not here your candor to implore
For scenes, whose author is, alas! no more:
He wants no advocate his cause to plead;
You will yourselves be patrons of the dead.
No party his benevolence confined,

No sect: alike it flow'd to all mankind.

He loved his friends-forgive this gushing tear;
Alas! I feel I am no actor here--

He loved his friends with such a warmth of heart,
So clear of interest, so devoid of art,

Such generous friendship, such unshaken zeal;
No words can speak it, but our tears may tell.-
O candid truth, O faith without a stain,
O manners gently firm and nobly plain,
O sympathising love of others' bliss!
Where will you find another breast like his?
Such was the Man. The Poet well

you know:
Oft has he touch'd your hearts with tender woe.
Oft in this crowded house, with just applause,
You heard him teach fair virtue's purest laws:

For his chaste Muse employ'd her heaven-taught lyre,
None but the noblest passions to inspire;

Ingenio immortali

JACOBI THOMSON,
Poetæ sublimis,

Viri boni,

Ediculam hanc quam vivus dilexit

Post mortem ejus constructam
Dicat dedicatque

GEORGIUS LYTTELTON.

The origin of this friendship is highly honourable to the

actor. He is said to have rescued the poet (then known to him only through his productions) from an arrest, by a present of a hundred pounds.

Not one immoral, one corrupted thought,
One line which dying he could wish to blot.

Oh! may to-night your favourable doom
Another laurel add, to grace his tomb!
Whilst he, superior now to praise or blame,
Hears not the feeble voice of human fame.
Yet if to those whom most on earth he loved,
From whom his pious care is now removed,
With whom his liberal hand and bounteous heart
Shared all his little fortune could impart ;
If to those friends your kind regard shall give,
What they no longer can from his receive:
That, that even now above yon starry pole
May touch with pleasure his immortal soul.'

His remains, as some time before his death he occupied a small villa in Kew Lane, were deposited in Richmond Church, under a plain stone, without any inscription; and a decent monument was erected to his memory in Westminster Abbey, in 1762,* out of the profits arising from a splendid edition of his works published by Millar. A tablet also, with a memorial inscription, was placed on the wall in Richmond Church in 1791. The Earl of Buchan likewise, with a view of raising to him a monument on Ednam Hill, collected a large party of gentlemen to celebrate the anniversary of his birthday in the years 1790 and 1791 but his eager enthusiasm, it may be feared, defeated it's own purpose. He has been more suc

cessful in the more recent instance of Burns.

* Inscribed with part of his own beautiful address to Philo sophy, at the conclusion of his Summer;'

Tutor❜d by thee, sweet Poetry exalts.
Her voice to ages: and informs the page
With music, image, sentiment, and thought
Never to die!'

But his most honourable memorial is to be found in the subjoined threnody of Collins.

Scene, On the Thames near Richmond.
In yonder grave a Druid lies,

Where slowly winds the stealing wave:
The year's best sweets shall duteous rise,
To deck it's Poet's sylvan grave.

In yon deep bed of whispering reeds
His airy harp shall now be laid;
That he, whose heart in sorrow bleeds,
May love through life the soothing shade.
Then maids and youths shall linger here,
And while it's sounds at distance swell,
Shall sadly seem in Pity's ear

To hear the woodland pilgrim's knell.
Remembrance oft shall haunt the shore,
When Thames in summer-wreaths is drest,
And oft suspend the dashing oar

To bid his gentle spirit rest.

And oft, as ease and health retire

To breezy lawn or forest deep,

The friend shall view yon whitening spire,
And 'mid the varied landscape weep.

But thou, who own'st that earthly bed,
Ah! what will every dirge avail?
Or tears, which Love and Pity shed,
That mourn beneath the gliding sail?
Yet lives there one, whose heedless eye

Shall scorn thy pale shrine glimmering near?
With him, sweet bard, may Fancy die,
And joy desert the blooming year!
But thou, lorn stream, whose sullen tide
No sedge-crown'd sisters now attend,
Now waft me from the green hill's side,
Whose cold turf hides the buried friend.

And see, the fairy valleys fade;

Dun night has veil'd the solemn view :
Yet once again, dear parted shade,
Meek nature's child, again adieu!