Among his peculiarities was a very unskilful and inarticulate manner of pronouncing any lofty or solemn composition. He was once reading to Dodington, who, being himself a reader eminently elegant, was so much provoked by his odd utterance, that he snatched the paper from his hands, and told him that he did not understand his own verses.

The biographer of Thomson has remarked, that an author's life is best read in his works: his obser

vation was not well-timed. Savage, who lived much with Thomson, once told me, how he heard a lady remarking, that she could gather from his works three parts of his character, that he was "a great lover, a great swimmer, and rigorously absti nent;" but, said Savage, "he knows not any love but that of the sex; he was perhaps never in cold. water in his life; and he indulges himself in all the luxury that comes within his reach." Yet Savage always spoke with the most eager praise of his social qualities, his warmth and constancy of friendship, and his adherence to his first acquaintance when the advancement of his reputation had left them behind him.

As a writer, he 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 Nature and on life with the eye which Nature bestows only on a poet; the eye that distinguishes, in every thing presented to its 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

there, his love of mankind, of his country, and his friends; his devotion to the Supreme Being; and his humanity and benevolence, shine out in every page.

what Thomson shows him, and that tie never yet has felt what Thomson impresses.

His is one of the works in which blank verse seems properly used. Thomson's wide expansion of general views, and his enumeration of circum.. stantial varieties, would have been obstructed and embarrassed by the frequent intersections of the sense, which are the necessary effects of rhyme.

His descriptions of extended scenes and general effects, bring before us the whole magnificence of nature, whether pleasing or dreadful. The gayety of Spring, the splendor of Summer, the tranquillity of Autumn, and the horror of Winter, take in their turns possession of the mind. The poet leads us through the appearances of things, as they are. successively varied by the vicissitudes of the year, and imparts to us so much of his own enthusiasm, that our thoughts expand with his imagery, and kindle with his sentiments. Nor is the naturalist without his part in the entertaiment; for he is assisted to recollect and combin; to arrange his discoveries, and to amplify the sphere of his contemplation.

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 splender, 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.

The highest praise which he has received ought not to be suppressed; it is said by Lord Lyttleton, in the prologue to his posthumous play, that his

works contained

"No line which, dying, he could wish to blot."

At the west end of the north aisle of Richmond Church is a brass tablet, which contains the following lines:

In the earth below this tablet

are the remains of

JAMES THOMSON

Author of the beautiful poems, entitled
The Seasons, Castle of Indolence,
&c. &c.

Who died at Richmond on the 27th day of August, and was buried here on the 29th, old style, 1748

The Earl of Buchan, unwilling that so good a man and sweet a poet should be without a memorial, has denoted the place of his interment for the satisfaction of his admirers in the year of our Lord 1792.

father of light and life! Thou good Supreme!
O teach me what is good! teach me Thyself!
Save me from folly, vanity, and vice,

From every low pursuit! and feed my soul
With knowledge, conscious peace, and virtue pure;
Sacred, substantial, never-fading bliss!

Winter.

SPRING.

ARGUMENT.

The subject proposed. Inscribed to the Countess of Hartford. The season is described as it affects the various parts of nature, ascending from the lower to the higher; with digressions arising from the subject. Its influence on inanimate mat. ter. On vegetables. On brute animals. And last, on man. Concluding with a dissuasive from the wild and irregular passion of love, opposed to that of a pure and happy kind.