Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 56.djvu/256

 1069. These corrections were embodied in the 1744 edition (inscribed to the Prince of Wales), to which were added two years later the final corrections made by the poet before his death. The British Museum possesses a copy of the 1738 edition of ‘The Seasons,’ with Thomson's own manuscript corrections, and also a number of interesting emendations in the handwriting (it is supposed) of Pope. It is curious to find Pope on one of the blank pages with which this copy is interleaved deleting the well-known ‘when unadorned, adorned the most;’ Thomson, who was generally mindful of his friend's suggestions, turned a deaf ear to this one. Much of the work of revision was impaired by a too conscious striving after a Virgilian veneer. (The responsibility of Pope for the ‘emendations,’ of which Mitford, Combe, and Ellis were convinced, has the support of Dr. Morel, but is disputed by Mr. Churton Collins, ‘Saturday Review,’ 31 July 1897; a verdict of non-proven is ably maintained by Mr. Tovey; cf. Athenæum, 1894, i. 131; Notes and Queries, 8th ser. xii. 389–9.). In July 1743 Thomson paid his first visit to Hagley, and there he seems to have made Lyttelton to some extent a partner in the work of textual revision. He was subsequently a frequent visitor there and at Shenstone's retreat, The Leasowes. In 1744 Lyttelton became one of the lords of the treasury, and promptly bestowed upon his friend the sinecure post of surveyor-general of the Leeward Islands, from which he drew a clear 300l. a year.

In the following year appeared the last but one of Thomson's plays, ‘Tancred and Sigismunda: a Tragedy’ (London, 8vo, 1752, 1766, and 1768; dedicated in epistolary form to the Prince of Wales), the plot of which was drawn from the novel in ‘Gil Blas.’ Pitt (who is said to have had ‘a sincere value for the amiable author’) and Lyttelton took upon themselves the patronage of this play, which had a far greater success than any other of Thomson's dramatic efforts. When it was produced at Drury Lane on 18 March 1745 Garrick played Tancred, and the part held the stage at intervals down to 1819 (, vol. v.; cf., Life of Garrick, i. 78); the play was translated into German in part by Lessing and by Schlegel, and imitated in 1761 by Saurin in his ‘Blanche et Guiscard.’

In 1736 the ‘Gentleman's Magazine’ printed Thomson's first poem ‘To Amanda’ (i.e. Elizabeth, daughter of Captain Gilbert Young, and sister-in-law of Thomson's friend James Robertson). Eight years elapsed without impairing in any way the poet's fidelity, but about 1744 the lady married Admiral John Campbell (d. 1790) [q. v.] The disappointment preyed upon his spirits, and even to a certain extent upon his health, and the amount of work completed under these conditions was small. Ever since he had been at Richmond Thomson had been engaged in a desultory way upon his second important poem, ‘The Castle of Indolence: an Allegorical Poem’ (London, 1748, 4to; 2nd edit. 1748, 8vo). Gray mentions it as containing ‘fine stanzas’ in a letter of 5 June 1748. It was first conceived in the form of a few detached stanzas in raillery of his own indolence, which he deemed to be well paralleled by that of his friends; among the traces of its origin there remains the autobiographical stanza commencing ‘A bard here dwelt more fat than bard beseems.’ Thomson had been an ardent admirer of Spenser from his youth, and it is noteworthy that in this noble specimen of art he has left the combined result of his earliest inspiration and his mature taste. In the soothing and drowsy effect which is suggested by the opening stanzas, Thomson proved himself as a master of onomatopœia worthy of comparison with the author of the ‘Lotos-Eaters.’

Among Thomson's later visitors at Richmond were Paterson and Collins, who introduced him to Warton, James Hammond, and Gilbert West. Collins in turn was introduced by him to the Prince of Wales, and was given a place in the ‘Castle of Indolence’ (stanzas 57–9). Lyttelton procured his friend a key to Richmond Park, and is even said to have written his ‘Observations upon the Conversion and Apostleship of St. Paul’ (1747), with a view to raising him from his apathy in regard to religion. ‘Had the poet lived longer,’ wrote Lyttelton, ‘I don't doubt he would have openly profest his faith’ (cf., Memoirs, i. 409). Early in 1748 Thomson's pension was stopped by the Prince of Wales, who had quarrelled with Lyttelton, but he was scarcely incommoded by the reduction of his income. Early in August, after a rapid walk from London, he stepped into a boat at Hammersmith Mall and was rowed to Kew. He caught a severe chill, and died at four o'clock in the morning of Saturday, 27 Aug. 1748, being not quite forty-eight years of age. He was buried near the font in Richmond parish church, where a brass tablet was erected to his memory by the Earl of Buchan in 1792. Armstrong, Andrew Reid, and James Robertson had attended him during his illness, and these, with Quin, Mallet, and Mitchell, followed him to the grave. The poet died intestate; but Lyttelton and Mitchell