Page:The Seasons - Thomson (1791).djvu/29

Rh rhymes had their proper place, and were even graceful: the compass of the stanza admitting an agreable variety of final sounds; while the sense of the poet is not cramped or cut short, nor yet too much dilated: as must often happen, when it is parcelled out into rhymed couplets; the usual measure indeed of our elegy and satire; but which always weakens the higher poetry, and, to a true ear, will sometimes give it an air of the burlesque.

This was the last piece Mr. Thomson himself published; his tragedy of Coriolanus being only prepared for the theatre, when a fatal accident robbed the world of one of the best men, and best poets, that lived in it.

He had always been a timorous horseman; and more so, in a road where numbers of giddy or unskilful riders are continually passing; so that when the weather did not invite him to go by water, he would commonly walk the distance between London and Richmond, with any acquaintance that offered; with whom he might chat and rest himself, or perhaps dine, by the way. One summer evening, being alone, in his walk from town to Hammersmith, he had overheated himself, and in that condition, imprudently took a boat to carry him to Kew; apprehending no bad consequence from the chill air on the river, which his walk to his house, at the upper end of Kew-lane, had always hitherto prevented. But, now, the cold had so seized him, that next day he found himself in a high fever, so much the more to be dreaded that he was of a full habit. This, however, by the use of proper medicines, was removed, so that he was thought to be out of Rh