are forry we cannot give the reader. Only one gentleman, Mr. Collins, who had lived fome time at Richmond, but forfook it when Mr. Thomson died, wrote an Ode to his memory. This, for the dirgelike melancholy it breathes, and the warmth of affection that feems to have dictated it, we fhall fubjoin to the prefent account.

OUR author himself hints, somewhere in his works, that his exterior was not the most promising; 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 accoft him, and enter into converfation, he would instantly brighten in a moft 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 felect 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 corresponded 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 verses, he could manage pretty well; or even improve them in the reading: but a passage of Virgil, Milton, or Shakespeare, would fometimes. quite opprefs him, that you could hear little elfe than fome ill-articulated founds, rifing as from the bottom of his breaft.

He had improved his taste upon the best originals, ancient and modern; but could not bear to write what was not strictly his own, what had not more immediately ftruck his imagination, or touched his heart fo that he is not in the least 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 stages of man's life.

THE autumn was his favourite feason for poetical composition, and the deep filence of the night, the time he commonly chofe for fuch ftudies; 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 exercife. Although he performed on no inftrument, he was paffionately fond of mufic, and would fometimes liften a full hour at his window to the nightingales in Richmond gardens. While a broad, 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 respect, naked and imperfect, when compared with the ancient, or with those of Italy; wifhing fometimes that a chorus, at leaft, and a better recitative, could be introduced..

NOR was his tafte lefs exquifite in the arts of painting, fculpture, and architecture. In his travels, he had feen all the molt celebrated monuments of antiquity, and the best productions of modern art; and ftudied them fo 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 saw 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 represented in his writings, 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 conceptions of his ope rations and providence, thine out in every page. So unbounded was his tenderness of heart, that it took in even the brute creation: judge what it must have been towards his own fpecies. He is not indeed known, through his whole life, to have given any perfon one moment's pain, by his writings or otherwife. He took no part in the poetical fquabbles which happened in his time; and was refpected and left undisturbed by both fides. He would even refufe to take offence when he justly might; by interrupting any perfonal ftory that was brought him, with fome jest, or fome humorous apology for the offender. Nor was he ever feen ruffled or discompofed, but when he read or heard of fome flagrant inftance of injustice, oppreffion, or cruelty: then, indeed, the strongest marks of horror and indignation were visible in his

countenance.'

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 still 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. 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 era of the English poetry.