But his merit did not long lie concealed. Mr. Forbes, afterwards Lord Prefident of the Seffion, then attending the service of Parliament, having feen a fpecimen of Mr. Thomfon's poetry in Scotland, received him very kindly, and recommended him to fome of his friends: particularly to Mr. Aikman, who lived in great intimacy with many perfons of diftinguished rank and worth. This gentleman, from a connoiffeur in painting, was become a professed painter; and his taste being no less just and delicate in the kindred art of defcriptive poetry, than in his own, no wonder that he foon conceived a friendship for our author. What a warm return he met with, and how Mr. Thomson was affected by his friend's premature death, appears in the copy of verfes which he wrote on that occafion.

In the mean time, our author's reception, whereever he was introduced, emboldened him to rifque the publication of his Winter: in which, as himself was a mere nevice in fuch matters, he was kindly affifted by Mr. Mallet, then private tutor to his Grace the Duke of Montrofe, and his brother the Lord George Graham, fo well known afterwards as an able and gallant fea-officer. To Mr. Mallet he likewife owed his first acquaintance with feveral of the wits of that time; an exact information of their characters, per

fonal and poetical, and how they stood affected to each other.

The Poem of Winter, published in March 1726, was no fooner read than univerfally admired; thofe only excepted who had not been used to feel, or to look for, any thing in poetry, beyond a point of fatirical or epigrammatic wit, a fmart antithefis richly trimmed with rhyme, or the foftnefs of an elegiac complaint. To fuch his manly claffical fpirit could not readily recommend itself; till, after a more attentive perufal, they had got the better of their prejudices, and either acquired or affected a truer tafle. A few others ftood: aloof, merely because they had long before fixed the articles of their poetical creed, and refigned themfelves to an abfolute defpair of ever feeing any thing new and original. These were fomewhat mortified to find their notions disturbed by the appearance of a poet, who seemed to owe nothing but to nature and his own genius. But, in a fhort time, the applaufe became unanimous; every one wondering how fo many pictures, and pictures fo familiar, fhould have moved them but faintly to what they felt in his defcriptions. His digreffions too, the overflowings of a tender, benevolent heart, charmed the reader no lefs; leaving him in doubt, whether he fhould more admire the Poet, or love the Man.

From that time, Mr. Thomfon's acquaintance was courted by all men of taste; and feveral ladies of high rank and distinction became his declared patroneffes: the Countess of Hertford, Mifs Drelincourt, afterwards Viscountess Primrose, Mrs. Stanley, and others. But the chief happinefs which his Winter procured him was, that it brought him acquainted with Dr. Rundle, afterwards Lord Bishop of Derry: who, upon converfing with Mr. Thomson, and finding in him qualities greater ftill, and of more value, than those of a poet, received him into his intimate confidence and friendfhip; promoted his character every where; introduced him to his great friend the Lord Chancellor Talbot; and, fome years after, when the eldeft fon of that nobleman was to make his tour of travelling, recommended Mr. Thomson as a proper companion for him. His affection and gratitude to Dr. Rundle, and his indignation at the treatment that worthy prelate had met with, are finely expressed in his poem to the memory of Lord Talbot. The true caufe of that undeserved treatment has been fecreted from the Public, as well as the dark manœuvres that were employed: but Mr. Thomfon, who had accefs to the beft information, places it to the account of

-Slanderous zeal, and politics infirm,

Jealous of worth.

Meanwhile, our poet's chief care had been, in return for the public favour, to finish the plan which their wishes laid out for him; and the expectations which his Winter had raised, were fully fatisfied by the fucceffive publication of the other Seafons: of Summer, in the year 1727; of Spring, in the beginning of the following year; and of Autumn, in a quarto edition of his works, printed in 1730.

In that edition, the Seafons are placed in their natural order; and crowned with that inimitable Hymn, in which we view them in their beautiful fucceffion, as one whole, the immediate effect of infinite Power and Goodness. In imitation of the Hebrew Bard, all nature is called forth to do homage to the Creator, and the reader is left enraptured in filent adoration and praife.

Befides thefe, and his tragedy of Sophonisba, written and acted with applause, in the year 1729, Mr. Thomfon had, in 1727, published his poem to the Memory of Sir Ifaac Newton, then lately deceafed; containing a deferved encomium of that incomparable man, with an account of his chief discoveries; fublimely poetical; and yet so juft, that an ingenious foreigner, the Count Algarotti, takes a line of it for the text of his philofophical dialogues, Il Neutonianifmo per le dame:

this was in part owing to the affiftance he had of his friend Mr. Gray, a gentleman well verfed in the Nertonian Philofophy, who, on that occafion, gave him a very exact, though general, abstract of its principles.

That fame year, the refentment of our merchants, for the interruption of their trade by the Spaniards in America, running very high, Mr. Thomfon zealously took part in it; and wrote his poem Britannia, to rouse the nation to revenge. And although this piece is the lefs read that its fubject was but accidental and temporary, the fpirited generous fentiments that enrich it, can never be out of seafon: they will at least remain a monument of that love of his country, that devotion to the Public, which he is ever inculcating as the perfection of virtue, and which none ever felt more pure, or more intense, than himself.

Our author's poetical ftudies were now to be interrupted, or rather improved, by his attendance on the Honourable Mr. Charles Talbot in his travels. A delightful task indeed! endowed as that young nobleman was by nature, and accomplished by the care and example of the best of fathers, in whatever could adorn humanity: graceful of perfon, elegant in manners and addrefs, pious, humane, generous; with an exquifite tafte in all the finer arts.