am a bad correspondent, that I can ever prove an unkind friend and brother. I must do myself the justice to tell you, that my affections are naturally very fixed and constant; and if I had ever reason of complaint against you, (of which, by the by, I have not the least shadow,) I am conscious of so many defects in myself, as dispose me to be not a little charitable and forgiving.

It gives me the truest heartfelt satisfaction to hear you have a good, kind husband, and are in easy, contented circumstances; but were they otherwise, that would only awaken and heighten my tenderness towards you. As our good and tender-hearted parents did not live to receive any material testimonies of that highest human gratitude I owed them, (than which nothing could have given me equal pleasure,) the only return I can make them now is by kindness to those they left behind them. Would to God poor Lizy had lived longer, to have been a further witness of the truth of what I say, and that I might have had the pleasure of seeing once more a sister who so truly deserved my esteem and love! But she is happy, while we must toil a little longer here below: let us, however, do it cheerfully and gratefully, supported by the pleasing hope of meeting yet again on a safer shore, where to recollect the storms and difficulties of life will not, perhaps, be inconsistent with that blissful state. You did right to call your daughter by her name; for you must needs have had a particular tender friendship for one another, endeared as you were by nature, by having passed the affectionate years. of your youth together; and by that great softener and engager of hearts, mutual hardship. That it was in my power to ease it a little, I account one of the most exquisite pleasures of my life. But enough of this melancholy, though not unpleasing strain.

"I esteem you for your sensible and disinterested advice to Mr. Bell, as you will see by my letter to him: as I approve entirely of his marrying again, you may readily ask me why I don't marry at all. My circumstances have, hitherto, been so variable and uncertain in this fluctuating

word, is induce to keep me from engaging in such a state: and now. hour they are more settled, and of late (which

wil be gad to hear considerably improved, I begin atunk nysed too far advanced in life for such youthful andertalings, not to mention some other petty reasons that are aut to startle the delicacy of difficult old bachelors. I am, however, not a little suspicious that, was I to pay a visit a Sentand. which I have some thoughts of doing soon. I might possibly, be tempted to think of a thing not easy repaired of done amiss. I have always been of opinion that none make better wives than the ladies of Scothand; and yet, who more forsaken than they, while the gentemen are continually running abroad all the world over! Some of them, it is true, are wise enough to return for a wife. You see I am beginning to make interest already with the Scots ladies. But no more of this infections subject. Pray let me hear from you now and then; and though I am not a regular correspondent, yet, perhaps, I may mend in that respect. Remember me kindly to your husband, and believe me to be

"Your most affectionate brother,
"JAMES THOMSON."

(Addressed) "To Mrs. Thomson, in Lanark.”

The benevolence of Thomson was fervid, but not active: he would give, on all occasions, what assistance his purse would supply; but the offices of intervention or solicitation he could not conquer his sluggishness sufficiently to perform. The affairs of others, however, were not more neglected than his own. He had often felt the inconveniencies of idleness, but he never cured it; and was so conscious of his own character, that he talked of writing an eastern tale of the Man who loved to be in Distress.

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

and, and told him that he did not understand his own

Verses.

The biographer of Thomson has remarked, that an auhor's life is best read in his works: his observation was not well-timed. Savage, who lived much with Thomson, - once told me, 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 what Thomson shows him, and that he 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 circumstantial varieties, would have been obstructed and embarrassed by the frequent intersection of the sense, which are the necessary effects of rhyme.

Enter time vici pens, des Are DIG LEIG ewig discernet.rmt, mi sometimes ma? le charged with fling the tur murt sun the mind.

Ties Diems. win win I was aged a te irs nearnes. I ve ses immi atered and enlarged by Bullspient zest, is de aur sizçosed his judgment ʼn gw nart fact, mi w bucks de conversation extended as lovedge and opened his prospects. They are. I tana, mproved in general; yet I know not whether they have not lost part of what Temple calls their “ race;" a word when, applied to wines, in its primitive sense, means the flavour of the soil.

▸ For an interesting milection of the various readings of the successive editions of the beans, see vol. ii. iii. and iv. of the Censura Literaria. Thomson's own preface to the second edition of Winter may be found in vol. ii. p. 67, of the above quoted work. En.

Liberty, when it first appeared, I tried to read, and soon sisted. I have never tried again, and, therefore, will not zard either praise or censure.

The highest praise which he has received ought not to › suppressed; it is said by lord Lyttelton, in the prologue › his posthumous play, that his works contained

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