words, "as truth sincere, as weeping friendship kind." He also made acquaintance with Mallet, then private tutor to the duke of Montrose, who probably introduced him to the leading wits of the day.

In March, 1726, Thomson published his Winter,' with a dedication to Sir Spencer Compton, then speaker of the house of commons, afterwards Earl Wilmington. This poem took universally, and introduced its author to the leading people about town; and encouraged by his success he next year produced his Summer,' his 'Poem on the Death of Sir Isaac Newton,' and his 'Britannia.' 'Spring' appeared in 1728, and the cycle was completed by the publication of Autumn' in 1730. In subsequent editions, Thomson introduced many alterations of his poems. Somerville, the author of The Chase,' had in an epistle to his brother poet remonstrated with him on the inaccuracy and slovenliness of some of his lines, and asked

"Why should thy Muse, born so divinely fair,

Want the reforming toilet's daily care?"

And there can be but one opinion as to the improvement which these re-touchings effected upon the poems in general. It will ever be recorded to the immortal honour of the bard of the Seasons that he was the first who broke through those trammels which had been gradually imposed upon English poetry from the period of the Restoration. And per haps his boldness in this respect was in a great measure owing to what soine might have regarded as his misfortune, his birth and education in a remote pastoral district of Britain, into which the artificial tastes and false perceptions current in another sphere of life had not penetrated. As to the intrinsic merits of Thomson's poetry, we cannot better please and instruct the reader than by quoting Campbell's critique on the bard of the Seasons. "Habits of early admiration teach us all to look back upon this poet as the favourite companion of our solitary walks, and as the author who has first or chiefly reflected back to our minds a heightened and refined sensation of the delight which rural scenery affords us. The judgment of cooler years may somewhat abate our estimation of him, though it will still leave us the essential features of his poetical character to abide the test of refiection. The unvaried pomp of his diction suggests a most unfavourable comparison with the manly and idiomatic simplicity of Cowper: at the same time, the pervading spirit and feeling of his poetry is in general more bland and delightful than that of his great rival in rural description. Thomson seems to contemplate the creation with an eye of unqualified pleasure and ecstasy, and to love its inhabitants with a lofty and hallowed feeling of religious happiness; Cowper has also his philanthropy, but it is dashed with religious terrors, and with themes of satire, regret, and reprehension. Cowper's image of nature is more curiously distinct and familiar. Thomson carries our associations through a wider circuit of speculation and sympathy. His touches cannot be more faithful than Cowper's, but they are more soft and select, and less disturbed by the intrusion of homely objects. It is but justice to say, that amidst the feeling and fancy of the Seasons, we meet with interruptions of declamation, heavy narrative, and unhappy digression-with a parhelion eloquence that throws a counterfeit glow of expression on common-place ideas—as when he treats us to the solemnly ridiculous bathing of Musi

dora; or draws from the classics instead of nature; or, after invoking Inspiration from her hermit seat, makes his dedicatory bow to a patronizing countess, or speaker of the house of commons. As long as he dwells in the pure contemplation of nature, and appeals to the universal poetry of the human breast, his redundant style comes to us as something venial and adventitious-it is the flowing vesture of the druid; and perhaps to the general experience is rather imposing; but when he returns to the familiar narrations or courtesies of life, the same diction ceases to seem the mantle of inspiration, and only strikes us by its unwieldy difference from the common costume of expression."

In 1729 Thomson appeared as a dramatic writer in the tragedy of 'Sophonisba,' which was received with only faint praise. Soon after the publication of The Seasons,' the solicitor-general, Sir Charles Talbot, selected Thomson to accompany his eldest son on his travels in the continent. With this promising young man Thomson visited most of the capital cities of Europe in the course of the year 1731, and appears to have spent his time very delightfully and profitably to himself. "Travelling," he says, in a letter to Bubb Dodington, "has long been my fondest wish for the very purpose you recommend. The storing one's imagination with ideas of all-beautiful, all-great, and all-perfect nature these are the true materia poetica,—the light and colours with which Fancy kindles up her whole creation, paints a sentiment, and even imbodies an abstracted thought. I long to see the fields where Virgil gathered his immortal honey, and tread the same ground where men have thought and acted so greatly." In 1732 he returned to England, and commenced writing his poem on Liberty,' in which he imbodied many of the reflections and observations which he had made during his foreign tour. This was, in its author's opinion, the best of his productions; but no one probably except himself ever thought so. Aaron Hill indeed was profuse in his praise of this "inimitable masterpiece," which he declared would stand "like one of those immortal pyramids which carry their magnificence through times that wonder to see nothing round them but uncomfortable desert;" but this, like many other of Aaron's critical judgments, has been set aside by the unanimous voice of posterity, and the 'pyramid' is already buried in the accumulated sand of public neglect and indifference.

.

Thomson's generous patron, Lord-chancellor Talbot, died in February, 1737; his accomplished son, with whom the poet had travelled, preceded him to the grave. The loss of these two friends was deeply felt by him, and he has recorded glowing tributes to their memory in his poem on Liberty.' By the death of the lord-chancellor be lost his situation as secretary of briefs, and became much embarrassed in consequence in his pecuniary affairs. The prince of Wales indeed granted him a pension of £100 per annum; but he lived to be deprived of it. In 1738 he produced another tragedy founded on the story of the death of Agamemnon. It met with only partial success; but he, notwithstanding, continued to write for the stage, and produced his Edward and Eleonora,' and, in conjunction with Mallet, the masque of Alfred.' In 1745 his Tancred and Sigismunda' was acted with considerable applause at Drury-lane. In the meanwhile his friend Mr Lyttleton presented him with the situation of surveyor-general of the Leeward islands, the duties of which were performed by deputy, and the clear emolu

ments £300 per annum. When Lyttleton fell into disfavour with the prince of Wales, his friends Thomson, West, and Mallet, were all deprived of the pensions which the prince had granted them.

Much of the summer of 1745, and of the autumn of 1746, were spent by Thomson at his friend Shenstone's rural retreat, the Leasowes. A more agreeable situation for the indolent bard could not well have been devised. We can easily imagine him strolling about the shady walks of the Leasowes, with his hands clasped behind his back-as he was once caught eating the sunny side of a peach-or loitering down a summer's afternoon in one of Shenstone's moss houses, and elaborating a stanza per week of his 'Castle of Indolence,' by way of mental exertion. The poem we have just mentioned is said to have been nearly fifteen years in progress. It was published in May, 1748, the year of his death. "There is nothing in the history of verse, from the restoration of Charles II. to the present time,-not even in Collins, we think, and certainly not in Gray,-which can compete with the first part of the Castle of Indolence.' His account of the land of Drowsy head,' and

Of dreams that wave before the half-shut eye,'

of the disappearance of the sons of indolence, with the exquisite simile with which it closes,-the huge covered tables all odorous with spice and wine, the tapestried halls, and other Italian pictures,-the melancholy music, and altogether the golden magnificence and oriental luxuries of the place, and the ministering spirits who

Poured all the Arabian heaven upon our nights,'

-an exquisite line-may stand in comparison with almost any thing in the circle of poetry." Such is Mr Babington Macaulay's opinion of the poem; but Mr Hazlitt will not allow that it is Thomson's finest production, or that it contains any passages equal to the best in the 'Seasons.'

Ambrose Philips.

BORN A. D. 1671.-died a. D. 1749.

AMBROSE PHILIPS was descended from an old Leicestershire family. He was educated at St John's college, Cambridge, and obtained a fellowship in 1700.

While at college, he is supposed to have written his celebrated 'Pastorals.' In No. 40 of the Guardian, is a paper by Pope on these performances of Philips. "A plan," says Drake, "had been formed, most probably by Addison, Tickell, and Philips, to introduce into the Guardian a set of papers on pastoral poetry, which, after discussing the merits of the ancients, should criticise those among the moderns who had attempted this department, and decidedly give the palm to Philips, who was described as the only legitimate disciple of Theocritus, Virgil, and Spenser. Pope, who had written his pastorals not long after those of his rival, could not patiently endure this decision, and therefore sent this paper for insertion in the Guardian; of which the irony is so

delicate and well-contrived, that, although in the parallelism which he institutes he is always superior, he gives the verdict in favour of Philips, with so much plausibility and art, and with such apparent seriousness and sincerity, that Steele, and the wits at Button's, were, with the exception of Addison, completely deceived; and Sir Richard, though partial to Philips, even hesitated about its publication, lest the severity of the criticism should offend Pope. The result of its insertion was, as might have been expected, an irreconcileable quarrel between the two Arcadians. Philips suspended a rod at Button's for the chastisement, as he affirmed, of his opponent; and Pope, in the first edition of his 'Letters,' complimented his irritated rival with the appellation of ' rascal.' Death only terminated their mutual malevolence." Pope, however, in one instance at least, allowed his rival to be a man "who could write very nobly." The poem which drew forth this acknowledgment was the Winter Piece,' which first appeared in No. 12 of the Tatler.

Philips, like most of his literary associates, took a decided part in the politics of the day. His Life of Archbishop Williams,' was a kind of manifesto of his adherence to the whig party. Swift in his journal to Stella, under date the 30th of June, 1711, writes :—“ I have had a letter from Mr Philips, the pastoral poet, to get him a certain employment from lord-treasurer. I have now had almost all the whig poets my solicitors; and I have been useful to Congreve, Steele, and Harrison, but I will do nothing for Philips: I find he is more a puppy than ever-so do not so solicit for him.' Swift in fact joined with his friend Pope in holding up the author of the Pastorals' to derision, and nick-named him 'Namby-Pamby' in some lines, which have, however, been attributed to Henry Carey.

The best poetical production of our author is his tragedy of 'The Distressed Mother,' altered from Racine's Audromaque.' Budgell wrote an admirable epilogue for this piece, which still retains a place among our acting plays. The reader will find some remarks by Steele upon it, in No. 290 of the Spectator, and by Addison, in No 335. Yet, notwithstanding the success of this his first essay as a dramatist, nine years elapsed before Philips again ventured on the boards. In 1721, two tragedies from his pen, entitled The Briton,' and 'Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester,' were brought forward; but they were barely endured at the time, and are now forgotten.

In 1718 he commenced the publication of a periodical paper, entitled the Freethinker.' One of his coadjutors in this work was Dr Boulter, then the humble minister of a parish in Southwark, but afterwards archbishop of Armagh. On Boulter's elevation and departure for Ireland, he took Philips with him in the quality of secretary, and afterwards procured for him several honourable and lucrative situations in that country. In 1748 he returned to England, with the intention of spending the remainder of his days, now lengthening out into old age, in his native country, and amongst the literary society of the metropolis. But he had scarcely been twelve months in England, when he was seized with palsy, and expired in the 78th year of his age. A short time before his decease a complete collection of his poems was published under his own superintendence.

'Biographical Sketches.

666

Among the poems of Philips, the Letter from Denmark,' (the Winter Piece' before referred to,) may be justly praised, says Dr Johnson. The Pastorals,' continues the same authority, "which by the writer of the 'Guardian' were ranked as one of the four genuine productions of the rustic Muse, cannot surely be despicable. That they exhibit a mode of life which does not exist, nor ever existed, is not to be objected: the supposition of such a state is allowed to Pastoral. In his other poems he cannot be denied the praise of lines sometimes elegant; but he has seldom much force, or much comprehension. The pieces that please best are those which, from Pope and Pope's adherents, procured him the name of 'Namby Pamby,' the poems of short lines, by which he paid his court to all ages and characters, from Walpole, the steerer of the realm,' to Miss Pulteney in the nursery. The numbers are smooth and sprightly, and the diction is seldom faulty. They are not loaded with much thought; yet, if they had been written by Addison, they would have had admirers: little things are not valued but when they are done by those who can do greater.

"In his translations from Pindar he found the art of reaching all the obscurity of the Theban bard, however he may fall below his sublimity; he will be allowed, if he has less fire, to have more smoke.

"He has added nothing to English poetry, yet at least half his book deserves to be read: perhaps he valued most himself that part which the critic would reject."

Aaron Hill.

BORN A. D. 1685.-DIED A. D. 1750.

THE reader has already met with the name of Aaron Hill more than once in some of the preceding sketches. The truth is, the individual now before us occupies a larger space in the literary history of his times, than seems due to his intrinsic merits as a poet and critic. This is to be accounted for, partly by the enthusiasm with which he cultivated literature and the society of literary men, and partly by the fact that his suavity of manners, and gentle disposition, secured him many friends in an age by no means remarkable for brotherly feeling among its literary men. He was the eldest son of George Hill, Esq. of Malmsburyabbey, Wiltshire; and was born in London, in the month of February, 1685. When nine years old he was sent to Westminster school, then taught by Dr Knipe. Here he remained five years, at the end of which period he conceived and executed a singular project.

Lord Paget, an ambassador at Constantinople, was related to the Hills of Malmsbury; and young Hill, having a strong desire to see the world, boldly placed himself on board a vessel sailing for Constantinople, and set out to visit his noble relative at the juvenile age of fourteen. His lordship received his young visitor with great cordiality, and furnished him with the means of extending his travels to Egypt and Palestine. He returned to England in 1703, in the train of his noble relative, and had an opportunity of further extending his knowledge of the world, by visiting most of the courts of Europe, during the journey homewards. Lord Paget's death, however, soon after his arrival in