then
the prince in the favor of the people.

The personal life of Thomson is not of much interest. From his first
residence in London, he supported, with his slender means, a brother, who
died young of consumption, and aided two maiden sisters, who kept a small
milliner-shop in Edinburgh. This is greatly to his praise, as he was at
one time so poor that he was arrested for debt and committed to prison. As
his reputation increased, his fortunes were ameliorated. In 1745 his play
_Tancred and Sigismunda_ was performed. It was founded upon a story
universally popular,--the same which appears in the episode of _The Fatal
Marriage_ in Gil Bias, and in one of the stories of Boccaccio. He enjoyed
for a short time a pension from the Prince of Wales, of which, however, he
was deprived without apparent cause; but he received the office of
Surveyor-General of the Leeward Islands, the duties of which he could
perform by deputy; after that he lived a lazy life at his cottage near
Richmond, which, if otherwise reprehensible, at least gave him the power
to write his most beautiful poem, _The Castle of Indolence_. It appeared
in 1748, and was universally admired; it has a rhetorical harmony similar
and quite equal to that of the _Lotos Eaters_ of Tennyson. The poet, who
had become quite plethoric, was heated by a walk from London, and, from a
check of perspiration, was thrown into a high fever, a relapse of which
caused his death on the 27th of August, 1748. His friend Lord Lyttleton
wrote the prologue to his play of _Coriolanus_, which was acted after the
poet's death, in which he says:

"--His chaste Muse employed her heaven-taught lyre
None but the noblest missions to inspire,
Not one immoral, one corrupted thought,
_One line which, dying, he could wish to blot_."

The praise accorded him in this much-quoted line is justly his due: it is
greater praise that he was opening a new pathway in English Literature,
and supplying better food than the preceding age had given. His _Seasons_
supplied a want of the age: it was a series of beautiful pastorals. The
descriptions of nature will always be read and quoted with pleasure; the
little episodes, if they affect the unity, relieve the monotony of the
subject, and, like figures introduced by the painter into his landscape,
take away the sense of loneliness, and give us a standard at once of
judgment, of measurement, and of sympathetic enjoyment; they display, too,
at once