he author congratulated
himself upon it as his noblest work; but an author and his reader are
not always of a mind. Liberty called in vain upon her votaries to read
her praises and reward her encomiast: her praises were condemned to
harbour spiders, and to gather dust; none of Thomson's performances were
so little regarded.

The judgment of the publick was not erroneous; the recurrence of the
same images must tire in time; an enumeration of examples to prove a
position which nobody denied, as it was from the beginning superfluous,
must quickly grow disgusting.

The poem of Liberty does not now appear in its original state; but, when
the author's works were collected after his death, was shortened by sir
George Lyttelton, with a liberty, which, as it has a manifest tendency
to lessen the confidence of society, and to confound the characters of
authors, by making one man write by the judgment of another, cannot be
justified by any supposed propriety of the alteration, or kindness of
the friend. I wish to see it exhibited as its author left it.

Thomson now lived in ease and plenty, and seems, for awhile, to have
suspended his poetry; but he was soon called back to labour by the death
of the chancellor, for his place then became vacant[164]; and though the
lord Hardwicke delayed, for some time, to give it away, Thomson's
bashfulness, or pride, or some other motive, perhaps not more laudable,
withheld him from soliciting; and the new chancellor would not give him
what he would not ask.

He now relapsed to his former indigence; but the prince of Wales was at
that time struggling for popularity, and, by the influence of Mr.
Lyttelton, professed himself the patron of wit: to him Thomson was
introduced, and being gaily interrogated about the state of his affairs,
said, "that they were in a more poetical posture than formerly;" and had
a pension allowed him of one hundred pounds a year.

Being now obliged to write, he produced, 1738[165], the tragedy of
Agamemnon, which was much shortened in the representation. It had the
fate which most commonly attends mythological stories, and was only
endured, but not favoured. It struggled with such difficulty through the
first night, that Thomson, coming late to his friends with whom he was
to sup, excused his delay by telling them how the sweat of his distress
had so disordered his wig, that he could not come till he had been
refitted by a barber.

He so interested himself in his o