wn drama, that, if I remember right, as
he sat in the upper gallery, he accompanied the players by audible
recitation, till a friendly hint frighted him to silence. Pope
countenanced Agamemnon, by coming to it the first night, and was
welcomed to the theatre by a general clap; he had much regard for
Thomson, and once expressed it in a poetical epistle sent to Italy, of
which, however, he abated the value, by transplanting some of the lines
into his epistle to Arbuthnot.

About this time the act was passed for licensing plays, of which the
first operation was the prohibition of Gustavus Vasa[166], a tragedy of
Mr. Brooke, whom the publick recompensed by a very liberal subscription;
the next was the refusal of Edward and Eleonora, offered by Thomson. It
is hard to discover why either play should have been obstructed.
Thomson, likewise, endeavoured to repair his loss by a subscription, of
which I cannot now tell the success.

When the publick murmured at the unkind treatment of Thomson, one of the
ministerial writers remarked, that "he had taken a _liberty_ which was
not agreeable to _Britannia_ in any _season_."

He was soon after employed, in conjunction with Mr. Mallet, to write the
mask of Alfred, which was acted before the prince at Cliefden-house.

His next work, 1745, was Tancred and Sigismunda, the most successful of
all his tragedies; for it still keeps its turn upon the stage. It may be
doubted whether he was, either by the bent of nature or habits of study,
much qualified for tragedy. It does not appear that he had much sense of
the pathetick; and his diffusive and descriptive style produced
declamation rather than dialogue.

His friend Mr. Lyttelton was now in power, and conferred upon him the
office of surveyor-general of the Leeward Islands; from which, when his
deputy was paid, he received about three hundred pounds a year.

The last piece that he lived to publish was the Castle of Indolence,
which was many years under his hand, but was, at last, finished with
great accuracy. The first canto opens a scene of lazy luxury that fills
the imagination.

He was now at ease, but was not long to enjoy it; for, by taking cold on
the water between London and Kew, he caught a disorder, which, with
some careless exasperation, ended in a fever that put an end to his
life, August 27, 1748. He was buried in the church of Richmond, without
an inscription; but a monument has been erected to his memory in
Westminster