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
propounding 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
hand, and told him that he did not understand his own verses.

The biographer of Thomson has remarked, that an author'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 abstinent;" 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 pres