ied; and Thomson, who had been rewarded for his attendance
by the place of secretary of the briefs, pays in the initial lines a
decent tribute to his memory. Upon this great poem two years were spent,
and the 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
public 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 a while 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; 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) 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,
excuse