mor the pal that ren drin ping bern that rick prov mor night Thom in the middl news + T ture. the pl With regard to the brother gardeners, you ought to know, that, as they are half vegetables, the animal part of them will never have spirit enough to consent to the transplanting of the vegetable into "distant dangerous climates: they, happily for themselves, have no other idea but to dig on here, eat, drink, sleep, and kiss their wives. As to more important business, I have nothing to write to you. You know best the course of it. Be (as you always must be) just and honest: but if you are unhappily romantic, you shall come home without money, and write a tragedy on yourself. Mr. Lyttelton told me that the Grenvilles and he had strongly recommended the person the governor and you proposed for that considerable office, lately fallen vacant in your department, and that there were good hopes of succeeding. He told me also that Mr. Pitt had said, it was not to be expected that offices such as that is, for which the greatest interest is made here at home, could be accorded to your recommendation; but that, as to the middling or inferior offices, if there was not some particular reason to the contrary, regard would be had thereto. This is all that can be reasonably desired; and if you are not infected with a certain Creolean distemper, (whereof, I am persuaded, your soul will utterly resist the contagion, as I hope your body will that of their natural ones,) there are few men so capable of that unperishable happiness, that peace and satisfaction of mind, that proceed from being reasonable and moderate in our desires, as you are. These are the treasures, dug from an inexhaustible mine in our own breasts; which, like those in the kingdom of heaven, the rust of time cannot corrupt, nor thieves break through and steal. I must learn to work at this mine a little more, being struck off from a certain hundred pounds a year which you know I had. West, Mallet, and I were all routed in one day. If you would know why-out of resentment to our friend + in Argyll-street. Yet I have hopes given me of having it restored with interest, some specimen in his "Liberty," as he has of the first in his "Seasons" and "Castle of Indolence." Gardening, except in the stiff ornamental style of Holland, had made but little progress in England in the days of Thomson. Nearly the poet's own expression in his (then recently altered) "Hymn on the Seasons:" "To distant barbarous climes."-Edit. + George, afterwards Lord Lyttelton. time the lit desired off the him n little last all God fo a God teen o you m party Do no never All poor mane will at soon. accoun you ar He va Ga + It the fort body. for dest enjoy it. again at The guage. The Sir friends, and you are among the oldest. Symmer is at last tired of quality, and is going to take a semi-country house at Hammersmith. I am sorry that honest sensible Warrender (who is in town) seems to be stunted in church preferment. He ought to be a tall cedar in the house of the Lord. If he is not so at last, it will add more fuel to my indignation, that burns already too intensely, and throbs towards an eruption. Peter Murdoch is in town, tutor to Admiral Vernon's son; and is in good hopes of another living in Suffolk, that country of tranquillity, where he will then burrow himself; in a wife, and be happy. Good-natured, obliging Millar is as usual. Though the doctor increases in his business, he does not decrease in spleen; but there is a certain kind of spleen that is both humane and agreeable, like Jacques in the play. I sometimes have a touch of it.-But I must break off this chat with you about our friends, which, were I to indulge it, would be endless. As for politics, we are, I believe, upon the brink of a peace. The French at present are vapouring in the siege of Maestricht; at the same time they are mortally sick in their marine, and through all the vitals of France. It is a pity we cannot continue the war a little longer, and put their agonizing trade quite to death. This siege, I take it, they mean as their last flourish in the war. May your health, which never failed you yet, still continue, till you have scraped together enough to return home, and live in some snug corner, as happy as the Corycius senex, in Virgil's fourth Georgic, whom I recommend both to you and myself as a perfect model of the truest happy life. Believe me to be ever most sincerely and affectionately Yours, &c., JAMES THOMSON. *Doctor Armstrong.-Armstrong was a worthy man, a good physician, and perhaps one of the best scientific didactic poets in the world, as appears from his poem on the Art of preserving Health. Thomson has described his absent moods in the "Castle of Indolence," in the sixtieth stanza. When the good Doctor was with the British army in Flanders, as surgeon or physician, he was taken prisoner one day, taking what he called a stroll beyond the lines. |