RELIQUIÆ THOMSONIANA.
To the Editor.
Sir,—The [article] relating to Thomson, in a recent number of the Table Book, cannot fail to have deeply interested many of your readers, and in the hope that further similar communications may be elicited, I beg to offer the little I can contribute.
The biographical memoranda, the subject of the conversation in the article referred to, are said to have been transmitted to the earl of Buchan by Mr. Park. It is not singular that no part of it appears in his lordship’s “Essays on the Lives and Writings of Fletcher of Saltoun, and the Poet Thomson, 1792.” 8vo. Mr. Park’s communication was clearly too late for the noble author’s purpose. The conversation professes to have been in October, 1791; to my own knowledge the volume was finished and ready for publication late in the preceding September, although the date 1792 is affixed to the title.
Thomson, it is believed, first tuned his Doric reed in the porter’s lodge at Dryburgh, more recently the residence of David Stuart Erskine, earl of Buchan; hence the partiality which his lordship evinced for the memory of the poet. At p. 194 of the Essays are verses to Dr. De (la) Cour, in Ireland, on his Prospect of Poetry, which are there ascribed to Thomson, and admitted as such by Dr. Thomson, who directed the volume through the press; although it is certain that Thomson in his lifetime disavowed them. The verses to Dr. De la Cour appeared in the Daily Journal for November 1734; and Cave, the proprietor and editor of the Gentleman’s Magazine, at the end of the poetical department in that miscellany for August, 1736, states himself “assured, from Mr. Thomson, that, though the verses to Dr. De la Cour have some lines from his Seasons, he knew nothing of the piece till he saw it in the Daily Journal.”
The appellation of the “oily man of God,” in the Essays, p. 258, was intended by the earl of Buchan for Dr. Murdoch, who was subsequently a biographer of Thomson. Such designations would puzzle a conjuror to elucidate, did not contemporary persons exist to afford a clue to them.
The recent number of the Table Book is not at hand, but from some MS. papers now before me,—James Robertson, surgeon to the household at Kew, who married the sister of Amanda, was the bosom friend of Thomson for more than twenty years. His conversation is said to have been facetious and intelligent, and his character exemplarily respectable. He died at his residence on Richmond Green after four days’ illness, 28th October, 1791, in his eighty-fourth year.
The original MS. of the verses to Miss Young, the poet’s Amanda, on presenting her with his “Seasons,” printed in the Essays, p. 280, were communicated by a Mr. Ramsay, of Ocherlyne, to his lordship. Some other presentation lines, with the Seasons, to the poet Lyttleton, were transcribed from a blank leaf of the book at Hagley, by Johnstone, bishop of Worcester, and transmitted by his son to the earl of Buchan in 1793 or 1794, consequently too late for publication. They follow here:—
Go, little book, and find our friend,
Who Nature and the Muses loves;
Whose cares the public virtues blend,
With all the softness of the groves.
A fitter time thou can’st not choose
His fostering friendship to repay:—
Go then, and try, my rural muse,
To steal his widowed hours away.
Among the autograph papers which I possess of Ogle, who published certain versifications of Chaucer, as also a work on the Gems of the Ancients, are some verses by Thomson, never yet printed; and their transcripts, Mr. Editor, make their obeisance before you:—
Come, gentle god of soft desire!
Come and possess my happy breast;
Not fury like, in flames and fire,
In rapture, rage, and nonsense drest.
These are the vain disguise of love,
And, or bespeak dissembled pains,
Or else a fleeting fever prove,
The frantic passion of the veins.
But come in Friendship’s angel-guise,
Yet dearer thou than friendship art,
More tender spirit at thine eyes,
More sweet emotions at thy heart.
Oh come! with goodness in thy train;
With peace and transport, void of storm.
And would’st thou me for ever gain?
Put on Amanda’s waning form.
The following, also original, were written by Thomson in commendation of his much loved Amanda:—
Sweet tyrant Love, but hear me now!
And cure while young this pleasing smart,
Or rather aid my trembling vow,
And teach me to reveal my heart.
Tell her, whose goodness is my bane,
Whose looks have smil’d my peace away,
Oh! whisper how she gives me pain,
Whilst undesigning, frank, and gay.
’Tis not for common charms I sigh,
For what the vulgar, beauty call;
’Tis not a cheek, a lip, an eye,
But ’tis the soul that lights them all.
For that I drop the tender tear,
For that I make this artless moan;
Oh! sigh it, Love, into her ear,
And make the bashful lover known.
In the hope that the present may draw forth further reliquiæ of the poet of the “Seasons” in your excellent publication, I beg leave to subscribe myself,
Sir, &c.
Will O’ The Wisp.
Sept. 17, 1827.