Once own the happy lines,
How the wit brightens, how the style refines!
Though Thomson's first want on his arrival in London from the North was a pair of shoes, and he lived for a time in great indigence, he was comfortable enough at last. Lord Lyttleton introduced him to the Prince of Wales (who professed himself the patron of literature) and when his Highness questioned him about the state of his affairs, Thomson assured him that they "were in a more poetical posture than formerly." The prince bestowed upon the poet a pension of a hundred pounds a year, and when his friend Lord Lyttleton was in power his Lordship obtained for him the office of Surveyor General of the Leeward Islands. He sent a deputy there who was more trustworthy than Thomas Moore's at Bermuda. Thomson's deputy after deducting his own salary remitted his principal three hundred pounds per annum, so that the bard 'more fat than bard beseems' was not in a condition to grow thinner, and could afford to make his cottage a Castle of Indolence. Leigh Hunt has versified an anecdote illustrative of Thomson's luxurious idleness. He who could describe "Indolence" so well, and so often appeared in the part himself,
Slippered, and with hands,
Each in a waistcoat pocket, (so that all
Might yet repose that could) was seen one morn
Eating a wondering peach from off the tree.
A little summer-house at Richmond which Thomson made his study is still preserved, and even some articles of furniture, just as he left them.[025] Over the entrance is erected a tablet on which is the following inscription:
HERE
THOMSON SANG
THE SEASONS
AND THEIR CHANGE.
Thomson was buried in Richmond Church. Collins's lines to his memory, beginning
In yonder grave a Druid lies,
are familiar to all readers of English poetry.
Richmond Hill has always been the delight not of poets only but of painters. Sir Joshua Reynolds built a house there, and one of the only three landscapes which seem to have survived him, is a view from the window of his drawing-room. Gainsborough was also a resident in Richmond. Richmond gardens laid out or rather altered by Brown, are now united with those of Kew.
Savage resided for some time at Richmond. It was the favorite haunt of Collins, one of the most poetical of poets, who, as Dr. Johnson says, "delighted to rove through the meanders of enchantment, to gaze on the magnificence of golden palaces, to repose by the waterfalls of Elysian gardens." Wordsworth composed a poem upon the Thames near Richmond in remembrance of Collins. Here is a stanza of it.