At last, without any farther contention with his modesty or any awe of the name of Dryden, he gave us a complete English Æneid, which I am sorry not to see, joined in this publication with his other poems[160]. It would have been pleasing to have an opportunity of comparing the two best translations that, perhaps, were ever produced by one nation of the same author.
Pitt, engaging as a rival with Dryden, naturally observed his failures, and avoided them; and, as he wrote after Pope’s Iliad, he had an example of an exact, equable and splendid versification. With these advantages seconded by great diligence, he might successfully labour particular passages, and escape many errours. If the two versions are compared, perhaps the result would be that Dryden leads the reader forward by his general vigour and sprightliness, and Pitt often stops him to contemplate the excellence of a single couplet; that Dryden’s faults are forgotten in the hurry of delight, and that Pitt’s beauties are neglected in the languor of a cold and listless perusal; that Pitt pleases the criticks, and Dryden the people; that Pitt is quoted, and Dryden read.
He did not long enjoy the reputation which this great work deservedly conferred; for he left the world in 1748, and lies buried under a stone at Blandford, on which is this inscription:
In memory of
Chr. Pitt, clerk, M.A.
Very eminent
for his talents in poetry;
and yet more
for the universal candour of
his mind, and the primitive
simplicity of his manners.
He lived innocent;
and died beloved,
Apr. 13, 1748,
aged 48.
THOMSON.
James Thomson, the son of a minister well esteemed for his piety and diligence, was born September 7, 1700, at Ednam, in the shire of Roxburgh, of which his father was pastor. His mother, whose name was Hume[161], inherited, as coheiress, a portion of a small estate. The revenue of a parish in Scotland is seldom large; and it was, probably, in commiseration of the difficulty with which Mr. Thomson supported his family, having nine children, that Mr. Riccarton, a neighbouring minister, discovering in James uncommon promises of future excellence, undertook to superintend his education, and provide him books.
He was taught the common rudiments of learning at the school of Jedburg, a place which he delights to recollect in his poem of Autumn; but was not considered by his master as superiour to common boys, though, in those early days, he amused his patron and his friends with poetical compositions; with which, however, he so little pleased himself, that, on every new-year’s day, he threw into the fire all the productions of the foregoing year.
From the school he was removed to Edinburgh, where he had not resided two years when his father died, and left all his children to the care of their mother, who raised, upon her little estate, what money a mortgage could afford, and, removing with her family to Edinburgh, lived to see her son rising into eminence.