By virtue as by nature close allied.
The painter's genius, but without the pride.
Worth unambitious, wit afraid to shine,
Honour's clear light, and friendship's warmth divine.
The son, fair-rising, knew too short a date;
But O how more severe the parent's fate I .
He saw him torn untimely from his side,
Felt all a father's anguish wept, and died.
The following verses, in which Thomson bewails him with all the warmth of grateful friendship, are only partially printed in that poet's works:
O could I draw, my friend, thy genuine mind,
Just as the living forms by thee designed!
Of Raphael's figures none, should fairer shine,
Nor Titian's colours longer last than thine.
A mind in wisdom old, in lenience young,
From fervid truth, whence every virtue sprung j
Where all was real, modest, plain, sincere;
Worth above show, and goodness unsevere.
Viewed round and round, as lucid diamonds show,
Still, as you turn them, a revolving glow:
So did his mind reflect with secret ray,
In various virtues, Heaven's eternal day.
Whether in high discourse it soared sublime
And sprung impatient o'er the bounds of time,
Or wandering nature o'er with raptured eye,
Adored the hand that turned yon azure sky:
Whether to social joy he bent his thought,,
And the right poise that mingling passions sought,
Gay converse blest, or, in the thoughtful grove,
Bid the heart open every source of love:
In varying lights, still set before our eyes
The just, the good, the social, and the wise.
For such a death who can, who would refuse,
The friend a tear, a verse the mournful muse?
Yet pay we must acknowledgment to Heaven,
Though snatch'd so soon, that Aikman e'er was given,
Grateful from nature's banquet let us rise,
Nor leave the banquet with reluctant eyes:
A friend, when dead, is but removed from sight,
Sunk in the lustre of eternal light;
And, when the parting storms of life are o'er,
May yet rejoin us on a happier shore.
As those we love decay, we die in part;
String after string is severed from the heart;
Till loosened life at last but breathing clay
Without one pang is glad to fall away.
Unhappy he who latest feels the blow,
Whose eyes have wept o'er every friend laid low;
Dragged lingering on from partial death to death,
And, dying, all he can resign is breath.
In his style of painting, Aikman seems to have aimed at imitating nature in her most simple forms; his lights are soft, his shades mellow, and his colouring mild and harmonious. His touch has neither the force nor the harshness of Rubens; nor does he, like Reynolds, adorn his portraits with the elegance of adventitious graces. His compositions are distinguished by a placid tranquillity,
