circumstance, which does equal honour to the patron and the poet, ought not here to be omitted; that my Lord Lyttelton's recommendation came altogether unsolicited, and long before Mr. Thomson was personally known to him.
It happened, however, that the favour of his Royal Highness was in one instance of some prejudice to our author; in the refusal of a licence for his tragedy of Edward, and Eleonora, which he had prepared for the stage in the year 1739. The reader may see that this play contains not a line which could justly give offence; but the ministry, still sore from certain pasquinades, which had lately produced the stage-act; and as little satisfied with some parts of the prince's political conduct, as he was with their management of the public affairs; would not risque the representation of a piece written under his eye, and, they might probably think, by his command.
This refusal drew after it another; and in a way which, as it is related, was rather ludicrous. Mr. Paterson, a companion of Mr. Thomson, afterwards his deputy and then his successor in the general-surveyorship, used to write out fair copies for his friend, when such were wanted for the press or for the stage. This gentleman likewise courted the tragic Muse; and had taken for his subject, the story of Arminius, the German hero. But his plot, guiltless as it was, being presented for a licence, no sooner had the censor cast his eyes on the hand-writing in which he had seen Edward and Eleonora, than he cried out: away with it! and the author's
