With Thomson, too, whose fame, happily for posterity, hung not upon
the ephemeral charm of accent, variety of attitude, or witchery of the
eye, like that of even the most transcendent of the votaries of the
buskins; with Thomson, too, his favoured lot led him to the happiness
of early and intimate, though, unfortunately, not of long-enduring
acquaintance, the destined race of Thomson, which was cut short nearly
in the meridian of life, being already almost run.
It was not in the house only of Mrs. Cibber that he met this impressive
and piety-inspiring painter of Nature, alike in her rural beauties and
her elemental sublimities: the young musician had the advantage of
setting to music a part of the mask of Alfred,[4] which brought him
into close contact with the author, and rivetted good will on one side
by high admiration on the other.
With various persons, renowned or interesting, of the same set, who
were gaily basking, at this period, in the smiles of popular sunshine,
the subject of these memoirs daily mixed; but, unfortunately, not a
memorandum of their intercourse has he left, beyond their names.
Mrs. Cibber herself he considered as a pattern of perfection in the
tragic art, from her magnetizing powers of harrowing and winning at
once every feeling of the mind, by the eloquent sensibility with which
she portrayed, or, rather, personified, Tenderness, Grief, Horror, or
Distraction.