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That beast was a sleepe upon one of the trees under which wee weare to goe; neither of us ever seeing such a creature weare astonished. We could not tell what to doe. It was impossible to carry our boat, for the thicknesse of the wood; to shoot att her wee would att least be discovered, besides it would trouble our Company. We durst not ventur to kill her, for feare of breaking of our boat.
"A French gentleman, well acquainted with the constitution of his country, told me above eight years since that France increased so rapidly in peace that they must necessarily have a war every twelve or fourteen years to carry off the refuse of the people." So Thicknesse wrote in 1776, and he seems to have accepted the statement as unimpeachable.
The two things did not happen in the same town. Both Smollett and Thicknesse were great grumblers.
Brock-Arnold describes Thicknesse as "a fussy, ostentatious, irrepressible busybody, without the faintest conception of delicacy or modesty, who seems to think he has a heaven-born right to patronize Gainsborough, and to take charge of his affairs." The aristocratic and pompous Thicknesse presented the painter to his friends, and also gave much advice about how he should conduct himself.
His promised picture of Thicknesse was relegated behind the door, and a check was sent the great man for five hundred pounds for his borrowed viola da gamba and other favors. But Thicknesse was not to be bought off.
Thicknesse was an intelligent man and may be considered a good writer, for, however careless and disorderly, he is often vivid and usually amusing. He was of course something of a dilettante and antiquarian. He had a sound sense for natural beauty. He was an enthusiastic friend as well as a venomous enemy. He was infinitely tender to animals.
Weems' book was written to elevate his man into a demigod; Thicknesse was intent on lowering his subject and exalting himself; while Pretyman extols himself and his subject equally, revealing how William Pitt could never have been William Pitt were it not for his tutor. Pretyman emphasizes trifles, slights important matters, and waxes learned concerning the irrelevant.
These instruments of destruction are carefully described: "Having prepared fortie or fiftie round-bellied earthen pots, and filled them with hand Gunpowder, then covered them with Pitch, mingled with Brimstone and Turpentine, and quartering as many Musket-bullets, that hung together but only at the center of the division, stucke them round in the mixture about the pots, and covered them againe with the same mixture, over that a strong sear-cloth, then over all a goode thicknesse of Towze-match, well tempered with oyle of Linseed, Campheer, and powder of Brimstone, these he fitly placed in slings, graduated so neere as they could to the places of these assemblies."
So when I come unto these yellow sands I come to kiss a pure and new-born Earth. May 12. The name of Philip Thicknesse, at one time Governor of Landguard Fort, is not unknown to posterity. The echo of his bitter quarrel with his son by his second wife, Baron Audley, has come down to us. He wrote also the first biography of Gainsborough, whom he claimed to have discovered.
So to be obedient to our superiours, without noise of trompet or drum, but zeal with griefe, we left that place. We are all embarked, and now must looke for the mouth of the river; and weare put to it, ffor it frized every night and the Ice of good thicknesse, and consequently dangerous to venture our boats against it. We must all the way breake the ice with great staves to make a passage.
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