Thomson now lived in ease and plenty, and seems for a while to have
suspended his poetry: but he was soon called back to labour by the
death of the Chancellor, for his place then became vacant; and
though the Lord Hardwicke delayed for some time to give it away,
Thomson's bashfulness or pride, or some other motive perhaps not
more laudable, withheld him from soliciting; and the new Chancellor
would not give him what he would not ask. He now relapsed to his
former indigence; but the Prince of Wales was at that time
struggling for popularity, and by the influence of Mr. Lyttelton
professed himself the patron of wit; to him Thomson was introduced,
and being gaily interrogated about the state of his affairs said
"that they were in a more poetical posture than formerly," and had a
pension allowed him of one hundred pounds a year.

Being now obliged to write, he produced (1738) the tragedy of
Agamemnon, which was much shortened in the representation. It had
the fate which most commonly attends mythological stories, and was
only endured, but not favoured. It struggled with such difficulty
through the first night that Thomson, coming late to his friends
with whom he was to sup, excused his delay by telling them how the
sweat of his distress had so disordered his wig that he could not
come till he had been refitted by a barber. He so interested
himself in his own drama that, if I remember right, as he sat in the
upper gallery, he accompanied the players by audible recitation,
till a friendly hint frighted him to silence. Pope countenanced
Agamemnon by coming to it, the first night, and was welcomed to the
theatre by a general clap; he had much regard for Thomson, and once
expressed it in a poetical epistle sent to Italy, of which, however,
he abated the value by transplanting some of the lines into his
Epistle to Arbuthnot.