Page:A Voice from the Nile, and Other Poems. (Thomson, Dobell).djvu/41

 secretary to another company, which also collapsed after a brief career. In 1874 he published in the National Reformer his most remarkable work, "The City of Dreadful Night." This poem was much more fortunate than its predecessors, for it attracted a good deal of notice in literary circles, and was very favourably spoken of in the Academy. The Spectator devoted an article to it, which, though censuring its tone, yet did some degree of justice to the remarkable powers of the author. But what most delighted Mr. Thomson was a few words of praise from the author of "Adam Bede." For "George Eliot" he always felt and expressed the deepest admiration, and her praise probably gave him the greatest degree of pleasure that he was capable of feeling. Here is an extract from her letter:—"My mind responds with admiration to the distinct vision and grand utterance in the poem which you have been so good as to send me. Also I trust that an intellect informed by so much passionate energy as yours will soon give us more heroic strains with a wider embrace of human fellowship in them—such as will be to the labourers of the world what the odes of Tyrteus were to the Spartans, thrilling them with the sublimity of the social order, and the courage of resistance to all that would dissolve it."

Mr. W. M. Rossetti (to whose edition of Shelley's Poetical Works Thomson had contributed some notes) also expressed his great admiration for the poem, and thenceforth remained on very friendly terms with the author. Philip Bourke Marston, the unfortunate Oliver Madox Browne, and Miss Blind may also be mentioned