Page:Dictionary of National Biography, Second Supplement, volume 3.djvu/512

 Thompson also contributed, chiefly to the 'Scotsman' and to ’Macmillan's Magazine,' a few essays and fugitive poems.

 THOMPSON, EDMUND SYMES- (1837–1906), physician. [See .]

THOMPSON, FRANCIS (1859–1907), poet and prose-writer, was born on 18 Dec. 1859 at 7 Winckley Street, Preston. His father, Charles Thompson (1824–1896), a native of Oakham, Rutland, practised homoeopathy at Preston and Ashton-under-Lyne, and married Mary Morton. Francis's uncles, Edward Healy Thompson (b. 1813) and John Costall Thompson, were both authors. Edward, who was professor of English literature at the catholic university in Dublin (1853–4) and sub-edited the 'Dublin Review' (1862–4), wrote devotional works, which were widely circulated; John published a volume of poems, 'The Vision of Liberty,' which won the approval of Sir Henry Taylor and of Gladstone. Like these uncles, Francis's father and mother were converts to the Roman catholic church. Francis was their second child, but the elder son died in infancy. Three sisters were born later.

Francis, who was brought up in the catholic faith, was sent in 1870 to Ushaw College, there to receive a fair classical education and to be prepared, if he and his mentors saw fit, for the priesthood. A frail and timid child of studious tastes, Thompson nurtured at Ushaw his life-long allegiance to the doctrines and liturgy of the church. At seventeen he left to study medicine by his father's wish at Owens College, Manchester. Medical study was repugnant to him, and after six years' trial, in the course of which he thrice failed in examination for a degree, he attempted in a helpless fashion humble means of livelihood. He made no plea in favour of a literary career, but he had read with ardent sympathy the works of Æschylus and Blake, while the gift from his mother of De Quincey's 'Confessions of an Opium Eater' gave his thought a perilous direction. His father's reproaches at his failure to earn a livelihood led him suddenly in Nov. 1885 to seek his fortune in London. There he filled for a time some small posts, among them that of a publisher's 'collector.' But, tormented by neuralgia and other ills, he fell a prey to opium, and soon passed through every phase of destitution, sleeping in the open, and seeking a few pence by selling matches or newspapers. During this period a Leicester Square bootmaker, accosting him in the street, gave him for a time light employment in his shop, and—what proved a more enduring gift—old account books for scribbling paper: Sustained through his sufferings by opium, he developed poetical powers, and at the end of two years of outcast life he copied out on ragged scraps of paper in the spring of 1888 two poems, ’The Passion of Mary' and 'Dream Tryst,' and a prose essay, 'Paganism Old and New.' These compositions he sent, giving Charing Cross Post Office as his address, to 'Merry England,' where the work of his uncle, Edward Healy Thompson, had already appeared. They were accepted by the editor, Mr. Wilfrid Meynell, and were duly published in the numbers for April, May, and June respectively. Browning read them shortly before his death, and pronounced their author to be a poet capable of achieving whatever his ambition might suggest. At the time opium eating and privation had ruined Thompson's health. Having been traced with difficulty, he was induced to enter a hospital, and afterwards to recruit at Storrington, Sussex. His recovery largely depended on the breaking of the opium habit. During this painful process his literary sense gathered fresh strength, and he wrote the 'Ode to the Setting Sun' and other verse and the 'Essay on Shelley.'

In 1893 he published his first volume of 'Poems,' chiefly written at Storrington. Coventry Patmore was among the earliest and most enthusiastic admirers of the book. The chief poem, 'The Hound of Heaven,' found wide popularity despite its somewhat recondite theme, which treated in the spirit of the strictest catholic dogma of conflict between human and divine love (cf. Life, ii. 240). Of the first section of the poems called 'Love in Dian's Lap' Patmore wrote that these were 'poems of of which Laura might have been proud' (Fortnightly Review, lxi.). There followed in 1895 'Sister Songs' (new edit. 1908), dedicated to Monica and Madeline Meynell, children of his friend and protector. There he described with subtlety and ingenuous calmness the days of his outcast experience, but the profuse imagery and visionary obscurity of his style rendered a cool reception for the moment inevitable. 