Page:Dictionary of National Biography, Second Supplement, volume 3.djvu/513

 From 1893 till 1897 Thompson lived, with short intervals, near the Franciscan monastery in Pantasaph, North Wales. There he wrote nearly all the 'New Poems,' which he published in 1897, and dedicated to Coventry Patmore, whose death spoilt the pleasures of publication. The book shows the powerful influence of older mystical poets, but the 'Mistress of Vision,' of which he himself said that it contained as much science as mysticism, takes with the 'Anthem of Earth' a place in the forefront of English verse.

In prose Thompson also gave proof of notable power. To the ’Academy,' under Mr. C. L. Hind's editorship, and, during the last years of his life, to the 'Athenæum,' he contributed a large body of literary criticism. In 1905 he issued 'Health and Holiness: a Study of the Relations between Brother Ass the Body and his Rider the Soul' (with a preface by Father George Tyrrell). There were published posthumously the 'Life of St. Ignatius Loyola' (1909), 'The Life of John Baptist de la Galle' (1911), and the 'Essay on Shelley' (1909), with a preface by Mr. George Wyndham, who pronounced it 'the most important contribution to pure letters written in English during the last twenty years.'

Despite his ascetic temper and his mystical prepossessions, Thompson found recreation in watching cricket matches, and wrote odds and ends of verse in honour of the game. During his last months he lodged in London and also paid a visit to an admirer, Mr. Wilfrid Scawen Blunt, at Newbuildings Place near Horsham. There Mr. Neville Lytton painted his portrait. In the summer of 1907 he was prevailed upon to enter the Hospital of St. Elizabeth and St. John, St. John's Wood, where he died from consumption on 13 Nov. 1907, fortified by the rites of the catholic church. He was buried in the catholic cemetery, Kensal Green, where his tomb is inscribed with his own words 'Look for me in the nurseries of Heaven.'



THOMPSON, HENRY, first baronet (1820–1904), surgeon, born at Framlingham, Suffolk, 6 Aug. 1820, was only son of Henry Thompson, a general dealer, by his wife Susannah, daughter of  [q. v.], the artist. Thompson was educated under Mr. Fison, a nonconformist minister at Wrentham. He early engaged in mercantile pursuits, as his parents, who were uncompromising baptists, disliked the idea of a profession. Coming to London, he was, however, apprenticed to George Bottomley, a medical practitioner at Croydon, in January 1844, and in October he entered University College, London, as a medical student. He obtained the gold medal in anatomy at the intermediate examination at the London University in 1849, and the gold medal for surgery at the final M.B. examination in 1851. From June 1850 he acted as house surgeon at University College Hospital to (Sir) [q. v. Suppl. I], who was newly appointed surgeon. Joseph Lister, afterwards Lord Lister, was one of his first dressers, and on his advice Lister went to Edinburgh to work under [q. v.]. In January 1851 Thompson entered into partnership at Croydon with Bottomley, his former master, but after a few months he returned to London, and took the house 35 Wimpole Street where he lived during the rest of his life.

At the Royal College of Surgeons of England Thompson was admitted a member in 1850 and a fellow in 1853. He gained the Jacksonian prize in 1852 for his dissertation 'On the Pathology and Treatment of Stricture of the Urethra,' and he had the unusual distinction of obtaining the prize a second time in 1860 with his essay 'On the Healthy and Morbid Conditions of the Prostate Gland.' In 1883 he was appointed Hunterian professor of surgery and pathology.

Thompson acted for a short time as surgeon to the St. Marylebone Infirmary, but in 1853 he was appointed assistant surgeon to University College Hospital, becoming full surgeon in 1863, professor of clinical surgery in 1866, consulting surgeon and emeritus professor of clinical surgery in 1874.

Thompson early showed his predilection for the surgery of the urinary organs, and in July 1858 he visited Paris to study the subject still further under Jean Civiale 