Page:Dictionary of National Biography, Third Supplement.djvu/554

 , and delicate, limpid English. ‘Celtic magic’ and a sensitive freshness and contemplative charm inspire these idylls as well as many pages of The South Country (1909), and In Pursuit of Spring (1914). The range of Thomas's cool, fastidious, critical taste, and of his subtle destructive analysis, is shown in his studies of Swinburne (1912) and Walter Pater (1913).

The incessant strain of literary journalism and of producing book after book for publishers, ‘paid at one pound per thousand words’, without respite or hope of popular success, had told seriously on Thomas's health by 1911, and with his deepening anxieties in the next two years his tendency to introspective melancholy steadily increased. The War solved his difficulties. In July 1915 he enlisted in the Artists' Rifles, but was transferred to the Royal Garrison Artillery. He went to France in 1917, and was killed at Arras on 9 April of that year.

Six months before joining the army, Thomas, inspired by the example of his friend Robert Frost, the American poet, bent all his energies to writing verse. In his foreword to The Collected Poems of Edward Thomas (1920), Walter De La Mare has said: ‘This intensity of solitude, this impassioned, almost trance-like delight in things natural, simple, short-lived and happy seeming, “lovely of motion, shape and line”, is expressed—even when the clouds of melancholy and of self-distrust lour darkest—on every page of this book. A light shines in it, like that of “cowslips wet with the dew of their birth”. If one word could tell of his all, that word would be England. … When indeed Edward Thomas was killed in Flanders, a mirror of England was shattered, of so true and pure a crystal that a clearer and tenderer reflection can be found in no other than in these poems …’

Sensitive and shy, Thomas guarded himself from the world by a fine, dry irony, which slightly veiled the poet both austere and ardent in his passion for beauty and the homely things of earth. His lofty, melancholy spirit burned in an eye fastidiously grave. His figure was tall and spare, his hair at thirty was bleached gold, his head noble. He left one son and two daughters. Among his personal friends were W. H. Hudson, Walter De La Mare, W. H. Davies, and Edward Garnett.

 THOMPSON, SILVANUS PHILLIPS (1851–1916), physicist, was born at York 19 June 1851, the second son of Silvanus Thompson, schoolmaster, of that city, by his wife, Bridget Tatham, of Settle. He was educated at Bootham School, York, and at the Flounders' Institute, Pontefract, graduating B.A. of London University in 1869. He acted as a master at the Bootham School from 1870 to 1875, in which year he graduated B.Sc., London. He studied for one year in London at the Royal School of Mines and spent one semester at Heidelberg University. He was appointed lecturer in physics at the University College, Bristol, in 1876, and became professor in 1878, gaining the degree of D.Sc., London, in the same year. In 1885 he was appointed principal and professor of applied physics and electrical engineering of the City and Guilds Technical College, Finsbury. He held these posts until his death at Hampstead 12 June 1916. He was elected F.R.S. in 1891, and, besides holding other important posts in connexion with various scientific societies, he was president of the Institution of Electrical Engineers in 1899, of the Physical Society in 1901, and of the Optical Society in 1905.

Silvanus Thompson showed at an early age great vigour and breadth of mind, considerable literary and artistic talent, and untiring industry that never abated throughout his life. Although he was interested in scientific theory, and made important contributions to the study of optics and electricity, the coincidence of Thompson's scientific life with the inauguration of the age of electrical engineering gave an irresistible opportunity for the exercise of his special talents. In addition to his knowledge of electrical science and of magnetism, he had unusual experimental and inventive skill and the true instinct of an engineer. His mind was intensely lucid, and his power of simple and arresting exposition was certainly not excelled, if equalled, among his scientific contemporaries. He attained the position of a pioneer in the development of applied electricity. In 1881 he produced a text-book, Elementary Lessons in Electricity and Magnetism, which has run through many editions; while his Dynamo-electric Machinery, published in 1884, established itself at once as a standard work for electrical engineers. He also published The Electro-magnet and Electro-magnetic Mechanisms (1891). His public lectures attracted large audiences and aided greatly in promoting technical education, especially in electrical  528