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 broken career of that unfortunate man of genius, and is characterised alike by sympathy and candour. The greater portion of the stock of Thomson's Works was, as is well known, destroyed by fire, so that this collection of his writings in verse is timely and welcome. Thomson's reputation (as his editor observes) is of the kind whose steady, if slow, growth makes for permanent endurance. Here we may find 'Vane's Story,' 'Weddah and Om-el-Bonain,' the famous 'City of Dreadful Night,' and many another outcome of his powerful but gloomy intellect. The translations from Heine take high rank among the attempts, so seldom successfully made, to supply English readers with a rendering of the quaint and delicate fancies of one whose alternations of mood were akin to those of Thomson himself"—National Observer.

This volume contains biographical and critical studies of the lives and works of Rabelais, Ben Jonson, William Blake, Shelley, Garth Wilkinson, John Wilson, James Hogg, Robert Browning, and others.

Now first reprinted from the unique original, with an Introduction and Notes by Bertram Dobell.