Page:The city of dreadful night - and other poems (IA cityofdreadfulni00thomrich).pdf/199



The late James Thomson, the "poet of despair," was one of those writers who found life a losing fight—to quote his own words, "one long defeat." To most of us perhaps the name James Thomson suggests nothing more than the amiable Georgian poet of "The Seasons," surviving now chiefly in "Histories of English Literature"; yet when, seventeen years ago, the second James Thomson ended in a London hospital a career which had been singularly forlorn of opportunity, there were even then not a few who believed that the succeeding generation would find the author of "The City of Dreadful Night" ranked high among the poets of his time. The belief has proved well founded. Seventeen years is long enough for many a poet who flourished gayly in his day to be forgotten, but Thomson's works have been steadily gaining ground.

Thomson was born at Port Glasgow in 1834 of middle-class parents, his father holding a position in the merchant navy. The death of his mother and the intemperate habits of his father caused the home to be early broken up, and the young Thomson was placed in the Caledonian Orphan Asylum, which is described by his friend and biographer, Mr. Dobell, as an excellent institution, but which could hardly furnish suitable opportunities for the unusually gifted boy, As it proved, the only occupation open to him was that of an army schoolmaster, and during eleven years Thomson discharged the uncongenial duties of this position. During the first year of his service as assistant schoolmaster, when hardly more than a boy, he met the young girl he calls his "good angel," whose untimely death cast a shadow over her lover's life. Another army association which was to influence him deeply was his acquaintance with Charles Bradlaugh. Although Mr. Dobell assures us that Thomson reached his extreme theological position as a result of his own reading and Meditation, and independently of his intimacy with Bradlaugh, yet it was due to the famous atheist that Thomson had even the slight opportunity of gaining the public ear that was vouchsafed him. With the exception of a few poems published from 1858 to 1860 in Tait's Magazine and "Sunday Up the River," which