Born, at Port Glasgow, 23 Nov. 1834. Educated at Caledonian Orphan Asylum, 1843–50. At Ballincollig, near Cork, as assistant regimental schoolmaster, 1850–52; at Military Training College, Chelsea, 1852–54. Contrib., to Tait’s “Edinburgh Mag.,” 1858; to “National Reformer,” 1860–75. Served as regimental schoolmaster till 1862. After leaving army, held various secretaryships. Visit to America, 1872; to Spain as correspondent to “New York World,” 1873; Contrib., to “Cope’s Tobacco Plant,” 1875–81. Contrib., at various times to “Daily Telegraph,” “Athenæum,” “Weekly Despatch,” “Fortnightly Rev.,” “Fraser’s Mag.,” “Cornhill Mag.” Died, in London, 3 June 1882. Buried in Highgate Cemetery. Works: “The City of Dreadful Night,” 1880; “Vane’s Story,” 1880; “Essays and Phantasies,” 1881. Posthumous: “The Story of a Famous Old Jewish Firm, etc.,” 1883; “A Voice from the Nile,” ed. by B. Dobell, 1884 [1883]; “Shelley” (priv. ptd.), 1884; “Selections from Original Contributions by J. Thomson to ‘Cope’s Tobacco Plant,’” 1889; “Poetical Works,” ed. by B. Dobell (2 vols.), 1895; “Biographical and Critical Studies,” ed. by B. Dobell, 1896. Life: by H. S. Salt, 1889.

Personal

  It may also be said of the late James Thomson, author of “The City of Dreadful Night,” that he was the English Poe. Not only in his command of measures, his weird imaginings, intellectual power and gloom, but with respect to his errant yet earnest temper, his isolation, and divergence from the ways of society as now constituted,—and very strangely also in the successive chances of his life so poor and proud, in his final decline through unfortunate habits and infirmities, even to the sad coincidence of his death in a hospital,—do the man, his genius, and career afford an almost startling parallel to what we know of our poet of “the grotesque and arabesque.”

  When we come to sum up the leading points of Thomson’s life and character, we are naturally met by the consideration how far his morbid despondency, which we call pessimism, was due to his misfortunes, and how far to physical causes…. It is the opinion of one of his biographers that Thomson inherited a constitutional melancholia, and that his early bereavement was “not the cause of his life-long misery, but merely the peg on which he hung his raiment of sorrow. Mr. Dobell, however, is inclined to believe that “no other affliction could have affected him as he was affected by this.” One would probably be safe in concluding that the truth lies somewhere between these two theories, and that Thomson’s pessimistic bent of mind was brought about partly by an inherited disposition to melancholia, and partly by the crushing misfortune of his early life. It must not be supposed, however, that, pessimist as he was, he was accustomed to make a parade of his sufferings: on the contrary, all accounts agree in representing him as a singularly cheerful companion, and one of the most brilliant of talkers. Neither did his pessimism take a cynical and misanthropic turn, as in the case of Schopenhauer, who regarded, or affected to regard, his fellow-creatures and fellow-sufferers (synonymous terms, as he thought) with aversion and dislike. Thomson’s disposition, on the other hand, was always benevolent and kindly, in which respect he resembled Shelley, for whom he again and again expresses the warmest feelings of reverence and admiration, and to whom, as “the poet of poets and purest of men,” “Vane’s Story,” with its accompanying poems, is dedicated.

  On one occasion, after he had left the hospitable house of his friends and was living alone in London lodgings, the children of his landlady (of whom, as of all children, he was fond, with a fully reciprocated affection) going to the door to admit him, closed it again in his face, and told their father that “Mr. Thomson’s wicked brother was at the door;” they could not recognise their Mr. Thomson in this figure of the dipsomaniac claiming his name. Even his best friends at times found themselves forced from his society; although Mr. Foote tells us that he struggled manfully against this terrible disease. The fits were always preceded by days of blackest hypochondria, until at last, in desperation, he flew to the bottle. Except for this infirmity, he was methodical, logical, even mathematical; and when not suffering from depression, “the most brilliant talker,” says Mr. Foote, “I ever met.” He was an inveterate smoker, and when he ceased to contribute to Mr. Bradlaugh’s paper, his main source of income was from Cope’s Tobacco Plant, a magazine to which he contributed some good essays, and a humourous poem about smoking, in Chaucer’s vein…. So Thomson paced the dreary ways of that vast murky chaos called London, hardly able to keep his head above water (indeed often going under), a man of exceptional genius, quite unknown, and powerless to win hearers for his too individual strain, with an ever-growing sense of utter aloofness from his fellows, faith and hope gone, health failing, now alone in the mean dingy room, now carousing late with some acquaintance, the overwrought, unsleeping brain tortured all night, hagridden by hell-born phantoms and cruel dreams! What wonder is it that he sought momentary relief in that poison which only intensifies the suffering it promises to cure…. Poor Thomson had long vainly desired publication, and his first book obtained audience “fit though few,” but this success came too late to serve him. Fame, long-expected, arrived; but only to look into the face of a dying man.

The City of Dreadful Night, 1874–80

  James Thomson, though his works were few and his death comparatively early, was still one of the remarkable poets of this century. Most of the poets of our time have flirted with pessimism, but through their beautifully expressed sorrow we cannot help seeing that on the whole they are less sad than they seem, or that, like Mr. Matthew Arnold, they laid hold of a stern kind of philosophic consolation. It was reserved for Thomson to write the real poem of despair; it was for him to say the ultimate word about melancholia; for, of course, it is the result of that disorder which is depicted in “The City of Dreadful Night.” It was for him to gauge its horrible shapes, to understand its revelations of darkness as Shelley and others have understood revelations of light. As soon as we have read the opening pages of “The City of Dreadful Night,” we feel transported to a land of infinite tragedy.

  “The City of Dreadful Night” may be characterized as a sombre, darkly wrought composition toned to a minor key from which it never varies. It is a mystical allegory, the outgrowth of broodings on hopelessness and spiritual desolation. The legend of Dürer’s Melancholia is marvelously transcribed, and the isometric interlude, “As I came through the Desert thus it was,” is only surpassed by Browning’s “Childe Roland.” The cup of pessimism, with all its conjuring bitterness, is drunk to the dregs in this enshrouded, and again lurid, but always remarkable poem.

  The “City of Dreadful Night” published in 1874, procured him for a time considerable reputation. Those untrained, but not impotent imaginations which, like the temper of Cassius “much enforced yieldeth a single spark,” are remarkable illustrations of the power of that gift amid the humblest surroundings to strike forth tragic though broken notes into the poetry of the wealthiest age.

  “The City of Dreadful Night” is the despair of a maker of selections. It is the work by which its author’s reputation must stand or fall, and from it alone can he be represented; yet to convey by means of quotation any adequate idea of its sombre and terrifying imaginative grandeur would be impossible. The poem owes its effect to the admirable art by which a powerful and peculiar impression, produced at the commencement, is unflaggingly sustained and continually heightened until the close. Examined in detail, the workmanship is by no means of an absolute perfection—the verse inclines to halt, minor flaws disfigure the surface. But if the poem be viewed broadly, as a whole, these flaws will be lost sight of; and, as I have already indicated, it is only as a whole that the Epic of Pessimism can be fairly judged.

General

  Shelley, Heine, Leopardi, Schopenhauer,—such were the writers whom Thomson valued most, and whose influence is visible in his poetry. Yet the production already mentioned, and many others, have traits which are not found elsewhere in prose or verse.

  During the last few weeks I have been studying the poetry and prose of James Thomson, a very remarkable writer, who lived at the bottom of the deep sea of oblivion, “silent and shrouded with the sense of fate.” But there is no English poet now living, except Tennyson, Browning, Swinburne, and Morris, who comes near him; and he has qualities which raise him to a level at least with these, though he is not so all-round as any one of them. I will bring you acquainted with him when you come here. He is a pessimist of the deepest dye, even more poignantly pessimistic than Leopardi, not so sublime and calm.

  As time goes on “The City of Dreadful Night” will more and more be considered a truly remarkable poem. It has the distinction of being the most hopelessly sad poem in literature. Much of Thomson’s other work is characterized by equally high qualities—one or two of the shorter poems by even greater technical skill if not exceeding it in power of sombre imagination. He stands quite by himself—following no leader, belonging to no school: to De Quincey however, he has strong affinities.

  Leopardi and Thomson (who has been called the second Leopardi) were poets of the broken heart, as in a less degree also were Byron and Heine. But we ought also to note the immense love of which our English pessimist was capable, and the full capacity for joy. His early poetry is all idealistic, mystical, exhaling impassioned affection, and breathing the “difficult iced air” of Faith’s mountain top…. One main character of Thomson was his love for allegory and symbol; this we find early and late in him. His pessimistic vein indeed is not to be regarded as that most proper and essential to the man merely because it came latest, when his spirit was overclouded by the dark environments of his career, co-operating with and evoking those demons of gloom and intemperate disease which lurked within, only waiting their sinister opportunity. His healthy period was surely that middle time when he worked strong and hopeful, full of human sympathy, and of trust in the great, sound, universal Heart of all, in that overruling Providence which is ever preparing man’s undying spirit for larger spheres of life and labour…. The purport and substance of Thomson should be gauged by his earlier, quite as much as by his later work, and the manner in that is often good also. We get an exuberant exultation in life, a glad, immense embrace of all Nature (including even Death, the renovator), as characterising the true and “Happy poet.” Here we have the “Lord of the Castle of Indolence,” as lovely, I think, as anything Thomson wrote in his maturity, yet composed at the early age of twenty-five, where the Spenserian measure is used with the skill of his namesake in the masterpiece bearing the same title.

  In the love of cloud-scenery, and the faithful painting of it; in all those large effects of weirdness and solemnity which make sunrises and sunsets so full of awe and mystery; in the poetry of wonder and desolation, Thomson is a master, and he has studied Shelley to good purpose…. He is a man who has broken down in the quest, who has sought the Holy Grail in vain, who at last, hopeless of seeing any divine light “starlight mingle with the stars,” has laid himself down in the unending forest, and is choked with the thick drift of darkness which every way falls upon him like the black snow of death. He has no questions to put to the oracle of doom; he has received his answer, and here records his belief that life is

  His claims, however, must rest on a comparatively small body of work, which will no doubt one day be selected and issued alone. “The City of Dreadful Night” itself, incomparably the best of the longer poems, is a pessimist and nihilist effusion of the deepest gloom amounting to despair, but couched in stately verse of an absolute sincerity and containing some splendid passages. With this is connected one of the latest pieces, the terrible “Insomnia.” Of lighter strain, written when the poet could still be happy, are “Sunday at Hampstead” and “Sunday up the River,” “The Naked Goddess,” and one or two others; while other things, such as “The fire that filled my heart of old,” must also be cited. Even against these the charge of a monotonous, narrow, and irrational misery has been brought. But what saves Thomson is the perfection with which he expresses the negative and hopeless side of the sense of mystery, of the Unseen; just as Miss Rossetti expresses the positive and hopeful one. No two contemporary poets perhaps ever completed each other in a more curious way than this Bohemian atheist and this devout lady.

  The striking contrast in “B. V.’s.” character—a courageous genial spirit, coupled with an intolerable melancholia; spiritual aspiration with realistic grasp of fact; ardent zeal for democracy and free thought with stubborn disbelief in human progress—is clearly marked in his writings, which are lit up here and there with flashes of brilliant joyousness, but, blackly pessimistic in the main. His masterpiece is the “City of Dreadful Night,”… next to this are “Vane’s Story,” an autobiographic fantasia, and the oriental narrative “Weddah and Om-el-Bonain.” Many of the lyrics, grave or gay, are poignantly beautiful, and the prose essays, satires, criticisms, and translations have great qualities that deserve to be better known. Shelley, Dante, Heine, and Leopardi were his chief literary models; his mature style, in its stern conciseness is less Shelleyan than Dantesque.