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See also: He contracted habits of intemperance, aggravated by his pessimistic turn of mind to See also:dipsomania, which made a successful career impossible for him . In 1869 he enjoyed what has been described as his " only reputable See also:appearance in respectable See also:literary society," in the See also:acceptance of his long poem, " See also:Sunday up the See also:River," for See also:Fraser's Magazine, on the See also:advice, it is said, of Charles See also:Kingsley . In 1872 Thomson went to the western states of See also:America, as the See also:agent of the shareholders in what he ascertained to be a fraudulent See also:silver mine; and the following year he received a See also:commission from the New-See also:York World to go to See also:Spain as its See also:special correspondent with the Carlists . During the two months of his stay in that distracted See also:country he saw little real fighting, and was himself prostrated by a See also:sunstroke . On his return to England he continued to write in the Secularist and the National Reformer, under the See also:initials " B.V."' In 1875 he severed his connexion with the National Reformer, owing to a disagreement with its editor; henceforth his chief source of income (1875-1881) was from the monthly periodical known as See also:Cope's See also:Tobacco Plant . Chiefly through the exertions of his friend and admirer, See also:Bertram See also:Dobell, Thomson's best-known See also:book, The City of Dreadful Night, and other Poems, was published in See also:April 188o, and at once attracted wide See also:attention; it was succeeded in the autumn by See also:Vane's See also:Story, and other Poems, and in the following year by Essays and Phantasies . All his best work was produced between 1835 and 1875 (" The See also:Doom of a City," 1857; " Our Ladies of Death," 1861; Weddah and Om-el-Bonain; " The Naked Goddess," 1866-1867; The City of Dreadful Night, 1870-1874) . He died at University See also:College See also:Hospital, in See also:Gower See also:Street, on the 3rd of See also:June 1882, and was buried at See also:Highgate See also:cemetery, in the same See also:grave, in unconsecrated ground, as his friend See also:Austin See also:Holyoake . To the productions of James Thomson already mentioned may be added the See also:posthumous See also:volume entitled A See also:Voice from the See also:Nile, and other Poems (1884), to which was prefixed a memoir by Bertram Dobell . This volume contained much that is interesting, but nothing to increase Thomson's reputation . If an See also:attempt be made to point to the most apparent literary relation-See also:ship of the author of The City of Dreadful Night, one might venture the See also:suggestion that James Thomson was a younger See also:brother of De Quincey . If he has distinct See also:affinity to any writer it is to the author of Suspiria de profundis; if we look further afield, we might perhaps discern shadowy prototypes in See also:Leopardi, See also:Heine and See also:Baudelaire . But, after all, Thomson holds so unique a See also:place as a poet that the effort at See also:classification may well be dispensed with . His was no literary See also:pessimism, no assumed gloom . The poem " See also:Insomnia " is a distinct See also:chapter of See also:biography; and in " Mater Tenebrarum " and elsewhere among his writings passages of self-See also:revelation are frequent . The merits of Thomson's See also:poetry are its imaginative See also:power, its sombre intensity, its sonorous See also:music; to these characteristics may be added, in his lighter pieces, a Heine-like admixture of See also:strange gaiety, pathos and See also:caustic See also:irony . Much the same may be said of his best See also:prose . His faults are a monotony. of epithet, the not infrequent use of See also:mere See also:rhetoric and verbiage, and perhaps a prevailing lack of the sense of See also:form; besides an occasional vulgar recklessness of expression, as in parts of Vane's Story and in some of his prose writings . See the Life, by H . S . See also:Salt (1905 edition) . |
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