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See also: British poet, best known by his signature " B.V.", was See also: born at See also: Port-See also: Glasgow, in See also: Renfrew-See also: shire, on the 23rd of See also: November 1834, the eldest See also: child of a mate in the See also: merchant See also: shipping service
.
His See also: mother was a deeply religious woman of the Irvingite See also: sect
.
On her See also: death, See also: James, then in his seventh
See also: year, was procured See also: admission into the Caledonian See also: Orphan See also: Asylum
.
In 185o he entered the See also: model school of the Military Asylum, See also: Chelsea, from which he went out into the See also: world as an assistant army schoolmaster
.
At the garrison at Ballincollig, near See also: Cork, he encountered the one brief happiness of his See also: life: he See also: fell passionately in love with, and was in turn as ardently loved by, the daughter of the armourersergeant of a regiment in the garrison, a girl of very exceptional beauty and cultivated mind
.
Two years later he suddenly received See also: news of her fatal illness and death
.
The See also: blow prostrated him in mind and See also: body
.
Henceforth his life was one of gloom, disappointment, misery and poverty, rarely alleviated by episodes of somewhat brighter See also: fortune
.
While in See also: Ireland he had made the acquaintance of See also: Charles
See also: Bradlaugh, then a soldier stationed at Ballincollig, and it was under his auspices (as editor of the See also: London Investigator) that See also: Thomson first appealed to the public as an author, though actually his earliest publication was in See also: Tait's See also: Edinburgh See also: Magazine for See also: July 1858, under the signature " Crepusculus." In 186o was established the paper with which Bradlaugh was so long identified, the See also: National Reformer, and it was here, among other productions by James Thomson, that appeared (1863) the powerful and sonorous verses " To our Ladies of Death," and (1874) his chief See also: work, the sombre and imaginative City of Dreadful See also: Night
.
In See also: October 1862 Thomson was dismissed the army, in See also: company with other teachers, for some slight breach of discipline
.
Through Bradlaugh, with whom for some subsequent years he lived, he gained employment as a See also: solicitor's clerk
.
From 1866 to the end of his life, except for two See also: short absences from See also: England, Thomson lived in a single See also: room, first in Pimlico and then in Bloomsbury
.
He contracted habits of intemperance, aggravated by his pessimistic turn of mind to dipsomania, which made a successful career impossible for him . In 1869 he enjoyed what has been described as his " only reputable appearance in respectableSee also: literary society," in the acceptance of his long poem, " See also: Sunday up the See also: River," for See also: Fraser's Magazine, on the 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 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 country he saw little real fighting, and was himself prostrated by a sunstroke
.
On his return to England he continued to write in the Secularist and the National Reformer, under the 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 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 Hospital, in See also: Gower Street, on the 3rd of See also: June 1882, and was buried at See also: Highgate 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 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 Baudelaire
.
But, after all, Thomson holds so unique a place as a poet that the effort atSee also: classification may well be dispensed with
.
His was no literary pessimism, no assumed gloom
.
The poem " See also: Insomnia " is a distinct chapter of 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 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 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 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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