A LIFE OF FRANCIS THOMPSON.* Sucu lovers of Francis Thompson's

work as are capable of a discreet and reasoned enthusiasm will close Mr. Everard lleynell's Life of the poet with disappointment and regret, Both as biography and as criticism the book is inadequate. The author scarcely attempts to consider Thompson apart from the relations which existed between them, to see him in diverse lights and from opposed points of view, in the round, as it were, and under all the contradictory aspects of a various personality. A true sympathy can reconcile apparent

• Tlio' LUe of Fian-eis Thompson.' By Evertifd Meynell, ;■ontion Punts givi Oates. [130. pet,i

contradictions, and show us even the defects of a character as integral parts of a whole, relating the perplexities and tortuousness of action to the more or less idealized image of the man, which it has disengaged from them. But Mr. Meynell'a book is less sympathetic than familiar ; the biographical details are insufficient and blurred ; while the tragic, if rather sordid, circumstances of Thompson's life in London, before the generous chivalry of Mr. Wilfrid Meynell lifted him into security, are not given their right value and weight. This period, of course, is necessarily obscure, but in the absence of material the author has endeavoured to reconstruct it imagina- tively by quoting passages from De Quincey, whose words, he tells us, became Thompson's own "by right of succession," whatever that may mean. The book is filled with attempts to parallel incidents in Thompson's life with incidents in the lives of Coleridge and De Quincey, and we cannot say that we find the method impressive. Parallels of this kind are invariably superficial and commonplace, and the three men resemble each other only in so far as they were more or less addicted to opium. Thompson had neither the qualities of mind which distinguished Coleridge, nor those characteristic of

De Quincey ; and his experience differs from theirs because the mind that registered it was different. We wish to see him as he

himself really was; and what interests us are not the habits.

whether of conduct or of style,through which he resembles other men, but those peculiar to himself. Opium, after all, was only a symptom of what was a constitutional infirmity of the mind, a means by which the will was relaxed and the imagination freed from the urgent and pressing necessities of actual life. His education at Ushaw, directed to the object of fitting him for the priesthood, was not calculated to build up his character or remedy its defects. A boy who has been trained with this special object in view from childhood until his nineteenth year, and is then rejected on the ground that he has no "vocation," a term sufficiently wide to cover a multitude of deficiencies, is obviously at a grave disadvantage. Mr.

Meynell has quoted a letter from the President of Ushaw, informing Thompson's parents of his rejection :—

"He has always been a remarkably docile and obedient boy, and certainly one of the cleverest boys in his class. Still, his strong, nervous timidity has increased to such an extent that I have been most reluctantly compelled to concur in the opinion of his Director and others that it is not the holy will of God that he should go on for the priesthood. . . . I quite agree with you in thinking that it is quite time that he should begin to prepare for some other career. If he can shake off a natural indolence which has always been an obstacle with him, he has ability to succeed in any career."

The letter is not a model of style : Mr. Meynell cites it as a proof of goodwill, while we are inclined to regard it as an

example of practical wisdom ; but consider what St. Francis would have thought of its spirit. We are only concerned, how- ever, with the effect of this education upon Thompson's sub- sequent life, the characteristics it fostered in him, the bias it gave to his will, and the fact that at the age of nineteen lie was forced to begin a preparation for some other career. For six

years he studied medicine at Owens College, Manchester, the choice of a profession being governed by the fact that his father was a doctor ; he himself seems to have been indifferent, to have assented passively, and to have neglected his work. Probably it was in 1879, when be was ill with fever, that he first took laudanum ; and it was at this time, too, Mr. Meynell tells us, that his mother gave him a copy of The Confessions of an English Opium Eater. Manchester, opium, and De Quincey are a felicitous combination, and, as we have said, Mr. Meynell has made full use of it. In 1885 Thompson, baying exhausted the patience of his family, went to London, and until 1888 he lived in obscure misery. In 1886 Mr. Macinaster, a bootmaker of Panton Street, took him from the streets, fed and

clothed him, employed him in his shop, and at Christmas sent him home for a holiday with his people. He returned from Manchester under the influence of opium, and Mr. Macinaster

found it necessary to dismiss him from his employment. "It seems Francis had let the shutter slip on a certain evening of delirium, and, it is gathered, a foot—the foot of a customer, no less—had been hurt. Whatever the immediate cause, Francis had to leave Panton Street in the middle of January, 1887. Mr. Macmaster stands an example. A His charity was of such exceptional fortune as commends ra]tricind to daily good works lest great benefits be left unperformed, lest our omissions etarve a frantis ThOmpson.". Mr. Mactaaster% charity was of

p, less sophisticated kind; and the manner of Mr. Meynell's references to him seems at times to be lacking in good taste. Thompson returned to the streets, where he met

with an unfortunate girl, who befriended him. There is a tribute to her memory in Sister Songs, where she is mentioned

as the "brave, sad, tender, lovingest thing." In 1888 he met Mr. Wilfrid Meynell, and from that time until his death a refuge was found for him, in which he was secure from any further conflict with the harsh realities of life.

We have stated with sufficient plainness our objections to Mr. Meynell's book. The facts presented are inadequate, and are not put clearly before us ; no reasons are given for Thompson's departure from Pantasaph and from Storrington ; his relations with his family during the later period of his life are not defined, comparisons with De Quincey and Coleridge are used to colour the facts, and every page is evidence of a strictly limited and personal point of view. There are worse errors of taste. Every contemporary criticism which was not merely adulation of Thompson's work, criticism which pointed out certain obvious defects and affectations of style, is held to have sprung from animus against Thompson's religion. One might think from Mr. Meynell's way of looking at the matter that theology were a tenth Muse. As a plain matter of fact, there were then, as there are still, a great number of sound and competent critics working for the Press who were of Thompson's religion, and the feeling of the age was distinctly favourable to Romanism. It was Lionel Johnson, himself a Romanist, whom Mr. Meynell quotes as saying that Thompson had done more to berm the English language than the worst American newspapers. Mr. Meynell writes : " ' The poet of a small Catholic clique' was a description given by one of the two or three writers who constituted the opposition to his claims to a great place in English literature. They all made a common discovery—Francis Thompson was a Catholic." Mr. Meynell himself is never tired of trumpeting it. Thompson's Romanian], however, is entirely irrelevant to the question of his poetry'e value. He was a true poet because his experience entered into his poetry, and Romanism was a part of his experience ; but as a theological system it contributed nothing to his genius.

The traces of it in his work are ritualistic rather than dogmatic. He is a religious poet because he expresses in his poetry mystical ideas common to all creeds and all peoples;

and on the fly-leaf of The Hound of Heaven one might inscribe the text from the Koran which says that "there is

no refuge from God but unto him." He is a true poet because he "tends toward the universal," and it is that tendency in poetry which makes it in itself a form of religion, by placing us in communion with a universal and eternal

consciousness. He is a true poet, but he is not one of the greater, poets. Mr. Garvin's verdict, one of the few which

seem just and adequate to Mr. Meynell, ranks his poetry second only to Shakespeare's sonnets. It is perhaps interest- ing as Mr. Garvin's personal opinion, but one could only arrive at it by ignoring the whole of the intervening period.

Much of Thompson's work, even of his finest work, is derived from Crashaw and Shelley, to mention only the more obvious influences, but his genius could not be merely imitative. He is sometimes too deliberately archaic in style and thought, and a preciosity or exquisiteness in his language prevents the free passage of the idea. Both these faults

can be illustrated by his use of the word " accipitrine " in the closing lines of Dread of Height. Thompson's words are " accipitrine to pursue "; accipiter is properly applied to

the short-winged sparrowhawk and goshawk, both of which pursue their game ; but he uses the term in connexion with falcons, "hawks of the tower." The falcon does not pursue her game, she " stoops " upon it, striking it to the ground; and if ehe should miss she does not pursue it, but towers again.

When Thompson speaks of "falcon-craft" he means the craft of the "gentle astringer " ; and the point, if small, is sufficient to show the danger of metaphors which are not drawn directly from actual experience., In his use of rare words, or of words coined by himself, he was too prodigal; and it would have been of advantage to him as an artist if he had taken the advice of Joachim du Bellay. Words are the material of poetry, but the object of every art is "to extirpate its material," to present the idea completely freed from it and immediately. As we

have said before in these columns, a poem may be extremely complex in itself, like the organ of sight ; but the result of its orgsclo complexity must be a greater simplicity of function. Our admiration of Thompson as a poet, -whicb is deep and sincere, is based mainly upon his simpler and less ambitious work; just as our admiration of him as a prose-writer is based; not upon the ornate and over-wrought Shelley, but upon some admirable articles and reviews of Crashaw, Milton, and Pope which he contributed to the Press.