THOMPSON, FRANCIS (1859-1907), English poet, born at Preston on Dec. 18, 1859, was the son of Charles Thompson, a doctor, and the nephew of Edward Healy Thompson, the friend of Manning and professor of English literature at Dublin. His father becoming a convert to Roman Catholicism, Francis was educated in the Catholic faith at Ushaw college, and in 1866 he proceeded to Owen's college, Manchester, to study medicine.
He took little interest in the work, however, and having thrice failed in his examinations, he went to London in Nov. 1885, to seek his fortune. There he fell into great destitution; ill health compelled him to take to opium, and after five years of misery, he obtained some light employment in the shop of a London bootmaker, where he found sufficient leisure to write his first poems. These he despatched to Wilfrid Meynell, then editor of Merrie England, who, struck with their great merit, arranged for immediate publication. At the same time the Meynells sought out the young author, whom they found on the verge of starva tion, and after persuading him to enter a hospital, they aided him throughout his long convalescence, and procured the pub lication of his first volume of poems in f893. The volume quickly attracted the attention of sympathetic critics, notably Coventry Patmore, who praised it in the Fortnightly Review (Jan. Much of Francis Thompson's verse is reminiscent of Crashaw's, but the beauty and splendid inventiveness of his diction were immediately recognized as giving him a unique place among his contemporaries. Persistent ill health limited his output, but Sister Songs (1895) and New Poems (1897) confirmed the opin ion formed of his genius. The former, dedicated to the children of Mrs. Meynell, was devoted mainly to descriptions of the days
when he was an outcast ; the latter, which contains some of his finest verse, indicates the influence of the older mystical poets. From 2893-97, Thompson lived, with short intervals, near the Franciscan monastery in Pantasaph, North Wales, and later he spent much time at the Capuchin monastery, Tanlasapt. He died in London on Nov. 13, 1907, and was buried at Kensal Green. He gave evidence of great power as a prose writer in his contribu tions to the Academy and the Athenaeum, and in his treatise Health and Holiness (1905), but it is mainly as a poet that he is remembered.
Among his work there is much that may justly be termed eccentric, especially the use of poetically compounded neologisms; but nothing can be more simply beautiful than "The Daisy," nothing more intimate or reverent than his poems about children, or more magnificent than "The Hound of Heaven." Apart from the works above mentioned Thompson wrote : Life of Ignatius Loyola (1909) ; Life of John Baptist de la Galle (19n) and Essay on Shelley (1909).
See also the Athenaeum, obit. by Wilfrid Meynell, since reprinted in Thompson's Selected Poems (1908) ; Wilfrid Blunt in the Academy, Nov. 23, 1907 ; the Dublin Review, cxlii., art. by Alice Meynell ; E. V. Lucas, One Day and Another ("A Rhapsodist at Lords") (1909) ; Floris Delattre in Revue Germanique, July-Aug. 2909 ; K. Rooker, Francis Thompson (1912) ; G. A. Beacock, F. Thompson (1912) ; J. Thompson (1923) pp. 159; and the authoritative biography, E. Meynell, The Life of Francis Thompson (1916), pp. 36o.