THOMSON, JAMES (1834-1882), British poet, best known by his signature "BAT.", was born at Port-Glasgow, in Renfrew shire, on Nov. 23, 1834, the eldest child of a mate in the merchant shipping service. His mother was a deeply religious woman of the Irvingite sect. On her death, James, then in his seventh year, was procured admission into the Caledonian Orphan Asylum. In 185o he entered the model school of the Military Asylum, Chel sea. As assistant army schoolmaster at Ballincollig, near Cork, he encountered the one brief happiness of his life: he fell pas sionately in love with, and was in turn as ardently loved by, the daughter of the armourer-sergeant of a regiment in the garrison, a girl of very exceptional beauty and cultivated mind. Two years later he suddenly received news of her fatal illness and death. The blow prostrated him in mind and body. Henceforth his life was one of gloom, misery and poverty, rarely alleviated.
While in Ireland he had made the acquaintance of Charles Bradlaugh, then a soldier stationed at Ballincollig. In 186o was established the paper with which Bradlaugh was so long identified, the National Reformer, in which, among other productions by James Thomson, there appeared (1861) the powerful and sonorous verses "To our Ladies of Death," and (1874) his chief work, the sombre and imaginative City of Dreadful Night. In October 1862 Thomson was dismissed the army, in company with other teachers, for some slight breach of discipline. Through Bradlaugh, with whom he lived for some years, he gained em ployment as a solicitor's clerk. From 1866 to the end of his life, except for two short absences from England, Thomson lived in a single room, first in Pimlico and then in Bloomsbury. He was intemperate in his habits, and made few friends. In 1869 his long poem, "Sunday up the River," appeared in Fraser's Magazine. In 1872 Thomson went to the western states of America, as the agent of the shareholders in what he ascertained to be a fraudu lent silver mine; and in 1873 he received a commission from the New York World to go to Spain as its special correspondent.
On his return to England he continued to write in the Secularist and the National Reformer, under the initials "B.y."' In 1875 he severed his connection 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 Cope's Tobacco Plant. Chiefly through the exertions of his friend and admirer, Bertram Dobell, Thomson's best-known book, The City of Dreadful Night, and other Poems, was published in April 188o, and at once attracted attention; it was succeeded in the autumn by Vane's Story, and other Poems, and in the following year by Essays and Phantasies. All his best work was produced between 1855 and 1875 ("The Doom of a City," 1857; "To our Ladies of Death," 1861 ; Weddah and "The Naked Goddess," 1866-1867; The City of Dreadful Night, He died at University College Hospital, in Gower Street, London, on June 3, 1882, and was buried at Highgate cemetery, in the same grave, in unconsecrated ground, as his friend Austin Holyoake.
To the productions of James Thomson already mentioned may be added the posthumous volume entitled A Voice from the Nile, and other Poems (1884), to which was prefixed a memoir by Bertram Dobell. If James Thomson has distinct affinity to any writer it is to De Quincey. The merits of Thomson's poetry are its imaginative power, its sombre intensity, its sonorous music; to these characteristics may be added, in his lighter pieces, a Heine-like admixture of strange gaiety, pathos and caustic irony. The same may be said of his best prose. His faults are a monotony of epithet, the not infrequent use of mere rhetoric and verbiage.