THOMSON, ,TAMES (1834-82). An English poet, born at Port Glasgow•, Scotland. In 1840 his father was disabled by a paralytic stroke and two years later his mother died. lie was edu cated at the Royal Caledonian Asylum (1S-t2 1S50) and then entered (1850) the Mili tary Asylum, Chelsea, to qualify as an army schoolmaster. The next year he was sent as a teacher to Ballincollig,„ near Cork, where he fell in love with a beautiful girl, who died in 1853. After serving as schoolmaster at various other places. he was discharged from the service in 1862 for a trivial offense against discipline. Through the influence of his friend Charles Brad laugh, lie obtained a clerkship in London: and under the pen-name of Bysshe Vanolis. or short ened to B. V. (Bysshe, the middle name of Shel ley and Vanolis, an anagram of Novalis), he began writing for the radical magazines. Ex cept for a short period in the United States and as correspondent for the New York World in Spain (1873), he passed the last sixteen years of his life in a narrow London lodging. He died
an inebriate in University College Hospital. Thomson was a thorough-going pessimist wholly out of joint with the ways of men. He first at tracted attention as a poet with his City of Dread ful Night (in the National Reformer, 1874, reprinted with other poems in 1850), a lurid poem of great imaginative power. Hardly less impressive is the volume entitled Vane's Story, Weddah and Om-el-Bovain, and Other• Poems (1881). The same year he collected some of his prose writings under the title Essays and Phan tasies. After his death appeared A Voice from the Nile, and Other Poems ( 18S4 ) ; Satires and Profanities (18S4) : and Poems, Essays, and Fragments (1892). Consult Poetical Works, ed. with memoir by Bertram Dobell (London, 1895) ; id., Biographical and Critical Studies (ib., 1396) ; and Life by H. S. Salt (ib., 1S89).