in the same grave as his friend Austin Holyoake, on June 8.
I borrow from Mr. Flaws' excellent essay on Thomson[1] the following description of his personal appearance and manner:—
"He looked like a veteran scarred in the fierce affrays of life's war, and worn by the strain of its forced marches. His close-knit form, short and sturdy, might have endured any amount of mere roughings, if its owner had thought it worth a care. It is rare to find so squarely massive a head, combining mathematical power with high imagination in so marked a degree. Hence the grim logic of fact that gives such weird force to all his poetry. You could see the shadow that 'tremendous fate' had cast over that naturally buoyant nature. It had eaten great furrows into his broad brow, and cut tear-tracks downwards from his wistful eyes, so plaintive and brimful of unspeakable tenderness as they opened wide when in serious talk. And as he discussed the affairs of the day, how the poet would merge in the keen-sighted trenchant critic, whose vocabulary was built up of the pure and racy English of all the centuries, always striking yet never pedantic!"
One reflection will probably have suggested itself to the reader of the foregoing sketch. Was not—he may perhaps ask—the fact that Thomson allowed his whole existence to be blighted by the death of a young girl, evidence of an essentially weak or defective character? To be endowed—like Burns for instance—with passions and affections of extraordinary force, is undoubtedly a misfortune, and
- ↑ Published in the Secular Review.
