inquire into the manning of the Navy, they were unanimous in their opinion that pressing, in its old indiscriminate and iniquitous form, could never again be resorted to. The circumstances of modern warfare have closed the question even more decisively. A large ocean trader of the eighteenth century differed only in degree from a man-of-war: she was similarly armed, similarly rigged; her crew, called upon to work their guns nearly as often as to "work cargo," were interchangeable for the duties of the fighting-ship. But a modern line-of-battle ship is practically a steam-factory worked by skilled mechanics, and the modern seamangunner the product of a long and special training, impossible to replace by men drawn suddenly from the merchant service, however good their quality as sailors. : Not the least extraordinary part of the story of impressment was the results achieved by it. That men taken by force when within sight of the English cliffs or, when hardly landed, seized in the midst of their families; called upon to fight for their country for one-third or less of the pay they could earn otherwise; knowing that if sick or wounded in that country's service their pay would be stopped and they themselves obtain less care and pity than had their employers' dogs; made to herd with convicts, vagrants, and vagabonds-with food insufficient in quantity and often putrid in quality, the source of many a contractor's fortune; frequently flogged almost to death, and always subject to the most brutalising influences that these men should have retained the moral fibre, the self-respect, the nobility of manhood which made Great Britain, for a moment, the supreme empire of the world, seems at first sight to contradict many philosophic principles and humanitarian theories. It may be alleged that the Plantagenet kings, holding uncertain sway in a barbarous age, necessarily governed by the rude and imperfect means then obtainable; that, capable rulers as were the Tudor sovereigns, they but gave expression to the modes of thought and social conditions of the epoch in which they lived and worked. But what can be said for the, so-called, "statesmen" of the last century who, with such material under their hands, could-notwithstanding the protests of those higher-natured and the plans of others clearer-sighted than themselves still find no better method of obtaining such men than the pressgang! M. OPPENHEIM. 593 THE WORKS OF JAMES THOMSON. (“B. V.")1 HE conditions which underlie the appearance of poetic genius THE are proverbially mysterious and inscrutable. Seldom, however, has Fate indulged in a stranger and more whimsical freak than in assigning one and the same name to two writers of such widely diverse temperaments as the placid, contented, and mildly optimistic poet whose "Castle of Indolence" still remains the most perfect expression of a life of leisured quietude, and the unhappy pessimist who could write "Mater Tenebrarum" and the "City of Dreadful Night." One cannot but fear that this incongruous identity of name may in future years be a cause of trouble and confusion to a bewildered posterity. It certainly seems a trifle hard on the elder poet, the respectability of whose name has hitherto been beyond question in the most orthodox quarters, that his reputation should now be compromised, if not eclipsed, by the brilliant but erratic genius of his namesake, the youngest member of the poetic brotherhood. Comparisons are odious, but sometimes unavoidable. The "Castle of Indolence" is indeed a splendid structure, which none but a master-hand could have reared; but hereafter there may tower beside it--for are not the names of the two architects identical ?—a "City" of still more colossal and majestic proportions. At present, however, there is little danger of any such untoward confusion or comparison, for the simple reason that the genius of the younger James Thomson is still almost unknown to the mass of English readers. It is true that some first-rate critics have expressed strong interest and admiration for "B. V.'s "" poems; George Eliot, W. M. Rossetti, George Meredith, and George Saintsbury being among the earliest to recognise the remarkable merits of the "City The City of Dreadful Night, and other poems, 1880. Vane's Story, and other poems, 1881. Essays and Phantasies, 1881. A Voice from the Nile, and other poems. With a memoir, by Bertram Dobell, 1884. (Messrs. Reeves & Turner.) Satires and Profanities, 1884. (Progressive Publishing Company.) 2 Bysshe Vanolis, a nom de plume said to have been adopted in memory of Shelley and Novalis, of Dreadful Night"; yet, in spite of many favourable notices from competent judges, there has never been any general appreciation of Thomson's works. That he could ever become a popular poet was of course rendered impossible by the nature of his writings; but it is strange nevertheless that in this, the fourth year since his death, he should still be ignored or underrated in many literary circles where homage is often paid to men of far less distinguished genius. James Thomson was pre-eminently a subjective poet; his life is the key to a proper understanding of his writings; and those who read between the lines of his poems and essays will not fail to discover that most of them are more or less autobiographical. An interesting account of Thomson's life may be found in Mr. Dobell's Memoir, prefixed to "A Voice from the Nile." It is a sad record of a talented and chivalrous spirit struggling in vain against overwhelming misfortunes and afflictions, which were aggravated partly by a constitutional melancholia, probably inherited from his father; partly by the life-sorrow that dated from the sudden death of a beautiful girl to whom he was betrothed; and partly, it must be admitted, by the deplorable intemperance that darkened his later years. There is a striking similarity in the profound sadness of Thomson's career to some of the incidents in the life of Edgar Poë: the orphaned childhood; the drudgery of an uncongenial profession; the untimely death of one whose image thenceforth could never be banished from the mind or the writings; the poverty and privations of an unsuccessful literary life; the use of stimulants as a desperate escape from the tortures of memory; and, lastly, the sudden death, apart from all friends, in a strange hospital-all this is common to the story of both poets. But Thomson's melancholy was deeper and more real than that of Poë's: in lines such as the following, wherein he sums up the story of his life, there can be no suspicion of any poetic exaggeration for artistic purposes : For there my own good angel took my hand, Back to her own celestial sphere of day! And ever since she ceased to be my guide, I reel and stumble on life's solemn way. Ah, ever since her eyes withdrew their light, Every reader of Thomson's poem must have noticed and wondered at the two different tones that are heard there; it seems almost incredible that the glad and exultant strains of "A Happy Poet" and "Sunday up the River" can have been written by the author of the "City of Dreadful Night." Yet the discrepancy is perhaps more apparent than real; for the fact that Thomson was endowed with keen powers of enjoyment, and had tasted at times some of the sweets of life, only serves to enhance the central and final gloom. It may be said of him, as of Schopenhauer, that "to be on the whole a believer in the misery of life, and yet to be occasionally visited by a vivid sense of its gleaming gladness, is surely the worst of conceivable positions." This was precisely the position in which Thomson's lot was cast; and there can be no doubt that the general tenor of his writings is strongly and distinctly pessimistic, in spite of occasional intervals of hopefulness or enjoyment. It is not, however, as a pessimist, but as a poet that Thomson is destined to be known. I will, therefore, begin by noticing his chief poetical characteristics. Of the three volumes of poetry now before the public, two were published during Thomson's lifetime, and the third in 1884, two years after his death. But many of the poems had appeared at earlier periods in Tait's Edinburgh Magazine, the National Reformer, and other papers, while the author's habit of prefixing to each poem the date at which it was composed shows us that some of his writings were kept in hand many years before being published at all; indeed, there was one period of nearly seven years (1875-1881) during which, in despair of obtaining any recognition of his work, he altogether ceased to write poetry. This fulness of deliberation and maturity of workmanship form one of the most salient features in Thomson's style. He seldom indulges in unpremeditated lyric flights or irregularities of metre, and does not possess that supreme imaginative faculty which can create such poems as the odes of Coleridge or Shelley. His peculiarity consists in the rare combination of an exquisite harmony of tone, and an almost perfect sense of rhythmic melody, with a keen, strong, logical cast of mind. Contradictory as it may seem, his genius was at one and the same time both poetical and mathematical; he is the connecting link between Shelley on the one hand and Browning on the other; and it is curious to observe that certain of his poems-" Vane's Story," for example--have been described by some critics as an echo of Shelley, by others as an echo of Browning. In this respect his position is unique; he successfully combines two mental qualities which are usually found to be antagonistic. I do not know of any other English poet who has been able to express such stern logic of realistic thought in such wonderfully subtle melody of language. 'Sully's Pessimism, p. 81. That Thomson's poetry has also certain unfortunate mannerisms and blemishes of style will not be denied by his warmest admirers. Of the morbid tone that pervades most of his chief poems I shall have occasion to speak later on his most conspicuous artistic faults are an excessive proneness to allegorical description, which sometimes involves the meaning in considerable obscurity; and a great inequality in the standard of his writing, which occasionally lapses into mediocrity and commonplace. In some of his poems his habit of coining double words is indulged almost to affectation; thus in the first few stanzas of "Bertram to the Lady Geraldine," one meets with the following: "vision-strange," "full-credentialled," "worldfilled," "dove-quick," "calm-robed," "dance-ready," "ethereallightly," "whirl-wanton," "lightest-tender," "dim-steadfast," "drearbarren," and many other equally strange combinations might be readily added to the list. The complaint made by some critics that Thomson's muse is addicted to faulty rhymes seems hardly justifiable; at any rate, if he sins in treating column and solemn as rhymes, and in other similar instances, it may be pleaded that he sins in excellent company; though we could wish perhaps that he had not extended the same licence to war and more. It may be here remarked that Thomson's mind seems to have been impressionable and receptive almost to a fault, for in reading his works we are constantly arrested by a reminiscence of Shelley, or the Brownings, or Blake, or De Quincey, or some other favourite author, though there is certainly no trace of anything like deliberate imitation. Thomson's purely poetic powers, apart from his pessimistic teaching, may be studied in his lyric pieces and translations from Heine, or such narrative and artistic poems as "Weddah and OmEl Bonain" and "The Naked Goddess." The former of these is a tragic story of Oriental love, told in eight-lined stanzas of wonderful beauty and vigour. Some of the more pathetic passages in this poem recall Keats's "Isabella"; but the movement, as a rule, is more rapid; the end is kept steadily in view throughout, and there is little ornament or digression. It would be impossible to do justice to "Weddah and Om-El Bonain" by the quotation of any special stanzas ; for its great merit consists in the consummate skill with which the different parts are welded together and the thread of the story preserved. It is a remarkable poem, and sufficient in itself to win a lasting reputation for its author: some readers will perhaps like it all the better because it is free from all elements of a personal and subjective nature. Shorter, and less ambitious in its scope, yet scarcely less delightful, is "The Naked Goddess," a splendid allegory descriptive |