---
title: "James Thomson (1834–1882)"
date: "2026-08-27T17:37:23+01:00"
modified: "2026-08-27T18:27:15+01:00"
url: "https://heritage.humanists.uk/james-thomson/"
post_id: 14322
categories: ["Arts", "Atheism", "Philosophy", "Secularism"]
tags: ["Freethought", "Literature", "Poetry", "Secularism"]
---

# James Thomson (1834–1882)

> Thomson resolved to speak for all who were unhappy. He would be the poet of the sad, the laureate of despair, the psalmist of the damned. Wherever there was a man or woman wearing out a heart in secret wretchedness, Thomson would be there to sing.
> 
> F. J. Gould







James Thomson, who published as B. V., was a Scottish writer and freethinker, best known for his long poem *The City of Dreadful Night*. A frequent contributor to the secularist press, he was much admired by his fellow freethinkers, including [Henry S. Salt](https://heritage.humanists.uk/henry-s-salt/), who published his first biography.







The memoir below, written by humanist [Frederick James Gould](https://heritage.humanists.uk/frederick-james-gould/), was originally published as a supplement to the *Literary Guide* in October 1902.







---







#### THE GENIUS OF “B.V.”  
A SKETCH OF THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF JAMES THOMSON.







James Thomson gave way to drink. Not habitually; at ordinary times he was perfectly temperate, both in eating and drinking. But still, every now and then, in a fit of melancholy, he gave way. Once, towards the end of his life, he staggered home to his lodgings in London, his face changed and wasted by alcohol. The door was opened by the children of the household—children with whom, in good nature, he had often played; children who loved him. And they suddenly closed the door against him, thinking he would harm them, and they told their father that “Mr. Thomson’s wicked brother was at the door.” They did not recognise their playmate.







> I can easily imagine a narrow-minded man sneering at Thomson and saying: “Ah, this is what comes of your Freethought. Thomson shook off his God, and then became a moral wreck.”







I can easily imagine a narrow-minded man sneering at Thomson and saying: “Ah, this is what comes of your Freethought. Thomson shook off his God, and then became a moral wreck.” Well, I should view the case quite the other way. I should say here was a man who was born with the taint of melancholy in his very nature. A shadow lay on him all his days. Some constitutional weakness subjected him to a morbid, bitter feeling which he could seldom fling off. He often cursed his own existence. The sun seemed as sackcloth, and the moon blood-red, and the human race made no progress (so he often thought in his despair), and mankind was going to its doom. He was a pessimist. He regarded life as an evil thing. Only now and then did a ray of happiness fall on his averted brow. Yes; but, if he cursed life, he never cursed truth. He never called on us to act the bully, or the liar, or the sneak, because life was sad and death welcome. In one of his poems, “The Polish Insurgent,” he represents a patriot Pole, ready to die for Poland, even though his cause was sure to be beaten. A friend deprecates his folly in going to certain defeat. The insurgent says :—







> ’Tis so easy to go and die  
> Where our country, our mother, the martyr,  
> Moaning in bonds, doth lie,  
> Bleeding with stabs in her breast,   
> Her throat with a foul clutch prest,  
> Under the thrice-accursed Tartar.







The friend deprecates :—







> But Smith, your man of sense,  
> Ruddy, and broad, and round— like so !  
> Kindly— but dense, but dense,  
> Said to me: ‘ Do not go;  
> It is hopeless; right is wrong;   
> The tyrant is too strong.’







And the Pole retorts fiercely :—







> Must a man have *hope* to fight?  
> Can a man not fight in despair?  
> Must the soul cower down for the body’s weakness,  
> And slaver the devil’s hoof with meekness,  
> Nor care nor dare to share   
> Certain defeat with the right?







Thomson was like the Polish insurgent. He expected to be beaten in the battle of life. But he would never admit that justice was injustice, or that the crooked was straight. A sorrowful genius, blighted by a ruinous appetite, limping on stony tracks in the wilderness, menaced by glooms, shadows, and tragic phantoms, Thomson valiantly kept his face towards the Holy Land of the Just and True, and never published an insincere word. A scurvy soul must he be who miscalls the memory of Thomson.







> A sorrowful genius, blighted by a ruinous appetite, limping on stony tracks in the wilderness, menaced by glooms, shadows, and tragic phantoms, Thomson valiantly kept his face towards the Holy Land of the Just and True, and never published an insincere word. A scurvy soul must he be who miscalls the memory of Thomson.







I now turn to some particulars of his life.\* James Thomson was born at Port Glasgow in 1834. His father was a sturdy sailor, who was fond of music and reciting. His mother was good and affectionate, but she had a touch of religious mania. She was a disciple of Edward Irving. This was the enthusiast who called himself an apostle. His congregation had the “gift of tongues”; they groaned and shrieked, and called the tumult a revelation. Perhaps Thomson’s melancholy came from his Irvingite mother. He was not a miserable boy. When the father was stricken with paralysis, and the family moved to London, James was admitted to the Royal Caledonian School. He was described as clever, high-spirited, and a good hand at the clarionet. When he passed on to the Royal Military Asylum at Chelsea he still made progress, especially in mathematics. Every hour he could snatch he gave to reading. One year he was all for Byron. The next year he loved the poetry of Percy Bysshe Shelley, and he never left that love till he died. It was now settled that he should be an army schoolmaster, and in 1851 he was sent to a barracks near Cork as a kind of pupil-teacher. While he was at Ballincolig the Scotch Dragoons were quartered there, and a member of the regiment was







PRIVATE CHARLES BRADLAUGH.







> Thomson was a man of thought; Bradlaugh was a man of both thought and action. They made friends, strolled together, and talked of religion and politics. The friendship lasted twenty-three years.







Thomson was a man of thought; [Bradlaugh](https://heritage.humanists.uk/charles-bradlaugh/) was a man of both thought and action. They made friends, strolled together, and talked of religion and politics. The friendship lasted twenty-three years. Thomson had another friend at the barracks—a girl, who was only fourteen, but who had eyes, and a grace, and a dreaminess, that reminded people of Eva in Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Not long after he left Ireland he heard she was dead, and he did not taste food for three days. Years afterwards, when he wrote “ Vane’s Story,” he made a picture of the dance which he remembered so well at Ballincolig:—







> When we together danced, we two!  
> I live it all again !……. Do you  
> Remember how I broke down quite  
> In the mere polka?……. Dressed in white,  
> A loose pink sash around your waist,  
> Low shoes across the instep laced,   
> Your moon-white shoulders glancing through,  
> Your yellow ringlets dancing too;   
> You were an angel then; as clean  
> From earthly dust speck, as serene  
> And lovely, and beyond my love,  
> As now in your far world above.







Some have thought that the death of this bright girl weighed on him all his days, and caused the moral dusk that made his life like death. But I agree with Mr. Foote in the opinion that Thomson’s gloom was so native and so deep that any other grief would have launched him into his perpetual plaint against the bitterness of human destiny. In 1854 he was regularly enlisted in the army as schoolmaster, and he stayed with the colours eight years. One of these eight years was spent in the island of Jersey, where he made acquaintance with George Julian Harney, editor of a local newspaper. I remember Mr. Harney, having paid him a visit in 1895—a fine old man, with long, silver hair. He called himself the Last of the Chartists, and, when a young man, had been imprisoned several times for selling papers that did not bear the Government stamp. Wherever Thomson went he found his way to the company of the brave.







> Freethinkers are obliged to fight the world, and perhaps they are a little too fond of fighting each other.







He left the army in 1862, and, being in want of a home, found the home in the house of Charles Bradlaugh. Mrs. Bonner has told her recollections of the games she and her sister Alice had with the poet. Here is a smiling passage:—







> He lived in our house for some years, and was beloved by everyone in it. He came when I was about five or six years old, and my earliest recollection of him is of sitting on his knee and asking him to make ‘an ugly face.’ First he refused; and when, after renewed and vehement entreaties, he complied, I was so terrified that I incontinently fled upstairs.







Often he and Bradlaugh walked out together, as they had done at Ballincolig. Often they sat smoking and debating. Years afterwards he and Bradlaugh quarrelled and parted. Each, of course, thought the other wrong. Freethinkers are obliged to fight the world, and perhaps they are a little too fond of fighting each other. Anyhow, one thing is manifest in Mr. Bradlaugh’s relations with the army schoolmaster. It was he who first made a note of Thomson’s genius as a poet and prose writer. He gave Thomson plenty of work to do—with pay—on the *National Reformer*. Thomson used to sign himself—







“B. V.”







The “B.” stood for Bysshe, one of Shelley’s names, and the “V.” for Vanolis, which was the name, turned about, of the German philosopher Novalis. He once used the full signature, “Bysshe Vanolis,” in print. It was a bit clumsy, so he dropped down to the letters by which he is now always known, “B. V.” This addition to his name usefully distinguishes him from an eighteenth-century poet, the James Thomson who wrote the elegant description of the Seasons.







> Thomson resolved to speak for all who were unhappy. He would be the poet of the sad, the laureate of despair, the psalmist of the damned. Wherever there was a man or woman wearing out a heart in secret wretchedness, Thomson would be there to sing.







In the *National Reformer* of 1874 B. V. published his masterpiece, “The City of Dreadful Night”; and it is through this sombre work that we may best arrive at his mind and heart. First of all, what is the meaning of it? Where is the City?







The City is here. We are in it every day. Every day men suffer, women suffer, children suffer. There are wrongs done every day; and, every day, people have sorrows which they hide. We see a good deal of the suffering. We hear a good deal of the sighing. We cannot know it all; we cannot know it all in the exact newspaper sense. But we know it is here. Now and then a popular journalist like Blatchford may write such a book as *Dismal England*; but we know there are many unhappy experiences that can never be recorded in any book whatsoever. Thomson resolved to speak for all who were unhappy. He would be the poet of the sad, the laureate of despair, the psalmist of the damned. Wherever there was a man or woman wearing out a heart in secret wretchedness, Thomson would be there to sing. It might be night there—dreadful night—but there should be a song; and B. V. would sing it. He did not, like Jesus, promise rest and heaven. If he had believed misery to be eternal, he could not have given it a more solemn hymn. He sang as if he stood in a universe of gloom, into which but one feeble ray of twilight struggled—sufficient only to reveal the face of his companion, Death. All he could say to desperate souls was: “I know you are miserable. I know what misery is. We cannot escape it. But I will express the misery for myself and you. That will be some sort of consolation. We shall feel the right thing has been done when we have cursed the misery”:—







> Because a cold rage seizes one at whiles  
> To show the bitter, old, and wrinkled truth  
> Stripped naked of all vesture that beguiles,  
> False dreams, false hopes, false marks and modes of youth;  
> Because it gives some sense of power and passion,  
> In helpless impotence to try to fashion  
> Our woe in living words, howe’er uncouth.  
> Yes, here and there some weary wanderer  
> In that same City of tremendous night   
> Will understand the speech, and feel a stir  
> Of fellowship in all disastrous fight;  
> ‘I suffer mute and lonely, yet another   
> Uplifts his voice to let me know a brother  
> Travels the same wild paths, though out of sight.’







The City is always enshrouded. Its streets, bridges, and islands, the marshes round it, and the mountains beyond, are for ever in the dark. The street-lamps burn, yet the air is black. People pass in the thoroughfares and seldom speak. A child is sometimes seen, but it is childhood’s shape without childhood’s joys. The poet peers into dark houses. In one house love has died; in another, faith has died; in another, hope. At last he comes to the Cathedral. People are going in slowly, silently, heavily. A warder at the porch asks each one where he comes from. They all answer they have been dreaming in the daylight, and now they wake up in the night. The daylight was an illusion; the night is real. One has come from the illustrious House of Parliament:—







> From pleading in a senate of rich lords  
> For some scant justice to our countless hordes,  
> Who toil half starved with scarce a human right;   
> I wake from day-dreams to this real night.







Another from the comic stage:—







> From making hundreds laugh and roar with glee  
> By my transcendent feats of mimicry,  
> And humour wanton as an elfish sprite;  
> I wake from day-dreams to this real night.







Another from the throne:—







> From ruling on a splendid kingly throne  
> A nation which beneath my rule has grown,  
> Year after year in wealth and arts and might;  
> I wake from day-dreams to this real night.







Another from the slum:—







> From drinking fiery poison in a den  
> Crowded with tawdry gIrls and squalid men,  
> Who hoarsely laugh and curse and brawl and fight;   
> I wake from day-dreams to this real night.







To this strange congregation of disease, cynicism, and chaos a preacher preaches. Darkness speaks to darkness, and the abyss communes with the abyss. The preacher’s eyes burn (yet burn without illumination) as he opens his mouth and moans to his disciples:—







> O melancholy brothers, dark, dark, dark!  
> O battling in black floods Without an ark!  
> O spectral wanderers of unholy night!  
> My soul hath bled for you these sunless years,  
> With bitter blood-drops running down like tears;  
> Oh, dark, dark, dark, withdrawn from joy and light!







The sermon keeps rigidly to the text of pain, and insists on the hopelessness of finding any help from star, or sky, or God. Presently, one of the wretched listeners rises up, and, in a harsh, abrupt voice, echoes the teaching of the pulpit. Life is a cheat, and death an infinite blackness. On this shrill outburst follows silence in the cathedral. Then the preacher closes the service with one of the most terrible verses in the English or any other language:—







> My Brother, my poor Brothers, it is thus;  
> This life itself holds nothing good for us,  
> But it ends soon and nevermore can be;   
> And we knew nothing of it ere our birth,  
> And shall know nothing when consigned to earth.  
> I ponder these thoughts, *and they comfort me*.







*Comfort!* That is the word the Evangelists usually introduce with smug graciousness—”Comfort,” “Heaven,” “Rest in the Lord.” Thomson’s preacher says we shall die and know nothing. He dreams of doom and is comforted! If the Christian pulpit has any nerves, the satire should set them on the quiver.







Some people may ask: “Is it right of any man, is it right of any poet, to make us uncomfortable with these gloomy ideas? Would it not be better to try and make us cheerful? Does it do any good to thrust upon us







THESE GHOSTS







and terrors?” Well, I do not stand by Thomson through thick and thin. He often seems to write as if the human race were going to the scaffold like a pinioned murderer, and poetry was but the funeral bell. But there was something in the world that justified B. V. He saw misery; but he saw something worse. He saw men who were rich, easy, idle; who lived in full sight of the woe of their neighbours, and never cared, never wept, never trembled, never reflected. Thomson would say: “Very well; if you will have your big dinners and your operas, and shootings, and song and wine, I will have you know that there is another side to life; that there is damnation as well as banquets, and a curse as well as doxologies.” Should we not think it very unfeeling if a man were to laugh and jest in a room where a patient lay ill, perhaps hovering between life and death? In something of that spirit of indignation Thomson would come forward and say: “Hush! your fellow-man is heartsick and unhappy. Be serious, until you can see a chance of his recovery.” Nevertheless, he sometimes gets into a mood with which I have no sympathy whatever. That is when he talks of being bored with the world. I can understand a man being merry. I can understand a man being deeply pained. But no sane man ought to be bored. Here is a page from “Vane’s Story”:—







> For I am infinitely tired  
> With this old sphere we once admired,  
> With this old earth we loved too well;  
> Disgusted more than words can tell,  
> And would not mind a change of Hell.  
> The same old solid hills and leas,  
> The same old stupid patient trees,  
> The same old ocean blue and green,  
> The same sky cloudy or serene;  
> The old two-dozen hours to run  
> Between the settings of the sun,  
> The old three hundred and sixty-five  
> Dull days to every year alive;   
> Old stingy measure, weight and rule,   
> No margin left to play the fool;   
> The same old way of getting born  
> Into it naked and forlorn:  
> The same old way of creeping out   
> Through death’s low door for lean and stout;   
> Same men with the old hungry needs,   
> Puffed up with the old windy creeds;   
> Old toil, old care, old worthless treasures,   
> Old gnawing sorrows, swindling pleasures;   
> The cards are shuffled to and fro,   
> The hands may vary somewhat so,   
> The dirty pack’s the same we know   
> Played with long thousand years ago;   
> Played with and lost with still by Man,   
> Fate marked them ere the game began;  
> I think the only thing that’s strange  
> Is our illusion as to change.







I do not like such yawns. Let us have one thing or the other. Let us be glad at the sunlight; let us be stung by the wrongs and sicknesses that men suffer; let us have some hearty feeling one way or the other; but don’t let us be listless and bored.







> Thomson could see the brightness of the world well enough at times. He lived oftenest in the City of Dreadful Night, but now and then he got out into the country and saw the wild forget-me-nots, and the brooks, and peace.







Thomson could see the brightness of the world well enough at times. He lived oftenest in the City of Dreadful Night, but now and then he got out into the country and saw the wild forget-me-nots, and the brooks, and peace. I will quote some lines about a fountain. They could hardly be chastened into tenderer beauty. He discovers to us, in a few periods, a fountain in the light of the sun and of the moon, the marble basin encircling it, and the dainty ferns, and the white limbs of its goddess, and the rivulet into which it throws itself before slipping coolly down the hill:—







> Its joyous, waving, silvery shaft  
> To all the beams of morning laughed,   
> Its steadfast murmurous crystal column   
> Was loved by all the moonbeams solemn;   
> From morn to eve it fell again,   
> A singing many-jewelled rain,   
> From eve to morn it charmed the hours   
> With whispering dew and diamond showers,   
> Crowned many a day with sunbows bright,   
> With moonbows halo’d many a night;   
> And so kept full its marble urn,   
> All fringed with fronds of greenest fern,  
> O’er which, with timeless love intent,   
> A pure white marble goddess leant;   
> And overflowing aye the urn   
> In rillets that became a burn,   
> It danced adown the verdant slope   
> As bright as youth, as gay as hope,   
> And ‘wandered at its own sweet will’;   
> And here it was a lakelet still,   
> And there it was a flashing stream,   
> And all about it was a dream   
> Of beauty, such a Paradise   
> As rarely blooms beneath our skies;   
> The loveliest flowers, the grandest trees,   
> The broadest glades, the fairest leas,   
> And double music tranced the hours,   
> The countless perfumes of the flowers,   
> The countless songs of swift delight   
> That birds were singing day and night.







As we read these lines we are inclined to think of Thomson himself as well as of his fountain. We murmur to ourselves: “Poor soul! we are glad for his sake that he could escape from desperate and morbid thoughts, and find a joy in the dancing of the waters and the blushing of the flowers.”







Thomson was never married. So far as one can tell from his published life, he never courted, never spent a solitary year in the passionate pursuit of any woman. He was no woman-hater. Towards women he was always respectful and courteous, but almost as if they were pictures which he loved to see, yet which had no personal relation with his own heart. In his poetry we find no true love-songs such as come plenteously from the lips of Robert Burns. One of Thomson’s ablest poems is his description of a row up the Thames in Sunday on the River. We see the smooth water, the willow-trees, the parks and woods, the summer sky; and there is a lady in the boat:—







> Those azure, azure eyes  
> Gaze on me with their love;   
> And I am lost in dream,  
> And cannot speak or move.
> 
> Those azure, azure eyes  
> Stay with me when we part;   
> A sea of azure thoughts  
> Overfloods my heart.







Thomson confesses that even these lines are imitated from Heine. When he goes on cheerily to number up the satisfying things you may give a man—horse, boat, wealth, health, pipe, book—and then—







> Give a man a girl he can love,  
> As I, O my Love, love thee;   
> And his heart is great with the pulse of Fate,  
> At home, on land, on sea,—







we suppose the ensuing lines will certainly bring us nearer to the bride-cake. But no! Thomson flies off at a mystical tangent as William Blake might have done, and the blue-eyed girl has for ever vanished:—







> My love is the flaming Sword  
> To fight through the world;   
> Thy love is the Shield to ward,   
> And the Armour of the Lord  
> And the Banner of Heaven unfurled.







And it is a curious circumstance that one of the most beautiful poems Thomson composed about a woman was called the Sleeper. A young lady has fallen asleep beside the fire: her dress is ruby, trimmed with white lace. Gradually the left hand, which had been shading her face from the heat, is let fall:—







> The hand on chin and throat downslips,  
> Then softly, softly on her breast;   
> A dream comes fluttering o’er the lips,  
> And stirs the eyelids in their rest,   
> And makes their undershadows quiver,   
> And like a ripple on a river  
> Glides through her breathing manifest.







He watches: he looks wistfully into the future for her; he ends with a blessing:—







> Sweet sleep; no hope, no fear, no strife,  
> The solemn sanctity of death,   
> With all the loveliest bloom of life ;  
> Eternal peace in mortal breath:   
> Pure sleep from which she will awaken   
> Refreshed as one who hath partaken  
> New strength, new hope, new love, new faith.







That poem seems to me to indicate Thomson’s attitude towards women—a kind of admiration that kept aloof, as if he had concluded it would not be well for him to enter on other relations; as if such a man as he would have wrecked a wife’s peace… Though, after all, we know not; perhaps the companionship of a good woman might have saved him from the City of Dreadful Night.







As to God, Thomson never expected salvation from that quarter. He was a declared Freethinker from the period of his young manhood. Sometimes suffering may drive a man to God. He says: “In God I shall find comfort for my troubles.” But, in the case of proud spirits (and let the clergy say what they like, it is right to have a proud spirit), suffering drives a man away from God. We see that in the case of Job, who could not understand the reason why he should bear so much misery; and he openly and flatly defied God. Thomson, too, was a proud spirit. He got rid of the Church creed as a high-spirited boy is glad to slip off a charity uniform. When he threw off the uniform he trod on it, stamped on it. Not that he had any animus against Jesus. Thomson said once:—







“JESUS, AS A MAN,







commands my heart’s best homage. His words, as reported by the Evangelists, are ever-flowing fountains of spiritual refreshments.” But he hated the dogmas which have been cherished as religion by priests and the people of small brains. If any one would like to know how much a man of education and poetic taste can detest Christianity as it too often presents itself, let him read Thomson’s *Satires and Profanities*. No expression is too scornful for him. He turns God into a gross old man, drinking bottle after bottle on Christmas Day. He laughs at the doctrine of the Devil:—







> The Devil is, in fact, as essential to the Christian schemes as a leader of the Opposition to that great political blessing, government by party.







And he goes on banteringly:—







> Just as Mr. Disraeli lamented the withdrawal of Mr. Gladstone, complaining of the embarrassment caused to the Government by having no responsible leader opposed to it, so we can imagine dear God lamenting the absence of a Devil, and declaring that the Christian scheme could not work well without one.







Perhaps the most biting of B. V.’s essays on Christianity and the Bible is that entitled *The Story of a Famous Old Jewish Firm*. “Biting” is the appropriate word. It bites without pity, without once letting go until the last line is written. The Old Jewish Firm is the God Jehovah, who set up business at the Creation, and dealt at first only with the Jews. But afterwards he took two partners, the Son and the Holy Ghost, and extended the trade to all parts of the Gentile world:—







> The head establishment was removed from Jerusalem to Rome, and branch establishments were opened in nearly all the towns and villages of Europe, besides many in Asia and Africa, and afterwards in America and Australia. It is worth noting that in Asia and Africa (although the firm arose in the former) the business has never been carried on very successfully; Messrs. Brahma, Vishnu, Seeva, & Co., the great houses of Buddha and Mumbo Jumbo, various Parsee firms, and other opposition houses, having among them almost monopolised the trade. The novel, distinctive, and most useful article which the Firm engaged to supply was a bread called, *par excellence*, the Bread of Life. The Prospectus…







I break off abruptly for fear of abrading too many thin skins! But he who thinks Thomson’s irony too harsh must remember the bottomless pit of orthodox stupidity which caused him to be angry. Not stupidity alone. There have been, in the teaching of the Churches, some elements so cruel that they deserve all the mordant acid that Thomson pours over them. Take, for instance, the belief of the Churches that sinners will be “lost.” It is an inhuman belief. Not a single sinner under the stars ought to be lost. Everyone should be snatched from sin and restored to home. Thomson says he would rather stay with the sinners than enjoy comfort while they are cast out. Here is his indignation:—







> With men, however vile, and not   
> With seraphim, I cast my lot:   
> With those poor ruffian thieves, too strong   
> To starve amid our social wrong;…  
> Shall these, so hardly dealt with here,  
> Be worse off in a future sphere?   
> And I, a well-fed lounger, seek   
> To ‘cut’ them dead, to cringe and sneak   
> Into that bland beau monde, the sky,   
> Whose upper circles are so high?…  
> Then I give God my scorn and hate,   
> And, turning back from Heaven’s gate   
> (Suppose me got there!), bow, *Adieu!*  
> *Almighty Devil, damn me too!*







> He took care to cultivate other faculties than the faculty for smashing. “A Freethinker,” he said, “who continues a mere negationist has gained nothing by his conversion from Christianity…”







Let us balance the effect of the passages just quoted. They represent a mood which B. V. deliberately expressed, and would never have dreamed of apologising for. But he took care to cultivate other faculties than the faculty for smashing. “A Freethinker,” he said, “who continues a mere negationist has gained nothing by his conversion from Christianity, and is worse than no gain to the cause of Secularism. He cannot fulfil his duty to himself, his party, and his cause without assiduous study, meditation, and work. The only effectual substitute for faith is thought; for theological dogma, well-reasoned principle; for the religion of God, the







RELIGION OF HUMANITY.”







To these words I most heartily subscribe. They would fit many a sham Secularist who will never have the grace to try the cap on.







Thomson’s recommendation to “assiduous study” is one that he followed loyally himself. His critical essays are models of deep reflection and acuteness of judgment as well as terse and graceful language. A special quality in Thomson’s literary judgment was fearlessness. If Rabelais could jest outrageously, Thomson was still prepared to maintain that the author of Gargantua was a supreme and Titanic genius. Few English people ever heard of William Blake; nevertheless, Thomson found in the mystical poet and artist a marvellous sincerity, wisdom, and beauty. Tennyson was acclaimed as profound; and Thomson coolly told the adoring public:—







> Scarcely any other artist in verse of the same rank has ever lived on such scanty revenues of thought (both pure and applied, or mixed) as Tennyson. While it cannot be pretended that he is a great sculptor, he is certainly an exquisite carver of luxuries in ivory; but we must be content to admire the caskets, for there are no jewels inside. His meditation at the best is that of a good leading-article; he is a pensioner on the thought of his age… When wax-flowers are oracular oaks, Dodona may be discovered in the Isle of Wight \[Tennyson’s residence\], but hardly till then.







I must close the record. In 1872 Thomson received a commission from a mining company to visit Colorado and inspect the directors’ property. The business took him among the Rocky Mountains, among gigantic valleys, pine-woods, and heights wrapped in snow; and he had plenty of open-air life and horse-riding. This was one of the cheerfulest periods of his life, though he made no money out of the excursion. Not long afterwards he obtained the post of correspondent in Spain for the *New York World*, at the time of the Carlist War. But he showed not much more energy in this kind of journalism than the Carlists in their military operations; and he was recalled. Thomson was drifting again to the Dreadful City. He parted from Mr. Bradlaugh; joined hands with [Mr. Foote](https://heritage.humanists.uk/george-william-foote/) for a while; and then another parting occurred. For seven years he wrote no poetry. The fountain had left off flinging its white water to the sky. It was at this time that the children shut the door when they saw his face. A gleam of peace followed. In 1880 his great poem was separately published, and judicious critics acknowledged its merits. He had happy moments when he visited his friends in Leicester, admired the fair landscapes of Charnwood Forest, or sat in a boat on the Soar reading a favourite volume. At such a bright stage of his career he might have died more fitly than at any other moment. But he slid back to the City of Night. The old melancholy fell upon him; and he became an outcast, and went up and down the streets of London homeless; and one day he entered the house of a friend, and lay on a bed, and broke a blood-vessel; and he was carried to a hospital near by, and there, in a day or two, he died. And he had once sung of the dead :—







> Ah, within our Mother’s breast,  
> From toil and tumult, sin and sorrow free,   
> Sphered beyond hope and dread, divinely calm,   
> They lie, all gathered into perfect rest;   
> And o’er the trance of their Eternity   
> The cypress waves more holy than the palm.







> Perhaps the noblest name that Thomson was ever called by was given him on the day of his funeral. Mr. Theodore Wright said Thomson was genuine. Nothing could be better than that.







Perhaps the noblest name that Thomson was ever called by was given him on the day of his funeral. Mr. Theodore Wright said Thomson was genuine. Nothing could be better than that. He had a terrible weakness; he had an awful strength also; but by night and by day he was genuine. His genius never cheated. He meant all the songs he sang. Whether he spoke of gods or men, his words were honest pictures of his thought.







**F. J . Gould.**







---







 See also 
----------

- [    F. J. Gould  ](https://heritage.humanists.uk/frederick-james-gould/)
- [    Charles Bradlaugh  ](https://heritage.humanists.uk/charles-bradlaugh/)
- [    G. W. Foote  ](https://heritage.humanists.uk/george-william-foote/)
- [    Leicester Secular Hall  ](https://heritage.humanists.uk/leicester-secular-hall/)