Believing as I do that James Thomson is, since Shelley, the most
brilliant genius who has wielded a pen in the service of Freethought, I
take a natural pride and pleasure in rescuing the following articles
from burial in the great mausoleum of the periodical press. There will
doubtless be a diversity of opinion as to their value. One critic, for
instance, has called “The Story of a Famous Old Jewish Firm” a witless
squib; but, on the other hand, the late Professor Clifford considered it
a piece of exquisite mordant satire worthy of Swift. Such differences
are inevitable from the very nature of the subject. Satire, more than
any other form of composition, rouses antipathy where it does not
command applause; and the greater the satire, the more intense are the
feelings it excites.
But which side, it may be inquired, is likely to be the best judge?
Surely the friendly one. Sympathy is requisite to insight, as Carlyle
says; while hostility blinds us to a thousand virtues and beauties. I am
aware that many will take objection to the employment of satire at all,
whether good or bad, on religious topics; but this seems to me
preposterous, and I should readily answer it, if Thomson had not done so
himself in the most vigorous and triumphant manner.
Nearly all the pieces in this volume appeared originally in the National
Reformer or the Secularist. I have attempted no arrangement of them, not
even a chronological one; the compositor has shuffled them at his own
sweet will. All I have done, besides collecting them and carefully
reading the proofs, is to indicate in each case the year of first
publication; and I think the reader will approve this plan as both
modest and sensible.
I am much mistaken if this volume does not become a well-prized treasure
to many Freethinkers; that it will ever be valued by the general public
I dare not hope. Yet the number of its admirers will increase with the
growth of a healthy scepticism. It will not fall like a bombshell among
ordinary readers, who serenely ignore the most terrible mental
explosives, and render them comparatively innocuous by mere force of
neglect; but it will startle and stimulate some minds, and in time its
influence will extend to many more.
What value Thomson placed on these pieces it is difficult to decide.
“Working off the talent,” he once remarked when I mentioned them. But
the fact remains that he allowed one or two of them to be reprinted as
pamphlets before any of his poems were collected in a volume. He
naturally cared more for his poems than for his prose. What poet ever
did the contrary? But even for these he cared little, except “The City
of Dreadful Night” and a few others, which expressed his profoundest
convictions.
There were several articles in his “Essays and Phantasies” that proved
Thomson to be a born satirist as well as a born poet; notably “Proposals
for the Speedy Extinction of Evil and Misery,” a tremendous display of
sustained irony, to my mind unsurpassed even by Swift at his greatest,
and with a poetic grandeur quite beyond him. The contents of this volume
show marks of the same strong hand. There is never, perhaps, so
continuous an exertion of power; but there is more versatility, more
freedom, and often more abandon. I fancy, too, there is more rapidity
and suppleness, and I am sure there is more mirth.
Thomson’s satire was always bitterest, or at any rate most trenchant,
when it dealt with Religion, which he considered a disease of the mind,
engendered by folly and fostered by ignorance and vanity. He saw that
spiritual superstition not only diverts men from Truth, but induces a
slavish stupidity of mind, and prepares the way for every form of
political and social injustice. He was an Atheist first and a Republican
afterwards. He derided the idea of making a true Republic of a
population besotted with religion, paralysed by creeds cringing to the
agents of their servitude, and clinging to the chains that enthral them.
A few words only as to Thomson’s life. Outwardly it was singularly
uneventful, although inwardly it was intense and exciting. He was bom at
Port Glasgow, on the 23rd of November, 1834; and he died in London, on
the 1st of June 1882. His father was a merchant captain, and his mother
a zealous Irvingite. Left parentless in his infancy, he was educated at
the Caledonian Orphan Asylum. For some years he served as a schoolmaster
in the army, during which time he contracted an intimate friendship with
Mr. Bradlaugh, with whom he subsequently worked and lived in London.
Soon after leaving Mr. Bradlaugh he devoted himself to journalism, to
which he brought a well-practised pen; contributing to the _National
Reformer, the Secularist, the Liberal, Cope’s Tobacco Plant_, and other
periodicals. Shortly before his death he gained access to the _Weekly
Dispatch_ and the _Fortnightly Review_. His poems and essays were mostly
written before he tried to live by his pen. Four volumes of these have
been published by Reeves and Turner, under the generous editorship of
Mr. Bertram Dobell, who has prefixed a memoir to the last, entitled “A
Voice from the Nile and Other Poems.” Besides the five volumes of
Thomson’s writings now before the public, there are many essays and
articles and a few poems still uncollected, some of them of high value;
and many poems in manuscript, unknown to all but a few privileged
friends. Mr. Dobell hopes to publish them all in time. Thomson’s
poetical reputation is, however, already established. The best judges
give him the highest praise. My own judgment assigns him the next place
to Robert Browning. Of course it is no blasphemy to dispute my estimate;
but what prospect is there of reversing the common verdict of George
Eliot, George Meredith, Swinburne, and Rossetti?
Mr. Dobell refers to the charm of Thomson’s manner in social
intercourse. His personal appearance told in his favor. He was of the
medium height, well-built, and active. He possessed that striking
characteristic sometimes found in mixed races—black hair and beard, and
grey-blue eyes. The eyes were fine and wonderfully expressive. They were
full of shifting light, soft grey in some moods and deep blue in others.
They contained depth within depth; and when he was moved by strong
passion they widened and flashed with magnetic power. When not suffering
from depression he was the life of the company. He was the most
brilliant talker I ever met, and at home in all societies; a fine
companion in a day’s walk, and a shining figure at the festive table or
in the social drawing-room. But you enjoyed his conversation most when
you sat with him alone, taking occasional draughts of our national
beverage, and constantly burning “the divine weed.”
Thomson’s sympathy with radical and revolutionary causes is not much
noticed by Mr. Dobell, but it was very strong. He was secretary for some
time to the Polish Committee in London, and his glorious lines on “A
Polish Insurgent” which I for one can never read without tears, proves
that he might have written the noble songs that George Eliot hoped he
would compose. He sympathised with all self-sacrifice, all lofty
aspiration, and in particular with all suffering. This last emotion was
often betrayed by a look rather than expressed in words. I vividly
remember being with him once on a popular holiday at the Alexandra
Palace. We were seated on the grass, watching the shifting groups of
happy forms, and exchanging appreciative or satirical remarks. Suddenly
I observed my companion’s gaze fixed on a youth who limped by with a
pleasant smile on his face, but too obviously beyond hope of ever
sharing in the full enjoyment of life. Thomson’s eyes followed him until
he passed out of sight, and the next moment our eyes met. I shall never
forget the gentle sadness of that look, its beautiful sympathy that
transcended speech, and made all words poor.
Thomson’s life was a long tragedy. He inherited from his father a fatal
curse, and in his youth he lost the beautiful girl to whom he was
engaged. She was the object of his passionate adoration, and allusions
to her often occur in his poems. Her image mingled with all the sombre
panoramas of Love and Death and Grief that passed before the eyes of his
imagination. Yet I do not agree with Mr. Dobell in regarding this
bereavement as the _cause_ of his life-long misery. She was, I hold,
merely the peg on which he hung his raiment of sorrow; without her,
another object might have served the same purpose. He carried within him
his proper curse, constitutional melancholia. From long and careful
observation I formed this conclusion, and it explains Thomson’s life and
philosophy. I would not dogmatise, however; for the profundities and
subtleties of the human heart baffle all calculation. Certitude is now
impossible. The seal of eternal silence is set on Thomson’s lips—“after
life’s fitful fever he sleeps well.” He is buried at Highgate, and his
darling lies, I suspect, in an unknown grave. Death has at last united
them, but their love survives in the glory of immortal song.