"Critics are continually asking a writer to be someone else than himself, but happily Mr. Thompson seems to be one of those poets who go their own way, oblivious of the cackle of Grub Street. . . . Passion, in its ideal sense, has seldom found such an ecstatic, such a magnificently prodigal expression. For the love that Mr. Thompson sings is that love which never finds, nor can hope to find, 'its earthly close.' It is the poet's love of love in the abstract, revealed to him symbolically in the tender youth of two little girls, and taking the form of a splendid fantastic gallantry of the spirit."
[31] Revelation iv, 5, ". . . there were seven lamps burning before the Throne, which are the seven spirits of God."
[32] F. T. in the Academy, February 6, 1897.
[33] To this he recurs in a note on Tennyson:—"Tennyson too pictorial. Picture verges on marches of sister-art, painting. Feminine; only not so entirely so as Swinburne;—still has remnants of statelier mood and time. Metre—beginning of degeneration completed in and by Swinburne."
[34] Afterwards he lodged at the post-office, and finally in a cottage on the hill behind the monastery.
[35] The Capuchins (Franciscans), are peculiar in aspect among Religious Orders as bearded friars.
[36] This was written long before Mr. Montgomery Carmichael's translation of The Lady Poverty brought the thirteenth-century writer's claim to the world as the Franciscan cloister to Thompson's notice.
[37] "After Her Going" was written in these days.
[38] The mortuary card, preserved in F. T.'s prayer-book, runs:—
"Of your charity pray for the soul of Charles Thompson, M.R.C.S., L.S.A., who departed this life April 9th, 1896, aged 72, fortified by the rites of Holy Church"—with the motto "The silent and wise man shall be honoured."