The same friend had his say in the Pall Mall Gazette and the Tablet, so that there was indeed one "conspirator" among his reviewers. With all such things Francis was well pleased; he enjoyed the smart of them, and cut them out and pasted them in a scrap-book along with the panegyrics:—
"In regard to Vernon," he wrote, "I am quite satisfied with his articles. You must consider that he and I have in the past exhorted each other to a Spartan virtue of criticism when one deals with a friend—if one thinks a friend can stand it. In taking placidly such unflinching candours there is a glow of self-approving delight akin to that afforded by taking the discipline, or breaking the ice to wash, or getting up in the morning, or any other unnatural act which makes one feel blessedly above one's neighbours."
Another of his friends thought such treatment salutary: Coventry Patmore to A. M., February 3, 1894:—
"Lang is a clever donkey. It will do F. T. nothing but good to be a little attacked."
Coventry Patmore's own article in the Fortnightly, July, 1894, was written before he and Thompson had met. It was easy for even frequent callers at Palace Court to miss F. T., since he never kept appointments. At this time A. M. wrote to F. T.:—
"I have been much disappointed at not having the opportunity of introducing you to Coventry Patmore. He wished so much to see you. If you knew the splendid praises he crowned you with!
"He wants to review your book. He would have done so in the paper he calls the 'Twopenny Damn'[29] (don't be shocked), if it had not died. As it is, he will do it somewhere."
As a matter of fact the critics knew neither the poet nor his address. Even his occasional editors, among whom was Mr. Henry Newbolt, were for their convenience saved direct communication with him. He knew nobody; and those who knew everybody did not know him. Mr. Yeats wrote at his death to W. M.:—
"Now I regret that I never met him, except once for a few minutes. There seems to be some strange power in the forms of excess that dissolves, as it were, the external will, to make the character malleable to the internal will. An extreme idealism of the imagination seems to be incompatible in almost all with a perfectly harmonious relation to the mechanics of life."
Another of the circle of his unacquaintance, Mr. Norman Gale, writing as an anthologist, for permission to quote, says to the poet:—
"Let me take this opportunity of congratulating you from my heart on the success of your book. I have said what I thought of it in print. I was candid."