1894] Francis Thompson 147 



young criminal into being a bishop.' ' Yes,' he said, ' a bishop would 

 be easy enough because the other bishops would look after him, but not 

 a country parson, that would be a dangerous experiment.' He was sur- 

 prised to learn that grey Arab horses were not foaled grey. 



" 6th Aug. — A party at Crabbet for Sunday. The Meynells, George 

 Wyndham, Alfred Douglas, and Blanche Wortley. Coventry Patmore, 

 Henley, and Locker could not come. Meynell told us much that was 

 interesting about Francis Thompson, who is the latest discovered of the 

 poets. 



" Thompson's history is most curious. He was educated at Ushaw, 

 and his father wanted him to become a doctor, but he had a distaste 

 for it and could not or would not pass his examinations. This led to a 

 quarrel, for the father had married a second time, and Thompson was 

 turned out of the house, or left it in anger. He came to London, where 

 he fell into extreme poverty, walking the streets as a beggar for five 

 years and sleeping under the arches by the Thames. The money he 

 earned he spent on opium, which drugged him to endurance of his life. 

 Nevertheless, he once attempted suicide, spending what remained to him 

 on a large dose of laudanum enough to kill two men. He divided it 

 into two portions and retired to I forget what cemetery in the city and 

 took the first half — whereupon he had a vision in which he saw Chat- 

 terton, who took him by the hand and comforted him, and reminded 

 him how the very morning after his suicide a letter had come from a 

 publisher which would have relieved him. So he did not take the sec- 

 ond dose, and recovered to find the dream fulfilled by the arrival pre- 

 cisely of a letter from a friend enclosing him the cutting of one of his 

 poems printed by Meynell in ' Merrie England.' Thompson had been 

 in the habit of writing poems on any scraps of paper he could pick up 

 and had sent several of them to Meynell, and among them a paper on 

 Paganism and Christianity, which Meynell had pigeon-holed and for- 

 gotten till six months later, when he read them and found them' excel- 

 lent. Then he had tried to get into communication with Thompson, but 

 had lost trace of him and had published the papers in hope of attracting 

 the author's attention. This succeeded, and Thompson, seeing his writ- 

 ings in print, wrote Meynell an angry letter about it, giving the address 

 of a chemist's shop near Charing Cross. Thither Meynell went, and 

 on inquiry was told that Thompson owed a bill there of four shillings 

 for opium, that he had no abode, but might be found at nights in the 

 street in front of Charing Cross Station. 



" Through the intervention of the chemist he was eventually dis- 

 covered and sent to Meynell's house apparently with but few weeks to 

 live, for he was dying of opium. Meynell wanted him to go to a hos- 

 pital, but at first he refused on account of a girl with whom he had a 



