heard his name, although it is already
bruited amongst the Immortals; and the great Catholic poet, for whose
advent we have been straining our vision, has passed beneath our eyes,
sung his immortal songs, and vanished." This was written almost ten
years before Thompson died, but after his resolve to write no more
poetry.

It is easily within the probabilities that, small as was Thompson's
audience during his lifetime, it would have been still smaller but for
the extraneous interest excited by the strange story of his life. He
was born on December 16, 1859, in Preston, Lancashire, whence he went
at the age of eleven to Ushaw College, a Catholic boarding school for
boys. This is the college where Lafcadio Hearn received his education;
he had left the school a year or two before young Thompson's arrival.
Both boys were designed for the priesthood. Hearn lost his faith then
or shortly afterwards: Thompson's irregular habits of dreamy
abstraction rendered him unfit for a sacerdotal career. When he had
completed his course at college, where he had distinguished himself in
English composition and attained respectable standing in the classics,
his father, a hard-working physician, entered the lad, now eighteen, as
a student of medicine in Owen College, Manchester. The Thompson family
had moved from Preston to Ashton-under-Lyne, where proximity to
Manchester made it possible for the young medical student to spend his
nights at home.

Francis was of the silent and secretive sort where he could not hope to
find intelligent sympathy. This, and some cloudy compromise with his
sense of filial dutifulness, will perhaps explain why he passed six
years as a student of medicine without any serious purpose of becoming
a physician and without informing his father of his disinclination.
Three examinations and three failures at intervals of a year were
necessary to convince the father of the true state of affairs. Stern
measures were adopted; and, although the consequences were pitifully
tragical, it is hard to blame the father of Francis. How are we to
discover the extraordinary seal in a case that requires special and
extraordinary treatment?

Francis was twenty-four years old with no more idea than a child's of
how life is planned on practical lines of prosperity. The senior
Thompson thought it time for him to learn and issued orders to find
employment of some remunerative kind. Accordingly during the next two
years Franci