as persons who felt and expressed high admiration for "The City of Dreadful Night."
Apologising for whatever may seem egotistical in the narrative, I shall now proceed to give some account of my own acquaintance with Mr. Thomson. When I read on its first appearance in the National Reformer the poem "To our Ladies of Death" I became convinced that it must be the work of a genuine poet. I read it again and again, my admiration increasing with each perusal. Thenceforth I looked eagerly in each issue of the Reformer for some new poem or essay from the pen of "B. V."[1]
The impression upon my mind of the great powers of this unknown writer deepened with time, and my wonderment was great that an author of such genius should confine it to the pages of the Reformer.
"The City of Dreadful Night" when first published ran through four or five numbers of the National Reformer. It was, however, crowded out of the paper one week, and held over to the next number. Thereupon I wrote to the editor to express my disappointment at its non-appearance, taking occasion at the same time to
- ↑ Bysshe Vanolis. "Bysshe" was chosen because of Thomson's reverence for Shelley, and "Vanolis" as an anagram of Novalis, the assumed name of the German mystic and poet, Friedrich von Hardenberg. It will be remembered that the life and character of the latter were largely affected by the untimely death of a young girl to whom he was deeply attached. Hardenberg, however, was not so inconsolable as Thomson, for he formed another attachment in no long time after his first love's death. A much closer parallel to Thomson's story was that of another German poet, Ernst Schultze; but of him Thomson knew nothing until a few months before his death.
