The Speedy Extinction of Evil and Misery : Selected Prose of James Thomson (B. V.)

fused if freethinking reader that "B.V.'s" recent reference to "merciful providence" had been ironic). But it is a tribute to both his sincerity and his skill that Thomson succeeds as consistently as he does, even when merely "hacking out" another article to amuse and edify secularist iconoclasts who, for the most part, were too busily engaged in hurling bricks at a God no longer there to recognize Thomson's true value. Of course not all of Thomson's prose is in this vein. His social criticism -to Thomson, at least, the more important aspect of his work -is in the great tradition of Victorian prose. This work reminds us somewhat of Matthew Arnold's, lacking Arnold's range and urbane sophistication, no doubt, but at one with Arnold in expressing the belief that Hebraism was definitely not the unum necessarium for the nineteenth century (as Thomson put it, the "continual cry of Work! Work! Work! is simply the Imperative mood of a doctrine which, couched in the quiet Indicative, reads, 'Mankind is a damned rascal'"). Thomson's attack upon Bumbledom was partly inspired by Arnold's comments on the Philistines, and, like Arnold, Thomson devoted much of his career to writing "biographical essays" and "introductory reviews" that were intended to propagate some of the best "known and thought in the world." Thomson, however, distrusting what he considered to be Arnold's kid-glove aloofness, offered a more down-to-earth "message" than Arnold's plea for "sweetness and light" Hellenism, calling for a sort of workingman's realism, encouraging men to live their lives fully and honestly while facing up to harsh reality. The message is neither original nor profound, but there is a clean masculinity and directness in Thomson's statement which avoid both the sentimental "robust optimism" of Browning or Henley and the limpwristed hedonism of the later aesthetes. Thomson's essays and articles also provide fresh insight into "Victorianism," and contain some lively portraits of the age. His prediction at the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War makes interesting reading even a century later ("The time is not This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1967.