The poetry of Francis Thompson appeared in three small volumes: "Poems," published in 1893; "Sister Songs," in 1895; and "New Poems," in 1897. The first of these volumes contained the "Hound of Heaven"; though it staggered reviewers at large, they yielded dubious and carefully measured praise and waited for developments. The pack was unleashed and the hue-and-cry raised on the coming of "Sister Songs" and "New Poems." Andrew Lang and Mr. Arthur Symons led the chorus of disapproval. It is amusing to read now that Francis Thompson's "faults are fundamental. Though he uses the treasure of the Temple, he is not a religious poet. The note of a true spiritual passion never once sounds in his book." Another critic of the poet declares that "nothing could be stronger than his language, nothing weaker than the impression it leaves on the mind. It is like a dictionary of obsolete English suffering from a severe fit of delirium tremens." A prominent literary periodical saw, in the attempt to foist Thompson on the public as a genuine poet, a sectarian effort to undermine the literary press of England. In the course of a year the sale of "Sister Songs" amounted to 349 copies. The "New Poems" fared worse; its sale, never large, practically ceased a few years after its appearance, three copies being sold during the first six months of 1902. [Illustration: Across the margent of the world I fled _Page 47_] And all this despite strong recommendations from fastidious quarters. George Meredith's recognition was instantaneous and unreserved. Henley's was accompanied by reproofs. Mr. Richard LeGallienne was enthusiastic. Mr. William Archer said to a friend, "This is not work which can possibly be _popular_ in the wide sense; but it is work that will be read and treasured centuries hence by those who really care for poetry." And he wrote to Thompson, "I assure you no conceivable reaction can wipe out or overlay such work as yours. It is firm-based on the rock of absolute beauty; and this I say all the more confidently because it does not happen to appeal to my own speculative, or even my own literary, prejudices." The most extravagant admirer of all, and the one who will probably turn out to have come nearer the mark than any of Francis Thompson's contemporaries, was Mr. J. L. Garvin, the well known English leader-writer in politics and literature. "After the publication of his second volume," he wrote in the English _Bookman_, March 1897, "when it became clear that the 'Hound of Heaven' and 'Sister Songs' should be read together as a strict lyrical sequence, there was no longer any comparison possible except the highest, the inevitable comparison with even Shakespeare's Sonnets. The Sonnets are the greatest soliloquy in literature. The 'Hound of Heaven' and 'Sister Songs' are the second greatest; and there is no third. In each case it is rather consciousness imaged in the magic mirror of poetry than explicit autobiography.... Even with the