ABSTRACT
James Thomson was of no group, was in truth among the most solitary of our poets, but he may be seen now and then on the fringes of the circle. He consulted with William Michael Rossetti about the animal stretched at the feet of the Melancholia, with the result that he alters With the poor creature for dissection brought into with the keen wolf-hound sleeping undistraught. It is characteristic of Thomson that, understanding the Melancholia better than Durer himself, he does not know whether it is a sheep awaiting dissection or a wolf-hound that lies at her feet. For all that, when people have done praising the sombre and majestic City of Dreadful Night and the sometimes almost Keatsian Arabic story, they should salute him for his part in an attempt. This, too, is a part of Romanticism, the discovery of the romance of everyday, though it may need certain disillusionment with romance for complete success in it.
