Miser of sound and syllable, no less Than Midas of his coinage.
We have said advisedly that the 'St. Teresa' marks an era in metre. For Coleridge was largely indebted to it and acknowledged his debt."
[31] Revelation iv, 5, " . . . there were seven lamps burning before the Throne, which are the seven spirits of God."
[32] F. T. in the _Academy_, February 6, 1897.
[33] To this he recurs in a note on Tennyson:--"Tennyson too pictorial. Picture verges on marches of sister-art, painting. Feminine; only not so entirely so as Swinburne;--still has remnants of statelier mood and time. Metre--beginning of degeneration completed in and by Swinburne."
IN 1892 F. T. had gone to Pantasaph. He was quartered, at first, in Bishop's House, at the monastery gates,[34] and the sandalled friars looked after all his wants--from boots to dogma.
"Thompson is ever so much better," writes Fr. Marianus soon after the poet's arrival. "He looks it too. He is less melancholy, in fact at times quite lively." And they cared for him delicately:--
"There is only one little thing about which I have some difficulty. I know Thompson must need now and again some little things, but I don't like to ask him does he need anything (though I have supplied him with paper, ink, &c.), and I should feel grateful if you would kindly write to Thompson and tell him to ask me for anything he may want--that I am his procurator."
"_C'en est fait_, as regards the opium. . . . I am very comfortable, thanks to your kindness and forethought. Father Anselm seems to have taken a fancy to me--also he is afraid of my being lonely--and comes to see me every other day. He took me all over the Monastery on Monday, and has just left me after a prolonged discussion of the things which 'none of us know anything about,' as Marianus says when he is getting the worst of an argument."
Father Anselm, now Archbishop of Simla, was the one of the friars of whom the poet spoke as his philosophical schoolmaster, and to whom he was indebted for the awakening of new intellectual interests. Coventry Patmore, too, as his correspondence testifies, knew how to appreciate the hospitality and good talk of the friars. Both the poets contributed to the _Annals_ of Father Anselm's editorship. Between the younger poet and Father Anselm there sprang up a close friendship, which was not without its influence upon Thompson's later work. During his Guardianship at Crawley Father Anselm was responsible for the inception of the Roger Bacon Society, whose meetings F. T. sometimes attended.