Being led on in certain studies he became attached to the terms specially connected with those studies. The process may be traced in the case of his use of the names of extinct animals. Their discovery he calls pure romance; "but the romance which lies in the new and unimagined forms, hidden from the poets and tale-tellers of all previous ages, and given up to eyes almost satiate with wonders, has yet to find its writers. . . . Tennyson has seen its uses for large and impressive allusion--
but Tennyson is almost alone even in the use of the theme. In an occasional later and younger poet you may find mention of the plesiosaure or other typical monster." Again, still reviewing Mr. Seeley's _Dragons of the Air_, Thompson writes:--
"We have strayed, it seems, into the ancient forge and workshop of Nature, where she is busy with her first experiments. . . . We behold, cast off from her anvil, in bewildering succession, shapes so fantastical, grotesque, and terrible, as never peopled the most lawless dreams of an Eastern haschish-eater; apparitions of inter-twisted types and composite phantasms, more and more strange than all the brute gods of Egypt. We are among the rough drafts of a creation."
The "occasional later and younger poet" was himself.
Of his partial acceptance of the criticism of the Press he makes sign in a note he had intended printing in _New Poems_:--
"Of words I have coined or revived I have judged fit to retain but few; and not more than two or three will be found in this book. I shall also be found, I hope, to have modified much the excessive loading both of diction and imagery which disfigured my former work."
That the note was not printed must not strictly be taken to mean that he repented of his repentance. But he was not easily brought to correct or discard--the initial process of composition had been too careful to be lightly tampered with. In A. M. he had a very stern critic for such words as "tameless," but he was found less amenable than George Meredith, who, accepting correction, altered two uses of words so formed. This letter was written during the making of _Poems_:--
"MY DEAR FRANCIS,--The Bible has 'unquenchable,' and I don't think it could have 'quenchless.' Lowell has 'exhaustless' somewhere. I think one can strictly hold 'less' to equal 'minus' or 'without,' and with these the verb is impossible. I remember refusing to be taught a setting of some words of Praed's that had 'tameless' for 'untamable,' so you see it is an old objection with me.