In part his was but a share in the general welcome then accorded to the poets. Davidson was being hailed with intense zest; Norman Gale himself, singing amid applause, offered congratulations and a review to F. T. Only with the appearance of _Sister Songs_ and _New Poems_ was he roundly and viciously abused. But already round the standard of "An Old Fogey" (Andrew Lang), raised in the _Contemporary Review_, February 1894, _à propos_ of "The Young Men," there was a considerable gathering. From the press cuttings of the year a good crop may be got of such sentences as:--
"I must agree with Mr. L.'s judgment of Mr. Francis Thompson. His 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. . . . He owes much to the perseverance of Mr. and Mrs. Meynell and the Catholics whom they influence."[28]
It fell to a critic on the _Westminster Gazette_ to do the out and out "slating." Leading off with quotations from "A Judgment in Heaven," he asks "Is it poetry? is it sense? is it English?" His case, with such phrases as "Supportlessly congest" well to the fore, was good. Quoting "To My God-child" as a happier example, he concluded, "This, too, is somewhat wild, but it means something."
"The poet of a small Catholic clique" was a description given by one of the two or three writers who constituted the opposition to his claims to a great place in English literature. They all made a common discovery--Francis Thompson was a Catholic.
"We had," said the _Weekly Register_, "Mr. de Vere, Mr. Wilfrid Blunt, Mrs. Hamilton King, Mr. Coventry Patmore, to name no others. We need not then have awaited Mr. Thompson's arrival to undermine the Press of England in the interests of 'Sectarianism'!"
It came to pass that this poet of fewest friends was charged not only with log-rolling, but with belonging to a "clique" that had its headquarters at Palace Court. The fact was that his few friends were even shyer than his friends' friends of praising him publicly. One young reviewer (the "Vernon" already mentioned) came at the stroke of morning's eight to shout through their bedroom doors his new discovered joy--a poem in _Merry England_ by F. T. "I know at last," was his loud confidence, "that there is a poet who may worthily take a place as Shakespeare's second." But in the papers this critic's notices were very halting: his praises did not call through the press as they did through the keyhole. The "clique" is proved in his notice the most unprofitable and unfriendly of companies. In Henley's _National Observer_ he writes:--