Thomson James183482

Thomson JAMES (1834-82), poet, was born at Port Glasgow, and, losing both parents at an early age, became an inmate of the Caledonian Orphan Asylum. He managed to educate himself sufficiently to become an army schoolmaster, and served in Ireland and elsewhere in that capacity. He left the army in 1862, and obtained a clerkship. In 1874 his powerful poem, The City of Dreadful Night, appeared, and a volume of shorter poems came out in 1880, a posthumous volume being published after his death. His longest poem is very morbid and pessimistic, but shows some genius.