gineering. Thompson was much consulted and greatly relied upon as an expert.
As principal and professor of the City and Guilds Technical College, Thompson had a full share in bringing about the success which the college achieved by the labours of the distinguished men who filled its three chairs, and he contributed in a high degree to securing the corporate spirit and loyalty, as well as the enthusiasm and sound learning of the Finsbury students.
Thompson pursued with zest his literary, antiquarian, and artistic tastes. He wrote lives of Philipp Reis (1883), of Michael Faraday (1898), and of Lord Kelvin (1910), as well as numerous essays. He devoted much time to the study of the sixteenth-century scientist, William Gilbert [q.v.], and to the translation of his work De Magnete. He was a skilful painter, especially of Alpine scenery, and an accomplished linguist. He came of quaker stock and was throughout his life an earnest member of the Society of Friends, in which he was recognized as a minister in 1903. His interest in religion prompted him to write The Quest of Truth (1915) and A Not Impossible Religion (published in 1918). He married in 1881 Jane, daughter of James Henderson, of Pollokshields, by whom he had four daughters.
[J. S. and H. G. Thompson, Silvanus Phillips Thompson. His Life and Letters, 1920; Proceedings of the Royal Society, vol. xciv, A, 1917–1918 (with portrait).]
THOMSON, HUGH (1860–1920), illustrator and pen-and-ink draughtsman, was born 1 June 1860 at Coleraine, co. Londonderry, the eldest son of John Thomson, who was in a tea-merchant's business in Coleraine, by his wife, Catherine, daughter of James Andrews. He was educated at the Model School, Coleraine, and first entered a firm of linen-manufacturers; but showing an aversion from commerce and a talent for design he was placed with the publishing firm of Marcus Ward & Co., of Belfast. There he came under the influence of John Vinycomb, a member of the Royal Irish Academy, whose counsel was the only real art training that he ever received. In 1883 he removed to London. Thomson's natural ability was quickly recognized by Joseph William Comyns Carr, editor of the then newly-established English Illustrated Magazine. In June 1884 his work first appeared in its pages, and he soon became one of its leading illustrators. Here first appeared his Sir Roger de Coverley (1886), and Coaching Days and Coaching Ways (1888). His drawings showed not only a delightful skill in landscape work but a consummate knowledge of horses, and a keen sense of humour. His early indebtedness to the art of Randolph Caldecott [q.v.] was obvious, but by degrees he developed an original talent.
For Messrs. Macmillan, the proprietors of the English Illustrated Magazine, to whom he was greatly attached both as artist and friend throughout the whole of his career, Thomson illustrated, between the years 1884 and 1903, a long series of books, eighteen in number, besides twelve volumes in their well-known county series, Highways and Byways, alone or in collaboration (1897–1920). He illustrated also with exquisite charm and grace many of the English classics of humour, beginning with Goldsmith's The Vicar of Wakefield (1890), Mrs. Gaskell's Cranford (1891)—which was declared to be ‘the book of the year’—and Mary Mitford's Our Village (1893). In 1894 he developed his delicate taste for sylvan scenery in Coridon's Song. Then, after William Somerville's The Chase (1896), followed a series of Jane Austen's novels—Sense and Sensibility (1896), and Emma, Mansfield Park, Northanger Abbey, and Persuasion, all in 1897; Pride and Prejudice he had already illustrated for Messrs. Allen in 1894. He continued with Fanny Burney's Evelina (1903), Thackeray's Henry Esmond (1905), George Eliot's Scenes from Clerical Life (1906) and Silas Marner (1907). He also illustrated The Ballad of Beau Brocade (1892) and The Story of Rosina (1895), both by Austin Dobson [q.v.], to whose help, encouragement, and friendship Thomson owed much of his early success. Among the other books with which he sustained his popularity were Charles Reade's Peg Woffington (1899), James Lane Allen's The Kentucky Cardinal (1900), and Mrs. Mabel Henrietta Spielmann's My Son and I (1908). He also supplied coloured illustrations for As You Like It (1909), The Merry Wives of Windsor (1910), The School for Scandal (1911), She Stoops to Conquer (1912), Dickens's The Chimes (1913), as well as for Sir James Barrie's Quality Street (1913) and The Admirable Crichton (1914), Hughes's Tom Brown's Schooldays (1918), and Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter (1920). In all these he showed a fine appreciation of his author's point of view, together with much character and imagination of his own. Thomson did much work for the leading illustrated journals, mainly The
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