APPENDIX.

THOMAS HOOD.*

THE name of Thomas Hood is known wherever language is put upon the rack. Every civilized Englishman who uses words is acquainted with the great word-twister. He is the acknowledged monarch of Pun-land. All other luminaries "pale their inef fectual fire" before the quick sparkle of his multitudinous quibbles. He has made punning a kind of genius. He has redeemed it from the detractions of the dull and pedantic. Any man may now play upon words, without having his friend point significantly to the gallows, and murmur that "he who makes a pun would pick a pocket. What King James, and Bacon, and Shakspeare, and Donne, and Cowley, could not do, what Canning and the whole Anti-Jacobin club could not effect, has been done by Thomas Hood. The analogies of sound seem now as much prized as those of thought. The fact that the greatest men in all ages have displayed a love for this kind of wit, must be admitted as a strong argument in its favor. The "verbal Unitarians," as Hood calls his opponents, have been compelled to abate the insolence of their censures, and relax the grimness of feature with which they once frowned defiance on double-meanings. The great family of Words, which might be supposed most interested in the issue of the struggle, have willingly given up their frames to the torture, and suffer martyrdom daily. The priests in the Inquisition of Verbiage, with their racks, wheels, scourges, and hot-irons, are

*"Whims and Oddities," and "Prose and Verse."

doing what is called a "fair business;" and every shriek drawn from the agonies of a tortured word is registered as a pun.

Hood, then, has so far influenced the legislation of letters as to turn quibbling from a crime into a fashion; but his own popularity as a humorist is not owing altogether to his word-twistings. He has one of the most singular minds ever deposited in a human brain. Whims and oddities come from him, because he is himself a whim and oddity. He seems of different natures mixed. He has the fancy, if not the imagination, of a poet, and some touches of pathos almost equal to the most brilliant scintillations of his wit. Behind his most grotesque nonsense, there is generally some moral, satirical, or poetic meaning. He often blends feeling, fancy, wit, and thoughtfulness, in one queer rhyme, or quaint quibble. The very extravagance of his ideas and expression; the appearance of strain and effort in his puns; the portentous jumbling together of the most dissimilar notions by some merry craft of fancy; and the erratic, dare-devil invasion of the inmost sanctuaries of conventionalism, have, in his writings, a peculiar charm, which we seek for in vain among his imitators, or among the tribe of extravagant wits generally. We do not believe he would be so fine a humorist, if he were not so much of a poet. There is a vein of genial kindliness in his nature, which modifies the mocking and fleering tendencies of his wit.

crous.

Hood was no humorist in the sense in which the word is sometimes employed. He was no mere provoker of barren laughter, but a man whose mirth had its roots deep in sentiment and humanity. He saw the serious side of life as clearly as the ludiHe knew what thin partitions separate in this world tears from laughter; that the deepest feeling often expresses itself in the quaint oddities of caricature; that wisdom sometimes condescends to pun, and grief to wreathe its face in smiles. Indeed, there is occasionally a little misanthropy in him. A close observer of his writings will often see a bitter personal experience of the author embodied in the most farcical and bewildering freaks of his fun. Hood makes us sympathize more quickly with the troubles of his life, from not thrusting them in our faces, with the usual parade of sorrow and lamentation. We laugh with him, and feel for him. Few writers have ever succeeded in blending so much thought and sentiment, so much true humor and no less true

pathos, with the most extravagant drollery and fanciful exaggeration.

Two of the most ludicrous of Hood's punning poems are the lachrymose ballads of "Sally Brown and Ben the Carpenter," and "Faithless Nelly Gray." The mockery, in these exquisite morceaux, of the plaintive style of the modern ballad, glistens with wit and humor. They are so well known that to extract from them would be an impertinence. "The Wee Man" is another queer specimen of his drollery. In the poem called "Jack Hall,” (Jackal) the resurrectionist, he commences with wailing the custom of disinterring bodies, and remarks, with much logical feeling:

"Tis hard one cannot lie amid
The mould beneath a coffin lid,
But thus the Faculty will bid

Their rogues break through it!
If they don't want us there, why did
They send us to it?"

The situation of the lover, who comes to sentimentalize over his mistress's grave, is thus vividly portrayed :

"The tender lover comes to rear

The mournful urn, and shed his tear-
Her glorious dust, he cries, is here!

Alack! alack!

The while his Sacharissa dear

Is in a sack!"

Here is a grave, grim, and dismal pun :—

"Death saw two players playing at cards,

But the game was not worth a dump,

For he quickly laid them flat with a spade,

To wait for the final trump!"

Hood's wit plays about the tomb somewhat daringly, but still he can hardly be said to disturb its sanctities. In the ballad of "Mary's Ghost" he makes the poor spirit lament the distribution of her former body among the physicians. She cries :

"O William dear! O William dear!

My rest eternal ceases;

Alas! my everlasting peace

Is broken into pieces.

"The body-snatchers, they have come,
And made a snatch at me;

It's very hard them kind of men
Won't let a body be."

After much agonizing description, respecting the disposition of the several parts of her once compact frame, she concludes:—

"The cock it crows I must be gone!

My William, we must part!
But I'll be yours in death, although
Sir Astley has my heart.

"Don't go to weep upon my grave,
And think that there I be;

They have n't left an atom there
Of my anatomie."

One of the finest things in "Prose and Verse" is the piece called "The Great Conflagration." It refers to the burning of the Houses of Parliament, in 1834, and consists chiefly of letters written by Sir Jacob Jubb, M. P., and various members of his household, descriptive of the event. Sir Jacob was severely burnt, "by taking his seat in the House, on a bench that was burning under him. The danger of his situation was several times pointed out to him, but he replied that his seat had cost him ten thousand pounds, and he could n't quit. He was at length removed by force." The richest epistolary gem is the letter of Ann Gale, housemaid. Her speculations on the fire are very deep. She understands that "The Lords and Commons was connected with a grate menny historicle associashuns, wich of coarse will hav to make good all dammage." Her feelings are strongly enlisted in favor of the members. "Ware the poor burnt-out creturs will go noboddy nose. Sum say Exetur Hall, sum say the Refudge for the Destitut, and sum say the King will lend them his Bensh to set upon." She tells her correspondent that the fear of fire leaves her no peace. "I don't dare to take my close off to go to bed, and I practise clambering up and down by a rop in case, and I giv Police Man 25 a shillin now and than to keep a specious eye to number fore, and be reddy to ketch anny one in his harms. * * O! Mary, how happy is them as livs lick you, as the song says, ‘Fur from the buzzy aunts of men.' Don't neglect to rake out evvery nite, see that evvery sole in the hows is turned

*

*

down xtinguished, and allways blo youreself out befoure you go to youre piller."

"The Bridge of Sighs, ""The Lady's Dream," and the "Song of the Shirt," all having relation to the claims of poverty and wretchedness, are included in this collection. The long prose

paper, entitled " Copyright and Copywrong," originally contributed to the London Athenæum, represents Hood pleading for his own craft, in his own peculiar way. The question never was discussed with more liveliness, if with more cogency. In alluding to American republications, he disclaims hostility to the United States in very characteristic expression. "The stars and stripes," he says," do not affect me like a blight in the eye, nor does Yankee Doodle give me the ear-ache. I have no wish to repeal the Union of the United States; nor to alter the phrase in the Testament into ' republicans and sinners.' In reality, I have rather a Davidish feeling toward Jonathan, remembering whence he comes, and what language he speaks; and holding it better in such cases to have the wit that traces resemblances, than the judgment which detects differences, and perhaps foments them." Toward the close of one portion of his quaint pleadings for the rights of authors, Hood bursts out in an eloquent acknowledgment of his obligations to literature, and to men of genius. They were," he says, "my interpreters in the House Beautiful of God, and my Guides among the Delectable Mountains of Nature. They reformed my prejudices, chastened my passions, tempered my heart, purified my tastes, elevated my mind, directed my aspirations. I was lost in a chaos of undigested problems, false theories, crude fancies, obscure impulses, and bewildering doubts, when these bright intelligences called my mental world out of darkness like a new creation, and gave it two great lights,' Hope and Memory, past for a moon, and the future for a sun."

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the

This touches the real point in every discussion respecting the rights of authors. We owe them a debt of gratitude, which we should take pleasure in repaying. Instead of doing this, we avail ourselves of every subterfuge of quibbling, to justify the most selfish and heartless conduct towards them. The book that comes to us as a benefactor, — which opens to our view boundless domains of beauty and grandeur, - which makes itself "felt in the blood, and felt along the heart;" is it consistent that we