The

But let us look over the head of Thomas Hood, and see whence Poesy leapt, followed by many merry dancing, wicked - witted sprites, playful quips, and oddities. first thing that strikes us in this noble round head, is the diaphanous look of the face, and the smallness of the regions devoted to the sense of life and gusto of enjoyment. There is no revel in physical health which overflows in what we term humor; for humor is as much the outcome of a healthy animalism and a strong ruddy nature, as it is of peculiar conformation of brain. In this sense, Hood has the mind but lacks the body of humor.

But there is another ingredient of humor of which Hood has little-it is hope. His hope is small. This would sadden his nature, continually check its buoyancy, and forever prevent it reaching the reckless joviality and swimming in those floods of unctuous mirth which characterize other humorists. His humor is not so much a rich feeling as a dry thought. He is like those who may not feel the pleasures of life, and so they think them. He is also restricted in the imaginative region; his sense of sublimity (wonder) is not large; his ideality is immense. Here, again, he gains in thought and loses in feeling. Thus he is shut out of the broader fields that we reckon the domain of humor, and confined to the narrower range of wit that is, wit as understood in our day. Here he reigns supreme. He is the most ethereal of wits. He cannot be coarse, and savage, and disgusting, like Swift, because his impulses are so moral and so noble, his nature is so full of poetry. He cannot be cruelly sarcastic, because his secretiveness and destructiveness are SO small. In the midst of his most fleering ridicule, there is a smile of goodness and a twinkle of kindness. It's a tender soul and a loving face behind the mocking mask. Though his mind be swayed this way and that, like the flower in the stream, with tricksy tendencies, it always has a deep strong rootage of earnestness, and anchors fast in humanity. He might have been hailfellow-well-met with those rare fellows at the Mermaid Tavern, because of his brilliant parts, but, the welcome over, he would have quietly shrunk into a corner. But the little quiet man in black, lighting up at times, would have given them many delightsome surprises, and called forth their thunders of merriment with the lightning-flashes of his odd quips, humors subtle and grotesque, and sparkling repartee. In his head the organs

of wit, comparison, causality, are very full; language is also large. And they indicate precisely the prominent features of Hood's wit. He is the greatest word-twister in the world. He detects analogies in words and ideas with the rapidity of intuition. He produces his most startling effects by antithesis the sudden contrast and explosion of op posites. And by virtue of his organization he is just the personification of antithesis: - large wit and small hope that means laughter next-door to tears; mirth with a mournful ring to it; merry fancies holding the pall of laughter, or letting its coffin gently into the grave; light gracefully fringing the skirts of darkness; life deftly masking the hiding-place of death.

A nature like his, even in moments of solemn agony, will often break out into bewildering freaks of farce, and make such genuine merriment, that the lookers-on may fail to see that the heart is breaking down in the tragic depths that lie below the sparkling surface. Women at such times, not being able to possess their souls to the same stretch and strain, will burst into hysterical laughter, when they want to be weeping bitter tears. Hood always appears to me to have so deep a sense, such a painful sense of the terrible earnestness of existence, that it would be unbearable if he could not get some humor out of it, and phantasie some light and merry moods of mind. His wit is often set to this tune, but so perfect is his representation, that you do not see how thin is the partition which divides your laughter from his sorrows, and that he is making fun of his own troubles, some of which are deep as death. In the sunshine of spirit which he calls forth, he sets his tears as very jewels of wit. Like Garrick, he can laugh on one side of the face and cry on the other; and some of his touches of mirth surprise you into tears. In his "Ode to Melancholy," he sings

"Even so the dark and bright will kiss—

The sunniest things throw sternest shade; And there is even a happiness

That makes the heart afraid! There is no music in the life That sounds to idiot-laughter solely; There's not a string attuned to mirth, But has its chord in melancholy." I have remarked that he produces his greatest effects by antithesis (indeed, that word is the sum of human life-the law of the universe-the history of the world. God and the Devil-Good and Evil--Truth and Error-Man and Woman-Attraction and

"Oh, God! that bread should be so dear, And flesh and blood so cheap!”

What handwriting on the wall is this"A wall so blank, my shadow I thank, For sometimes falling there."

In the Dream of Eugene Aram," he makes
the murderer say of his victim-

"A dozen times I groaned. The dead
Had never groan'd but twice."

And, speaking of the dead body,

66 There was a manhood in his look
That murder could not kill."

But turning to a more cheerful subject, we shall find this antithesis come to a climax in the "Parental Ode to my Son, three years and five months old." Here we have the prose and poetry of Childhood written in parallel lines, and startling but truthful contrast. Unless the reader is accustomed to have to write against time, and the brightest strains of thought jangled by a child, or children, boisterously appealing to the parental anxiety, it will be difficult to reach the full fruition of this delicious ode. But it's worth going through the necessary process, to reap its full enjoyment:-

"Thou happy, happy elf!

(But stop-first let me kiss away that tear)
Thou tiny image of myself!
(My love, he's poking peas into his ear!)
Thou merry, laughing sprite!
With spirits feather-light,
Untouch'd by sorrow and unsoil'd by sin,
(Good heavens! the child is swallowing a
pin !)--

Thou little tricksy Puck!
With antic toys so funnily bestuck,
Light as the singing-bird that wings the air!
(The door! the door! he'll tumble down the
stair!)

Thou darling of thy sire;
(Why, Jane, he'll set his pinafore afire!)
Thou imp of mirth and joy,

In Love's dear chain so strong and bright a
link,

Thou idol of thy parents (Drat the boy!

There goes my ink!)-

(That dog will bite him if he pulls it's tail!) Thou human humming-bee, extracting honey

From every blossom in the world that blows, Singing in youth's Elysium ever sunny (Another tumble-that's his precious nose !)-

Thy father's pride and hope!

(He'll break the mirror with that skippingrope!)

With pure heart newly stamp'd from nature's mint,

(Where did he learn that squint?)

Thou young domestic dove! (He'll have that jug off with another shove!) Dear nursling of the hymeneal nest ! (Are those torn clothes his best?) Little epitome of man!

(He'll climb upon the table, that's his plan !) Touch'd with the beauteous tints of dawning life,

(He's got a knife!)

Thou enviable being,

No storms, no clouds, in thy blue sky foreseeing,

Play on, play on, My elfin John!

Toss the light ball, bestride the stick,
(I knew so many cakes would make him sick!)
With fancies buoyant as the thistle-down,
Prompting the face grotesque and antic brisk,

With many a lamb-like frisk.

(He's got the scissors snipping at your gown!) Thou pretty opening rose!

(Go to your mother, child, and wipe your nose !)

Balmy and breathing music like the south; (He really brings my heart into my mouth!) Fresh as the morn, and brilliant as its star! (I wish that window had an iron bar!) Bold as the hawk, yet gentle as the dove! (I'll tell you what, my love,

I cannot write unless he's sent above!)"

Bacon has remarked, that there is no exquiisite beauty that has not some strangeness in its proportions. Hood is a master of this unexpectedness, whether it startles with its laughter in his rich grotesquerie, or surprises with its rapid and crushing lyrical energy in thunder-strokes of thought. He said his epitaph should be-" Here lies the man who spat more blood and made more puns than any other." He was indeed a marvellous punster-monarch of Pun-land. All great humorists and wits have been fond of this wit of words. Shakspeare was always making them, and Douglas Jerrold will speak a bookful per day, when in the mood.

But it has always been considered the lowest species of wit; and it took the genius.

of Hood to legitimatize it, and render it respectable. It was a great pity that he should have been compelled to break up his fire from heaven into such small sparks and brilliant scintillations. He had to pick up his living at the point of his pen, and puns sold better than poetry. He could turn any and everything to punning account, and scattered them by mouthfuls wherever he

went.

In him it was tolerable, because he was also a poet, and so frequently graced it with the presence of poetry. But, since he set the example, it has been followed by many who have rendered the maker of puns a being to be avoided by all earnest men, because nothing is sacred to his touch, no sanctuary safe from his grinning irreverence. Hood's lowest wit has a delicate aroma, while that of these fellows stinks of smoke and stale beer. Every one who can make a pun now sets up for a wit. It is the age of punning, and penman almost signifies punman. Poor dear Tom Hood and Laman Blanchard have something to answer for in all this broad-grin pasquinado. If they could see what their flashing mirth, rollicking humor and sparkling wit have ended in-what barnacles have stuck on to the bulk of their fame to swim with them, they might well wish to fors wear their claim to the foundership of what is called the "Punch School." Not a word against "Punch" itself. Having the spirit of Jerrold and Editorial Lemon, it requires a little water; or how could it be Punch? Only, sometimes we could wish for a little less of the third ingredient. But around this "Punch" there do congregate a company of conceited puppies who have grown into sad dogs. They return the fumes of Punch in the most vapid effusions. Mr. Punch-to change our illustration-draws the crowd together, and these literary mountebanks perform their antics, and pick up their halfpence at the outskirts. This would not be so bad if confined to the public street; but when the day is done, and the out-door exhibition is ended, they disband, and individually inflict their ancient jokes and sorry sleight-of-hand on many unprotected circles of society. This ambition to say, smart things, and to be thought funny, is working fatally in the literature of the day, and is sapping the very root of all earnestness. A man will soon have to be ashamed of all serious earnestness in the presence of these modern Samsons, who wear such long hair, and slay with the jawbone of an ass. Nor can we tolerate all the

senseless levity that in certain quarters is fast eating out the sturdy spirit of our glorious Saxon language, or, without protest, permit these eunuchs of thought to replace the lofty English of Shakspeare, and Milton, and the great divines, with the slang of the cider-cellars, and the cantology of puppydom. We have all had too much of this irreverence and losel levity. Life is too real, too earnest, too solemn a thing, to be spent in producing or in reading such light literature. We want something more of the Ironside earnestness in individual character, in our books, and in the national life. Earnestness is the root of greatness and heroism. They were in earnest," and not "They were only joking," is the epitaph which history has inscribed in letters of light, or of blood, on the tombs of her illustrious-the heroes, martyrs, and teachers.

Hood has been charged with being irrelig ious, because he was unmerciful to the "unco gude" in their own conceit those who make long prayers in the market-place, and pull long faces in the vestry-those who wear their religion like a Sunday cloak, which is brushed up once a week, and put on when the apron of trade is cast aside; the pile of which cloak he would occasionally stroke backwards and ruffle its equanimity. He ridiculed pretence; he hated humbug; he exposed all lying abominations, all Pharisaical cant-but religion! never. Take the ode to "Rae Wilson," which we consider one of the finest defences of genuine religion ever made. Remember that a man is building for truth when he destroys that which is false; and that is just what Hood does in this ode. The wolf's clothing, the mask of hypocrisy, and the suit of sanctimony, are here stripped off the quacks and pretenders, and consumed to ashes in the fires of his scorn and wit. I quote a bit of his mind and creed; and if the reader think him wrong and blind, who, as he himself says

"Who would rush at a benighted man,

And give him two black eyes for being blind?"

"I do confess that I abhor and shrink
From schemes, with a religious willy-willy,
That frown upon St. Giles's sins, but blink
The peccadilloes of all Piccadilly.
My soul revolts at all such base hypocrisy,
And will not, dare not, fancy in accord
The Lord of Hosts with an exclusive lord
Of this world's aristocracy.
It will not own a notion so unholy,
As thinking that the rich by easy trips
May go to heaven, whereas the poor and lowly
Must work their passage as they do in ships.