Pisa, a little before his death, at a time when he was miles away—his character, on the whole, was one of the most intere esting, and his life among the most romantic, in literary story. Every one must remember the catastrophe which robbed the world of this wonderful being. Everybody knows that, on the news of the arrival of Leigh Hunt in Italy, Shelley hastened to meet him. During all the time he spent in Leghorn, he was in

correspondence, upon Shelley's domestic | pair of eyes in a lady's breast; or writfeelings and habits, on his love to his ing to Rowland Hill for the use of Surwife and family, on his amiable, forgiv-rey Chapel to preach his peculiar views ing, and benevolent disposition. Alto- in; or, like Dr Johnson, lifting a poor gether to parody an expression of Dr houseless outcast upon his back, and Johnson's-let him who would attain an carrying her to a place of refuge; or runEnglish style, chaste but not cold, classi-ning about from cottage to cottage, in cal but not stiff, energetic but never ex- Marlow, visiting and helping the sick; travagant, clear but never shallow, pro- or swallowing endless cups of tea; or found but never mystic, give his days basking in the hottest beams of an Italian and his nights to the prose of Shelley. sun, till he had made men suspect that he We are writing a criticism, not a life. had been designed for the planet Mercury; But we would refer those who would or, though on all other subjects the wisest know more about his personal and pri- of the wise, the gentlest of the gentle, vate manners, to Leigh Hunt's and Med- the bravest of the brave, yet, when one win's "Reminiscences;' to Talfourd's topic was introduced, becoming straight"Oration in Defence of Moxon;" to a way insane, his eyes glaring, his voice series of papers which appeared in the screaming, his hand vibrating frenzy; or "New Monthly Magazine, entitled, sailing in his crazy, Charonlike boat upon Shelley at Oxford;" and to the recent the Serchio; or seen entering a wood near life by his early friend, Captain Medwin. All agree in describing him as the most warm-hearted, the most disinterested, the most childlike, and, withal, the most eccentric of human beings. Whether lying asleep on the hearth-rug, with his small round head thrust into almost the very fire; or launching on the Serpentine, in defect of a paper boat, a fiftypound note; or devouring large pieces of dry bread, amid his profound abstractions; or stalking along the streets of brilliant spirits-to him ever a sure progLondon, with his long and quiet steps; nostic of coming evil. On his return to or snatching a child from its nurse's his home and family, his skiff was overarms, shaking, the while, his long fair taken by a fearful hurricane, and all on locks, and asking what it remembered of board perished. His body, when found, its antenatal state; or now scalding and was in a state unfit for removal. It was, now half-poisoning himself with chemical therefore, under the auspices of Byron experiments; or discussing a point in and Hunt, burned on the sea-shore, all Plato, under the twilight trees, with far- but the heart, which would not consume. heard shrieking voice; or taking Leigh To a gentleman who, at the time, was Hunt by the two hands, and asking him, with a glass surveying the sea, the scene with the most comical earnestness and of his drowning assumed a very striking grief, "Can you tell me the amount of appearance. A great many vessels were the national debt?" or, another time, in visible, and among them one small skiff, a stage-coach, unintentionally terrifying which attracted his particular attention. an old lady out of her wits, by saying Suddenly a dreadful storm, attended suddenly to his companion, in quotation by thunder and columns of lightning, from Shakspere, "Hunt, I pray thee, let swept over the sea, and eclipsed the prous sit upon the ground, and tell strange spect. When it had passed, he looked stories of the deaths of kings;" or rush- again. The larger vessels were all safe, 'ng out of the room, in sweltering terror, riding upon the swell, the skiff only had as his wild imagination painted to him a gone down for ever. And in that skiff

was Alastor! Here he had met his fate. Wert thou, oh "religious sea!" only avenging on his head the cause of thy denied and insulted Deity? Were ye, ye elements, in your courses, commissioned to destroy him? Ah, there is no reply. The surge is silent. The elements have no voice. In the eternal councils the secret is hid of the reason of this man's death. And there, too, rests the still more tremendous secret of the character of his destiny. Let us shut the book, and clasp the clasp.

Note. There is much in this paper the author would not write now; being convinced, however, that Shelley on the subject of religion was absolutely insane, and having still an admiration of the man's sincerity, as well as genius, we permit it to stand, contenting ourselves with adding a caveat to the readers of that edition of his works published by Moxon, in reference to the many abominations and blasphemies contained in many parts of it, and retained, we have heard, in opposition to the wishes of some of the poet's wisest and warmest friends. We allude to this afterwards.

THOMAS HOOD.

Ir is the lot of some men of genius to be to the pathetic and the fantastic-serious, born as if between Milton's "L'Allegro" shrinks in timidity from the face of his and "Penseroso," their proximity to both inner nature-shies the stoop of the deoriginally equal, and their adhesion to scending Pythonic power, and, feeling the one or the other depending upon that if he wept at all it were floods of casual circumstances. While some pen-burning and terrible tears, laughs, and dulate perpetually between the grave does little else but laugh, instead. and the gay, others are carried off bodily, We look upon this writer as a quaint as it happens, by the comic or the tragic masquer-as wearing above a manly and muse. A few there are who seem to say, profound nature a fantastic and delibeof their own deliberate option, "Mirth, rate disguise of folly. He reminds us of with thee we mean to live"-deeming it Brutus, cloaking under pretended idiocy better to go to the house of feasting than a stern and serious design which burns to that of mourning; while the storm of in his breast, but which he chooses in this adversity drives others to pursue sad and way only to disclose. A deep message dreary paths, not at first congenial to has come to him from the heights of his their natures. Such men as Shakspere, nature, but, like the ancient prophet, he Burns, and Byron, continue, all their is forced to cry out, "I cannot speak-I lives long, to pass, in rapid and perpe-am a child!"

tual change, from the one province to Certainly there was, at the foundation the other; and this, indeed, is the main of Hood's soul, a seriousness which all source of their boundless ascendency his puns and mummeries could but inover the general mind. In Young of differently conceal. Jacques, in the fothe "Night Thoughts," the laughter, rest of Arden, mused not with a pronever very joyous, is converted, through founder pathos, or in quainter language, the effect of gloomy casualties, into the upon the sad pageant of humanity than ghastly grin of the skeleton Death-the does he; and yet, like him, his "lungs" pointed satire is exchanged for the are ever ready to crow like chanticleer" solemn sermon. In Cowper, the fine at the sight of its grotesquer absurdities. schoolboy glee which inspirits his hu- Verily, the goddess of melancholy owes a mour goes down at last, and is quenched deep grudge to the mirthful magician like a spark in the wild abyss of his who carried off such a promising votary. madness-"John Gilpin" merges in the It is not every day that one who might Castaway." Hood, on the other hand, have been a great serious poet will conwith his strongest tendencies originally descend to sink into a punster and editor

ce

of comic annuals. And, were it not that ballads in size, they are books in the his original tendencies continued to be reader's feeling. Every one knows how manifested to the last, and that he turn- resistance adds to the idea of extension, ed his drollery to important account, we and how roughness impedes progress. would be tempted to be angry, as well as Some of Hood's poems, such as "Lycus," to regret, that he chose to play the fool are rough as the centaur's hide; and, rather than King Lear in the play. having difficulty in passing along, you are tempted to pass them by altogether. And though a few, feeling that there is around them the power and spell of genius, generously cry, "There's true metal here, when we have leisure we must return to this," yet they never do. In fact, Hood has not been able to infuse

As a poet, Hood belongs to the school of John Keats and Leigh Hunt, with qualities of his own, and an all but entire freedom from their peculiarities of manner and style. What strikes us, in the first place, about him, is his great variety of subject and mode of treatment. His works are in two small duodecimo human interest into his fairy or mythovolumes; and yet we find in them five logical creations. He has conceived them or six distinct styles attempted and in a happy hour; surely on one of those attempted with success. There is the days when the soul and nature are oneclassical-there is the fanciful, or, as we when one calm bond of peace seems to might almost call it, the "Midsummer unite all things-when the sun seems to Night”—there is the homely tragic nar- slumber, and the sky to smile-when the rative there is the wildly grotesque- air becomes a wide balm, and the low there is the light, and there is the grave wind, as it wanders over flowers, seems and pathetic, lyric. And, besides, there telling some happy tidings in each gorgeis a style, which we despair of describing ous ear, till the rose blushes a deep crimby any one single or compound epithet, son, and the tulip lifts up a more towerof which his "Elm Tree" and "Haunted ing head, and the violet shrinks more House" are specimens resembling Ten- modestly away as at lovers' whispers; in nyson's "Talking Oak"-and the secret such a favoured hour-when the first and power of which, perhaps, lie in the strain of music might have arisen, or the feeling of mystic correspondence between first stroke of painting been drawn, or man and inanimate nature, in the start of the chisel of the first sculptor been heard, momentary consciousness with which we or the first verse of poetry been chanted, sometimes feel that in nature's company or man himself, a nobler harmony than we are not alone, that nature's silence is lute ever sounded, a finer line than not that of death; and are aware, in a painter ever drew, a statelier structure high and grand sense, that we are "made and a diviner song, arisen from the dust of dust." We know few volumes of -did the beautiful idea of the "Plea of poetry where we find, in the same com- the Midsummer Fairies" dawn upon this pass, so little mannerism, so little self-poet's mind. But although he has conrepetition, such a varied concert, along with such unique harmony of sound.

ceived his fairies in a happy hour, and framed them with exquisite skill and a Through these varied numerous styles, fine eye to poetic proportion, he has not we find two or three main elements dis- made them alive-he has not made them tinctly traceable in all Hood's poems. objects of love; and you care less for his One is a singular subtlety in the percep- centaurs and his fairies than you do for tion of minute analogies. The weakness, the moonbeams or the shed leaves of the as well as the strength of his poetry, is forest. How different with the Oberon derived from this source. His serious and the Titania of Shakspere! They are verse, as well as his witty prose, is laden true to the fairy ideal, and yet they are and encumbered with thick-coming fancies. human--their hearts warm with human Hence, some of his finest pieces are tedious passions, are fond of gossip, flattery, inwithout being long. Little more than trigue, and quarrel, as men or women

can be and you sigh with or smile at wanting. This defect is fatal not only them, precisely as you do at Theseus and to long poems, but to all save the shortHippolyta. Indeed, we cannot but ad- est; it reduces them instantly to the mire how Shakspere, like the arc of hu- rank of rhymed essays; and a rhymed manity, always bends in all his charac- essay, with most people, is the same ters into the one centre of man-how his thing with a rhapsody. Even dreams villains, ghosts, demons, witches, fairies, require a nexus, a nisus, a nodus, a fools, harlots, heroes, clowns, saints, sen- point, a purpose. Death is but a tame sualists, women, and even his kings, are shadow without the scythe. The want all human, disguises, or half-lengths, or of a purpose in any clear, definite, imminiatures, never caricatures nor apo- pressive form has neutralised the effect logies for mankind. How full the cup of many poems besides Hood's-some of of manhood out of which he could bap- Tennyson's, and one entire class of Sheltise now an Iago, and now an Ague- ley's8- whose " Triumph of Life" and cheek-now a Bottom, and now a Mac-"Witch of Atlas" rank with "Lycus" beth-now a Dogberry, and now a Caliban and the "Midnight Fairies"-being, like —now an Ariel, and now a Timon-into them, beautiful, diffuse, vague; and, like the one communion of the one family- them, perpetually promising to bring forth nay, have a drop or two to spare for solid fruit, but yielding at length leaves Messrs Cobweb and Mustardseed, who and blossoms only. are allowed to creep in too among the Subtle fancy, lively wit, and copious number, and who attract a share of the language, are the undoubted qualities of tenderness of their benign father. As Hood as a poet. But, besides, there are in Swift his misanthropy sees the hated two or three moral peculiarities about object in everything, blown out in the him as delightful as his intellectual; and Brobdignagian, shrunk up in the Lilli- they are visible in his serious as well as putian, flapping in the Laputan, and lighter productions. One is his constant yelling with the Yahoo-nay, throws it lightsomeness of spirit and tone. out into those loathsome reflections, that verse is not a chant but a carol. Deep he may intensify and multiply his hatred; as may be his internal melancholy, it so in the same way operates the opposite expresses itself in, and yields to, song. feeling in Shakspere. His love to the The heavy thunder-cloud of wo comes race is so great that he would colonise down in the shape of sparkling, soundwith man all space, fairyland, the grave, ing, sunny drops, and thus dissolves. He hell, and heaven. And not only does be casts his melancholy into shapes so fangive to superhuman beings a human in-tastic, that they lure first himself, and terest and nature, but he accomplishes then his readers, to laughter. If he canwhat Hood has not attempted, and what not get rid of the grim gigantic "shadow few else have attempted with success of himself," which walks ever before him, he adjusts the human to the superhuman as before all men, he can, at least, make actors; and the secret of this adjustment, mouths and cut antics behind its back. as hinted in a former paper, lies entirely This conduct is, in one sense, wise as in the humanity which is diffused through well as witty, but will, we fear, be imievery part of the drama. In it, as in one tated by few. Some will continue to soft ether, float, or swim, or play, or dive, follow the Unbaptised Terror, in tame or fly, all his characters. and helpless submission; others will pay In connection with the foregoing de- it vain homage; others will make to it fect, we find in Hood's more elaborate resistance equally vain; and many will poetical pieces no effective story, none that seek to drown in pleasure or forget in can bear the weight of his subtle and beau- business their impression that it walks on tiful imagery. The rich blossoms and before them-silent, perpetual, pausing pods of the peaflower-tree are there, but with their rest, running with their speed, the strong distinct stick of support is growing with their growth, strengthen

His

The genial kind-heartedness which distinguished Thomas Hood did not stop with himself. He silently and insensibly drew around him a little cluster of kindred spirits, who, without the name, have obtained the character and influence of a school, which may be called the Latter Cockney School. Who the parent of this school, properly speaking, was, whether Leigh Hunt or Hood, we will not stop to

ing with their strength, forming itself of its genius it never fails to remember a ghastly rainbow on the fumes of their the cause of the poor; and if it cannot, bowl of festival,. lying down with them any more than the kindred spirit of at night, starting up with every start Burns, make for its country some "usefu' that disturbs their slumbers, rising with plan or book," it can "sing a sang at them in the morning, rushing before least." Hood's poetry is often a pleading them like a rival dealer into the market- for those who cannot plead for themplace, and appearing to beckon them on selves, or who plead only like the beggar, behind it, from the death-bed into the who, reproached for his silence, pointed land of shadows, as into its own domain. to his sores, and replied, "Isn't it begging If from this dreadful forerunner we can- I am with a hundred tongues?" This not escape, is it not well done in Hood, advocacy of his has not been thrown utand would it not be well done in others, terly away; it has been heard on earth, to laugh at, as we pursued its inevitable and it has been heard in heaven. steps? It is, after all, perhaps only the future greatness of man that throws back this gloom upon his infant being, casting upon him confusion and despair, instead of exciting him to gladness and to hope.* In escaping from this shadow, we should be pawning the prospects of our immortality. How cheerily rings Hood's lark-like note of poetry among the various voices of the age's song-its eagle screams, its raven croakings, its plaintive nightingale inquire. Perhaps we may rather comstrains! And yet that lark, too, in her lowly nest, had her sorrows, and, perhaps, her heart had bled in secret all night long. But now the "morn is up again, the dewy morn," and the sky is clear, and the wind is still, and the sunshine is bright, and the blue depths seem to sigh for her coming; and up rises she to heaven's gate, as aforetime; and as she soars and sings she remembers her misery no more; nay, hers seems the chosen voice by which Nature would convey the full gladness of her own heart, in that favourite and festal hour.

pare its members to a cluster of bees settling and singing together, without thought of precedence or feeling of inferiority, upon one flower. Leigh Hunt and Hood, indeed, have far higher qualities of imagination than the others, but they possess some properties in common with them. All this school have warm sympathies, both with man as an individual, and with the ongoings of society at large. All have a quiet but burning sense of the evil, the cant, the injustice, the inconsistency, the oppression, and the falsehood, that are in the world. All are Best of all in Hood is that warm hu- aware that fierce invective, furious recalmanity which beats in all his writings. citration, and howling despair, can never His is no ostentatious or systematic phi-heal nor mitigate these calamities. All lanthropy; it is a mild, cheerful, irrepres- are believers in their future and permasible feeling, as innocent and tender as nent mitigation; and are convinced that the embrace of a child. It cannot found literature-prosecuted in a proper spirit, soup-kitchens; it can only slide in a few and combined with political and moral rhyines and sonnets to make its species progress-will marvellously tend to this a little happier. Hospitals it is unable result. All have had, or have, too much to erect, or subscriptions to give-silver real or solid sorrow to make of it a matand gold it has none; but in the orisons ter of parade, or to find or seek in it a * This thought we copy from Carlyle, who frequent source of inspiration. All, fihas copied it from the Germans, and they nally, would rather laugh than weep men out of their follies, and ministries out of

from Pascal.

YOL. I.-H