dexterity and depth, is worthy of Lucretius holding a very different brief. But I am grateful especially for the grand dithyrambs, worthy also of the great Roman, which authorize an inscription on the roll of British poets of the illustrious name of John Henry Newman, as much to their honour in the companionship as to his ! Verses on Various Occasions (J. H. N.). London: Burns, Oates & Co., 1868. 1 Transfiguration, No. 51, p. 91. 2 Epiphany Eve: A Birthday Offering, No. 14, pp. 41-2. 3 The Month of Mary, No. 150, pp. 259–60. The Pilgrim Queen, No. 149, pp. 255–7. 5 Refrigerium, No. 111, pp. 184–5. • The Pillar of the Cloud (Lead, Kindly Light), No. 81, June 16, 1833, pp. 133-4. The Dream of Gerontius, January, 1865, No. 166, pp. 294 and 297. • Ibid., pp. 301-4. • Ibid., pp. 304, 313, 323, 335. 10 Ibid., pp. 321 and 336. 11 Ibid., pp. 336-7. THOMAS HOOD 1798-1845 ONE of the uncrowned kings; the Heir bred, like Victor Hugo's L'Homme qui Rit, to suppose that he was a clown! If only he had known that his work in life was pure poetry— that he was a poet born! Till he died he never took rank as a poet. Scarcely would he have recognized himself as one. Although throughout his life he wrote poems, most of them received with favour, some with applause, they came as separate phenomena. His profession continued to be that of wit and humorist. The productions themselves, many as they were, did not muster together, and acclaim him for their chief and captain. Not until he had died, after forty-seven years of grinding care and poverty, were his graver poems, which in general reflect his adversities in their gloom, given to the world in a collected form. The utmost their editor hoped for them then was, that ‘in any future recital of the names of writers who have contributed to the Stock of genuine English poetry, Thomas Hood might find honourable mention'. The commendation is altogether too apologetic. It is pitched in a key too low to satisfy Hood's sincere admirers. Poets and poems are divisible into two primary classes. There are those that the kingdom of poetry, though it is willing to admit them, could do without, and those that it could not. Whatever his particular rank in the indispensable order, it is to this that he belongs. As I glance over the two volumes which comprise the body of his verse, serious and humorous, I am constantly lighting upon pieces which it would be impossible to omit without the creation of a painful, visible gap in literature. The Song of the Shirt is in possession of a niche which could not otherwise be filled : Oh! but to breathe the breath To feel as I used to feel, Before I knew the woes of want Oh! but for one short hour! A respite however brief! No blessed leisure for Love or Hope, A little weeping would ease my heart, My tears must stop, for every drop A second would stand painfully empty without the Dream of Eugene Aram to occupy it, and the abrupt shuddering close : That very night, while gentle sleep The urchin eye-lids kiss'd, Two stern-faced men set out from Lynn, Through the cold and heavy mist; And Eugene Aram walk'd between, Yet another place he has permanently appropriated by his haunting Haunted House-murder-haunted-with its rusty stains, Obscurely spotted to the door, and thence With mazy doubles to the grated casement— What human creature in the dead of night Had coursed like hunted hare that cruel distance? I do not claim on his behalf a monopoly of capacity for measuring against one another the powers of Earth and Hell; but I know of none but Burns who equals him in the reconciliation, for the purpose, of the tragic and the comic. Mark the trooping of monsters to avenge the attack of the Brocken forgemen upon Hell's lord : Awful coveys of terrible things, With forked tongues and venomous stings, Shapes, that within the focus bright Of the Forge, are like shadows and blots; Sounds! that fill the air with noises, Owls that screech, and dogs that yell- Bones to shatter, And limbs to scatter, And who it is that must furnish the latter Those blue-looking men know well! 4 As I know of few things in poetry more grotesquely terrible than the burning of Satan to a cinder, so I feel the singularity of Hood's gift for eliciting the poetry of everyday life. How dainty is the pathos employed on so commonplace a topic as a common death-bed! VOL. II M We watch'd her breathing thro' the night, Her breathing soft and low, As in her breast the wave of life So silently we seem'd to speak, As we had lent her half our powers Our very hopes belied our fears, For when the morn came dim and sad, Perfect every line. We owe more gratitude for this investiture of simple death-such as it is not beyond the least of us to aspire to-with a quiet beauty, than for a song of triumph over a Conqueror's bier. That indeed is among Hood's merits, which he shares with the princes of song, that, though he can rise to the heights, he sees the beauty of plain things. A child's embrace of its mother is as ordinary as dying; and see how much it too suggests to him! Love thy mother, little one! Kiss and clasp her neck again ;- Will kiss and clasp her neck in vain. Gaze upon her living eyes, And mirror back her love for thee ;- |