THOMAS HOOD, the son of a bookseller, was born in London.  "Next to being a citizen of the world," he writes  in his Literary Reminiscences, "it must be the best thing to be born a citizen of the world's greatest city."

    On the death of her husband in 1811 Mrs Hood moved to Islington, where Thomas Hood had a schoolmaster who appreciated his talents, "made him feel it impossible not to take an interest in learning while he seemed so interested in teaching."  Under the care of this "decayed dominie", he earned a few guineas—his first literary fee—by revising for the press a new edition of Paul and Virginia.  Admitted soon after into the counting-house of a friend of his family, he "turned his stool into a Pegasus on three legs, every foot, of course, being a dactyl or a spondee"; but the uncongenial profession affected his health, which was never strong, and he was sent to his father's relations at Dundee, Scotland.  There he led a healthy outdoor life, and also became a large and indiscriminate reader, and before long contributed humorous and poetical articles to the provincial newspapers and magazines.  As a proof of his literary vocation, he used to write out his poems in printed characters, believing that that process best enabled him to understand his own peculiarities and faults, and probably unaware that Samuel Taylor Coleridge had recommended some such method of criticism when he said he thought "print settles it."    On returning to London in 1818, Hood applied himself assiduously to the art of engraving, in which he acquired a skill that in after years became a most valuable assistant to his literary labours, and enabled him to illustrate his various humours and fancies by a profusion of quaint devices, which not only repeated to the eye the impressions of the text, but, by suggesting amusing analogies and contrasts, added considerably to the sense and effect of the work.

    In 1821, John Scott, the editor of the London Magazine, was killed in a duel, and the periodical passed into the hands of some friends of Hood, who proposed to make him sub-editor.   His installation into this congenial post at once introduced him to the best literary society of the time; and in becoming the associate of Charles Lamb, Henry Cary, Thomas de Quincey, Allan Cunningham, Bryan Procter, Serjeant Talfourd, Hartley Coleridge, the peasant-poet John Clare and other contributors to the magazine, he gradually developed his own intellectual powers, and enjoyed that happy intercourse with superior minds for which his cordial and genial character was so well adapted, and which he has described in his best manner in several chapters of Hood's Own.
 

   He had married in 1825, and Odes and Addresses—his first work—was written in conjunction with his brother-in-law J. H. Reynolds, a friend of John Keats.  Coleridge wrote to Charles Lamb averring that the book must be his work.  The Plea of the Midsummer Fairies (1827) and a dramatic romance, Lamia, published later, belong to this time.

    The Plea of the Midsummer Fairies was a volume of serious verse, in which Hood showed himself a by no means despicable follower of Keats.  But he was known as a humorist, and the public, which had learned to expect jokes from him, rejected this little book almost entirely.  There was much true poetry in the verse, and much sound sense and keen observation in the prose of these works; but the poetical feeling and lyrical facility of the one, and the more solid qualities of the other, seemed best employed when they were subservient to his rapid wit, and to the ingenious coruscations of his fancy.  This impression was confirmed by the series of the Comic Annual, dating from 1830, a kind of publication at that time popular, which Hood undertook and continued, almost unassisted, for several years.  Under that somewhat frivolous title he treated all the leading events of the day in a fine spirit of caricature, entirely free from grossness and vulgarity, without a trait of personal malice, and with an under-current of true sympathy and honest purpose that will preserve these papers, like the sketches of Hogarth, long after the events and manners they illustrate have passed from the minds of men.  But just as the agreeable jester rose into the earnest satirist, ore of the most striking peculiarities of his style became a more manifest defect.  The attention of the reader was distracted, and his good taste annoyed, by the incessant use of puns, of which Hood had written in his own vindication:

    Now it is true that the critic must be unconscious of some of the subtlest charms and nicest delicacies of language who would exclude from humorous writing all those impressions and surprises which depend on the use of the diverse sense of words.  The history, indeed, of many a word lies hid in its equivocal uses; and it in no way derogates from the dignity of the highest poetry to gain strength and variety from the ingenious application of the same sounds to different senses, and more than from the contrivances of rhythm or the accompaniment of imitative sounds.  But when this habit becomes the characteristic of any wit, it is impossible to prevent it from degenerating into occasional buffoonery, and from supplying a cheap and ready resource, whenever the true vein of humour becomes thin or rare.

    Artists have been known to use the left hand in the hope of checking the fatal facility which practice had conferred on the right; and if Hood had been able to place under some restraint the curious and complex machinery of words and syllables which his fancy was incessantly producing, his style would have been a great gainer, and much real earnestness of object, which now lies confused by the brilliant kaleidoscope of language, would have remained definite and clear.  He was probably not unconscious of this danger; for, as he gained experience as a writer, his diction became more simple, and his ludicrous illustrations less frequent.  In another annual called the Gem appeared the poem on the story of Eugene Aram, which first manifested the full extent of that poetical vigour which seemed to advance just in proportion as his physical health declined.

    He started a magazine in his own name, for which he secured the assistance of many literary men of reputation and authority, but which was mainly sustained by his own intellectual activity.  From a sick-bed, from which he never rose, he conducted this work with surprising energy, and there composed those poems, too few in number, but immortal in the English language, such as the Song of the Shirt (which appeared anonymously in the Christmas number of Punch, 1843), the Bridge of Sighs and the Song of the Labourer, which seized the deep human interests of the time, and transported them from the ground of social philosophy into the loftier domain of the imagination.  They are no clamorous expressions of anger at the discrepancies and contrasts of humanity, but plain, solemn pictures of conditions of life, which neither the politician nor the moralist can deny to exist, and which they are imperatively called upon to remedy. Woman, in her wasted life, in her hurried death, here stands appealing to the society that degrades her, with a combination of eloquence and poetry, of forms of art at once instantaneous and permanent, and with great metrical energy and variety.
 

    Hood was associated with the Athenæum, started in 1828 by James Silk Buckingham, and he was a regular contributor for the rest of his life.  Prolonged illness brought on straitened circumstances; and application was made to Sir Robert Peel to place Hood's name on the pension list with which the British state so moderately rewards the national services of literary men.  This was done without delay, and the pension was continued to his wife and family after his death.  Nine years after a monument, raised by public subscription, in the cemetery of Kensal Green, was inaugurated by Richard Monckton Milnes with a concourse of spectators that showed how well the memory of the poet stood the test of time. Artisans came from a great distance to view and honour the image of the popular writer whose best efforts had been dedicated to the cause and the sufferings of the workers of the world; and literary men of all opinions gathered round the grave of one of their brethren whose writings were at once the delight of every boy and the instruction of every man who read them.  Happy the humorist whose works and life are an illustration of the great moral truth that the sense of humour is the just balance of all the faculties of man, the best security against the pride of knowledge and the conceits of the imagination, the strongest inducement to submit with a wise and pious patience to the vicissitudes of human existence.

 From

The Scotsman

14 May, 1845.

THE LATE THOMAS HOOD.

—was the son of Mr Hood, the Bookseller, of the firm of Vernor and Hood.  He gave to the public an outline of his early life, in the "Literary Reminiscences" published in Hood's Own.  He was, as he there states, early placed "upon lofty stool, at lofty desk," in a merchant's counting-house; but his commercial career was soon put an end to by his health, which began to fail; and by the recommendation of the physicians he was "shipped, as per advice, in a Scotch smack," to his father's relations in Dundee.  There he made his first literary venture in the local journals: subsequently he sent a paper to the Dundee Magazine, the editor of which was kind enough, as Winifred Jenkins says, "to wrap my bit of nonsense under his Honour's kiver, without charging for its insertion."  Literature, however, was then only thought of as an amusement; for on his return to London, he was, we believe apprenticed to an uncle as an engraver, and subsequently transferred to one of the Le Keux.  But though he always retained his early love of art and had much facility in drawing, as the numberless quaint illustrations to his works testify, his tendencies were literary, and when, on the death of Mr John Scott, the London Magazine passed into the hands of Messrs Taylor & Hessey, Mr Hood was installed in a sort of sub-editorship.  From that time his career has been open and known to the public.

    The following is, we apprehend, something like a catalogue of Mr Hood's works, dating from the period when his "Odes and Addresses," written in conjunction with his brother-in-law, Mr J H. Reynolds, brought him prominently before the public:—"Whims and Oddities;" "National Tales;" "The Plea of the Midsummer Fairies" (a volume full of rich, imaginative poetry); "The Comic Annuals," subsequently reproduced with the addition of new matter as "Hood's Own;" "Tylney Hall; "Up the Rhine;"  and "Whimsicalities; a Periodical Gathering."  Nor must we forget one year's editorship of "The Gem," since that included "Eugene Aram's Dream," a ballad which we imagine will live as long as the language.  Of later days Mr Hood was an occa­sional contributor to Punch's casket at mirth and benevolence; and, perhaps, his last offering, "The Song of the Shirt," was his best—a poem of which the imitations have been countless, and the moral effect immeasurable.

    [The above short memoir is extracted from a kindly notice of Mr Hood in the Athenæum, and gives a general idea of his multifarious labours.  Mr Hood's reputation is chiefly founded upon his unequalled talents as a wit and humorist, but he had many higher claims upon the voice of fame.  He was possessed of poetical powers of no mean order, as many of his descriptive sketches amply testify; and the ballad, "Eugene Aram's Dream," mentioned in the preceding sketch, is one of the most powerful pictures of the workings of remorse and guilty terror to be found in any language.  As a novelist, also, Mr Hood is worthy of a high place; and though "Tylney Hall" is the only regular novel he has ever completed (for a second was being published in "Hood's Magazine," under the title of "Our Family," when the author's hand was arrested by his final illness), yet it alone is amply sufficient to es­tablish his excellence in this department.  We perceive that some regret has been expressed that Mr Hood should have expended his genius upon the light periodical literature of the day; but in our opinion such expressions are less justifiable than they at first eight appear to be.  His writings in magazines and elsewhere have cheered the leisure hours of many whom otherwise they might never have reached; he has diffused among thousands of his countrymen much innocent and cheerful amusement, thus contributing largely to the general fund of happiness.  And not only so, for the majority of his works were of such a nature as to instruct as well as to amuse—to improve the heart and the feelings, as well as to gratify the imagination.  The moral tendency of Mr Hood's writings was always of the highest and most unimpeachable kind, his sympathies were strong and active, yet tender and sensitive, and even in his most light-hearted moods, he would sometimes touch some of the hidden springs of the heart, and delicately appeal to the most tender and sacred feelings of our nature. There was often deep thoughtfulness in his smiles, and tears would sometimes mingle with his most joyous laughter.  We quite concur in the opinion of the writer in the Athenæum, that "the world will presently feel how much poorer it is for Hood's withdrawal."]

____________________

 
HOOD,

WHO SANG THE "SONG OF THE SHIRT."

GERALD MASSEY
1850.

Bibliography

The list of Hood's separately published works is as follows:

Odes and Addresses to Great People (1825) 

Whims and Oddities (two series, 1826 and 1827) 

The Plea of the Midsummer Fairies, Hero and Leander, Lycus the Centaur
                         and other Poems (1827),  his only collection of serious verse
 
The Dream of Eugene Aram, the Murderer (1831) 

Tylney hall, a novel (3 vols., 1834) 

The Comic Annual—editions between 1830 and 1842. 

Hood's Own, or, Laughter from Year to Year (1838, second series, 1861) 

Up the Rhine (1840) 

Hood's Magazine and Comic Miscellany (1844-1848) 

National Tales (2 vols., 1837), a collection of short novelettes 

Whimsicalities (1844), with illustrations from John Leech's designs; and many
                         contributions to contemporary periodicals.