From The Saturday Review.

the ordinary level of human spirits, but overflowing into infinite streams of humor and geniality, are admirably exemplified in the

real strength of his worthy and thoroughly lovable character. Younger readers will do well to become acquainted with this portrait of the favorite humorist of the last generation before they begin to study his works. When they have gained an interest in the personality of Hood as a man, they will be all the readier to sympathize with him as a fanciful, quaint, poetical, burlesque, and pathetic writer.

THE WORKS OF THOMAS HOOD.* THE miscellaneous works of Thomas Hood, which a not ungraceful filial piety has col-records of his domestic life. So is also the lected in the volumes before us, need very little comment on their present republication. They will find many among the persistent readers of the light literature of the day who can look back to their original date, and recall the feeling produced by their mingled brilliancy and depth when they were circulated for the first time. And they will meet the eyes of a younger generation who knew not Hood as a living writer, or who only knew him through the exceptionally wider popularity attained by one or two of his later poems, rather because they fell in with the popular sentiment of the moment than from any intrinsic superiority over the rest of his writings. Probably, the effect produced on these two classes of readers by the perusal of the volumes in question will be various in kind and degree. The affectionate interest which old readers of Hood may or must feel in turning over the pages, on meeting with the familiar sparkles of wit, and the familiar subdued lustre of the truest pathos and the most exquisite imagination, is replaced in the later generation by an interest which must be purely critical. It is a question how far the genuine novelty and originality of Hood will affect modern taste, brought up on a diet of newer turns of phrase and newer forms of humor, with a sense that he is either novel or original; but that, to some extent at least, these qualities will be still recognized in him, there is no doubt at all.

The younger Mr. Hood acted very judiciously in feeling the way for this republication by giving to the world his father's Life and Letters, which were noticed in our columns some two years ago. It is one thing to know a writer in his works, and another (sometimes a very different thing) to know him as a man. But some compensation for not having known Hood as a contemporary author was certainly to be found, by those who chose to look for it, in the knowledge of Hood's character as shown in his life and his correspondence. The extreme gentleness and playfulness of nature which sustained him through ill-health and needy circumstances, not only keeping him afloat at *The Works of Thomas Ilood. Moxon: 1862.

Of all the styles of writing known to literature, the humorous style is perhaps the most evanescent and volatile. Though the whole human race may tend to laughter at the same sort of things for generation after generation, yet the perfect joke of yesterday is not the perfect joke of to-day, still less of to-morrow. The domain of the mythical Joe Miller steadily advances, year after year, annexing and absorbing one witty touch or happy hit after another; and the fresher layers of jocularity soon smother the older forms of wit in mere oblivion. Sometimes the memory of a joke outlasts its intelligibility; as in the instance of the celebrated joke of Hannibal before one of his great battles, reported by Livy, at which neither schoolboy nor schoolmaster has ever laughed, though at the time it succeeded in amusing the staff of Hannibal. The wit of Aristophanes himself, though clothed in the very perfection of language, and appreciable in all its clearness by the classical scholar, yet only in a few instances tickles the scholar as he reads it to actual laughing. And the same is the case with many of the comic scenes of Shakspeare. It is necessary either to see the personages and action upon the visible stage, or to create, by the power of imagination, a vivid mental picture of the dramatic circumstances as they would be presented on the stage, before we can altogether appreciate the truth and naturalness of diction which marks Shakspeare's comic characters. Persons who habitually quote good things out of Shakspeare without quotation marks, as being, in virtue of their origin, good things for ever and notorious to everybody as such, are very much to blame. Besides puzzling or irritating the modern reader, they do, in a sense, wrong

Shakspeare by taking his words into their | exercise this gift was almost irrepressible. own mouths, instead of noting the fact that Even in the simple, manly, and touching they are citing a quotation. It is one of the letter written from a sick bed to thank the signs of the wonderful power and simplicity grave premier, Sir Robert Peel, for one of of Shakspeare that his prose dialogue should the most graceful acts of ministerial kindbe so elastic in diction as to maintain a nat-ness upon record, Hood was unable to refrain ural and almost perfect ease at the present from a pun. In his ordinary writings they day. But even the vitality of Shakspeare's overflowed from his pen with a nearly conlanguage is no proof that, if he were writing secutive inconsecutiveness. To the class of now-a-days, he would have expressed his persons whom a single pun offends, as dismeaning in exactly the same words, or chosen turbing the due concentration of the intellect exactly the same shade of meaning to express upon the real meaning of the language used, at all. Both in the choice of the idea to be Hood's manner of building up an illogical shadowed out, and in moulding and polish- series of ideas by the side of a logical one ing the vehicle or form of words in which must have been painful in the extreme. To that idea was to be conveyed, he would have keep pace with Hood's double intent required followed most accurately the ever-moving from the reader a mental operation analagous and volatile fashion of his own time. to the process of counting the money in his pocket with one hand while using the other to carry out some entirely distinct act of volition, by which Robert Houdin taught himself the first rudiments of conjuring. It might almost be said that Hood reduced to a science the counterpoint of punning-so

In the particular department of humorous writing to which so many of Hood's productions belong, the fickleness of human taste is most strongly shown. A pun is emphatically a thing of the moment, and fades almost as soon as the explosion of laughter which is caused by the flash of its absurd harmoniously does a running accompanidouble meaning has died away into silence. ment of all the chords of sublunary nonsense The very fame of Joe Miller, as the mythical go along with the melody or air of actual owner of all stale jokes, only rests upon a sense in his comic verse or prose. Yet, if deep law of nature-that no man can hon- our view is correct of the quick evanescence estly laugh twice at the same pun-and its of this species of verbal wit, is even the corollary, that no man can honestly claim a greatest mastery over such wit sufficient to laugh from his neighbors for a pun which save his memory from oblivion? Not of ithas been made and published once before. self alone. But in Hood the extraordinary Laughter at the repetition of a bad pun only combination of real poetical genius, taste, grows grimmer and grimmer upon each suc- and imagination, with this irrepressible cessive compulsion; and the neatest joke quick-wittedness, raised the level of his nonwhich depends upon mere parallelism of sense in proportion with the height of the sound or verbal duplicity soon meets with a serious side of his words. The truest poetry reception of the most profound indifference. is always that which admits of the best parThe better the pun, the sooner it dies out of odies; and Hood's method enfolded both the favor, by the very fact of that pungency and poetry and its parody in the same language. prettiness which make it so instantaneously Strike out the nonsense, and the appropriateand universally known when once it has been ness, frequently the elegance, or even beauty, uttered. And, in dying, it leaves barren the of the sense remains. It is very probable soil upon which it grew. It has extracted that a lesser admixture of this quick wit in the risible virtue of that particular contrast Hood's composition would have raised him of unsuitable ideas at once and forever; or even higher as a serious poet; but it is cerat least until some new discovery in the tain that the genuine dash of poetry which chemistry of wit enables the scientific joker generally pervades even the lightest of his to combine its bases with some third ingre- comicalities elevates them out of the merely dient of Attic salt, and so produce some trivial and burlesque. A good instance of novel explosive substance to electrify or his real eloquence in nonsense is to be found amuse a more and more fastidious world. in his "Ode to Joseph Hume." As long as the parliamentary memory of that great economist is green, the following lines may

Hood was endowed with a gift of punning almost without parallel, and his tendency to

well live as his most appropriate, half-comic, half-serious encomium, in the hearts of the English people :

"In Parliament no star shines more or bigger,
And yet thou dost not care to cut a figure;
Equally art thou eloquent and able,
Whether in showing how to serve the nation,
Or laying its petitions on the Table
Of multiplication.

In motion thou art second unto none,

tell another story better. Such power of drawing character as he had is better shown where his narrative is clothed in an epistolary form, than where the personages and incidents are brought directly upon the scene; and in spite of Pamela and Clarissa Harlowe it may be laid down, as a general rule, that the use of a series of letters as the vehicle for the story argues a weakness in the

Though fortune on thy motions seems to frown, novelist. The direct reaction of personal For though you set a number down

You seldom carry one.

character and circumstances upon each other

Great at speech thou art, though some folks forms the broader, if the more dangerous,

cough,

But thou art greatest at a paring off.

But never blench,

Although in stirring up corruption's worms

You make some factions

Vulgar as certain fractions,

Almost reduced unto their lowest terms,
Go on, reform, diminish, and retrench;
Go on, for ridicule not caring;
Sift on from one to nine with all their noughts,
And make state ciphers eat up their own 'orts,
And only in thy saving be unsparing:
At soldiers' uniforms make awful rackets,
Don't trim though, but untrim their jackets.
Allow the tin mines no tin tax,
Cut off the Great Seal's wax!
Dock all the dockyards, lower masts and sails,
Search foot by foot the Infantry's amounts,
Look into all the Cavalry's accounts,
And crop their horses' tails.
Look well to Woolwich and each money vote,
Examine all the cannons' charges well,

And those who found th' Artillery compel
To forge twelve-pounders for a five pound

note.

Watch Sandhurst too, its debts and its cadets
Those military pets.

Take Army-no, take Leggy tailors
Down to the Fleet, for no one but a nincom,
Out of our nation's narrow income,
Would furnish such wide trousers to the sail-

ors.

ground on which the power of a great novel-
writer is to be tried. The characters of
Tylney Hall are no particular characters at
all; and though, in Hood's narrative epis-
tles, a certain piquancy and individuality of
manner attach to the several letter-writers,
it would be entirely impossible to predicate
from their style or their sentiments how they
would behave under any imaginable circum-
stances of real life. Here, too, it is proba
ble that Hood's power was, to some extent,
spoiled by the very versatility of his clever-
ness, which prevented more absolute concen-
tration upon the main idea. Had he been
less peculiarly gifted as a humorist, he
might have been more effective as a drama-
tist or a romancer.
Still, for the purposes
of collecting an exhaustive memorial of his
father's talents, Mr. Hood has very rightly
republished Tylney Hall and the other sto-
ries. The same justification hardly applies
to such obviously ephemeral bits of non-
sense as the mixture of verses and "patter"
on the ship-launch, St. Valentine's Day, and
the Lord Mayor's show. Less vulgar, but
not much less slight, than the stuff which
delights the frequenters of modern music-
halls, these trivialities should have slept
in the past with the vocal entertainments
through which alone their author intended
them to meet the public ear. Of Hood, as
of other poets and authors, it is best that it
should be said-

"He kept his worst; his best he gave." And when the worst was composed only for a special purpose, which it probably answered well enough, it is unfair upon the author that it should rise up in judgment against him among his collected works, now that he has no power left of putting his own waste papers into the fire. It is the only shortcoming in Mr. Thomas Hood's merits

as editor that he has not learnt the last and greatest art and we will say, the last and greatest touch of filial piety-the art to blot. Yet we might point to many little gems of poetry, of gracefulness and wit, for the reproduction of which we are greatly indebted to Mr. Hood the younger. Here is a specimen, perhaps the lightest and prettiest "ado about nothing" ever written in a young lady's album:

"A pretty task, Miss SA Benedictine pen,

to ask

That cannot quite at freedom write
Like those of other men.

No lover's plaint my Muse must paint
To fill this page's span,

But be correct, and recollect
I'm not a single man.

"Pray, only think, for pen and ink,
How hard to get along,

That may not turn on words that burn,
Or love, the life of song!

Nine Muses, if I chooses, I

May woo all in a clan,

But one, Miss S-, I daren't address
I'm not a single man.

"Scribblers unwed, with little head
May eke it out with heart,
And in their lays it often plays
A rare first fiddle part.

They make a kiss to rhyme with bliss,
But if I so began,

I have my fears about my ears-
I'm not a single man.

"Upon your cheek I may not speak,
Nor on your lip be warm;

I must be wise about your eyes,
And formal with your form;
Of all that sort of thing, in short,
On T. H. Bayly's plan,

I must not twine a single line –
I'm not a single man.

"A watchman's part compels my heart
To keep you off its beat;

And I might dare as soon to swear
At you as at your feet.

I can't expire in passion's fire,
As other poets can

My life (she's by) wont let me die-
I'm not a single man.

"Shut out from love, denied a dove,
Forbidden bow and dart,
Without a groan to call my own,
With neither hand nor heart;

To Hymen vowed, and not allowed
To flirt e'en with your fan;

Here end, as just a friend, I must-
I'm not a single man."

Truly the pen that wrote these lines was "in very gracious fooling."

has in his lifetime indulged. Doubtless, in the next century, some enthusiast will arise to declare that the record of the Rugeley poisonings is to be studied as a palimpsest, and that the late Mr. William Palmer was the model of what a husband, brother, and friend should be.-Saturday Review.

WHITEWASHING.-The mania for rehabilitat- | crimes a man has committed, or the vices he ing the black sheep of history is a curious feature of our times. Philosophically considered, it is an effect of the wide-spread scepticism which has crept over the public mind with regard to the popular and traditional representation of the great characters and events of the past. The faith in the accuracy of historical portraiture has been rudely shaken, and there has sprung up a growing anxiety to test its genuineness by recurring to authentic and unimpeachable sources of information. It is the merit of Mr. Froude that he typifies this laudable desire. But the task of dissecting the mate- JOSEPHINE.-If the Duke of Leuchtenberg rials of which history is composed is one which should ultimately be chosen to occupy the varequires a cool and sound judgment-above all, cant throne of Otho, it will add to the singulara judgment which is proof against the tempta-ity of the fortune which since the fall of Napotion to make the facts disclosed, however stub-leon has attended the descendants of Josephine. born, square with some plausible or hastily adopted theory. Without this, the most conscientious research is no guarantee against the most mischievous perversion of the truth. There is, of course, a class of shallow sciolists who, in inviting their readers to reverse the judgments of former generations, are actuated merely by an ambition to broach something new or paradoxical. Indeed, it would almost seem that the chance of receiving the posthumous honors of whitewash bears a direct ratio to the THIRD SERIES. LIVING AGE. 972.

That fortune seems to justify the superstition, which regarded Josephine as the star of Napoleon's destiny. No royalty is now to be found among the relatives of Napoleon, except in the descendants of his discarded wife. The grandson of Josephine is Emperor of France. Another of her descendants was married to the Queen of Portugal; of her granddaughters, one was Queen of Sweden, another still lives as Empress Dowager of Brazil. Her great-grandson may be King of Greece.-Saturday Review

From The Saturday Review. THE "EDINBURGH REVIEW" ON THE

SUPERNATURAL.

istry; and the same tendency is observable, in some degree at least, in the half-philosophical, half-theological discussions which are at present in vogue.

UNEDUCATED men class all phenomena of which they have any conception under three An article on the "Supernatural '* has reheads. There are, first, familiar phenomena, cently appeared in the Edinburgh Review, in such as the falling of an apple to the ground, which an attempt is made to bring miracles. which they do not think require any ex-to a certain extent, into the common cateplanation; secondly, strange and striking gory of natural phenomena. Of the three events, such as a great national pestilence, heads under which the uneducated classify or the sudden death of a healthy man, which events, science has long ago united the two they regard as the results of a special inter- first. On the one hand, she brings the fallposition of Providence; and, lastly, miracles, ing of the apple under a general law, in spite and the supernatural generally. This clas- of its familiarity; and, on the other hand, sification is, of course, made very roughly, she brings plague and sudden death under and, in most cases, quite unconsciously; but general laws, in spite of their strangeness, it is, nevertheless, certain that, in their eyes, Miracles remain, and it is now attempted to every event which they observe, or can im- bring these into the same list. Hitherto, the agine, would come under one of these three human reason has had its choice of two heads. The uneducated man, therefore, does courses in reference to miracles. It might not explicitly recognize any such thing as either deny them, and say that the accounts a law of nature. Implicitly, it is true, he which we have are the products of delusion does. If he were asked why an apple falls or imposture, or it might bow the head, and to the ground, he would probably answer, admit that its domain is limited. But the "because it is natural;" and if pressed for Edinburgh reviewer thinks that he has disan explanation, would give it in some nearly covered a middle way. He believes in miridentical proposition, such as that it always acles, but denies that they are supernatural. does fall, and must as a matter of course. Superhuman he admits them to be; but this In this answer there lies hid, no doubt, the he holds to be something quite distinct and notion of a natural law; but this notion has different from supernatural. The latter not with him assumed any explicit shape. It word, he thinks, implies that the laws of nais this absence of any desire of finding a law ture are suspended or violated, whereas the which marks, above all things, the contrast former only implies that they are applied in between an uncultivated and a cultivated a certain way by the divine will; and he mind. A cultivated mind craves, in every contends that our only or chief difficulty in case, a rational or scientific method which conceiving a miracle arises from our supposmay connect or underlie phenomena. Where ing without any reason that it involves a a scientific method is not attainable, it con- "violation of the laws of nature." To sum tents itself with an unscientific method; but up in his own words, "The intellectual yoke it does so with an uneasy spirit, and haunted involved in the common idea of the superwith a desire to seize the hidden clue, which natural is a yoke which men impose on thema true imagination tells it must be some- selves. Obscure language and confused where discoverable. We have seen this thought are the main causes of the diffistrikingly exemplified in almost every prov-culty."

ince of thought. Naturalists have long col- The case which the reviewer puts is this. lected species upon species of every kind of Man, he says, is acquainted with a certain animal, and have arranged them by their ex-number of natural laws, and is able to use ternal marks, or, where possible, by their in- this knowledge so as to bring about certain ternal organization; but they have been results. Civilized man can accomplish things possessed by the longing to discover some more binding link, and some more real method than any external marks can supply. The same feeling inspires the physical philoopher in his researches into the nature of magnetism, electricity, and the laws of chem

which to a rude people appear miraculous, and in all probability, with the advance of knowledge his power will be immensely increased. God acts in the same way. He knows all the laws of the universe, and he * Living Age, No. 967.