to the Duke of Devonshire to be set on a Library Door at Chatsworth :

"Ye Devill on Two Styx (Black Letter) 2 vols. "On Cutting off Heirs with a Shilling. By Barber Beaumont.

"Percy Vere. In 40 volumes.

"On the Affinity of the Death Watch and Sheep Tick.

"Malthus's Attack of Infantry.
"Macadam's Views in Rhodes.
"Manfredi. Translated by Defoe.
"Earl Grey on Early Rising.

"The Life of Zimmermann. By Himself.
"On Trial by Jury, with remarkable Packing
Cases.

"Koscuisko on the right of the Poles to stick up for themselves.

"On Sore Throat and the Migration of the Swallow.

"Johnson's Contradictionary. "Cursory Remarks on Swearing. "The Scottish Boccaccio. By D. Cameron."

In default of longer extracts, the reader is bound to remember that the humour of Hood is to be seen in a more diffused form than such verbal samples as we have given would serve to suggest-in poems and sketches, where the mere wit and word-play are but seasoning to a wider and more continuous interest arising from lively incident and the dramatic representation of character. All in all, his "Miss Kilmansegg" is perhaps his best humorous poem of any considerable length; and among his prose-sketches the most amusing are perhaps those which take the form of letters passing between cooks, maidservants, and other illiterate persons, and giving their impressions of public and private matters in their own style and spelling.

Well, but what is it all worth? In truth, "I don't know; nor you don't know; nor none of us don't know;" but this we all feel that it is worth something. The day surely is past in which it was thought necessary to apologise for humour; and, despite a few obstinate dissenters, the peculiarly affectionate spirit with which our recent philosophy has been disposed to regard humour in general, is now gladly extended, by all consistent persons, even to that longvilified form of humour which consists in word-play and pun. As to the use of

that or of any other kind of humourthis is not the only case in which it would be well once for all to adopt the principle, that the justification of a thing is to be sought, a priori, in the fact that it proceeds from obedience to an innate function, as well as, a posteriori, in an attempted appreciation of its calculable effects. But, if an answer to the question, "Cui bono?" is still demanded, one may point out that, just as in reading a great poem or other serious work of imagination, two kinds of benefit are distinguishable-the benefit, on the one hand, of the actual matter of thought, the images, the expressions, delivered into the mind from it, and either remaining there to be recovered by the memory when wanted, or playing more occultly into the underprocesses of the mind that lie beneath conscious memory; and the benefit, on the other hand, of the momentary stir, or wrench, or enthusiastic rouse, given to the mind in the act of reading—so, with a difference, is it with humorous writing too. First, there is the actual intellectual efficiency afterwards of the good things communicated-whether they be bits of shrewd sense, or maxims, or touching combinations of ideas, or permanent fancies of mirth for the mental eye; and, secondly, there is the twitch given to the mind, along with every good thing, in the act of receiving it, and the total shampooing or exhilaration resulting from their sum. But the reader will probably like to work out the rest of the psychology of the subject for himself.

To redeem Hood, however, from the consequences of any adverse decision that might be come to on this ground by the narrower utilitarians of literature, there remains yet a select class of his writings, characterised by the presence of moral and speculative purpose, to an extent that ought to satisfy the strictest advocate for the consecration of genius to philanthropic aims and the service of struggling opinion. Like other men, Hood had his "fixed ideas" in lifepermanent thoughts and convictions, in behalf of which he could become pugna

His

cious or even savage, or under the excitement of which every show of humour would fall off from him, and he would appear as a man purely sorrowful and serious. The sentiment of Anti-Pharisaism may be regarded as traditional in all men of popular literary genius; and back from our own days to those of Burns and still farther, British Literature has abounded with expressions of it, each more or less powerful in its time, but not superseding the necessity of another, and still another, in the times following. Almost last in the long list of these poets of Anti-Pharisaism comes the name of Hood. writings are full of this sentiment, and especially of protests against over-rigid Sabbatarianism. On no subject did he so systematically and resolutely exert his powers of sarcasm and wit; and perhaps the English language does not contain any single poem from which the opponents of extreme Sabbatarianism and of what is called religious formality in general can borrow more pungent quotations, or which is really in its way a more eloquent assertion of personal intellectual freedom, than the Ode to Rae Wilson, Esquire. The following passage is very popular:

"The Saints!-the Pharisees, whose beadle stands

Beside a stern coercive kirk,

A piece of human mason-work,

Calling all sermons contrabands

"Thrice blessed, rather, is the man with whom

The gracious prodigality of nature, The balm, the bliss, the beauty, and the bloom,

The bounteous providence in every feature, Recall the good Creator to his creature, Making all earth a fane, all heaven its dome! To his tuned spirit the wild heather-bells Ring Sabbath knells;

The jubilate of the soaring lark

Is chaunt of clerk;

For choir, the thrush and the gregarious linnet;

The sod's a cushion for his pious want;
And, consecrated by the heaven within it,
The sky-blue pool, a font.
Each cloud-capp'd mountain is a holy altar;
An organ breathes in every grove;
And the full heart's a Psalter,
Rich in deep hymns of gratitude and love!"

Fortunately for Hood's reputation, even with those whom he here attacks, he has left other pieces, the sentiment of which cannot be discussed controversially, but belongs to the universal heart. "He sang the Song of the Shirt" was the epitaph which Hood chose for himself; but, though we might pardon the taste that would consent to such a selection, because Hood himself made it, we should be sure of the general verdict that the finest thing that Hood ever wrote was his "Bridge of Sighs." Who can cross London Bridge at night, or can read his newspaper for many days successively, without

hands!

lyric?

But heard, far off, the mobled woe

Of some new plaintiff for the light;
And leave your dear reward, and go
In haste, yet once again to smite
The hills, and, like a flood, unlock
Another nation from the rock;

Oh ye who, sure of nought but God
And death, go forth to turn the page
Of life, and in your heart's best blood
Date anew the chaptered age;

Ye o'er whom, as the abyss

O'er Curtius, sundered worlds shall kiss,

Do

ye

dream what ye have done? What ye are and shall be? Nay, Comets rushing to the sun,

And dyeing the tremendous way With glory, look not back, nor know How they blind the earth below.

From wave to wave our race rolls on, In seas that rise, and fall, and rise; Our tide of Man beneath the moon

Sets from the verge to yonder skies;
Throb after throb the ancient might
In such a thousand hills renews the
earliest height.

'Tis something, o'er that moving vast,
To look across the centuries
Which heave the purple of a past
That was, and is not, and yet is,
And in that awful light to see
The crest of far Thermopyla,
And, as a fisher draws his fly

Ripple by ripple, from shore to shore, To draw our floating gaze, and try

The more by less, the less by more,
And find a peer to that sublime
Old height in the last surge of time.

'Tis something yet great Clio's reed,
Greek with the sap of Castaly,
In her most glorious word midway
Begins to weep and bleed;
And Clio, lest she burn the line
Hides her blushing face divine,

While that maternal muse, so white
And lean with trying to forget,
Moves her mute lips, and, at the sight,
As if all suns that ever set
Slanted on a mortal ear

What man can feel but cannot hear,

A presage blanched the Olympian hill To moonlight: the old Thunderer nods;

But all the sullen air is chill

With rising Fates and younger gods. Jove saw his peril and spake : one blind Pale coward touched them with mankind.

What, then, on that Sicanian ground Which soured the blood of Greece to shame,

To make the voice of praise resound
A triumph that, if Grecian fame
Blew it on her clarion old,
Had warmed the silver trump to gold!

What, then, brothers! to brim o'er
The measure Greece could scarcely
brim,

And, calling Victory from the dim
Of that remote Thessalian shore,
Make his naked limbs repeat
What in the harness of defeat

He did of old; and, at the head

Of modern men, renewing thus Thermopylæ, with Xerxes fled

And every Greek Leonidas,
Untitle the proud Past and crown
The heroic ages in our own!

Oh ye, whom they who cry "how long"
See, and-as nestlings in the nest
Sink silent-sink into their rest;
Oh ye, in whom the Right and Wrong
That this old world of Day and Night
Crops upon its black and white,
Shall strike, and, in the last extremes
Of final best and worst, complete
The circuit of your light and heat;
Oh ye who walk upon our dreams,
And live, unknowing how or why
The vision and the prophecy,

Breathe a nobler year whose least Worst day is as the fast and feast

Of men-and, with such steps as chime To nothing lower than the ears

Can hear to whom the marching spheres

Beat the universal time

Thro' our Life's perplexity,
March the land and sail the sea,

O'er those fields where Hate hath led
So oft the hosts of Crime and Pain-
March to break the captive's chain,
To heal the sick, to raise the dead,
And, where the last deadliest rout
Of furies cavern, to cast out

Those Dæmons,-ay, to meet the fell

Foul belch of swarming Satan hot From Etna, and down Etna's throat Drench that vomit back to hellIn the east your star doth burn; The tide of Fate is on the turn;

The thrown powers that mar or make Man's good lie shed upon the sands, Or on the wave about to break

Are flotsam that nor swims nor stands; Earth is cold and pale, a-swoon With fear; to the watch-tower of noon

The sun climbs sick and sorrowful,

Or, like clouded Cæsar, doth fold His falling greatness to behold Some crescent evil near the full. Hell flickers; and the sudden reel Of fortune, stopping in mid-wheel

Till the shifted current blows,

Clacks the knocking balls of chance; And the metred world's advance Pauses at the rhythmic close; One stave is ended, and the next Chords its discords on the vext

And tuning Time: this is the hour

When weak Nature's need should be The Hero's opportunity,

And heart and hand are Right and Power,

And he who will not serve may reign, And who dares well dares nought in vain.

Behind you History stands a-gape;

On either side the incarnadine Hot nations in whom war's wild wine Burns like vintage thro' the grape, See you, ruddy with the morn Of Freedom, see you, and for scorn

As on that old day of wrath

The hosts drew off in hope and doubt, And the shepherd-boy stept out To sling Judæa upon Gath, Furl in two, and, still as stone, Like a red sea let you on.

On! ay tho' at war's alarms

That sea should flood into a foe! On the horns of Jericho Blow when Virtue blows to arms. Numberless or numbered-on ! Men are millions, God is one. On! who waits for favouring gales? What hap can ground your Argosy? A nation's blessings fill your sails,

And tho' her wrongs scorched ocean dry, Yet ah! her blood and tears could roll Another sea from pole to pole.

On day round ye, summer bloom

Beneath, in your young veins the bliss Of youth! Who asks more? Ask but this,

-And ask as One will ask at DoomIf lead be true, if steel be keen? If hearts be pure, if hands be clean? On! night round ye, the worst roak

Of Fortune poisoning all youth's bliss; Each grass a sword, each Delphic oak An omen! Who dreads? Dread but

this,

Blunted steel and lead unsure,
Hands unclean and hearts impure!
Full of love to God and man

As girt Martha's wageless toil;
Gracious as the wine and oil
Of the good Samaritan;
Healing to our wrongs and us
As Abraham's breast to Lazarus;

Piteous as the cheek that gave
Its patience to the smiter, still
Rendering nought but good for ill,
Tho' the greatest good ye have
Be iron, and your love and ruth
Speak but from the cannon's mouth-

On! you servants of the Lord,

In the right of servitude

Reap the life He sowed, and blood His frenzied people with the sword, And the blessing shall be yours, That falls upon the peacemakers! Ay, tho' trump and clarion blare, Tho' your charging legions rock Earth's bulwarks, tho' the slaughtered air

Be carrion, and the encountered shock Of your clashing battles jar The rung heav'ns, this is Peace, not War!

With that two-edged sword that cleaves

Crowned insolence to awe,
And whose backward lightning lea ve
Licence stricken into law,
Fill, till slaves and tyrants cease,
The sacred panurgy of peace!

Peace, as outraged peace can rise
When her eye that watched and
prayed

Sees upon the favouring skies

The great sign, so long delayed, And from hoofed and trampled sod She leaps transfigured to a god, Meets amid her smoking land

The chariot of careering war, Locks the whirlwind of his car, Wrests the thunder from his hand, And, with his own bolt down-hurl'd, Brains the monster from the world! Hark! he comes! His nostrils cast Like chaff before him flocks and men. Oh proud, proud day, in yonder glen Look on your heroes! Look your last, Your last and draw in with the passionate eye

Of love's last look the sights that paint eternity.

He comes—a tempest hides their place! Tis morn. The long day wanes. The

loud

Storm lulls. Some march out of the cloud,

The princes of their age and race;
And some the mother earth that bore
Such sons hath loved too well to let them
leave her more.

But oh, when joy-bells ring

For the living that return, And the fires of victory burn, And the dancing kingdoms sing, And beauty takes the brave To the breast he bled to save,

Will no faithful mourner weep Where the battle-grass is gory, And deep the soldier's sleep

In his martial cloak of glory, Sleeps the dear dead buried low? Shall they be forgotten? Lo, On beyond that vale of fire

This babe must travel ere the child Of yonder tall and bearded sire

His father's image hath fulfilled,
He shall see in that far day
A race of maidens pale and grey.
Theirs shall be nor cross nor hood,
Common rite nor convent roof,
Bead nor bell shall put to proof
A sister of that sisterhood;
But by noonday or by night
In her eyes there shall be light.
And as a temple organ, set

To its best stop by hands long gone,
Gives new ears the olden tone
And speaks the buried master yet,
Her lightest accents have the key
Of ancient love and victory.

And, as some hind, whom his o'erthrown And dying king o'er hill and flood Sends laden with the fallen crown,

Breathes the great trust into his blood Till all his conscious forehead wears The splendid secret that he bears,

For ever, everywhere the same,

Thro' every changing time and scene, In widow's weeds and lowly name

She stands a bride, she moves a queen; The flowering land her footstep knows; The people bless her as she goes,

Whether upon your sacred days

She peers the mightiest and the best,
Or whether, by the common ways,
The babe leans from the peasant's
breast,

While humble eyelids proudly fill,
And momentary Sabbaths still