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no relation to letters; hoping that authorship would proffer him thenceforth the freshness of variety, that upon occasion of loss or trouble it might be his solace and recompense, and that, with a less-jaded brain, what writing he could accomplish would be of a more enduring kind. It is so true, however, that one nail drives out another! As an editor, this person was unable to do anything beyond his newspaper-work; as a business-man, with not the soundest health, and with his heart, of course, not fully in his occupation, he found himself neither at ease in his means, nor able to gain sturdier hours for literature than vigorous journalist-authors filch from recreation and sleep. Fortunate in every way is the æsthetic writer who has sufficient income to support.him altogether, or, at least, when added to the stipend earned by first-class work, to enable him to follow art without harassment. For want of such a resource, poets, with their delicate temperaments, may struggle along from year to year, composing at intervals which other men devote to social enjoyment, rarely doing their best; possibly with masterpieces stifled in their brains till the creative period is ended; misjudged by those whom they most respect, and vexed with thoughts of what they could perform, if sacred common duties were not so incumbent upon them. Nevertheless, if Hood's life had been one of scholastic ease, in all likelihood he would not have written that for which his name is cherished. He was eminently a journalist-poet, and must be observed in that capacity. Continuous editorial labor, beginning in 1821 with his post upon The London Magazine, and including his management of The Comic Annual, Hood's Own, The New Monthly, and, lastly, Hood's Magazine,-established but little more than a year before his death,-this journalistic experience, doubtless, gave him closer knowledge of the wants and emotions of the masses, and especially of the populace in London's murky streets. Even his facetious poems depict the throng upon the walks. The sweep, the laborer, the sailor, the tradesman, even the dumb beasts that render service or companionship, appeal to his kindly or mirthful sensibilities and figure in his rhymes. Thus he was, also, London's poet, the nursling of the city which gave him birth, and now holds sacred his resting-place in her cemetery of Kensall Green. Like the gentle Elia, whom he resembled in other ways, he loved "the

sweet security of streets," and well, indeed, he knew them. None but such as he could rightly speak for their wanderers and poor.

The rich philanthropist or aristocratic author may honestly give his service to the lower classes, and endeavor by contact with them to enter into their feelings, yet it is almost impossible, unless nurtured yourself at the withered bosom of our Lady of Poverty, to read the language of her patient foster-children. The relation of almoner and beneficiary still exists, a sure though indefinable barrier. Hood was not exclusively a poet of the people, like Elliott or Béranger, but one who interpreted the popular heart, being himself a sufferer, and living from hand to mouth by ill-requited toil. If his culture divided him somewhat from the poor, he all the more endured a lack of that free confession which is the privilege of those than whom he was no richer. The genteel poor must hide their wounds, even from one another. Hood solaced his own trials by a plea for those "whom he saw suffer." A man of kindred genius, the most potent of the band of humanitarian writers, who, in his time, sought to effect reform by means of imaginative art, also understood the poor, but chiefly through the memory of his own youthful experiences. In after years the witchery of prose-romance brought to Charles Dickens a competence that Hood never could hope to acquire. Most men of robust physical vigor, who have known privation, yield to luxury when they achieve success, and Dickens was no exception; but his heart was with the multitude, he never was quite at home in stately mansions, and, though accused of snobbery in other forms, would admit no one's claim to patronize him by virtue of either rank. or fortune.

We readily perceive that Hood's modes of feeling resembled those which intensify the prose of Dickens, though he made no approach to the latter in reputation and affluent power. Could Dickens have written verse, an art in which his experiments were, for the most part, utter failures,-it would have been marked by wit and pathos like Hood's, and by graphic, Doresque effects, that have grown to be called melodramatic, and that give a weird strength to "The Dream of Eugene Aram," "The Haunted House," and to several passages in the death scene of " Miss Kilmansegg.' Hood nearly has equaled Dickens in the

analysis of a murderer's spectral conscience:

"But Guilt was my grim Chamberlain That lighted me to bed;

And drew my midnight curtains round, With fingers bloody red!

"Merrily rose the lark, and shook

The dew-drop from its wing;
But I never marked its morning flight,
I never heard it sing:

For I was stooping once again
Under the horrid thing."

The old Hall in "The Haunted House" is a counterpart to the shadowy grand-staircase in the Dedlock Mansion, or to Mr. Tulkinghorn's chamber-where the Roman points through loneliness and gloom to the dead body upon the floor. This poem is elaborate with that detail, which, so painful and over-prolonged, gives force to many of Dickens' descriptive interludessuch as, for instance, the opening chapter of Bleak House. The poet and the novelist were fellow-workers in a melo

dramatic period, and there is something of stage effect in the marked passages of either. Take an example from "Miss Kilmansegg:"

"As she went with her taper up the stair, How little her swollen eye was aware

That the shadow which follow'd was double! Or, when she closed her chamber-door, It was shutting out, and for evermore, The world-and its worldly trouble.

"And when she quench'd the taper's light,
How little she thought, as the smoke took flight,
That her day was done-and merged in a night
Of dreams and duration uncertain-

Or, along with her own,
That a Hand of Bone
Was closing mortality's curtain!"

In extravagance, also, Dickens and Hood resembled each other, and it seems perfectly natural that the fantasies of both should be illustrated by the same Cruikshank or Phiz. Both, also, give us pleasant glimpses of England's greensward and hedge-rows, yet the special walk and study of each were in the streets and alleys of London; together they breathed the same burdened, whispering, emotional atmosphere of the monster town. They were of the circle which Jerrold drew around him, the London group of humane satirists and poets. Theirs was no amateur or closetwork, but the flower of zeal and fellowcraft, which binds the workmen's hearts

together, and makes art at once an industry, a heroism, and a vitalizing faith.

Our digression at length has brought us to the special group of lyrics upon which Hood's fame indubitably rests. The manner of what I call his proper style had been indicated long before, in such pieces as "The Elm Tree" and "The Dream of Eugene Aram," of which the former is too prolonged, a still-life painting, barren of human elements-and the latter, as has been seen, a remarkable ballad, approaching Coleridge's "Rime of the Ancient Mariner" in conception and form. In Hood's case the intellectual flames shone more brightly as his physical heat went out; in the very shadow of death he was doing his best, with a hand that returned to the pure ideals of his youth, and a heart that gained increase of gentleness and compassion as its throbs timed more rapidly the brief remainder of his earthly sojourn. journ. In his final year, while editor of Hood's Magazine, a journal to which he literally gave his life, he composed three of the touching lyrics to which I refer: "The Lay of the Laborer," "The Lady's Dream," and "The Bridge of Sighs." The memorable "Song of the Shirt was written a few months earlier, having appeared anonymously in the preceding Christmas number of Punch. With regard to this poem the instinct of the author's devoted wife, who constituted his first public, was prophetic when she said: "Now, mind, Hood, mark my words, this will tell wonderfully! It is one of the best things you ever did!" No other lyric ever was written that at once laid such hold upon the finest emotions of people of every class or nationality, throughout the whole reading or listening world-for it drew tears from the eyes of princes, and was chanted to rude music by ballad-mongers in the wretchedest streets.

The judgment of the people has rightly estimated the two last-named poems above their companion-pieces. They are the unequaled presentment of their respective themes, the expressed blood and agony of "London's heart." "The Song of the Shirt" was the impulsive work of an evening, and open to some technical criticism. But who so cold as to criticise it? Consider the place, the occasion, the despair of thousands of working-women at that time, and was ever more inspired and thrilling sermon preached by a dying poet? With like sacredness of feeling, and superior

melody, "The Bridge of Sighs" is a still more admirable poem. It is felicitously wrought in a meter before almost unused, and which few will henceforth have the temerity to borrow: "Who henceforth shall sing to thy pipe, O thrice-lamented! who set mouth to thy reeds?" The tragedy of its stanzas lies at the core of our modern life. The woes of London, the mystery of London Bridge, the spirit of the materials used by Dickens, or by Ainsworth, in a score of turbid romances, all these are concentrated in this precious lyric, as if by chemic process in the hollow of a ring. It is the sublimation of charity and forgiveness, the compassion of the Gospel itself; the theme is here touched once and forever; other poets who have essayed it, with few exceptions, have smirched their fingers, and soiled crushed the shell they picked from the mud, in their very effort to redeem it from pollution. The dramatic sorrow, which attends the lot of womanhood in the festering city, reaches its ultimate expression in "The Bridge of Sighs," and "The Song of the Shirt." They were the twinprayers which the suffering poet sent up from his death-bed, and, methinks, should serve as an expiation for the errors of his simple life.

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Our brief summary of the experience and work of Thomas Hood has shown that his more careful poetry is marked by natural melody, simplicity, and directness of language, and is noticeable rather for sweetness than imaginative fire. There are no strained and affected cadences in his songs. Their diction is so clear that the expression of the thought has no resisting medium-a high excellence in ballad-verse. With respect to their sentiment, all must admire the absolute health of Hood's poetry written during years of prostration and disease. He warbled cheering and trustful music, either as a foil to personal distress-which would have been quite too much to bear, had he encountered its echo in his own voice, or else through a manly resolve that, come what might, he would have nothing to do with the poetry of despair. The man's humor, also, buoyed him up, and thus was its own, exceeding great reward.

How prolonged his worldly trials were,what were the privations and constant apprehensions of the little group beneath his swaying roof-tree, something of this is told in the "Memorials" compiled by his

daughter, and annotated by his son-the Tom Hood of our day: an imperfect and disarranged biography, yet one which few can read without emotion. Ill health lessened his power to work, and kept him poor, and poverty in turn reacted disastrously upon his health. With all his reputation he was a literary hack, whose income varied as the amount of writing he could execute in a certain time. To such a man, however, the devotion of his family, and the love of Jane Reynolds,—his heroic, accomplished wife, a woman in every way fit to be the companion of an artist and poet, were abundant compensation for his patient struggle in their behalf. To the last moment, propped up in bed, bleeding from the lungs, almost in the agony of death, he labored equally in a serious or sportive vein; but while thousands were relishing his productions, they gave no delight to the anxious circle at home. One passage in the Memorials tells the whole sad story: "His own family never enjoyed his quaint and humorous fancies, for they were all associated with memories of illness and anxiety. Although Hood's Comic Annual, as he himself used to remark with pleasure, was in every home seized upon, and almost worn out by the handling of little fingers, his own children did not enjoy it till the lapse of many years had mercifully softened down some of the sad recollections connected with it."

The sorrow and anguish of the closing hours were not without their alleviation. His last letter was written to Sir Robert Peel, in gratitude for the pension conferred on Mrs. Hood. When it was known that he lay dying, public and private sympathy, for which he cared so greatly, comforted him in unnumbered ways. His friends, neighbors, brother-authors, readers, and admirers, throughout the kingdom, alike profoundly touched, gave him words of consolation as well as practical aid. A new generation has arisen since his death at the age of 46, but it is pleasant to remember the eagerness and generosity with which, seven years afterward, the English people contributed to erect the beautiful monument that stands above his grave. The rich gave their guineas; the poor artizans and laborers, the needlewomen and dress-makers, in hosts, their shillings and pence. Beneath the image of the poet, which rests upon the structure, are sculptured the words which he himself,

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FROM the grave of Hood, we pass to observe a living writer, in some respects his antipode, who deals with precisely those elements of modern life which the former had least at heart. It is true that Matthew Arnold, whose first volume was issued in 1848, had little reputation as a poet until some years after Hood's decease; but up to that time English verse was not marked by its present extreme variety, nor had the so-called school of culture obtained a foothold. Arnold's circumstances have been more favorable than Hood's, and in youth his mental discipline was thorough; yet the humorist was the truer poet, although three-fourths of his productions never should have been written, and although there scarcely is a line of Arnold's which is not richly worth preserving. It may be said of Hood that he was naturally a better poet than circumstances permitted him to prove himself; of Arnold, that through culture and good fortune he has achieved greater poetical successes than one should expect from his native gifts. His verse often is the result not of "the first intention," but of determination and judgment; yet his taste is so cultivated, and his mind so clear, that, between the two, he has o'erleapt the bounds of nature, and almost falsified the adage that a poet is born, not made.

Certainly he is an illustrious example of the power of training and the human will. Lacking the ease of the lyrist, the boon of a melodious voice, he has, by a tour de force, composed poems which show little deficiency of either gift,-has won reputation, and impressed himself upon his age, as the apostle of culture, spiritual freedom, and classical restraint.

There is a passion of the voice, and a passion of the brain. If Arnold, as a singer, lacks spontaneity, his intellectual processes, on the contrary, are spontaneous, and sometimes rise to a loftiness which no mere lyrist, without unusual mental faculty, can ever attain. His head not only predominates, but exalts his somewhat languid heart. A poet once sang a woman:

Affections are as thoughts to her,"

but thought with Arnold is poetical as affection and in a measure supplies its place. He has an intellectual love for the good, beautiful, or true, but imparts to us a vague impression that, like a certain American statesman, he cares less for man in the concrete than for man in the abstracta not unusual phenomenon among æsthetic reformers. While admiring his delineations of Heine, the De Guérins, Joubert, and other far-away saints or heroes, we feel that he possibly may overlook some pilgrim at his roadsidedoor. Such is the effect of his writings, at this distance, and it is by his works that an artist chiefly should be judged.

Through the whole course of Arnold's verse one searches in vain for a blithe, musical, gay or serious off-hand poem: such, for example, as Thackeray's "Bouillabaise," Allingham's "Mary Donnelly," Hood's "I remember, I remember," or Kingsley's "The Sands O'Dee." Yet he can be very nobly lyrical in certain uneven measures depending upon tone, and which, like "Philomela,' "Philomela," express an ecstatic sensibility:

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In other poems, which reveal his saddest or profoundest intellectual moods, he is subjective and refutes his own theory. For his work claims to be produced upon a theory that of epic or classical objectivity, well and characteristically set forth in the preface to his edition of 1854. Possibly this was written shortly after the completion of some purely objective poem, like "Sohrab and Rustum," and the theory deduced from the performance. An objective method is well suited to a man of large or subtile intellect, and educated tastes, who is deficient in the minor sympathies. Through it he can allow his imagination full play, and give a pleasure to readers without affecting that feminine instinct which really is not a constituent of his poetic mold.

Arnold has little quality or lightness of

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touch. His hand is stiff, his voice rough by nature, yet both are refined by practice and thorough study of the best models. His shorter meters, used as the framework of songs and lyrics, rarely are successful; but through youthful familiarity with the Greek choruses he has caught something of their irregular beauty. "The Strayed Reveler" has much of this unfettered charm. Arnold is restricted in the range of his affections; but that he is one of those who can love very loyally the few with whom they do enter into sympathy, through consonance of traits or experiences, is shown in the emotional poems entitled "Faded Leaves" and "Indifference," and in later pieces, which display more lyrical fluency, Calais Sands" and "Dover Beach." A prosaic manner injures many of his lyrics at least, he does not seem clearly to distinguish between the functions of poetry and of prose. He is more at ease in long, stately and swelling measures, whose graver movement accords with a serious and elevated purpose. Judged as works of art, "Sohrab and Rustum and "Balder Dead" really are majestic poems. Their blank-verse, while independent of Tennyson's, is the result, like that of the "Morte d'Arthur," of its author's Homeric studies; is somewhat too slow in "Balder Dead," and fails of the antique simplicity, but is terse, elegant, and always in the grand manner." Upon the whole, this is a remarkable production; it stands at the front of all experiments in a field remote as the northern heavens and almost as glacial and clear. Fifty lines, which describe the burning of Balder's ship-his funeral pyre, have an imaginative grandeur rarely excelled in the "Idyls of the King." Such work is what lay beyond Hood's power even to attempt; and shows the larger mold of Arnold's intellect. first-class genius would display the varying endowments of them both.

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Sohrab and Rustum" is a still finer poem, because more human, and more complete in itself. The verse is not so devoid of epic swiftness. The powerful conception of the relations between the two chieftains, and the slaying of the son by the father, are tragical and heroic. The descriptive passage at the close, for diction and breadth of tone, would do honor to any living poet :

"But the majestic river floated on,

Out of the mist and hum of that low land,
Into the frosty starlight, and there mov'd,

Rejoicing, through the hush'd Chorasmian waste
Right for the Polar Star, past Orgunjè,
Under the solitary moon: he flow'd

Brimming, and bright, and large: then sands begin
To hem his watery march, and dam his streams,
And split his currents; that for many a league
The shorn and parcell'd Oxus strains along
Oxus, forgetting the bright speed he had
Through beds of sand and matted rushy isles-
In his high mountain cradle in Pamere,

A foil'd circuitous wanderer:-till at last
The long'd-for dash of waves is heard, and wide
His luminous home of waters opens, bright
And tranquil, from whose floor the new-bathed stars
Emerge, and shine upon the Aral Sea."

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"Tristram and Iseult," an obscure, monotonous variation upon a well-worn theme, is far inferior to either of the foregoing episodes. "The Sick King in Bokhara' and "Mycerinus" are better works, but Arnold's narrative poems, and the " Empedocles on Etna,"-his classical drama,-are studies, in an age which he deems uncreative, of as many forms of early art, and successively undertaken in default of congenial latter-day themes. Their author, a poet and scholar, offers, as an escape from certain heresies, and as a substitute for poetry of the natural kind, a recurrence to antique or mediæval thought and forms. However well executed, is this a genuine addition to literature? I have elsewhere said that finished reproductions cannot be accepted in lieu of a nation's spontaneous song. Arnold thus explains his own position: "In the sincere endeavor to learn and practice, amid the bewildering confusion of our times, what is sound and true in poetical art, I seemed to myself to find the only sure guidance, the only solid footing, among the ancients. They, at any rate, knew what they wanted in Art, and we do not. It is this uncertainty which is disheartening, and not hostile criticism." This is frank and noteworthy language, but does not the writer protest too much? Are not his sadness and doubt an unconscious confession of his own special restrictions, restrictions other than those which, as he perceives, belong to England in her weary age, or those which, in a period of transition from the phenomenal to the scientific, are common to the whole literary world? Were he a greater poet, or even a small, sweet singer, would he stop to reason so curiously? Rather would he chant and chant away, to ease his quivering heart-strings of some impassioned strain.

We cannot accept his implication that

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