private generosity, not the less true or hearty for the limits which a precarious and very moderate income necessarily imposed on it, was in accordance with the general sentiments of kindness which he was wont to express both in public and private: if he preached, he did not forget to practise. It has been well said that "the predominant characteristics of his genius are humorous fancies grafted upon melancholy impressions." Yet the term "grafted" seems hardly strong enough. Hood appears, by natural bent and permanent habit of mind, to have seen and sought for ludicrousness under all conditions: it was the first thing that struck him as a matter of intellec-. tual perception at choice. On the other hand, his nature being poetic, his sympathies acute, and the condition of his life morbid, he very frequently wrote in a tone of deep and indeed melancholy feeling, and was a master both of his own art and of the reader's emotion; but, even in work of this sort, the intellectual exercitation, when it takes precedence of the general feeling, is continually fantastic, grotesque, or positively mirthful. And so again with those of his works - including rude designs along with finished or off-hand writing - which are professedly comical: the funny twist of thought is the most essential thing; and the most gloomy or horrible subject-matter is often selected as the occasion for the horse-laugh. A man of such a faculty and such a habit of work could scarcely, in all instances, keep himself within the bounds of good taste, - a term which people are far too ready to introduce into serious discussions, for the purpose of casting disparagement upon some work which transcends the ordinary standards of appreciation, but a term nevertheless which has its important meaning and its true *Horne's New Spirit of the Age. place. Hood is too often like a man grinning awry, or interlarding serious and beautiful discourse with a nod, a wink, or a leer, neither requisite nor convenient as auxiliaries to his speech; and to do either of these things is to fail in perfect taste. Sometimes, not very often, we are allowed to reach the close of a poem of his without having our attention jogged and called off by a single interpolation of this kind; and then we feel unalloyed - what we constantly feel also even under the contrary conditions how exquisite a poetic sense, and choice a cunning of hand, were his. On the whole, we can pronounce him the finest English poet between the generation of Shelley and the generation of Tennyson. W. M. ROSSETTI. |