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Greek tragedians, and the Bible. The books of Isaiah and Job he especially admired.

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He was a blessing to the poor. He visited the sick in their beds, - for he had studied medicine that he might be able to practise on occasion. He inquired personally into their wants, and kept a regular list of industrious poor, whom he assisted with small sums to make up their accounts; and out of his income of a thousand pounds a year he bestowed a pension of one hundred upon a needy literary man.

He

In person Shelley was the beau-ideal of a poet. is described as looking "like an elegant and slender flower, whose head drooped from being overcharged with

rain."

In mind he was singularly free from all sickly sentimentalism.

"Many persons," says De Quincey, "remarked something seraphic in the expression of his features; and something seraphic there was in his nature. He would from his earliest manhood have sacrificed all that he possessed to any comprehensive purpose of good to the race of man. He looked upon the evils of existing institutions, and the vices of old societies, through the distorted media of that cruelty and injustice which had been a portion of his own bitter experience, and which had roused in him that bitter indignation against Christianity that colored his whole crusade against revealed religion."

In summing up this estimate of Shelley's poetry, what has already been quoted in another chapter may be here again applied, "it lacks flesh and blood;" and for that reason it is less widely popular than it deserves to be. Of the poet's obscurity (which has been often censured) it should be distinctly observed that it is not at all an unintelligibility purposely planned to give relish to his thought, as in other verse, but the inherent haziness of a being never quite at home on terra firma.

Shelley was not only intensely psychological, but like Spenser and Sidney, organically ethereal. At his steadiest poise, he has a tendency to soar; like the sweet-pea

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he easily escapes into regions where lower-thoughted mortals cannot follow him and his sky-born fancies. Had he but lived to gain the wisdom and experience that comes with riper years, instead of leaving us before his brown locks had known their earliest frost, he might have attained to even higher structural perfection. His matured judgment would have better regulated the selection of his themes, and would undoubtedly have corrected the rashness of his sentiment; but to the last, his poetry would have been above the grasp of minds that chiefly commerce with the actual and the real, and eschew fancies and ideals, for

"Native to the sky,

Downward he could not hie."

OUR

CHAPTER XXII.

HOOD, MACAULAY, AND LANDOR.

UR poetical literature at this time was brightened by many lively and agreeable versifiers who display among themselves refinement, taste, and classic elegance rather than force, or originality of invention, and by two poets of really creative energy. Hood has produced poems that appeal to the universal heart, and have wrought themselves into the memory of all readers of verse; and we may safely place him among distinguished poets. And independent of his high reputation in prose, Macaulay's masterly ballads will long hold their distinct place in English literature. No poet has more forcibly illustrated the lamentable truth that

"Laughter to sadness is so near allied,

But thin partitions do their bounds divide,"

than Thomas Hood, who has given to the world more puns and levities than any cotemporary author, and has written some of the most powerfully pathetic song that our literature affords.

This "poet of melancholy and of mirth" was the son of a bookseller, and born in London, 1798. Hood was educated for the counting-house; but his health being found unequal to the confinement and close application of the merchant's desk, he went to Dundee to reside with the relatives of his father, and there destiny most fortu

nately led his steps to the first round of that ladder which he afterward so successfully mounted: he became a contributor to the local newspapers and to the "Dundee Magazine." His modest judgment of his own abilities deterred him at this time from literature as a profession, and on his return to London he applied himself assiduously to the art of engraving, in which he acquired a skill that enabled him in after-years to illustrate his humors and fancies by those quaint devices which have given rare effect to his drolleries.

About the year 1821 Hood adopted literature as a profession, and was installed as regular assistant to the "London Magazine." In this congenial work he became the associate of the best literary men of the time, and in that happy, genial intercourse gradually developed his own intellectual powers. Poor Tom Hood! his life was one of incessant exertion, embittered by ill health, straitened circumstances, and all the disquiets and uncertainties pertaining to literary bread-getting; and when one thinks of all he suffered while playing the merry harlequin for the gaping world, his puns seem sorrowful as sighs, and his jests sadder than tears! When almost prostrated with disease, the British Government, whose moderation in rewarding the national services of authors is "known unto all men," came tardily to the rescue with a nig gardly pension. It came too late for the toil-worn poet; and in May, 1845, his kindly heart, with all its sadness and its mirth, was forever stilled.

Though Hood has chiefly appeared before the world in the character of a humorist, he possessed a rich imaginative fancy, poetic insight, wonderful power over the higher passions and emotions, and a pathos that has seldom been surpassed. His productions are in various styles and forms. His first work, "Whims and Oddities," attained

"National Tales," and 66

Tilney

to great popularity. Hall," a novel, followed. Hood's prose was less attractive than his verse; and his novel was a decided failure. He next gave to the world his "Midsummer Fairies," a rich, imaginative poem, superior to any of his former productions.

As editor of the "Comic Annual," and also of some of the "Literary Annuals," Hood increased his reputation for sportive humor and poetical fancy. In the "Comic Annual," which he undertook and continued, almost unassisted, for several years, Hood treated all the leading events of the day in a fine spirit of caricature, and in a style which (like the delineation of Hogarth) will be identified by posterity as peculiarly his own.

The most original feature in Hood's humorous productions is the abundant use of puns, generally considered too contemptible for literature, but in his plastic hands made graceful and poetical, often becoming the basis of genuine humor or purest pathos, and sometimes uniting the serious and mournful in strangely effective combination, as in this description of the birth of Miss Kilmansegg.

“What different dooms our birthdays bring!
For instance, one little manikin thing

Survives to wear many a wrinkle;

While death forbids another to wake,
And a son that it took nine moons to make
Expires without even a twinkle!

"Into this world we come like ships,

Launched from the docks, and stocks, and slips,

For fortune fair or fatal;

And one little craft is cast away

In its very first trip in Babbicome Bay,

While another rides safe at Port Natal.

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