The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood

Thomas Hood

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• Publié par: sulev
• Publié le: 08 décembre 2010
• Nombre de lectures: 41
• Langue: English

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Project Gutenberg's The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood, by Thomas Hood
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Title: The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood
Author: Thomas Hood
Release Date: April 18, 2005 [EBook #15652]
Language: English
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*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE POETICAL WORKS OF THOMAS HOOD ***
Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Robert Prince, Leonard Johnson and
the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net.
THE POETICAL WORKS
OF
THOMAS HOOD
WITH BIOGRAPHICAL INTRODUCTION
BY
WILLIAM MICHAEL ROSSETTI
ENLARGED AND REVISED EDITION
A. L. BURT COMPANY, PUBLISHERS, 52-58 DUANE STREET,
NEW YORKThomas Hood.
BIOGRAPHICAL INTRODUCTION.
There were scarcely any events in the life of Thomas Hood. One condition there was
of too potent determining importance—life-long ill health; and one circumstance of
moment—a commercial failure, and consequent expatriation. Beyond this, little
presents itself for record in the outward facts of this upright and beneficial career,
bright with genius and coruscating with wit, dark with the lengthening and
deepening shadow of death.
The father of Thomas Hood was engaged in business as a publisher and
bookseller in the Poultry, in the city of London,—a member of the firm of Vernor,
Hood, and Sharpe. He was a Scotchman, and had come up to the capital early in
life, to make his way. His interest in books was not solely confined to their saleable
quality. He reprinted various old works with success; published Bloomfield's poems,
and dealt handsomely with him; and was himself the author of two novels, which are
stated to have had some success in their day. For the sake of the son rather than the
father, one would like to see some account, with adequate specimens, of these
longforgotten tales; for the queries which Thomas Hood asks concerning the piteous
woman of his Bridge of Sighs interest us all concerning a man of genius, and
interest us moreover with regard to the question of intellectual as well as natural
affinity:—"Who was his father,
Who was his mother?
Had he a sister,
Had he a brother?"
Another line of work in which the elder Hood is recorded to have been active was
the opening of the English book-trade with America. He married a sister of the
engraver Mr. Sands, and had by her a large family; two sons and four daughters
survived the period of childhood. The elder brother, James, who died early of
consumption, drew well, as did also one or two of the sisters. It would seem
therefore, when we recall Thomas Hood's aptitudes and frequent miscellaneous
practice in the same line, that a certain tendency towards fine art, as well as towards
literature, ran in the family. The consumption which killed James appears to have
been inherited from his mother; she, and two of her daughters, died of the same
disease; and a pulmonary affection of a somewhat different kind became, as we
shall see, one of the poet's most inveterate persecutors. The death of the father,
which was sudden and unexpected, preceded that of the mother, but not of James,
and left the survivors in rather straitened circumstances.
Thomas, the second of the two sons, was born in the Poultry, on or about the 23d
of May, 1799. He is stated to have been a retired child, with much quiet humor;
chuckling, we may guess, over his own quaint imaginings, which must have come in
crowds, and of all conceivable or inconceivable sorts, to judge from the products of
his after years; keeping most of these fancies and surprises to himself, but every
now and then letting some of them out, and giving homely or stolid bystanders an
inkling of insight into the many-peopled crannies of his boyish brain. He received his
education at Dr. Wanostrocht's school at Clapham. It is not very clear how far this
education extended:[1] I should infer that it was just about enough, and not more
than enough, to enable Hood to shift for himself in the career of authorship, without
serious disadvantage from inadequate early training, and also without much aid
thence derived—without, at any rate, any such rousing and refining of the literary
sense as would warrant us in attributing to educational influences either the
inclination to become an author, or the manipulative power over language and style
which Hood displayed in his serious poems, not to speak of those of a lighter kind.
We seem to see him sliding, as it were, into the profession of letters, simply through
capacity and liking, and the course of events—not because he had resolutely made
up his mind to be an author, nor because his natural faculty had been steadily or
studiously cultivated. As to details, it may be remarked that his schooling included
some amount—perhaps a fair average amount—of Latin. We find it stated that he
had a Latin prize at school, but was not apt at the language in later years. He had
however one kind of aptitude at it—being addicted to the use of familiar Latin
quotations or phrases, cited with humorous verbal perversions.
In all the relations of family life, and the forms of family affection, Hood was simply
exemplary. The deaths of his elder brother and of his father left him the principal
reliance of his mother, herself destined soon to follow them to the tomb: he was an
excellent and devoted son. His affection for one of his sisters, Anne, who also diedshortly afterwards, is attested in the beautiful lines named The Deathbed,—
"We watched her breathing through the night."
At a later date, the loves of a husband and a father seem to have absorbed by far
the greater part of his nature and his thoughts: his letters to friends are steeped and
drenched In "Jane," "Fanny," and "Tom junior." These letters are mostly divided
between perpetual family details and perennial jocularity: a succession of witticisms,
or at lowest of puns and whimsicalities, mounts up like so many squibs and
crackers, fizzing through, sparkling amid, or ultimately extinguished by, the
inevitable shower—the steady rush and downpour—of the home-affections. It may
easily be inferred from this account that there are letters which one is inclined to
read more thoroughly, and in greater number consecutively, than Hood's.
The vocation first selected for Hood, towards the age of fifteen, was one which he
did not follow up for long—that of an engraver. He was apprenticed to his uncle Mr.
Sands, and afterwards to one of the Le Keux family. The occupation was ill-suited to
his constantly ailing health, and this eventually conduced to his abandoning it. He
then went to Scotland to recruit, remaining there among his relatives about five
years.[2] According to a statement made by himself, he was in a merchant's office
within this interval; it is uncertain, however, whether this assertion is to be accepted
as genuine, or as made for some purpose of fun. His first published writing appeared
in the Dundee Advertiser in 1814—his age being then, at the utmost, fifteen and a
half; this was succeeded by some contribution to a local magazine. But as yet he
had no idea of authorship as a profession.
Towards the middle of the year 1820, Hood was re-settled in London, improved in
health, and just come of age. At first he continued practising as an engraver; but in
1821 he began to act as a sort of sub-editor for the London Magazine after the death
of the editor, Mr. Scott, in a duel. He concocted fictitious and humorous answers to
correspondents—a humble yet appropriate introduction to the insatiable habit and
faculty for out-of-the-way verbal jocosity which marked-off his after career from that of
all other excellent poets.
His first regular contribution to the magazine, in July, 1821, was a little poem To
Hope: even before this, as early at any rate as 1815, he was in the frequent practice
of writing correctly and at some length in verse, as witnessed by selections, now in
print, from what he had composed for the amusement of his relatives. Soon
afterwards, a private literary society was the recipient of other verses of the same
order. The lines To Hope were followed, in the London Magazine, by the Ode to Dr.
Kitchener and some further poems, including the important work, Lycus the
Centaur—after the publication of which, there could not be much doubt of the
genuine and uncommon powers of the new writer. The last contribution of Hood to
this magazine was the Lines to a Cold Beauty . Another early work of his, and one
which, like the verses To the Moon, affords marked evidence of the impression
which he had received from Keats's poetry, is the unfinished drama (or, as he termed
it, "romance") of Lamia: I do not find its precise date recorded. Its verse is lax, and its
tone somewhat immature; yet it shows a great deal of sparkling and diversifiedtalent. Hood certainly takes a rather more rational view than Keats did of his subject
as a moral invention, or a myth having some sort of meaning at its root. A serpent
transformed into a woman, who beguiles a youth of the highest hopes into amorous
languid self-abandonment, is clearly not, in morals,