HOOD'S SERIOUS POEMS.

A CONTINUOUS perusal of these Poems leads to the conclusion that Hood excelled most writers in the external forms of poetry, but that, though possessing poetical powers, he seldom developed them into what criticism would call a poem, until perhaps shortly before his death. Gifted with an ear for lingual music, and possessing a most extraordinary com- mand over words, lie never fails to present a smooth and flowing verse,— unless it be in "Lyons the Centaur," where the length of line encumbers him : a quick observer of life and nature, he has a sufficiency of fresh and striking images; with a great deal of sense and reflection, he formed a true judgment upon what he observed ; his manly shrewdness detected con- ventional cants ; and he had a heart which prompted him to feel for the sufferings of mankind, without falling into the theatrical claptrap that disfigures the philanthropy of so many of his compeers. But a natural bias for verbal resemblances ever clung to him, tempting him to mar the seriousness, and sometimes the pathos of his verse, by verbal levities, if not by mere puns; his observation, having something superficial in it, piled up images • and his facility, with probably the habit of periodical writ- ing where length contends with excellence, caused him to be ever running down thoughts and exhausting topics, very curious, no doubt, and some- times almost wonderful as an appeal to perception, but injurious to poetry, which must strike the imagination and fill the mind, not employ it on happy resemblances or a singular assemblage of imagery. Besides this undue expansion, his subjects were rarely well chosen for an extended poem, or appropriately treated. A glancing notice of his more elaborate productions will better illustrate this opinion.

His most extended, and at one time probably his favourite poem, was " The Plea of the Midsummer Fairies ' ; a fiction which, assuming the life of mythological beings to depend upon the faith of mankind in their existence, brings Queen Titania and her followers to the foot of Saturn or Time, to postpone the doom impending over them from the waning belief of men. After a series of pleas, not very likely to move old Chronos, he gets angry, (one scarcely wonders that he should get impa- tient,) and is about to wreak his vengeance, when Shakspere appears, takes the fairy group under his protection, and gives them immortality by his Midsummer Night's Dream. This fiction is graceful and well imagined, but marred by injudicious treatment. The reader should have been let into the plan at starting; in default of which, and in the ab- sence of an antique air about the poem, he goes on in a maze, the drift lost, and "the pleas" seeming purposeless. But the vital defect of the poem is its length. Upwards of a thousand lines of mere allegory, badly reasoned, and relieved but by one single action, exhaust the interest and the reader.

" Hero and Leander" is a subject with more of story and human inte- rest: but about this time, (prior to 1827,) Mr. Hood had fallen into the mistaken notion of imitating the Elizabethan writers, or rather the sort of mimicry of them which Keats and Barry Cornwall had made a mode. In " The Plea of the Fairies " Spenser was his prototype, and Shak- epere's Poems in " Hero and Leander" ; so that the manner was obso- lete, and, to say truth, somewhat minute and prosaic. He also intro- duced an invention, at which we are not surprised that he should have been delighted, for most young poets would. It is not the tempest which drowns Leander, but a mermaid that, having fallen in love with him, meets him on his course, and unwittingly kills him in carrying him to her cave. This introduction is, no doubt, an addition ; it facili- tates some submarine description, and produces a double distress : but the description and the Mermaid's troubles are based upon conceits ; the simple love and anguish of Hero are overlaid ; and the reader is trans- ported to the cold and barren regions of a bastard mythology.

" Lyons the Centaur " is a poem of the same period of the author's life: its subject is the transformation of the hero into a Centaur. A river nymph having fallen in love with Lycus, confined to the dominion of Circe, applies to her rival for an incantation to make hint immortal : the jealous sorceress gives her one that shall turn him into a horse; but the nymph, horror-struck at the effect, stops short in the midst, and leaves Lycus a Centaur.

This poem is supposed to be told by the victim; and is less elaborated than some of the others. Nor is the fiction badly conceived, or its ac- companying circumstances badly designed—bating some conceits. But Hood could not walk in the dread circle of Circe and her supernatural terrors. In his hands the terrible mostly becomes horrible; and his picture of the men transformed into beasts, but retaining their human feelings, though just and even natural, is not impressive,—perhaps be- cause it is too literal and too physical in its descriptions, and the metre too like dancing doggrel. It is, however, an example of ingenious invention.

" I ran at my fears—they were fears and no more;

For the bear would not mangle my limbs, nor the boar, But moan'd; all their brutalized flesh could not smother The horrible truth—we were kin to each other!

" They were mournfully gentle, and group'd for relief, i All foes in their skin, but all friends in their grief: The leopard was there—baby-mild in its feature;

And the tiger, black-bared, with the gaze of a creature

That knew gentle pity; the bristle-back'd boar, His innocent tusks stain'd with mulberry gore; And the laughing hyiena—but laughing no more; And the snake, not with magical orbs to devise Strange death, but with woman's attraction of eyes; The tall ugly ape, that still bore a dim shine Through his hairy eclipse of a manhood divine; And the elephant stately, with more than its reason, How thoughtful in sadness ! but this is no season To reckon them up, from the lag-bellied toad To the mammoth, whose sobs shook his ponderous load. There were woes of all shapes, wretched forms, when I came, That hung down their heads with a human-like shame; The elephant hid in the boughs, and the bear Shed over his eyes the dark veil of his hair; And the womanly soul, turning sick with disgust, Tried to vomit herself from her serpentine crest; While all groan'd their groans into one at their lot, As I brought them the image of what they were not."

" Miss Kilmansegg and her Precious Leg " is a long poem of a later date, breathing the spirit of this world, and designed to illustrate the evils of an inordinate love of gold, by the story of the birth, education, home life, marriage, unhappiness, and death of an heiress, to whom wealth and the world were everything, nature and affection nothing. Hood, however, could seldom get on without a conceit ; and therefore, instead of telling the story naturally, he must make Miss Kilmansegg lose a leg by an accident, and insist on having a golden one. Such a theme is well enough for " comic songs" like those of Hudson, but is too gro- tesque for a narrative poem filling considerably upwards of a hundred pages, and professing to point a moral as well as to satirize folly and depict life. This golden leg, too, by involving as it were a story of its own, whilst it contributes to facilitate an undue expansion. " Miss Kilmansegg and her Precious Leg " is nevertheless a series of light and lively sketches, full of hits at passing foibles, mingled with graver and deeper thoughts, expressed in verse whose spirit never flags and whose movement never stumbles. The picture of the Count who comes to woo, though of too low a grade for the society he moves in, is superior to any prose on the same kind of theme, because it has less of theatrical fustian.

"And because the sex confess a charm In the man who has slash'd a head or arm, Or has been a throat's undoing, He was dress'd like one of the glorious trade, At least when glory is off parade, With a stock, and a frock, well trimm'd with braid, And frogs—that went a-wooing.

"Moreover, as Counts are apt to do,

On the left-hand side of dark inirtout, At one of those holes that buttons go through, (To be a precise recorder,)

A ribbon be wore, or rather a scrap,

About an inch of ribbon mayhap, That one of his rivals, a whimsical chap, Described as his 'Retail Order.'

"And then—and much it help'd his chance—

He could sing, and play first fiddle, and dance,

Perform charades and proverbs of France—

Act the tender, and do the cruel ; For amongst his other killing parts, He had broken a brace of female hearts, And murder'd three men in duel!

"Savage at heart, and false of tongue, Subtle with age, and smooth to the young, i

Like a snake in his coiling and curling— Such was the Count—to give him a niche—

Who came to court that heiress rich,

And knelt at her foot—one needn't say which— Besieging her Castle of Sterling."

It is not, however, in these longer works that Hood's poetical genius is best tested, but in the shorter poems which appeared subsequently; " The Haunted Honse,"—a description of a deserted mansion, published, we think, in his Magazine,—is in its entirety a most remarkable work, for the number, variety, and exquisite appropriateness of the images :.

but it wants certainty, object, and interest ; which last is sought

for by composition, not matter. Cui bond ? "To what purpose is all

this ? ' the reader is tempted to ask; and when he has been led on to the end, expecting some incident at last, and meets nothing, he feels disap-

pointed. There is a want of earnestness too in this as well as in many of

the other compositions ; which is apt to cause a similar feeling in the reader.

"Eugene Aram's Dream" is the last production we shall notice : not that we think it superior to "The Elm Tree," and it is certainly inferior to " The Song of the Shirt," but because the reader will find in it the best

specimen of the writer's characteristics. The harmony of the verse is

pleasing, if it does not rise to melody ; the images are natural, distinct, and apt : but—and here is the whole pinch—it is deficient in comprehensive- ness and imagination. Let the reader, if lie has not the poem, peruse the two following extracts. In the first, descriptive of the close of a village school, the poet shows him nothing which he could not see of himself, though he might not so well express it : the second, from the account of Clarke's murder, is too physical, except the fine passages marked in Italics.

A VILLAGE SCHOOL.

'Twas in the prime of summer time, An evening calm and cool, And four-and-twenty happy boys Came bounding out of school: There were some that ran and some that leapt, Like troutlets in a pool.

Away they sped with gamesome minds, And souls untouch'd by sin; To a level mead they came, and there They drave the wickets in;

Pleasantly shone the setting sun

Over the town of Lynn

Lilre sportive deer they coursed about, And shouted as they ran, Turning to mirth all things of earth, As only boyhood can: But the Usher sat remote from all, A melancholy man.

THE TERRORS OF MURDER.

Nothing but lifeless flesh and bone, That could not do me ill; And yet I fear'd him all the more, For lying there so still: There was a manhood in his look, That murder could not kill!

And, lo! the universal air Seem'd lit with ghastly flame: Ten thousand thousand dreadful eyes Were looking down in blame: I took the dead man by his hand, And called upon his name !

Oh, God ! it made me quake to see Such sense within the slain!

But when I tonch'd the lifeless clay, The blood gush'd out amain ! For every clot, a burning spot, Was scorching in my brain; My head was like an ardent coal, My heart as solid ice; My wretched, wretched soul, I knew, Was at the Devil's rice: A dozen times I groan d; the dead Had never groan'd but twice!

It is probable that the literalness we have mentioned as a fault in

Hood's poetry was a principle of his composition ; which, though he gradually outgrew it, be never entirely got rid of. And, animated as it was in his case by fertility of fancy, felicity of remark, and vividness of style, it may probably be more pleasing to the mass of readers than the highest poetry. The purchaser of this collection therefore is safe; for the Common reader will be pleased, and the critical reader interested in tracing

op the causes which induced Hood to stop where he did. The later and

shorter poems are attractive to all.