25 AUGUST 1877, Page 20

Poems, 1111M07'0213 and Pathetic. By Thomas Hood the Younger, with

a Memoir by his Sister, Frances F. Broderib. (Chatto and Windus.) —The "Memoir" is a simple and affectionate record, which it is no small pleas ire to read. Naturally it gives but a partial picture of the life which it narrates ; the clotall of the literary work in which Hood's days were chiefly spent is rather hinted at than described. It leaves a pleasing impression; one is especially glad to learn that, in the wri!er's judgment, Hood was not a disappointed man, and had no feeling that "the world had used him badly." His life is saddened, to those who regard it from the outside, by the remembrance of his premature deathr but it was not unhappy. Of the value of the poems here collected we cannot now speak in detail. Briefly, wo may say that the " pathetic '' seem better than the humorous ; the fun of the latter is without the fullness and spontaneity which so distinguish the work of the elder Hood., Wo often admire its ingenuity—it is fairly good comic verse— but we seldom laugh.