The Serious Poems of Thomas Hood Edited by Samuel Lucas,
M.A. With Preface by Thomas Hood the younger. The Comic POEMS of Thomas Hood. Edited by Samuel Lucas, M.A. With Preface by Thomas Hood the younger. (E. Moxon and Co.)—These are very pretty and convenient editions of a poet whose beauty and pathos will live longer than even his fun, good as that fan is. Each contains a fine profile engraving of the poet. But while there is no notice that we can find that these editions are only selections, it is quite certain that many of Hood's most beautiful sonnets are omitted from The Serious Poems, for what reason we cannot at all understand. By far the most beautiful sonnet he ever wrote, beginning,—
" It is not death that sometime in a sigh, This eloquent breath shall take its speechless flight ; That sometime these bright stars that now reply In sunlight to the sun shall set in night,"
is wanting. The almost equally fine one on "The Trim Silence" is wanting, and several others. What is the reason of this ? Surely the edition should be called a selection rather than an edition of his "serious poems," if any, however few, for which a student of Hood would at once look, are omitted.
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