MEMORIALS OF THOMAS HOOD. * Tin: children of Thomas Hood have

wisely chosen to make him as much as possible his own biographer, the means at their disposal for that purpose being not inconsiderable in quantity, and very precious in kind. They consist of letters addressed to intimate friends chiefly during the last ten years of the writer's life, and these the editors have connected together by a modest thread of explanation and. comment, derived from their recollections of a father who was the playfellow of their childhood, and who made them his close companions to the last ; for say they, " we were never separated for any length of time from our parents, neither of us having been sent to a boarding-school, or in earlier years con- fined to that edifying Botany Bay—the Nursery—where children grow up by the pattern of unwatched, uneducated, hired ser vents." They have done their work in a thoroughly filial spirit, free from all desire of self-display, and therefore they have done it fittingly, as every judicious reader will thankfully ac- knowledge. Thomas Hood was born on the 23d of May, 1799, in the Poultry, where Thomas, his father, who was a Scotchman of cul- tivated taste, and an author of some popularity, in his day, carried on business as a bookseller. Sydney Smith's account of his earliest known progenitor was that he disappeared suddenly and for ever in Assize time ; and Thomas Hood the Second used to say that as his grandmother was a Miss Armstrong he was descended from two notorious thieves—Robin Hood and Johnnie Armstrong. Little is known of his early years. Mr. Hessey, who was intimate with his father, recollects him as "a singular child, silent and retired, with much quiet humour, and apparently delicate in health." One droll anecdote of this period of his life has survived many others related by him to his son. He drew the figure of a demon with the smoke of a candle on the staircase ceiling near his bedroom door, to frighten his brother. "Unfortunately he forgot that he had d.olle,so, RLI(1) when he went to bed, succeeded in terrifying himself into -fits almost—while his brother had not observed the pietnfe," At the age of fifteen or sixteen he was articled to his uncle, Mr. Sands, an engraver. His health having suffered from confinement he was sent to a relation in Scotland., where he remained some years and made his first appearance in print ; but it was not until the year 1821 that he adopted literature as a. profession, being then engaged as sub-editor of the London Magazine, which had passc into the hands of his friends Messrs. Taylor and Hessey.

first contributions to the magazine consisted of humorous not

and answers to correspondents in the "Lion's Head." Kr. Echo" in Hood's Magazine was a continuation of this 1, Some of the replies to imaginary letters were very quaint—to., instance :— "VERITY. It is better to have an enlarged heart than a contracted one, and even such an hmmorrhage as mine than a spitting of spite."

"'A Chapter on Bustles' is under consideration for one of our back- numbers."

"N.N. The most characteristic Mysteries of London' are those which have lately prevailed on the land and the river, attended by collisions of vessels, robberies, assaults, accidents, and other features of Metropolitan in- terest. If N.N. be ambitious of competing with the writer, whom he names, let him try his hand at a genuine, solid, yellow November fog. It is dirty, dangerous, smoky, stinking, obscure, unwholesome, and favourable to vice and violence."

Among the contributors to the London Magazine was John Hamilton Reynolds, whose sister Hood married, and conjointly with whom he wrote and published anonymously "Odes and Ad- dresses to Great People," which had a great sale, and occasioned no little speculation as to the author. Coleridge unhesitatingly declared that no other man could have written it than Charles Lamb.

"On the 5th of May 1824, the marriage of my father and mother took place. In spite of all the sickness and sorrow that formed the greatest por- tion of the after-part of their lives, the union was a happy one. My mother was a woman of cultivated mind and literary tastes, and well suited to him as a companion. He had such confidence in her judgment that he read, and re-read, and corrected with her all that he wrote. Many of his articles were first dictated to her, and her ready memory supplied him with his refer- ences and quotations. He frequently dictated the first draft of his articles, although they were always finally copied out in his peculiarly clear neat writing, which was so legible and good, that it was once or twice begged by printers, to teach their compositors a first and easy lesson in reading hand- writing. Of late years, my mother's time and thoughts were entirely de- voted to him, and he became restless and almost seemed unable to write unless she were near.

"The first few years of his married life were the most unclouded my father ever knew. The young couple resided for some years in Robert

• Memorials of Thomas Hood. Collected, Arranged, and Edited by his to their great Street, Adelphi. Here was born their first child, which, Daughter. With a Preface and Notes by his Son. Illustrated with Copies from his own Sketches. In two volumes. Published by Moson and Co.

grief, scarcely survived its birth. In looking over some old papers, I found a few tiny curls of golden hair, as soft as the finest silk, wrapped in a yellow and time-worn paper inscribed in my father's handwriting :— " Little eyes that scarce did see.

Little lips that never smiled ; Alas 1 my little dear dead child, Death is thy father, and not me, I but embraced thee, soon as he!"

"On this occasion, those exquisite lines of Charles Lamb's On an in- fitnt dying as soon as born, were written and sent to my father and mother.'

In 1826 appeared the first series of "Whims and Oddities " with the followlng "Dedication to the Reviewers "—

" What is a modern Poet's fate ? To write his thoughts upon a slate : The critic spits on what is done, Gives it a wipe—and all is gone!

The first series reached a second edition in the same year, and other works followed in quick succession. In 1831-2, Hood wrote some pieces for the stage, and an entertainment for Charles Mathews the Elder, "who was heard by a friend most characteristically to remark that he liked the entertainment very much, and Mr. Hood too —but that all the time he was reading it, Mrs. Hood would keep siniffang the candles. This little fidgetty observation," says Mrs. Broderip, "very much shocked my mother, and of course de- lighted my father." About this time the Duke of Devonshire asked Hood for a set of titles for a door of sham books for the en- trance of a library staircase at Chatsworth, and received a list of about four score among which were, "The Life of Zimmermann. By Himself ;" (Zimmermann, the author of Solitude,) "Designs for Friezes. By Captain Parry ; " "On the Site of Tully's Of- fices ; " "On Sore Throat and the Migration of the Swallow. By T. Abernethy," &c. Hood -was now living in a very pretty little cottage in a-pleasant garden on Winchmore Hill, which he quitted in 1832 for Lake House, Wanstead, a beautiful but exceedingly inconvenient old place. It was a bad exchange, and he always regretted it. Much of the scenery and description of his only completed novel, Tylney Ball, was taken from Wanstead and its neighbourhood. Here, as at Winchmore Hill, his life seems to have passed smoothly enough with the exception of some sharp but comparatively harmless attacks of illness. It was not until 1834 that his pecuniary troubles began and brought with them continual aggravations of his bodily sufferings. He used to make frequent excursions to the sea, for which he had an ardent love, being an expert boatman and a good swimmer, as well as a poet ; and he was much amused when one of his contemporaries, in a little sketch of his life gravely asserted that he had been destined for the sea, but disliked the great ocean too much to ful- fil the intention. The only ground he could imagine for this as- sertion was that he had written in one of the Comics a burlesque ac- count of a landsman's sufferings in a first voyage. Thus is contem- porary biography written. The author of another memoir got hold of alit of truth as to Hood's mental character, but turned it into un- truth by overstatement when he said, "we believe his mind to be more serious than comic; we have never known him laugh heartily either in company or in rhyme." But the queerest blunder-Was that made by Mr. Horne, when in The New Spirit of the Age, by a mistake of a single letter he gave to . Hood the pages descriptive of Mr. Hook, and enriched the -knowledge of the former with the discovery that he was " a er-out and a man about town," and that he had given the

d "unfavourable views of human nature."

°nk the end of 1834, Hood suffered a very heavy loss by the „lire of a firm' and became involved in pecuniary difficulties. irlie course he took to extricate himself is thus described in a dietter of his own ;— P° "'Emulating the illustrious example of Sir Walter Scott, he determined to try whether he could not score off his debts as effectually and more creditably with his pen than with the legal whitewash or a wet sponge. He had aforetime realized in one year a sum equal to the amount in arrear, and there was consequently fair reason to expect that, by redoubled diligence, eco- nomizing, and escaping costs at law, he would soon be able to retrieve his affairs. With these views, leaving every shilling behind him, derived from the sale of his effects, the means he carried with him being an advance upon his future labours, he -voluntarily expatriated himself, and bade his native land good night.' " As the readers of Up the Rhine are aware, Hood started alone for the Rhineland, and finally fixed his residence at Coblentz, where he was joined by his family. The expatriation was in every way an unfortunate one. He was caught in the fearful and memorable storm of the 4th and 5th of March, 1835, when eleven vessels, including a Dutch East Indiaman, were lost off the coast of Holland • and he attributed much of his subsequent sufferings to the menial and bodily exhaustion which attended this danger. He was disgusted with the Rhinelanders, a mongrel race in whom he discovered all the bad qualities of the French without the good ones of either French or Germans. They were all comprised in-two classes, Jew Germans and German Jews. The diet of the country was wretched, and the domestic comforts few ; and he found that he and his might have lived in England in the same !plaid style for the same money. "It is not pleasant," he says in one of his letters, "nor even a pecuniary trifle to pay from twenty to thirty per cent on your whole expenditure for being an Englishman—and you cannot avoid it ; but it is still more vexa- tious to the spirits and offensive to the mind to be everlastingly engaged in such a petty warfare for the defence of your pocket, and equally, revolting to the soul to be unable to repose confidence on the word or honesty of any human being around you." The only fruit of his visit to Germany which nught not as well have been matured in England, was his Up the Rhine, the sale of which was spoiled by. the dishonesty of his agent. The book now entirely out of print ; why is it suffered to remain so ? Turning his back with delight on Coblentz, Hood went in Jti7 1837 to Ostend, a place which was very much to his liking unt he found himself the victim of its malarious atmosphere, of Aie. he felt the effects as long as he lived. In july or August, 1104 - he finally returned to England, utterly broken in health, bat I strong in mind and as gallant in spirit as ever. The B-- tioned in the following extract from a letter, dated February..a

1841, was the agent of whom we have already spoken. tti

"You will be gratified to hear that, without any knowledge Of it on ' , part, the Literary Fund (the members of the Committee having frequeid I inquired about my health, and the B— Business of Dilke), unan' mously voted me 501., the largest sum they give, and, setting aside the standing rules, to do it without my application. I, however, returned (though it would have afforded me some ease and relief), but for many well-weighed reasons. I am, however, all the better for the offer, w places me in a good position. It was done in a very gratifying honourable manner, and I am the first who has said no.' But I am good spirits, and hope to get through all my troubles as independently heretofore."

In the August of the same year he was made comparatively M ' fluent by succeeding, on the death of Theodore Hook, to the edittorship of the New Monthly, but he soon resigned it to edit Rood') Magazine which began with the year 1844, and ended with its; proprietor's life on the 3d of May, 1845. That life had been truly a long disease, aggravated in its last ten years by care and' annoyances that fell with a double weight on the mind over tasked by such constant and harassing occupation." Very touc* ingly does his daughter say :- "The The income his works now produce to his children, might then ha .3 prolonged his life for many years ; although when we looked on the cal happy face after death, free at last from the painful expression that had - almost become habitual to it, we dared not regret the rest so long prayed for, and hardly won."

. . . .

"His own family never enjoyed his quaint and humorous fancies, for they were all associated with memories of illness and anxiety. Although Hood's Comic Annual," as he himself used to remark with pleasure, was in every house seized upon, and almost worn out by the frequent handling ' of little fingers, his own children did not enjoy it till the lapse of many years had mercifully softened down some of the sad recollections connected with it. The only article that I can remember we ever really thoroughly enjoyed, was Mrs. Gardiner, a Horticultural Romance,' and even this was composed in bed. But the illness he was then suffering from was only rheumatic fever, and not one of his dangerous attacks, and he was unusually cheerful. He sat up in bed, dictating it to my mother, interrupted by our bursts of irrepressible laughter, as joke after after joke came from his lips, he all the while laughing and relishing it as much as we did. But this was a rare—indeed almost solitary—instance ; for he could not usually- write so well at any time as at night, when all the house was quiet. Our family rejoicings were generally when the work was over, and we were too thankful to be rid of the harass and hurry, to care much for the results of such labour."

. . . .

"He had, for years past, known, as well as his doctors, his OW11 frail tenure of existence, and had more than once, as he said himself, been so near Death's door, he could almost fancy he heard the creaking of the hinges ;' and he was now fully aware that at last his feeble step was on, its very threshold. With this knowledge he wrote the following beautiful letter to Sir Robert Peel—worthy of being the last letter of such a man. "Dear Sir,—We are not to meet in the flesh. Given over by my physi- cians and by myself, I am only kept alive my frequent instalments of mulled port wine. In this extremity I feel a comfort, for which I cannot refrain from again thanking you, with all the sincerity of a dying man,— and, at the same time, bidding you a respectful farewell. "Thank God my mind is composed and my reason undisturbed, but my rice as an author is run. My physical debility finds no tonic virtue in a steel pen, otherwise I would have written one more paper—a forewarning one—against an evil, or the danger of it, arising from a literary movement in which I have had sonic share, a one-sided humanity, opposite to that Catholic Shakspearian sympathy, which felt with king as well as peasant, and duly estimated the mortal temptations of both stations. Certain classes at the poles of society are already too far asunder; it should be the duty /Of our writers to draw them nearer by kindly, attraction, not to aggravate Ike existing repulsion, and place a wider moral gulf between rich and poor, with Hate on the one side and Fear on the other. But I am too weak for this task, the last I had set myself; it is death that stops my pen, you Be, and not the pension.

"God bless you, sir, and prosper all you measures for the benefit of my beloved country.

"I have the honour to be, Sir, your most grateful and obedient servant, "Taos. HOOD."