second and third series of _Whims and Oddities_, and in 1829 commenced
the _Comic Annual_, and it was continued nine years. It proved very
profitable; it was a small, widely-printed volume, with rough woodcuts
drawn by Hood, who had been some time on probation with Sands and Le
Keux, the engravers. Several thousand copies were sold annually, as
the publishers' ledgers show. Then came out the comic poem of _The
Epping Hunt_, which, Hood tells us, "was penned by an underling at the
Wells, a person more accustomed to riding than writing," as shown in
this epistle:--"Sir,--Abouut the Hunt. In anser to your Innqueries,
their as been a great falling off latterally, so much so this year
that there was nobody allmost. We did a mear nothing provisionally,
hardly a Bottle extra, which is as proof in Pint. In short our Hunt
may be sad to be in the last Stag of a Decline. Bartholomew Rutt."
Next appeared _The Dream of Eugene Aram_, with this note: "The late
Admiral Burney went to school at an establishment where the unhappy
Eugene Aram was usher subsequent to his crime. The Admiral stated that
Aram was generally liked by the boys; and that he used to discourse to
them about _murder_ in somewhat of the spirit which is attributed to
him in this poem." The poem is exquisitely written throughout, and is
sometimes little less than sublime.
In the spring of 1831, Hood became the occupier of Lake House, near
Wanstead; and while residing here, he wrote his novel of _Tylney Hall_,
in which the characters are exuberant with wit and humour, but the plot
is defective. Hood next published _Hood's Own; or, Laughter from Year
to Year_, a volume of comic lucubrations, reprinted, "with an infusion
of New Blood for General Circulation." He next went to the Continent
for the benefit of his health. When in Belgium, he published his _Up
the Rhine_, constructed on the groundwork of _Humphrey Clinker_. The
work consists of a series of imaginary letters from a hypochondriacal
old bachelor, his widowed sister, his nephew, and a servant-maid, who
form the imaginary travelling party. Each individual writes to a friend
in England, and describes the scenes, manners, and circumstances, in
a manner suitable to the assumed character. The nephew's remarks seem
to embody the opinions and observations of Hood himself. The book is
illustrated with whimsical cuts in Hood's rough but effective style,
and abounds in good sense as well as humour. Here is a specimen:--
"An English lady resident at Coblentz, one day wishing to order of
her German servant (who did not understand English) a boiled fowl for
dinner, Grettel was summoned, and that experiment began. It was one
of the lady's fancies, that the less her words resembled her native
tongue, the more they must be like German. So her first attempt was
to tell the maid that she wanted a cheeking, or keeking. The maid
opened her eyes and mouth, and shook her head. 'It's to cook,' said
the mistress, 'to cook, to put in an iron thing, in a pit--pat--pot.'
'Ish understand risht,' said the maid, in her Coblentz patois. 'It's a
thing to eat,' said her mistress, for dinner--for deener--with sauce,
soace--sowose.' No answer. 'What on earth am I to do?' exclaimed
the lady, in despair, but still made another attempt. 'It's a little
creature--a bird--a bard--a beard--a hen--a hone--a fowl--a fool;
it's all covered with feathers--fathers--feeders!' 'Ha, ha,' cried
the delighted German, at last getting hold of a catchword, 'Ja, ja!
fedders--ja woh!' and away went Grettel, and in half-an-hour returned
triumphantly, with a bundle of stationers' quills."
Hood afterwards became editor of the _New Monthly Magazine_, from which
he retired in 1843. In the course of this year, public feeling had been
much excited by cases of distress and destitution, which came before
the London police-magistrates, arising from the excessively low rate of
wages paid by dealers in ready-made linen to their workwomen. Taking
advantage of a market overstocked with labourers, these tradesmen got
their work done for a rate of payment so small that fourteen or fifteen
hours' labour were frequently required in order to obtain sixpence!
Hood's sympathy was excited, and "The Song of the Shirt" was the
result--"a burst of poetry and indignant passion by which he produced
tears almost as irrepressibly as in other cases he produced laughter."
"The Song of the Shirt" was sent to a comic periodical, but was refused
insertion; it has, however, been sung through the whole length and
breadth of the three kingdoms.
Our author's last periodical was _Hood's Magazine_, which he continued
to supply with the best of its contributions till within a month before
his death. It contained a novel, which was interrupted by his last
illness and death; the last chapters were, in fact, written by him
when he was propped up by pillows in bed. He had the consolation, a
short time before his death, of having a Government pension of 100_l._
a-year, which was offered him by Sir Robert Peel, in the following
noble and touching letter, Sir Robert knowing of his illness, but not
of his imminent danger--"I am more than repaid," writes Peel, "by the
personal satisfaction which I have had in doing that for which you
return me warm and characteristic acknowledgments. You perhaps think
that you are known to one with such multifarious occupations as myself
merely by general reputation as an author; but I assure you that there
can be little which you have written and acknowledged which I have not
read, and that there are few who can appreciate and admire more than
myself the good sense and good feeling which have taught you to infuse
so much fun and merriment into writings correcting folly and exposing
absurdities, and yet never trespassing beyond those limits within which
wit and facetiousness are not very often confined. You may write on
with the consciousness of independence as free and unfettered as if
no communication had ever passed between us. I am not conferring a
private obligation upon you, but am fulfilling the intentions of the
Legislature, which has placed at the disposal of the Crown a certain
sum (miserable, indeed, in amount) to be applied to the recognition of
public claims on the bounty of the Crown. If you will review the names
of those whose claims have been admitted on account of their literary
or scientific eminence, you will find an ample confirmation of the
truth of my statement. One return, indeed, I shall ask you--that you
will give me the opportunity of making your personal acquaintance."
To this statement in the _Cornhill Magazine_ are appended the following
reflections:--"O sad, marvellous picture of courage, of honesty, of
patient endurance, of duty struggling against pain! How noble Peel's
figure is standing by that sick-bed, how generous his words, how
dignified and sincere his compassion! And the poor dying man, with a
heart full of natural gratitude towards his noble benefactor, must turn
to him and say--'If it be well to be remembered by a Minister, it is
better still not to be forgotten by him in a 'hurly Burleigh!' Can you
laugh? Is not the joke horribly pathetic from the poor dying lips? As
dying Robin Hood must fire a last shot with his bow--as one reads of
Catholics on their death-bed putting on a Capuchin dress to go out of
the world--here is poor Hood at his last hour putting on his ghastly
motley, and uttering one joke more. He dies, however, in dearest love
and peace with his children, wife, friends: to the former especially
his whole life had been devoted, and every day showed his fidelity,
simplicity, and affection. In going through the record of his most
pure, modest, honourable life, and living along with him, you come to
trust him thoroughly, and feel that here is a most loyal, affectionate,
and upright soul, with whom you have been brought into communion. Can
we say as much of all lives of all men of letters? Here is one at least
without guile, without pretension, without scheming, of pure life, to
his family and little modest circle of friends tenderly devoted."
After a lethargy, which continued four days, Hood died May 3rd, 1845.
He was buried in Kensal Green Cemetery, where a poetical monument has
been erected to his memory. He left a son, who inherits much of his
father's genius.
"Hood," says one of his biographers, "was undoubtedly a man of genius.
His mind was stored with a vast collection of materials drawn from a
great variety of sources, but especially his own observations; and he
possessed the power of working up those materials into combinations
of wit and humour and pathos of the most original and varied kinds.
He has wit of the highest quality, as original and as abundant as
Butler's or Cowley's, drawn from as extensive an observation of nature
and life, if not from so wide a reach of learning, and combined with
a richness of humour of which Butler had little and Cowley none. His
humour is frequently as extravagantly broad as that of Rabelais, but
he has sometimes the delicate touches of that of Addison. As a punster
he stands alone. His puns do not consist merely of double meanings
of words--a low kind of punning, of which minds of a low order are
capable, and with which his imitators have deluged English comedy and
comic literature--but of double meanings of words combined with double
meanings of sense in such a manner as to produce the most extraordinary
effects of surprise and admiration. His power of exciting laughter is
wonderful, his drollery indescribable, inimitable. His pathetic power
is not equal to his comic, but it is very great. The moral tendency
of Hood's works is excellent. In the indulgence of his spirit of fun,
he is anything but strait-laced as regards the introduction of images
and phrases which a fastidious person might call vulgar or coarse; but
an indecent description or even allusion will not easily be found. He
is liberal-minded, a warm eulogist as well as a glowing depicter of
the good feelings of our nature and the generous actions which those
feelings prompt, and he is an unsparing satirist of vice, pretension,
and cant in all their forms.
"Hood, in his person, was thin, pale, and delicate; in his temper
he was kind and cheerful; he seems to have imbibed the social and
benevolent feeling of his friend Lamb, and he was no less than Lamb
a favourite among his friends. His long-continued sufferings only
stimulated him to amuse himself and others by the exercise of his
extraordinary imagination; and when at last he could no longer bear up
under his bodily pains, his complaint was simple, but it indicated a
terrible degree of suffering--'I cannot die, I cannot die.'"
A Witty Archbishop.
An industrious student, a deep thinker, an acute reasoner, a learned
mind, a correct and at times elegant writer--these are titles of
honour which the mere out-side-world, travelling in its flying
railway-carriage, will gladly award to the late Archbishop of Dublin
(Dr. Whately). Not so familiar are certain minor and more curious
gifts, which he kept by him for his own and his friends' entertainment,
which broke out at times on more public occasions. He delighted in the
oddities of thought, in queer quaint distinctions; and if an object
had by any possibility some strange distorted side or corner, or even
point, which was undermost, he would gladly stoop down his mind to get
that precise view of it, nay, would draw it in that odd light for the
amusement of the company.
Thus he struck Guizot, who described him as "startling and ingenious,
strangely absent, familiar, confused, eccentric, amiable, and engaging,
no matter what unpoliteness he might commit, or what propriety he
might forget." In short, a mind with a little of the Sydney Smith's
leaven, whose brilliancy lay in precisely these odd analogies. It was
his recreation to take up some intellectual hobby, and make a toy of
it. Just as, years ago, he was said to have taken up that strange
instrument the boomerang, and was to be seen on the sands casting it
from him, and watching it return. It was said, too, that at the dull
intervals of a visitation, when ecclesiastical business languished, he
would cut out little miniature boomerangs of card, and amuse himself by
illustrating the principle of the larger toy by shooting them from his
finger.
The even, and sometimes drowsy, current of Dublin society was almost
always enlivened by some little witty boomerang of his, fluttering
from mouth to mouth, and from club to club. The Archbishop's last was
eagerly looked for. Some were indifferent, some were trifling; but it
was conceded that all had an odd extravagance, which marked them as
original, quaint, queer. In this respect he was the Sydney Smith of the
Irish capital, with this difference--that Sydney Smith's king announced
that he would never make the lively Canon of St. Paul's a Bishop.
Homœopathy was a medical paradox, and was therefore welcome. Yet in
this he travelled out of the realms of mere fanciful speculation, and
clung to it with a stern and consistent earnestness faithfully adhered
to through his last illness. Mesmerism, too, he delighted to play with.
He had, in fact, innumerable _dadas_, as the French call them, or
hobby-horses, upon which he was continually astride.
This led him into a pleasant affection of being able to discourse _de
omnibus rebus_, &c., and the more recondite or less known the subject,
the more eager was he to speak. It has been supposed that the figure
of the "Dean," in Mr. Lever's pleasant novel of _Roland Cashel_, was
sketched from him. Indeed, there can be no question but that it is an
unacknowledged portrait.
"What is the difference," he asked of a young clergyman he was
examining, "between a form and a ceremony? The meaning seems nearly
the same; yet there is a very nice distinction." Various answers were
given. "Well," he said, "it lies in this: you sit upon a form, but you
stand upon ceremony."
"Morrow's Library" is the Mudie of Dublin; and the Rev. Mr. Day, a
popular preacher. "How inconsistent," said the archbishop, "is the
piety of certain ladies here. They go _to Day for a sermon_, and _to
Morrow_ for a novel!"
At a dinner-party he called out suddenly to the host, "Mr. ----!" There
was silence. "Mr. ----, what is the proper female companion of this
John Dory?" After the usual number of guesses an answer came, "Anne
Chovy." [This has been attributed to Quin, the actor and epicure.]
_Another Riddle._--"The laziest letter in the alphabet? The _letther_
G!" (lethargy).
_The Wicklow Line._--The most unmusical in the world--having a
Dun-Drum, Still-Organ, and a Bray for stations.
_Doctor Gregg._--The new bishop and he at dinner. Archbishop: "Come,
though you _are_ John Cork, you musn't stop the bottle here." The
answer was not inapt: "I see your lordship is determined to draw me
out."
On Dr. K----x's promotion to the bishopric of Down, an appointment in
some quarters unpopular: "The Irish government will not be able to
stand many more such Knocks Down as this!"
The merits of the same bishop being canvassed before him, and it being
mentioned that he had compiled a most useful Ecclesiastical Directory,
with the Values of Livings, &c., "If that be so," said the archbishop,
"I hope the next time the claims of our friend Thom will not be
overlooked." (Thom, the author of the well known _Almanack_.)
A clergyman, who had to preach before him, begged to be let off,
saying, "I hope your grace will excuse my preaching next Sunday."
"Certainly," said the other indulgently. Sunday came, and the
archbishop said to him, "Well! Mr. ----, what became of you! we
expected you to preach to-day." "Oh, your grace said you would excuse
my preaching to-day." "Exactly; but I did not say I would excuse you
_from_ preaching."
At a lord lieutenant's banquet a grace was given of unusual length.
"My lord," said the archbishop, "did you ever hear the story of Lord
Mulgrave's chaplain?" "No," said the lord lieutenant. "A young chaplain
had preached a sermon of great length. 'Sir,' said Lord Mulgrave,
bowing to him, 'there were some things in your sermon of to-day I never
heard before.' 'Oh, my lord,' said the flattered chaplain, 'it is a
common text, and I could not have hoped to have said anything new on
the subject.' '_I heard the clock strike twice_,' said Lord Mulgrave."
At some religious ceremony at which he was to officiate in the country,
a young curate who attended him grew very nervous as to their being
late. "My good young friend," said the archbishop, "I can only say to
you what the criminal going to be hanged said to those around, who
were hurrying him, 'Let us take our time, they can't begin without
us.'"--(_Yorick Junior._--_Notes and Queries. Third Series._)
The following charade, said to be one of the last by Dr. Whatley, has
puzzled many wise heads:--
"Man cannot live without my _first_,
By day and night it's used;
My _second_ is by all accursed,
By day and night abused.
My _whole_ is never seen by day,
And never used by night;
Is dear to friends when far away,
But hated when in sight."
A Correspondent of _Notes and Queries_ suggests the following
solution:--
"_Ignis_, or fire, all men will own
Essential to the life of man;
_Fatuus_, a fool, has been, 'tis known,
Cursed and abused since time began.
Some _Ignis Fatuus_, Will-o'-wisp.
Not seen by day, nor used by night,
Men love, and for their phantom list,
When 'tis unseen, but hate its sight."
Literary Madmen.
"Great wits are sure to madness near allied,
And their partitions do their bounds divide."--DRYDEN.
This bold assertion has long since been pronounced incorrect.
Nevertheless, the barrier between genius and madness has not been
traced. Eccentricity is often mistaken for craziness; and the entire
subject is beset with nice points and shades of controversy. In 1860
appeared Octave Delepierre's _Histoire Littéraire des Fous_, upon the
soundness of which critics are divided in opinion. The following sketch
of its contents, however, shows the work to be full of interest.
A history of literary madmen is yet to be written--whether it be a
history of authors who have gone mad, or of persons who, being mad,
have turned authors. It is singular to notice what relief madmen find
in literary composition; so much so, that it has been employed as a
method of cure in more than one of our lunatic asylums. At the Crichton
Royal Institution, Dumfriesshire, a little journal, entitled the _New
Moon_, was published every month, the contents being contributed, set
up, and printed by the inmates in their lucid moments. Occasionally
there was a little incoherence--a little roughness; but, as a
whole, the _New Moon_ would bear comparison with many other amateur
periodicals. Here are two stanzas written by a man tortured by long
sleeplessness, whom private misfortunes had driven mad:--
"Go! sleep, my heart, in peace,
Bid fear and sorrow cease:
He who of worlds takes care,
One heart in mind doth bear.
"Go! sleep, my heart, in peace,
If death should thee release,
And this night hence thee take,
Thou yonder wilt awake."
Theology has sent more people mad than any other pursuit--a truth of
which M. Delepierre's _Histoire Littéraire des Fous_ furnishes some
interesting illustrations.
The writer has, however, occasionally mistaken eccentricity for
craziness. Simon Stylites on his pillar and St. Anthony in his cave
were crazed; but we do not think that Baxter's _Hooks and Eyes for
Believers' Breeches_ is an indication of insanity any more than
such works as _La Seringue Spirituelle pour les Ames constipées en
Dévotion_, or _La Tabatière Spirituelle pour faire éternuer les Ames
dévotes_. Very probably, if we could refer to these works, we should
find that the title had little or nothing in common with the contents,
but as a mere trick to catch purchasers. Few people would charge
Latimer with being mad because he preached a "Sermon on a Pack of
Cards." Nor do we think any conclusion can be drawn unfavourable to
the Jesuit missionary Paoletti from the mere fact of his writing a
treatise to prove that the American aborigines were eternally damned
without hope of redemption, because they were the offspring of the
Devil and one of Noah's daughters. His mind had not lost its balance
to such a degree as that of old Portel, who persuaded himself that the
soul of John the Baptist had passed into his body; or of Miranda, a
living man, who fancies himself the forty-ninth incarnation of Adam
through Romulus and Mohamed; while Queen Victoria is the seventieth
embodiment of the soul of Eve, by way of Miriam and the Virgin Mary!
Geoffrey Vallée was another monomaniac of this class, who began by
having a shirt for every day in the year, which he used to send into
Flanders to be washed at a certain spring, and ended by being burnt at
the stake as an atheist for a silly book he wrote. Our own John Mason,
who proclaimed Christ's coming, and declared Water Stratford, near
Buckingham, to be the seat of his throne, has had many imitators at
home and abroad.
Endeavours to interpret prophecy and explain the Apocalypse have
turned many a brain, even in our own days. One Francis Potter wrote
a book with the following title:--"An Interpretation of the number
666, wherein it is shown that this number is an exquisite and perfect
character, truly, exactly, and essentially describing that state
of government to which all other notes of Antichrist do agree." A
Frenchman, Soubira, ran mad on the same subject about the same period.
In 1828 he published a pamphlet with this meagre title--"666." Here is
a sample:--
Les banquiers de la France 666
Des organistes de la Foi 666
Et des concerts de la cadence 666
Vont accomplir la loi 666
Et conterminer l'alliance 666
Joseph O'Donnelly fancied he had discovered the primitive language,
and printed some specimens of it at Brussels in 1854.
The literary madman is often harmless enough, and his condition being
not rarely the result of an overtasked brain, in his lucid moments he
is his former self. If in his mad moments Lee called upon Jupiter to
rise and snuff the moon; it was in his calmer hours that he replied
to the sneers of a silly poet--"It is very difficult to write like a
madman, but very easy to write like a fool." Christopher Smart was
another poetical lunatic, whose best pieces were composed while he was
under restraint. These are not, however, very remarkable, their chief
merit consisting in their history. Like the Koran, they were committed
to writing under circumstances of great difficulty; the whitened walls
of his cell were his paper, and his pen the end of a piece of wood
burnt in the fire. Thomas Lloyd belonged to this class, but few of his
fragments have been preserved. Milman, of Pennsylvania, lost his bride
by lightning on their wedding-day: his reason never recovered the shock.
Luke Clennel, the engraver, forgot his art during his long state of
unreason, but would compose very passable verses; while John Clare,
whose poetry brought him into note, and led to his ruin, scarcely
wrote at all during his mad moods. Thomas Bishop took to the drama,
and his _Koranzzo's Feast, or the Unfair Marriage_, a tragedy founded
on facts 2,366 years ago, is a serious performance, amply illustrated.
Among the characters are four queens, three savages, and five ghosts,
not including the ghost of a clock, intended as part of the stage
furniture. The most singular of this class of one-sided writers is M.
G. Desjardins, who, we believe, is still alive. It is impossible to
imagine a head more completely turned than his.
Another writer of this eccentric class is Paulin Gagne, author of
_L'Unitéide, ou la Femme-Messie_, a poem in twelve cantos. The
thirty-eighth act of the eighth canto passes in a potato-field, and
the scene is opened by _Pataticulture_ in a speech of this fashion:--
"Peuples et Rois, je suis la Pataticulture,
Fille de la nature et du siècle en friture;
J'ai toujours adoré ce fruit délicieux
Que, dit-on, pour extra, mangeaient jadis les Dieux."
He winds up by declaring that
"Dans la pomme de terre est le salut de tous."
In the following act, _Carroticulture_ is introduced with a new version
of the Marseillaise:--
"Allons, enfans de la Cacrotte."