“What demon hath possessed thee, that thou wilt never forsake that
impertinent custom of punning?”
_Scriblerus._
If I might be allowed to answer the question instead of Mr. Hood, I
should say, that it is the same demon which provokes me to rush directly
through his new volume in preference to half a dozen works, which order
of time and propriety entitle to previous notice. This book detains me
from my purposes, as a new print in a shop-window does a boy on his way
to school; and, like him, at the risk of being found fault with for not
minding my task, I would talk of the attractive novelty to wights of the
same humour. It comes like good news, which nobody is ignorant of, and
every body tells to every body, and sets business at a stand-still. It
puts clean out of my head all thought of another engraving for the
present sheet, though I know, good reader, that already “I _owe_ you
one”--perhaps two:--never mind! you shall have “_all_ in good time;” if
you don’t, I’ll give you leave to eat me. With such a tender, the most
untender will, or ought to be, as content as “the blacks of Niger at its
infant rill,” seated at their “_white-bait_,” the thirty-eighth
_cut_--in Mr. Hood’s book, very near “the end,”--a very inviting one to
Shylock-kind of people, who have not
“------seen, perchance, unhappy white folks cook’d,
And then made free of negro corporations.”--p. 149.
Mr. Hood begins--to be modest--with pleading guilty to what he calls
“some verbal misdemeanours,” and then, leaving “his defence to Dean
Swift, and the other great European and oriental _pun_dits,” puts
himself upon his country. But by whom is he arraigned, save a few
highwaymen in the “march of intellect,” who sagely affirm, that “a man
who would make a pun would pick a pocket!”--a saying devised by some
wag, to the use and behoof of these doldrums, who never hear a good
thing, but they button up their pockets and features, and walk off with
nothing about them of likeness to humanity but the biforked form. For
capital likenesses of such persons, turn to the story of “Tim Turpin,”
and look first, to pay due honour, at the engravings of “the Judges of
a-size,” and then at “Jurors--not con-jurors.” Portraits of this order
could not have been drawn by any other than a close and accurate
observer of character. Indeed, that Mr. Hood is eminently qualified in
this respect, he has before abundantly testified; especially by “The
Progress of Cant,” a print that must occupy a distinguished place in a
history of Character and Caricature, whenever such a work shall be
written.[477] In this new series of “Whims and Oddities,” he presents a
sketch, called “Infant Genius;”--a little boy delighted with having
rudely traced an uncouth figure; such a “drawing” as excites a good
mistaken mother to declare, “the little fellow has quite a genius, and
will be very clever if he only has encouragement:”--and thus many a
child’s talent for fine-drawing--which, at the tailoring trade, might
have secured the means of living--has been misencouraged to the making
up of fifth-rate artists with a starvation income. The engraving of the
“Infant Genius” illustrates the following poem.