768 



HOOD 



struggling against the slow progress of a fatal 

 disease, continued to produce his Comic Annuals 

 and other lighter matter, and schemed his Up the 

 Rhine, a humorous account of the proceedings of 

 an English family in Germany, told in letters, and 

 too obviously imitated from Humphrey Clinker. 

 This, when published, in 1839, at once hit the public 

 taste, but seems to have brought little profit to its 

 author, who, apparently destitute of all business 

 faculty, suffered throughout his career from the 

 misfortunes or the superior sagacity of his pub- 

 lishers. The sufferings of Hood during these five 

 years were very terrible, and are only hinted by 

 his son and daughter in their memoir of their 

 father. In an unpublished letter to his wife in 

 April 1840, written during a temporary visit to 

 England from the house of his generous friend, the 

 first Charles Wentworth Dilke, he writes : ' I find 

 niy position a very cruel one after all my struggles 

 to be, as I am, almost moneyless, and with a very 

 dim prospect of getting any', but by the sheer 

 exercise of my pen. What is to be done in the 

 meantime is a question I ask myself without any 

 answer but Bruges jail. At the very moment of 

 being free of Bailey, am I tied elsewhere, hand and 

 foot, and by sheer necessity ready to surrender 

 myself that slave, a bookseller's hack ! ' 



By the kindness of friends Hood was enabled to 

 return to England, with security from his creditors, 

 in 1840. Disease of lungs and heart was now so 

 far advanced that the fatal issue was only a ques- 

 tion of time, but he continued to struggle on 

 bravely and cheerfully for five years longer. In 

 1841 he was offered by Colburn the editorship of 

 the New Monthly Magazine at a salary of 300 a 

 year, a post which he filled for two years, when, a 

 difference arising with the proprietor, he resigned the 

 editorship, and in January 1844 started a new 

 periodical of his own, Hood's Monthly Magazine, 

 destined to be his last literary venture. Meantime 

 in the Christmas number of Punch ( 1843 ) had 

 appeared the ' Song of the Shirt ; ' and in Hood's 

 Magazine, during its brief career, there followed 

 the 'Haunted House,' the 'Lay of the Labourer,' 

 and the ' Bridge of Sighs,' proving that, as the dark- 

 ness of his own prospects deepened, the sympathies 

 with his kind deepened also, and quickened his 

 finest genius. Only a few months after the starting 

 of the magazine a notice to the subscribers had to 

 tell that the health of the editor was rapidly failing. 

 Towards the end of the year his friends used their 

 interest with the government of the day, and in 

 November Sir Robert Peel wrote announcing a 

 pension to Mrs Hood on the civil list of 100 a year. 

 In the number of the magazine for February 1845 

 appeared Hood's last contribution, the touching 

 lines, prophetic of his approaching end, beginning : 



Farewell life my senses swim, 

 And the world is growing dim, 



and ending : 



O'er the earth there comes a bloom, 

 Sunny light for sullen gloom, 

 Warm perfume for vapours cold 

 I smell the rose above the mould ! 



After three more months of increasing pain and 

 distress, Thomas Hood died at Devonshire Lodge, 

 Finchley Road, on the 3d of May 1845. He was 

 buried in Kensal Green Cemetery. His devoted 

 wife, broken in health with the long attendance on 

 her husband, survived him only eighteen months. 



Hood produced in twenty-four years an amount 

 of prose and verse of which at least one half the 

 world might willingly let die. Of the other half, 

 all the serious poetry is remarkable, and a small 

 portion of first-rate excellence. Lyrics such as the 

 'Song of the Shirt,' the ' Bridge of Sighs, ' Eugene 

 Aram,' the song beginning 'I remember, I remem- 



ber, the house where I was born,' and the ' Ode to 

 Melancholy ' are of an assured immortality. His 

 humorous verse and in the best of it, as in ' Miss 

 Kilmansegg,' are often blended poetry, pathos, and 

 even real tragic power is of a kind that Hood 

 absolutely created. Not only was he the most 

 prolific and successful punster that ever used that 

 form of wit, but he turned it to purposes of whicli 

 no one had ever supposed it capable. It became in 

 his hands the most natural and obvious vehicle for 

 all his better gifts. The truth is, he brought to it 

 the transfiguring power of real imagination, and, 

 instead of its degrading whatever object it touched, 

 in his hands it ministered to the noblest ends. 

 Even in the 'Song of the Shirt,' when his deepest 

 sympathies were involved, he uses the pun with 

 almost magical effect, as where the poor needle- 

 woman, confined to her squalid garret when all 

 nature is beckoning her forth, exclaims : 



And underneath my eaves 



The brooding swallows cling, 

 As if to show me their sunny backs, 



And twit me with the spring ! 



It was Hood's misfortune that the necessity of 

 writing for bread compelled him to write con- 

 stantly below his better genius. But he has left 

 sufficient to found a durable fame as a writer of 

 rare individuality, who, using a discredited method, 

 made it delightful by the imagination of a true 

 poet and the humanity of a genuine lover of his 

 Kind. 



The best account of Hood's early life is to be found in 

 his Literary Reminiscences, published in the first series of 

 Hood's Own. The Memoir by his son and daughter is the 

 chief source of information about his later life, but is a 

 poor and unsatisfactory book. Later, in 1885, Mr Alex- 

 ander Elliot, in a modest work entitled Hood in Scotland, 

 has collected from persons and documents previously un- 

 consulted some very interesting details of Hood's early 

 residence in Dundee, and of a second visit of a few 

 weeks paid by him to that city not lon^ before his 

 death. 



Hoofs* The healthy soundness of the horse's 

 foot is mainly preserved by permitting it to 

 grow uninjured by the rasp and knife (see 

 HORSE-SHOEING ), and kept clean by being washed 

 with cold water ; all other applications are in- 

 jurious and destroy the toughness of the ' horn 

 surface.' Softness and brittleness of the hoof, 

 which are fruitful sources of cracks and Corns 

 (q.v. ), may be remedied by placing the feet 

 for several hours daily in thick woollen swabs, 

 kept cool and moist by frequent applications of 

 cold water, and by encouraging a more healthy 

 growth of horn by occasional mild blisters round 

 the coronary band. Cracks, or sand-cracks, as 

 they are termed, mostly occur amongst horses much 

 upon the road, cause lameness, and constitute un- 

 soundness. When serious and recent, poulticing, 

 thinning away of the crust about the crack, and 

 perfect rest are essential. After the earlier heat 

 and tenderness are removed a hot iron should be 

 drawn at right angles to the crack, both above 

 and below, so as to separate the diseased from the 

 sound horn. Waxed thread or fine wire should be 

 wound round the hoof, and a sound growth of horn 

 stimulated by a blister round the coronet. The 

 horse's hoofs are too hard and coarse to be em- 

 ployed for the making of the better class of combs 

 and buttons, for which purpose the hoofs of cattle, 

 to the value of nearly 5000, are annually imported 

 into Britain. They are, however, largely used by 

 manufacturers of prussiate of potash and artificial 

 manures. See FOOT. 



Hoogkly, or HUGLf, a river of Bengal Proper, 

 the most westerly of the channels by which the 

 Ganges reaches the sea, and commercially the most 

 important. Taking its distinctive name near t)>o 



