25S 



TABLE-TALK AST) VABIETIES. 



that he completed his education at a : 

 finish ing school at Camberwell, upon 

 'which Tom has some twenty good 

 jokes in his Literary Reminiscences. 

 From Camberwell he went to Dun- 

 dee, and soon after he was appren- 

 ticed to his uncle, Mr. Kobert 

 Sands, to learn the art and mystery 

 of engraving. Here he soon found 

 out the drift of his own genius ; he 

 left the burin for the pen, composed 

 a few light pieces of poetry, got into 

 notice, and, after Scott's death in 

 1821, became a sort of sub-editor of 

 the London Magazine. It was at 

 this time that he acquired the friend- 

 ship of Lamb, Hazlitt, Gary, Allan 

 Cunningham, Clare, and others, so 

 delightfully pictured by Mr. Hood 

 himself in his two short Li- 

 terary Reminiscences. A volume 

 of Odes and Addresses to Great 

 People gave him a rank and a. re- 

 putation in literature for something 

 done in a better kind of Colman 

 vein. It was some time, however, 

 before the real author was known ; 

 and Coleridge, after two perusals, 

 wrote and taxed Lamb with the 

 authorship of the work. This 

 was high praise, and, as the young 

 lady said of Dr. Johnson, from one 

 who could not lie, and could not be 

 mistaken. 



A Plea for the Midsummer Fairies 

 was followed by a volume of Whims 

 and Oddities, inscribed to Sir Wal- 

 ter Scott; then came the Comic 

 Annual, with its six or seven years 

 of clever and lively existence ; then 

 Tylney Hall, a story in three vo- 

 lumes, with one super-excellent cha- 

 racter in it, called Unlucky Joe ; 

 then Up the Rhine, the result of a 

 residence on the banks of that hur- 

 rying river ; then Hood's Own, a 

 volume of cullings from his comic 

 lucubrations, with what he calls a 

 new infusion of blood for general 

 circulation. Here he gave us his 

 two short Literary Reminiscences 

 already alluded to. On Hook's 

 death, Hood became editor of the 



New Monthly Magazine, and, upon 

 some disagreement with Mr. Col- 

 burn, editor of a magazine of his 

 own, bearing his own name. 



Hood \vas a little below the 

 middle size, with a grave face, 

 which habitually wore an air of 

 melancholy. He was mistaken 

 more than once in Germany, he 

 tells us, for a regimental chaplain. 

 His mouth, he informs us, was a 

 little wry, as if it had always laughed 

 on the wrong side. But Hood's 

 was no willow-pattern face. He 

 was silent in mixed company ; a. 

 kind of Puritan in look, till an op- 

 portunity for a joke appeared, 

 which he rose at like a trout 

 not, however, to be caught, but 

 to catch others ; his countenance 

 brightened up with the rising wit \ 

 you saw a play around his mouth ; 

 his eyes sparkled, and all the genius 

 of the man stood full in the face 

 before you. 



CHARACTERISTICS OF BYROU's . 

 WRITINGS. 



Never had any writer so vast 3 

 command of the whole eloquence of 

 scorn, misanthropy, and despair. 

 That Marah was never dry. No art 

 could sweeten, no draughts could ex- 

 haust its perennial waters of bitter- 

 ness. Never was there such variety 

 in monotony as that of JByrori. From 

 maniac laughter to piercing lamen- 

 tation, there was not a single note of 

 human anguish of which he was not 

 master. He always described him- 

 self as a man of the same kind with 

 his favourite creations, as a man 

 whose heart had been withered,, 

 whose capacity for happiness was 

 gone and could not be restored, but 

 whose invincible spirit dared the 

 worst that could befall him here or 

 hereafter. 



How much of this morbid feel- 

 ing sprang from an original disease 

 of the mind, how much from real 

 misfortune, how much from the 

 nervousness of dissipation, how 



