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Encyclopedia Britannica - Main :: HIG-HOR |
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HOOD, THOMAS (1799-1845) , British humorist and poet, the son of Thomas Hood, bookseller, was born in London on the 23rd of May 1799. " Next to being a citizen of the world," writes Thomas Hood in his Literary Reminiscences, " it must be the best thing to be born a citizen of the world's greatest city." On the death of her husband in 1811 Mrs Hood removed to Islington, where Thomas Hood had a schoolmaster who appreciated his talents, and, as he says, " made him feel it impossible not to take an interest
newspapers
In 1821 Mr John Scott, the editor of the London Magazine, was killed in a duel, and that periodical passed into the hands of some friends of Hood, who proposed to make him sub-editor. His installation into this congenial post at once introduced him to the best literary society of the time; and in becoming the associate of Charles Lamb, Cary, de Quincey, Allan Cunningham, Proctor, Talfourd, Hartley Coleridge, the peasant-poet Clare and other contributors to the magazine, he gradually developed his own intellectual powers, and enjoyed that happy intercourse with superior minds for which his cordial and genial character was so well adapted, and which he has described in his best manner in several chapters of Hood's Own. He had married in 1825, and Odes and Addresseshis first workwas written in conjunction with his brother-in-law Mr J. H. Reynolds, the friend of Keats. S. T. Coleridge wrote to Charles Lamb averring that the book must be his work. The Plea of the Midsummer Fairies (1827) and a dramatic romance, Lamia, published later, belong to this time. The Plea of the Midsummer Fairies was a volume of serious verse, in which Hood showed himself a by no means despicable follower of Keats. But he was known as a humorist, and the public, which had learned to expect jokes from him, rejected this little book almost entirely. There was much true poetry in the verse, and much sound sense and keen observation in the prose of these works; but the poetical feeling and lyrical facility of the one, and the more solid qualities of the other, seemed best employed when they were subservient to his rapid wit, and to the ingenious coruscations of his fancy. This impression was confirmed by the series of the Comic Annual, dating from 1830, a kind of publication at that time popular, which Hood undertook and continued, almost unassisted, for several years. Under that somewhat frivolous title he treated all the leading events of the day in a fine spirit of caricature, entirely free from grossness and vulgarity, without a trait of personal malice, and with an under-current of true sympathy and honest purpose that will preserve these papers, like the sketches of Hogarth, long after the events and manners they illustrate have passed from the minds of men. But just as the agreeable jester rose into the earnest satirist, one of the most striking peculiarities of his style became a more manifest defect. The attention of the reader was distracted, and his good taste annoyed, by the incessant use of puns, of which Hood had written in his own vindication:" However critics may take offence, A double meaning has double sense." Now it is true that the critic must be unconscious of some of the subtlest charms and nicest delicacies of language who would exclude from humorous writing all those impressions and surprises which depend on the use of the diverse sense of words. The history, indeed, of many a word lies hid in its equivocal uses; and it in no way derogates from the dignity of the highest poetry to gain strength and variety from the ingenious application of the same sounds to different senses, any, more than from the contrivances of rhythm or the accompaniment of imitative sounds. But when this habit becomes the characteristic of any wit, it is impossible to prevent it from degenerating into occasional buffoonery, and from supplying a cheap and ready resource, whenever the true vein of humour becomes thin or rare. Artists have been known to use the left hand in the hope of checking the fatal facility which practice had conferred on the right; and if Hood had been able to place under some restraint the curious and complex machinery of words and syllables which his fancy was incessantly producing, his style would have been a great gainer, and much real earnestness of object, which now lies confused by the brilliant kaleidoscope of language, would have remained definite and clear. He was probably not unconscious of this danger; for, as he gained experience as a writer, his diction became more simple, and his ludicrous illustrations less frequent. In another annual called the Gem appeared the poem on the story of " Eugene
for which he secured the assistance of many literary men of reputation and authority, but which was mainly sustained by his own intellectual activity. From a sick-bed, from which he never rose, he conducted this work with surprising energy, and there composed those poems, too few in number, but immortal in the English language, such as the " Song of the Shirt " (which appeared anonymously in the Christmas number of Punch, 1843), the " Bridge of Sighs " and the " Song of .the Labourer," which seized the deep human interests of the time, and transported them from the ground of social philosophy into the loftier domain of the imagination. They are no clamorous expressions of anger at the discrepancies and contrasts of humanity, but plain, solemn pictures of conditions of life, which neither the politician nor the moralist can deny to exist, and which they are imperatively called upon to remedy. Woman, in her wasted life, in her hurried death, here stands appealing to the society that degrades her, with a combination of eloquence and poetry, of forms of art at once instantaneous and permanent, and with great metrical energy and variety. Hood was associated with the Athenaeum
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