Part 5 (1/2)
THOMAS HOOD.
Now almost the last light has gone out of the galaxy that made the first thirty years of this age so bright. And the dynasty that now reigns over the world of wit and poetry is poor and pale, indeed, in comparison.
We are anxious to pour due libations to the departed; we need not economize our wine; it will not be so often needed now.
Hood has closed the most fatiguing career in the world--that of a professed wit; and we may say with deeper feeling than of others who shuffle off the load of care, May he rest in peace! The fatigues of a conqueror, a missionary preacher, even of an active philanthropist, like Howard, are nothing to those of a professed wit. Bad enough is it when he is only a man of society, by whom every one expects to be enlivened and relieved; who can never talk gravely in a corner, without those around observing that he must have heard some bad news to be so out of spirits; who can never make a simple remark, while eating a peaceful dinner, without the table being set in a roar of laughter, as when Sheridan, on such an occasion, opened his lips for the first time to say that ”he liked currant jelly.” For these unhappy men there are no intervals of social repose, no long silences fed by the mere feeling of sympathy or gently entertained by observation, no warm quietude in the mild liveries of green or brown, for the world has made up its mind that motley is their only wear, and teases them to jingle their bells forever.
But far worse is it when the professed wit is also by profession a writer, and finds himself obliged to coin for bread those jokes which, in the frolic exuberance of youth, he so easily coined for fun. We can conceive of no existence more cruel, so tormenting, and at the same time so dull. We hear that Hood was forever behindhand with his promises to publishers; no wonder! But when we hear that he, in consequence, lost a great part of the gains of his hard life, and was, as a result, hara.s.sed by other cares, we cannot mourn to lose him, if,
”After life's fitful fever, he sleeps well;”
or if, as our deeper knowledge leads us to hope, he is now engaged in a better life, where his fancies shall take their natural place, and flicker like light on the surface of a profound and full stream flowing betwixt rich and peaceful sh.o.r.es, such as, no less than the drawbacks upon his earthly existence, are indicated in the following
SONNET.
The curse of Adam, the old curse of all, Though I inherit in this feverish life Of worldly toil, vain wishes, and hard strife, And fruitless thought in care's eternal thrall, Yet more sweet honey than of bitter gall I taste through thee, my Eva, my sweet wife.
Then what was Man's lost Paradise? how rife Of bliss, since love is with him in his fall!
Such as our own pure pa.s.sion still might frame Of this fair earth and its delightful bowers, If no fell sorrow, like the serpent, came To trail its venom o'er the sweetest flowers; But, O! as many and such tears are ours As only should be shed for guilt and shame.
In Hood, as in all true wits, the smile lightens on the verge of a tear.
True wit and humor show that exquisite sensibility to the relations of life, that fine perception as to slight tokens of its fearful, hopeless mysteries, which imply pathos to a still higher degree than mirth.
Hood knew and welcomed the dower which nature gave him at his birth, when he wrote thus:--
All things are touched with melancholy Born of the secret soul's mistrust, To feel her fair ethereal wings Weighed down with vile, degraded dust.
Even the bright extremes of joy Bring on conclusions of disgust, Like the sweet blossoms of the May, Whose fragrance ends in must.
O, give her, then, her tribute just, Her sighs and tears and musings holy; There is no music in the life That sounds with idiot laughter solely; There's not a string attuned to mirth, But has its chord in melancholy.
Hood was true to this vow of acceptance. He vowed to accept willingly the pains as well as joys of life for what they could teach. Therefore, years expanded and enlarged his sympathies, and gave to his lightest jokes an obvious harmony with a great moral design, not obtrusively obvious, but enough so to give a sweetness and permanent complacency to our laughter. Indeed, what is written in his gayer mood has affected us more, as spontaneous productions always do, than what he has written of late with grave design, and which has been so much lauded by men too obtuse to discern a latent meaning, or to believe in a good purpose unless they are formally told that it exists.
The later serious poems of Hood are well known; so are his jest books and novel. We have now in view to speak rather of a little volume of poems published by him, some years since, republished here, but never widely circulated.
When a book or a person comes to us in the best possible circ.u.mstances, we judge--not too favorably, for all that the book or person can suggest is a part of its fate, and what is not seen under the most favorable circ.u.mstances is never quite truly seen either as to promise or performance--but we form a judgment above what can be the average sense of the world in general as to its merits, which may be esteemed, after time enough has elapsed, a tolerably fair estimate of performance, though not of promise or suggestion.
We became acquainted with these poems in one of those country towns which would be called, abroad, the most provincial of the province. The inhabitants had lost the simplicity of farmers' habits, without gaining in its place the refinement, the variety, the enlargement of civic life.
Their industry had received little impulse from thought; their amus.e.m.e.nt was gossip. All men find amus.e.m.e.nt from gossip--literary, artistic, or social; but the degrees in it are almost infinite. They were at the bottom of the scale; they scrutinized their neighbors' characters and affairs incessantly, impertinently, and with minds unpurified by higher knowledge; consequently the bitter fruits of envy and calumny abounded.
In this atmosphere I was detained two months, and among people very uncongenial both to my tastes and notions of right. But I had a retreat of great beauty. The town lay on the bank of a n.o.ble river; behind it towered a high and rocky hill. Thither every afternoon went the lonely stranger, to await the fall of the sunset light on the opposite bank of the full and rapid stream. It fell like a smile of heavenly joy; the white sails on the stream glided along like angel thoughts; the town itself looked like a fair nest, whence virtue and happiness might soar with sweetest song. So looked the scene _from above_; and that hill was the scene of many an aspiration and many an effort to attain as high a point of view for the mental prospect, in the hope that little discrepancies, or what seemed so when on a level with them, might also, from above, be softened into beauty and found subservient to a n.o.ble design on the whole.
This town boasted few books, and the accident which threw Hood's poems in the way of the watcher from the hill, was a very fortunate one. They afforded a true companions.h.i.+p to hours which knew no other, and, perhaps, have since been overrated from a.s.sociation with what they answered to or suggested.
Yet there are surely pa.s.sages in them which ought to be generally known and highly prized. And if their highest value be for a few individuals with whom they are especially in concord, unlike the really great poems which bring something to all, yet those whom they please will be very much pleased.
Hood never became corrupted into a hack writer. This shows great strength under his circ.u.mstances. d.i.c.kens has fallen, and Sue is falling; for few men can sell themselves by inches without losing a cubit from their stature. But Hood resisted the danger. He never wrote when he had nothing to say, he stopped when he had done, and never hashed for a second meal old thoughts which had been drained of their choicest juices. His heart is truly human, tender, and brave. From the absurdities of human nature he argues the possibility of its perfection.