The Sun.
London, England, 1847-06-28 00:00:00

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LONDON, MONDAY, JUNE 28, 1847.

By a simultaneous movement of official munificence
an annual pension of one hundred pounds has been
awarded to the orphan children of Taoicts HOOD,
another of two hundred pounds to LEIGH HUNT,
and another of three hundred pounds to THEOBALD
MATHEW. We are rejoiced at this nobly-discrimi-
nated generosity, or rather, we should say this de-
served mark of Ministerial approbation to the true
labourers for the welfare and happiness of the multi-
tude. Those who cannot sympathise with our
feelings of exultation at the course pursued by the
present advisers of our most Gracious SOTEREIGN in the
distribution of the somewhat paltry fund of 1,2001.,
placed at their disposal for the reward of literary, sci-
entific, and public services, are not competent to appre-
ciate the genius or the characters of the three eminent
eminent individuals just enumerated. By his advo-
cacy of the very degraded and the very despised, by
his thrilling and passionate appeals to the charity of
the living million, by the gentle and humanizing
tone of his writings, by the grace and delicacy
of his poetic creations, and the ardour with
which he strove to inculcate morality—even
through the medium of -conceits like those of
Swirr, and buffooneries, like those of RABELAIS—
THOMAS HOOD bequeathed to his children a direct
claim upon the attention of the Government. By
years of honourable toil, during which he has
adorned the literature of his native land, and advo-
cated those principles of liberality which were once
the opprobrium of a gallant minority, but which are
now triumphant and predominant throughout the
people, the veteran bard and patriarchal essayist,
LEIGH HUNT, acquired an immediate right to the
aid of the State in the autumn of his chequered des-
tiny. Of the career by which the Rev. THEOBALD
MATHEW, or as he is now more usually and more affec-
tionately called Father MATHEW, commands our ap-
plause and our gratitude, it would be a matter of the
utmost supererogation to speak. That career is
finely and even grandly indicated in the title granted
to him by universal acclamation—The Apostle of
Temperance. The songs of HOOD are a portion of
our household language ; the essays of HUNT are re-
curring perpetually to our memory, with a pleasant
vividness in the otherwise bald and barren casualities
of domestic life ; the name, the fame, and the good-
ness of MATHEW are reverenced in every village, and
in every homestead. Such men as these are surely
entitled to the assistance of the Monarch, the Cabinet,
and the Parliament ; but especially so in the afflictions
of poverty, the anguish of decrepitude, or the desola-
tion of declining years. Remembering how poor
HOOD toiled on a bed of agony to earn his honest
bread by the sweating of his brain; remembering how
LEIGH HUNT was long since incarcerated for the
petty crime of terming our English TIBERIUS,
GEORGE the FOURTH, "an Adonis of sixty," and
how he has lingered on, until now, with barely a
competence to smooth the pillow under his worn
temples ; remembering how Father MATHEW has
neglected his own personal interests in labouring
for the moral and physical advancement of his
fellow-creatures—how, indeed, he has rendered his
private fortunes altogether subservient to the fortunes
of the million—it cannot but be matter of general and
cordial congratulation that six hundred pounds of the
national property have been apportioned with so
much discrimination.

Rejoicing, however, as we do to the very uttermost
in the arrangements thus made by Lord JOHN
RUSSELL for the sustenance of the orphans of the
Genius of Popular Charity, and for the amelioration
of the condition of the Genius of Social Happiness and
of the Genius of National Benevolence, we do conceive
that there is ample reason to cavil at the niggard-
liness of the fund from which these pensions are
abstracted. Twelve hundred pounds per annum is
surely a miserable sum to be placed at the disposal of
the Government for the purpose of affording aid to the
helpless, and encouragement to the deserving, among our
literary, and scientific, and moral benefactors. Twelve
hundred pounds ! Why, it should at the least be
doubled, it should at the very lowest computation be
increased to two thousand four hundred. How are not
the intentions of a discerning Minister crippled
and cramped and restrained by this erroneous system
of economical gratitude Supposing the fund
originally at the disposal of the Prime Minister to
have been of a reasonably elastic limit, the disgrace
would not have continued so long upon the nation
and upon the Government—the disgrace, we say,
would not have continued so long of neglecting
the brightest dramatic genius of the age—one of
the brightest dramatic geniuses of any age since the
days of SHAKSPERE and OTwAY—we mean, of
course, none other than JAMES SHERIDAN KNOWLES.
'While the name of a writer so eminently distin-
guished in our poetic literature as SHERIDAN
KNOWLES, is continually and carelessly passed over
in the distribution of such pensions as those we have
enumerated, we can never express our unalloyed satis-
faction, we can never cease to declaim against the
reprehensible parsimony of the State, and the griev-
ous injustice which is done to a man of a true and
beautiful genius. A pittance (scarcely twenty-five
pounds each per annum) is granted to the children of
'THOIII9 HOOD. We are grateful. An income of
two hundred per annum is given to LEIGH HUNT. v
e are heartily rejoiced. An annual pension of
three hundred per
\ equallyie a n v v ehai
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en
se slit
annum is awarded to Father MA-
THEW.
of our satisfactainroe.
We
expression
ERinmethri KNOWLES iS
permitted in no
manner to be the recipient of the offi-
cial monies he has well earned by his inimitable com-
positions. He whose voice has spoken audibly to the
popular heart, by the lips of the players,
he who has
made the tears of the very many rain down at the
woes of virtue and the pathos of contrition, he who
has fired the bosoms of the people with the language of
loyalty to the cause of freedom, is himself apparently