The Sun.
London, England, 1846-06-01 00:00:00

HOOD'S.

recent
Not only a new covering, butanesweecinhgartahcatetrthise given
iven
to Hood's Magazine for June ; and
is a very remarkable improvement upon many
numbers, we congratulate the pnblisher upon the alters_
tion. Since the untimely decease of its first gifted edi-
tor, we regretted to observe a singular falling off in the
ability of his miscellany, and we regretted this the more
as it was intimately connected with his memory, and
with some of his last and noblest literary efforts, by as-
sociation. It faded away from a sparkling and humour-
ous collection of papers to a mere hodge-podgeing (to
employ a homely phrase) of indifferent fictions, and
those moreover in a swarm of fragments. Without any
question the present number is the best which has ap-
peared since our noble poet Thomas hood seceded from
the magazine. It is commenced, too, in a very unusual
Manner for a periodical publication—the first contribu-
tion being the first act of a Portuguese tragedy, entitled
Ignez de Castro, from the pen of Mr. J. Jones, the ac-
complished author of "Rural Sonnets." Anything that
bill'ty appear under the sifr,l ature of this entleman is
to enii.t out 6yiup taw. and, i.O re,oonable extent,
wepropitiate our favour. Iu spe4king tens, moreover,
w are influenced wholly.by a sense of what is truthful,

and goed. and beautiful ; the more so as we know the
author only through his writings ; individually he is a
total stranger to us ; as connected with his poems he is
one of our familiar favourites. . Our . predisposition
in his favour, however, arises from something
beyond even the merit of his productions ;" our interest
towards him is aroused from the circumstance of his
being the brother of one of our most illustrious
female lyrist; Felicia 'romans. We shall reserve our
opinion upon his five-act tragedy to a later period, when
the drama enlarges upon us in a more complete form :
but of his " Sonnets for the Times" we can speak in
decided terms of praise ; they are nerved with the true
verve of poetry. Those now lying before us form a per-
fect match to three preceding ones, " Moonlight on the
waters," the present being descriptive of " The phos-
phoresence of the ocean." Regarding the wonders of nature
with the sympathising eye of a lover of nature, the
writer infuses into his descriptions of those wonders a
reflex of their awe and loveliness. This is essentially
the case with these most charming sonnets, they have
upon them the bloom of truth, and within them the
animation of feeling. When, for example, their writer
says of the phosphoressence of the ocean—
" A mys'try of volition it appears,"
the picture conveyed in that single line is complete, be-
bause it is so suggestive. With its utterance the ima-
gination takes in the lambent and undulating aspect of
this phenomena of the billows ; the mind at once has
before it a sea corrugated with a silver brightness.
Here again is a noble piece of pictorial metre :
" But now, around,
On ev'ry side the thunder-drops let fall.
In globules all luceolent rebound,
As, quLcrelling, the winds bring on a squall,
Which into foam the Water-gems doth blow,
And calls the dagger'd Lightning to the fray
Beneath Night's ebon pall their part to play.'
It is pleasurable to encounter passages like these
amidst the scum of verse with which the public are
being incessantly drenched. It assures us that the
mantle of poesy has descended to our own generation,
and that we are not absolutely lapsed into a sordid and
matter-of-fact disposition. It admonishes us, moreover,
to remember some that are among us, and to look with
hopeful eyes to the author of the " New Timon," but
especially and mainly to THE Young Poet of the Age,
whom that same author of the " New Timon" scorned
—Alfred Tennyson ! As likely to sustain the popular
taste for poetry we rejoice that an idea which received
our commendation last month, under the name of " A
May Garland," is continned this month, under that of
" A Summer Wreath for Summer-tide." It is a treat
worth striving much to obtain, and betokens the
rhythmical taste of the collector. He reminds us of
Thomson's flocks, " thick nibbling through the clover'd
vale ;" of Shakspere's Ariel, revelling " under the
blossom that hangs on the bough ;" of Croly's " per-
fumed pink, that studs the earth with clustering ruby !"
and of other choice cullings of variable beauty. " Nell
Gwynne," the " White Cloud," and the " Bushranger,"
are continued with average ability, but their incessant
recurrence induees us to wish them ended. A few
more miscellaneous papers make up, however, an excel-
lent number.