The Cecil Whig. [volume] (Elkton, Md.) 1841-current, 1885-10-31
5'"a''s 4" literature and B''s''p'p.
An Original WING Feature.
TOM HOOD.

English literature is not confined, how
ever, to one quality of wealth; every
variety is represented, and each of some
particular and singular merit. Her epic
and ballad writer's, her essayists and his
torical writers, her novelists and song
authors have SO fully included the public
and social annals of their country in the
work they have produced that they can
truly be placed in the light of purely
representative literature. Beginning
with the love tales of Chaucer, including
the historical dramas of Shakespeare and
his JonsonIan contemporaries, thence
down to the battle hymns of Byron,
Tennyson and Scott, and the philosophic
poems of Browning, Arnold and Swim
burne, the entire cosmos of English life
and thought during the more eventful
periods of her history is represented.
These poets were beyond doubt made for
the times that bore them. The ancient
feudalism of the day served as a back.
ground to the local paintings of them all,
but the foreground figures are vastly
different in habit, style and system. In
the days of Chaucer sickly effeminance
pervaded the atmosphere. The rugged,
crude, unintelligent natures of the peo-
pie were laved in continual stream of
lustful inertia; love and madness and
debauchery were the reigning elements,
and remained SO until long after the
chaste, sweet notes of Chaucers Tyre had
been drowned in the more intellectual
and artful strains of Spencer's instru-
ment. But from Chaucer sprang the
i first impetus for social and moral eleva-
ton and refined literary recreation, and
the great nation once sent in quest of
such golden fleece as sublime and
matchless wisdom and the sacred purity
of Millions angels never paused, surged
on bravely and earnestly adding daily
accretions to its rapidly swelling store,
down, down through the dayspf Pope
aud Dryden, DIR. johnson, Burns, Scott
and Words worth to the sunbright galaxy
gathered at the present time in the la I'd
of white chalk cliffs and distorted par
liments. The natures of the writers
embraced in these several periods adapted
themselves upon occasional or general
instances to some phase of nature in the
landscape of their country or the habits
of their fellows Each writer became the
creator of his own peculiar style, because
|
ent lights, and built his little conserva.
tive theory of that nature about it with
utter contempt of a previous opinion or
the manner in which it had formerly
been treated. Thus Charles Dickens
made Uriah Heap despicable and ut
terly unlovcable wretch, while Thomas
Carlyle made his man of deceit and per-
jury and petty villiany suitable subject
for unique criticisms and stole, philo-
sophie sentiment. Carlyle plowed down
deep for the sake of theory and practice
of materialistic doctrines. Dickens
skinned the outer circles of Criah's
virtues, touched the interior elements of
his vices, and cndeavored to show the
world how very much it was burdened
with such men. These two writer's and
their varying traits are representative of
the whole galaxy. Each subject the
time and country furnished for notation
by her literateurs received an ultimate
and distinctive treatment from thous-
and fertile brains, with the one exception
that the central subject of all, the one
grand ideal, the country itself, figures
alike in song and story, in philosophy or
annal, except where political beliefs
vary and the literature is made not a
literature but sparkling jargon of par
liamentary repartee aid statistical con.
troversy; for it seems that the political
writer's of England, like the political
writer's of every country, are unavoid-
ably estranged from the charmed circle
of poets, romantists and philosophists
bv their ultra radcalism. And so it is
that what the beautiful genius of Robert
Burns wove into tender love song, or
enchanting lyric the pathos and humor
of Tom Hood tuned into rollicking
rhyme and irresistible comicalities. Who
can resist Tom Hood? Who can fail, ere
ne has read the poems fifteen minutes,
to be lost heart and soul in the chaste
and irresistible mirth the poor sickly
poets genius conceived while his hearts
blood was turning cold with the icy chill
of misfortunate, unkind world? There
were two Tom Hoods: One who kept
the whole of London in milthful qui
vive through all the long days of severe
and wasting illness by his sparkling lam
poems and characteristic puns, and one
who captivated the deepest, aiicctionate
regard of the little family and group of
friends that constantly surrounded his
invalid bed in l. ,ndon in 1915, and the
year prece ding it. Therefore, as an emf
nent critic has suggested: 1.-THE sad
world owes him debt of gratitude, not
only for making it laugh, but for seeing
its actual woes and for weeping with
those who wept. Charles Lamb said,
jestingly, and as pun on Hoods name,
that he carried two iaces-one tragic ana
the other comic. 1t was rather as if the
| two elements of his mind receiving sim
| ultaneously the same idea, the rarest
medium invariably refracted the thought,
and gave 1t an unexpected whimsical
turn. As, for instance, when speaking
seriously in his address to his old asso.
ciates, the boys of Chaplain Academy:
Perchance thou deem'st 1t were Il thing
To wear Il crown-to be a King.
And sleep on regal down.
Alas. thou knowest not regal cares;
For happier is thy head that wears
The hat without n CROWN"
Thus was Tom Hood the fairest, clearest
example of the touching sentiment, the
ever truthful epigram:
There's not string atuned to mirth
But has its chord1n melancholy"
How ever dubious the poets life may
have seemed to him and others through
out its saddest periods of suffering. no
breath of morbidity is discoverable any
where in his work from the first sweet
sentence of The bridge of signs" to the
last rollicking paragraph of Miss Kill.
mansegg." When mirthful mood came
the poem or pun it created glowed with
the deep. awful humor of the satirist,
and when sadness possessed his soul
there invariably fell from his pen such
gems as Eugene Aram," The Song of
the Shirt, " the Plea of the Midsummer
Fairies," and other pieces. In the |