The Sun. — 1846-01-19 (London, England)

LITERATURE. THE COMIC ANNUAL for 1846. By Thomas Hood. Poor Tom Hood's capacity—his extraordinary capacity—for compositions of the very highest poetical merit, has recently been commemorated by ourselves, in reviewing the late republication of his poems. Now, by the reprint of his renowned " Whimsicalities," at this moment lying on our escritoire, we are enabled, with some degree of plausibility, to particularise the exuberance, the sun-heartedness, and the irresistible breadth of his humour. Almost everybody has revelled in the facetiousness which is squandered with such lavish pleasantry over this volume; the contents alternately insinuating a moral or pointing an eccentricity. A more genial, hearty, or unaffected exhibition of drollery can scarcely be discovered anywhere, and gloriously has Leech embodied several of Hood's happiest creations. His illustration to that illustrious conceit ending— "No warmth, no cheerfulness, no healthful ease, No comfortable feel in any member, No shade, no shine, no butterflies, no bees, No fruits, no flow'rs, no leaves, no birds—November!" is rich to an extreme ; the frostbitten smear of a man's figure just discernable through the fog, his (literally) frieze coat muffled up to his nose, the canal water at his feet too thickly encrusted with ice to permit of suicide—all these concomitants, produced simply with parallel lines, bring that most miserable and blue-devillish month before one palpably and visibly. Then Miss Crane—the Miss Crane—with her button nose and her starched mittens—there, from the pencil of Leech, you can almost distinguish her shrill, scrooping voice, as she utters the grace before meat :—" For what we are going to receive— elbows, elbows l—the Lord make us—backs in and shoulders down—triiily thankful— and no chattering ! Amen." Then Mr. 'Pryme, the famous Mr. Pryme, with his bald head as " scarlet as a love-apple"— there he is to the very life; and Mrs. Gardiner, too, as she appeared when chasing away that incorrigible pig, who derived such exquisite gratification from wallowing in a bed of tulips; and James Hockin, and Mr. Crumpler, there they are all together finished to a hair or a wrinkle—sheer callotypes. Nevertheless, capital as are these productions of Leech, grotesquely as &hey are conceived and excellently as they are reduced to form—they still lag far behind those rough, inartistic, malformed pictorial jokes, which only Hood could accomplish or invent, for comicality and point; from "II unah-baloo," as a chorus of singers shouting in concert, after the system of Mainzer and his fellow-labourer, to "Does your mother know you're out ?" as uttered by the fa un•yard cock to the chicken just popped from its shell. And as to the extravagant jocoseness of the literature, nothing need be insisted upon that question ; almost every one being familiar with its amazing and preposterous humour. Surely there is nobody but remembers the " Sea-Totaller," and that scrap of incorrigible fun christened "An Extraordinary Operation." And surely everybody recollects " The Longest Hour in my Life," and " The Camberwell Beauty." And surely—and surely a remembrance of "The Grimsby Ghost" can never have evaporated from the memory of any one who has once travelled over those thirteen mortal chapters, all athirst to discover the important secret which troubles the phantom of the late widow Mullins, the chandleress, and causes it to haunt the shop in her favourite post " between the coffee-mill and the barrel of red herrings," until the goblin at last divulges the secret to her daughter, in those remarkable anti memorable words—" Mary, it arn't booked, but there's tuppence for sandpaper at number nine!" From all subjects, even the most unaluring, the ready fancy and spontaneous wit of Hood extracted materials for our merriment, sunning them at the same moment with the glow of philanthropy. The summer air, with its green " luxury of boughs," the vernal glory of the dingle, or the gleam of water in a midnight valley, stirred up his heart with a mysterious, but potent gladness ; he wandered through the natural cloisters of the forest with his whole soul brimming up with a love for Nature and Nature's God. In those moments he was a poet of the loftiest order; his mind was attuned to the subtlest presence of beauty ; extrinsic loveliness, however, partial or minute, found a ready response in his bosom. His thoughts were then purified to an exceeding delicacy, and his words were musical and modulated in proportion. But in his gayer moments, when the wine of Anacreon seemed to stain his lips, and the heart flashed up through the eye in sparkles of merriment, none could vie with him in the wonderful richness of his drollery ; his quips hail the gold of originality, and shone with the lustre of their absurdity. As a collection of this true and legitimate species of humour, this reprint of " Hood's Whimsicalities" is without a parallel.  7.