Year: 1860

HOOPS WT.-We find the grotesque through
Hoods writings in union with the fantastic and
the fancful. His fertility in the most unexpect-
ed analogies becomes to the reader of his works
a matter of continual wonder. Strange and Gu
rious contrasts and likenesses, both mental and
verbal, which might never once occur to o
mind of more than common eccentrici:y and in
venton, seem to have been in his mind with the
ordinary flow of thinking. Plenteous and sus-
tanned, therefore, his wit is, it never to
startle. We have no doubt of his endless resour-
ces, and yet each new instance becomes new
marvel. His wit, too, is usually pregnant and
vital with force aud meaning. In verbal wit he
has had but few equals, and in puns he has had
none. He made the pun an instrument of power;
and had his wit been malignant, he could have
pointed the pun to a sharpness that would have
left wounds as deep thought, and could have
added poison to it that would have kept them
ranking as long as memory lasted. The secret
of his power in the pun is, that he does not rest
in the analogy of sound alone, but seeks also for
analogy of significance. Generally there is a sub
tile coincidence between his meaning and what
the sound of the pun signifies, and thus the pun
becomes amusing or illustrative image, or
most emphatic and striking condensation of his
thought. "Take care of your cough" he writes
to his engraver, lest you go to cOughy pot, as
said before but did not say before, that no.
body is so likely as a wood engraver to cut his
stick" Speaking of his wife, he says, To be
sure, she still sticks to her old fault of going to
sleep while am debating, till vow to change
nv tDomanuensis for a nadnuensis." How keenly
and we'll the pun serves him in burlesque, in his
comic limitations of the great moralist He hits
off with inimitabe ridicule the great moralist's
dislike to Scotland Boswell inquired the Doc
tors opinion on Illicit distillation, and how the
great morast would act in an affray between the
smuggers and the excise " If went by the
letter of the law, should assist the customs but
according to the spirit, should stand by the con-
trabandists." The Doctor was always very sati-
rical on the want of timber in the North. "Sr."
said he to the young Lord of Incombally, who
was going to join his regiment. may Providence
preserve you in battle, and especially your nei-
ther limbs You may grow a walking stick here,
but you must import wooden leg" AT Dunsin-
name the old prejudice broke out. "Sir," said
be to Boswell, Macbeth was an idiot he ought
to have known that every wood in Scotland
might be carried in mans hand. The Scotch,
sir, like the frogs in the table: if they had
log, they would make king of it," We will
quote here stanza which contains quite ser
GUS application of the pun ; and for Hoods pur-
pose no other word could so happily or so pun
gently express his meaning. The poem is an
"Address TO Mrs. Fry !" and the doctrine Of it
s that it is better and wiser to teach the young
and uncorrupted that are yet outside the prison
than the vicious and the hardened who have got
inside it. Then he goes on:


tsI like your chocolate good Mistress Fry


like your cookery in every way;


like your Shrovetde service and supply


like to hear your sweet Pandeans play


like the pity in your full brmmed eye


like your carriage and your silken gray,


Your dove like habits and your silent preaching;
But don't like your Ne'ogatory teaching"
Atlantic Monthly.