as an exposition of the charm of that production, and better express the graces of style than the following? "The beauty of that poetry is, to me, that it was never too handsome; there is no fatigue of sublimity about it." In all parts of the book the soundest taste is manifested, and the true position of Byron and his school well posited as to Shakspeare and the greater poets. Our space does not permit of giving extracts and examples; but the following happy expressions will give some idea how the book glows with fine perceptions and observant satire. "Our guide, an accomplished swindler," as a matter of course. The gentlemen at Athens he describes as fierce but not dangerous;" and rejoices at Smyrna, "that a Londoner is no longer a spittoon for true believers." 66 Mr. Titmarsh is not, too, without his enthusiasm, though it seems to glow more towards the living than the dead, as witness his description of the beauties of Smyrna, more especially the Fig-nymph. We apprehend but one annoyance from this book, and that is the setting in of a race of comic tourists. Now, as incapacity is more bearable in the old stereotyped phraseology, and learning may be useful when it does not endeavour to become frolicsome, we hope that Mr. Titmarsh, therefore, will register his style, as the tailors do the fashion of a paletot, and that thus we shall be saved from an epidemic of folly, for which, unfortunately, no quarantine is provided. Let him go over the whole globe after the same mode, and we will go with him joyfully; but as is said to the servants, we cannot allow any followers. We dread the next summer, or rather the following publishing season. But, however, we trust we shall then see him again and alone. POEMS. BY THOMAS HOOD. In Two Volumes. Fcp. 8vo. Edward Moxon. London : AGAIN have we in the great busy blundering world; stupid, stolid, dozing, prosing, hustling, bustling with the petty object of the day, let one of the greatest of our poets go down to the grave unappreciated, or if partially deified, wrongfully so. And this in an age ringing with indignation against other blind, wilful, stupid old ages that are gone: especially fulminating against the seventeenth as not appreciating the great one, in spite of contemporary laudations that he was or again, though it was boldly, but yet wisely prophesied that he should be "Fresh to all ages: when posterity "Shall loathe what's new, think all his prodigy, "That is not Shakespeare's, every line each verse Surely past ages do not deserve this stolid character, and if they should, is ours in a condition to bring the charge? Who was brave or wise enough to assert whilst he was alive, that Thomas Hood was a great poet? or, like Jonson or Digges, would dare to name him with Horace or Theocritus, with Juvenal, or even with our own Pope or Dryden, much less with Shakespeare or Jonson, two names that at length demand a servile homage even with the unimpressionable many. And yet we defy any who can truly appreciate these poets, after perusing the two volumes now published, not to say Hood deservedly ranks with them, uniting in a wonderful degree the opposite qualities of many. Why wait for confirmation of many generations to assert this, when a comparison of the works will justify the assertion. Were this collection for the first time put into the hands of a man of taste and experience, it would be difficult to convince him it was the product of one spirit. Or he must declare that it was a kindred production to that of the very few that embrace the whole circle of human sympathies, and possess the opposite faculties of wit and pathos in their utmost perfection. To our own shame we say it, we knew not Thomas Hood until his real works were thus presented to us. We had seen him piecemeal, had admired, as they crossed us, many of his individual productions. We regarded him of course as a great humorist, as a most. amusing word-conjurer, as an earnest, powerful enunciator: but we had never reflected on the curious or the surprising contrariety and universality of his powers. He had been contrasted (and that too in a work of great pretensión) with Theodore Hook. The purest critics could not consider him but as a great joker-a living and enlarged Joe Miller of the age. His grave poems were received with more surprise than appreciation, and slowly won their way to public attention. The Song of the Shirt" ran with electric power through the whole mind of the land; and even that perhaps owed something to its medium, so slow are we all to give credence to an unexpected development of power. Its stern uncompromising reality too, was as much a passport. to its ready popularity as its own felicitous truth and poetical power: "Eugene Aram's Dream," nor the "Midsummer Fairies,' both intrinsically greater than this admirable but painful lyric, made no such sensation; and the latter, and his "Hero and Leander" never reached beyond a very limited first edition. In our opinion they must both take a permanent place in the language, more especially the last, which is worthy to stand beside the old Greek poem, or its admirable paraphrase by Marlowe. It is highly probable that whatever posterity know of Mr. Hood, will be through the beautiful lyric and narrative poems in these volumes. His power over words is wonderful, surely no writer at all equals him in his abundance and aptitude in the use of epithets so perfect yet. so inexhaustible, equalled only by his power of verse which is numerous, crystal and sparkling as if scooped direct from the Pierian spring. This certain proof of true poetry he possesses in great force. His power of words is magical, making them perform several duties at the same moment, and playing sleight-of-pen with them in a manner that no one else can at all approach. For instance, in that wonderful poem, "An Ode addressed to Rae Wilson, Esquire," we have― "I own I shake my sides at ranters, or again : And treat Sham-Abr'am saints with wicked banters; It's when I've got my wine-I say, d—canters : "As if he dee-dash-dee'd some other flock." Of this indomitable tendency to indicate the fanciful and the frolicsome that floats as it were over the surface even of the deepest truths and most powerful emotions, the instances are innumerable, but as that earnest little poem "The Workhouse Clock" furnishes a striking example, not only of this strong characteristic but of many others, we shall, contrary to our usual custom, indulge in a quotation or two. How abundant in expression, feeling, and observation, is this account of the pauper throng— "Father, mother, and careful child, Looking as if it had never smiled- Urged by the sighs of sorrow and wrong, Stop its course who can ! Stop who can its onward course And irresistible moral force; O vain and idle dream! That human movement contains within Onward, onward, with hasty feet, But starving amidst Whitechapel's meat, Through the Poultry-but still unfed— Here is a true Shakespearian poem, both in abundance of language and exactness of expression, and it will stand advantageous comparison for imagery and nice touches of observation with Hubert's account of the reception by the populace of Arthur's death. We should very much have liked to enter on an elaborate exemplification of the vast variety of powers these poems comprehend, but space forbids: we can only, therefore, earnestly recommend to the reader "The Ode to Rae Wilson, Esq.," which we believe has hitherto only appeared in a periodical publication; for strength of satire, grace and wit, true feeling, and that peculiar mixture of frolic and pathos that must hereafter be called Hood-ism. Never have cant and hypocrisy been more admirably exposed, and the genuine feeling brought so powerfully out in contrast to it. The poetry and wit are here blended miraculously. We had marked many passages to quote, but finding them so many, leave it to the reader's perusal. The lyric poems in the second volume are worthy to be bound up with Jonson's and Fletcher's. The sonnets are not altogether quite so exquisite in tone, following too much the concetti of the old poets. The one on Lear is too full of them, and altogether beneath the mighty subject. But the following is so appropriate, that we cannot refrain from closing with it our too brief notice of two volumes that are full to overflowing with the divine and refining essence of genuine poetry :— "His voice is heard, but body there is none To fix the vain excursions of the eye; VELASCO; OR, MEMOIRS OF A PAGE. BY CYRUS REDDING. 3 vols. post 8vo. London: T. C. Newby. THE key to this novel may be found in its first and last sentences. Its motto says, quoting from old Burton, "Amidst the gallantry and misery of the world, jollities, perplexities and cares, simplicity and villany, subtlety, knavery, candour and integrity, mutually mixed, and offering themselves, I rub on ;" and its final sentence is, "It may be expected to afford evidence how much I feel the truth of the aphorism, that Experience is the mother of knowledge." It is evidently the work of one who has seen much of men and the world: who is acquainted with various countries, and who has lived his whole term with his observation keenly alive. Nor in so living does he seem to have dulled his sensibilities to the good or the beautiful; the whole tone of the book is as fresh and as buoyant, as trustful of genuine feeling and virtue, as if penned by an enthusiast ignorant of the world. It is undoubtedly a satirical novel, and though abounding in Spanish names and characters, more than one individual holding a conspicuous position in our own land may be discerned. It is doubtful indeed if it should not be classed with the political novels, and placed on the shelf with Coningsby" and "The Sybil," and the other numerous works that have for the last twenty years purported to shadow forth the history of the day in its genuine forms, stripped of the gorgeous pall under which it is usually buried by the professed historian. It has, in fact, a double object, striking at home follies through foreign ones. And, certainly, if the author is to be relied upon for his evidence, and there is every reason to believe that he speaks from personal knowledge and long experience, the hereditary aristocracy of every country bears within itself the seeds of mortal disease, their decay and extinction being distinctly marked in their mental imbecility, ignorant assumption, disgusting egotism, and sensual heartlessness. We have seen the decay of the French, Spanish, and indeed almost all the southern continental hereditary aristocracy, by the appointment of noble imbeciles to the governance of the many. And in our country they have only been saved as a class by the continuous transfusion of new vigour from the classes they so sillily affect to look down upon. We have seen what Dukeism has come to, and may live to see Baronism equally demented. Merit in the individual, and not in his dead great-grandfather, is fast becoming the test of competency. All this is well set forth in the present novel, not obtrusively declared, but unfolded in nice traits of character, and a development from the life. We know not what has been the author's career, but he evidently has been in a situation, if not to share in the working, to well view the machinery of public governance. It is quite impossible, having once viewed it in this light, not to discern that not only are several public characters, but that several public events are delineated, and dilineated with a shrewd knowledge of their internal processes. A fiery bishop; a tergiversating, high legal functionary; a facile, time-serving, subtle minister, with very little alteration of circumstances, might all be found in our own senate. The Post Office espionage, the cant of religious promulgation, and other topics of the time, are as applicable to England as to Spain. It is, however, not only in political matters that the author has |