FOOTNOTES
[1] The authority—I might almost say, the one authority—for the life of Hood, is the Memorials published by his son and daughter. Any point which is not clearly brought out in that affectionate and interesting record will naturally be equally or more indefinite in my brief summary, founded as it is on the Memorials.
[2] "Two years," according to the Memorials; but the dates for this portion of Hood's life are not accurately given in that work. Hood completed the fifteenth year of his age in May, 1814. It is certain, from the dates of his letters, that his sojourn in Scotland began not later than September, 1815; and the writer of the Memorials himself affirms that Hood "returned to London about 1820," in or before July. If so, he was in Scotland about five years; and, from the fact that he had written in a Dundee newspaper in 1814, one might even surmise that the term of six years was nearer the mark. At any rate, as he had reached Scotland by September, 1815, he was there soon after completing his sixteenth year: yet Mr. Hessey (Memorials, p. 23) says that he was articled to the engraving business "at the age of fifteen or sixteen," and his apprenticeship, according to Mr. Hood, junior, lasted "some years" even before his transfer from Mr. Sands to Mr. Le Keux. The apprenticeship did not begin until after the father's death; but the year of that death is left unspecified, though the day and month are given. These dates, as the reader will readily perceive, are sometimes vague, and sometimes contradictory. In the text of my notice, I have endeavored to pick my way through their discrepancies.
[3] This "Tim, says he," is a perfect gag in many of Hood's letters. It is curious to learn what was the kind of joke which could assume so powerful an ascendant over the mind and associations of this great humorist. Here it is, as given in the Hood Memorials from Sir Jonah Barrington's Memoirs:—
"'Tim,' says he—
'Sir,' says he—
'Fetch me my hat, says he;
'That I may go,' says he,
'To Timahoe,' says he,
'And go to the fair,' says he,
'And see all that's there,' says he.—
'First pay what you owe,' says he;
'And then you may go,' says he,
'To Timahoe,' says he,
'And go to the fair,' says he,
'And see all that's there,' says he.—
'Now by this and by that,' says he,
'Tim, hang up my hat,' says he."
[4] Horne's New Spirit of the Age.
[5] No connection with any other Ode.
[6] The first two stanzas by Hood, the other two contributed by Barry Cornwall at the request of Mrs. Hood, with a view to the poem being set to music.
[7] Suggested, according to Hood's son, by a water-color drawing by Keats's friend Severn.
[8] The opening Poem in the volume published by Hood in 1827, under the same title. The Poem was prefaced by the following letter to Charles Lamb:—
"My dear Friend, I thank my literary fortune that I am not reduced like many better wits to barter dedications, for the hope or promise of patronage, with some nominally great man; but that where true affection points, and honest respect, I am free to gratify my head and heart by a sincere inscription. An intimacy and dearness, worthy of a much earlier date than our acquaintance can refer to, direct me at once to your name; and with this acknowledgment of your ever kind feeling towards me, I desire to record a respect and admiration for you as a writer, which no one acquainted with our literature, save Elia himself, will think disproportionate or misplaced. If I had not these better reasons to govern me, I should be guided to the same selection by your intense yet critical relish for the works of the great Dramatist, and for that favorite play in particular which has furnished the subject of my verses.
It is my design in the following poem to celebrate by an allegory that immortality which Shakspeare has conferred on the fairy mythology by his Midsummer Night's Dream. But for him, those pretty children of our childhood would leave barely their names to our maturer years; they belong, as the mites upon the plumb, to the bloom of fancy, a thing generally too frail and beautiful to withstand the rude handling of time: but the Poet has made this most perishable part of the mind's creation equal to the most enduring; he has so intertwined the Elfins with human sympathies, and linked them by so many delightful associations with the productions of nature, that they are as real to the mind's eye, as their green magical circles to the outer sense. It would have been a pity for such a race to go extinct, even though they were but as the butterflies that hover about the leaves and blossoms of the visible world. I am, my dear friend, yours most truly,
T. HOOD."
[9] Hood edited The Gem, one of the many annuals of that day, for the year 1829. The volume is memorable for having contained his fine poem.
"The remarkable name of Eugene Aram, belonging to a man of unusual talents and acquirements, is unhappily associated with a deed of blood as extraordinary in its details as any recorded in our calendar of crime. In the year 1745, being then an usher and deeply engaged in the study of Chaldee, Hebrew, Arabic, and the Celtic dialects, for the formation of a lexicon, he abruptly turned over a still darker page in human knowledge, and the brow that learning might have made illustrious was stamped ignominious forever with the brand of Cain. To obtain a trifling property he concerted with an accomplice, and with his own hand effected the violent death of one Daniel Clarke, a shoe-maker, of Knaresborough, in Yorkshire. For fourteen years nearly the secret slept with the victim in the earth of St. Robert's Cave, and the manner of its discovery would appear a striking example of the divine justice even amongst those marvels narrated in that curious old volume alluded to in the Fortunes of Nigel, under its quaint title of 'God's Revenge against Murther.'
"The accidental digging up of a skeleton, and the unwary and emphatic declaration of Aram's accomplice that it could not be that of Clarke, betraying a guilty knowledge of the true bones, he was wrought to a confession of their deposit. The learned homicide was seized and arraigned, and a trial of uncommon interest was wound up by a defence as memorable as the tragedy itself for eloquence and ingenuity—too ingenious for innocence, and eloquent enough to do credit even to that long premeditation which the interval between the deed and its discovery had afforded. That this dreary period had not passed without paroxysms of remorse may be inferred from a fact of affecting interest. The late Admiral Burney was a scholar at the school at Lynn in Norfolk when Aram was an usher, subsequent to his crime. The Admiral stated that Aram was beloved by the boys, and that he used to discourse to them of murder, not occasionally, as I have written elsewhere, but constantly, and in somewhat of the spirit ascribed to him in the poem.
"For the more imaginative part of the version I must refer back to one of those unaccountable visions which come upon us like frightful monsters thrown up by storms from the great black deeps of slumber. A lifeless body, in love and relationship the nearest and dearest, was imposed upon my back, with an overwhelming sense of obligation—not of filial piety merely, but some awful responsibility, equally vague and intense, and involving, as it seemed, inexpiable sin, horrors unutterable, torments intolerable—to bury my dead, like Abraham, out of my sight. In vain I attempted, again and again, to obey the mysterious mandate—by some dreadful process the burthen was replaced with a more stupendous weight of injunction, and an apalling conviction of the impossibility of its fulfilment. My mental anguish was indescribable;—the mighty agonies of souls tortured on the supernatural racks of sleep are not to be penned—and if in sketching those that belong to blood-guiltiness I have been at all successful, I owe it mainly to the uninvoked inspiration of that terrible dream."
The introduction of Admiral Burney's name makes it likely that Hood may have owed his first interest in the story to Charles Lamb. The circumstance that the book over which the gentle boy was poring when questioned by the usher was called the Death of Abel, is by no means forced or unnatural. Salomon Gessner's prose poem, Der Tod Abels, published in 1758, attained an astonishing popularity throughout Europe, and appeared in an English version somewhere about the time of the discovery of Aram's crime.
[10] The Englishman's Magazine, August 1831. This magazine was a venture of Edward Moxon, the publisher, but had a career of only seven months. It is memorable, however, for including, besides the above and various papers by Charles Lamb, poetical contributions from Tennyson and Arthur Hallam, and also for containing the review by the latter of Tennyson's first volume of poems, published in 1830. The beautiful stanzas of Hood's appear here, as far as I have discovered, for the first time. The date of their composition remains unfixed. Hood's son was under the impression that they were written on the death of one of his father's sisters, but supplied no evidence bearing on the question.
[11] These impressive, if rather morbid, lines seem to have been hitherto overlooked by Hood's editors, and are here collected for the first time.
[12] From Hood's novel of Tylney Hall, published in 1834; apparently one of the many tender tributes originally addressed by Hood to his wife.
[13] Written in 1835 after Hood's disastrous voyage to Rotterdam, in which the ship was nearly lost, and Hood's health was permanently affected.
[14] Written at Coblenz, where Hood and his family were then settled, in November 1835.
[15] Assigned by Hood's son to the year 1835, but apparently only on conjecture.
[16] Written at Ostend in September 1839.
[17] Originally published by instalments in Colburn's New Monthly Magazine in 1840 and 1841, as one of a proposed series to be entitled "Rhymes for the Times."
[18] From the opening number of Hood's Magazine, January 1844. Written to accompany an engraving from a painting by Thomas Creswick, bearing the same title.
[19] Hood's last verses. They appeared in his Magazine in February 1845, and were thus probably composed during the previous month. In the original collection of Hood's serious poems, published after his death, they were wrongly assigned to the April of this year. Hood died on the third of May.
[20] In Hood's day Mr. Graham was one of a group of distinguished aeronauts which included Monck Mason, Hollond, Green, and others. Mr. Graham had made a memorable ascent in his Balloon in 1823.
[21] Elizabeth Fry had set up her school for the children in Newgate as early as 1817. Moll Brazen, Suky Tawdry, Jenny Diver, and the rest, are names borrowed from Gay's Beggars' Opera.
[22] The well-known Humanitarian, M. P. for Galway, the author of "Martin's Act" for the protection of animals from ill-treatment, and one of the founders of the noble society having the same object. He died in 1834.
[23] After nearly eighty years it is almost pardonable to remind the reader that in the earlier days of the Waverley Novels their author was much talked of by the above title. The variety of Hood's reading, and his resource in simile, are very noticeable in this Ode. The likening of Dominie Sampson to Lamb's friend, George Dyer and the comparison of Mause Headrigg to Rae Wilson on his travels, are admirable examples.
[24] The famous Arctic explorer was engaged for many years, from 1818 onwards, in his various efforts to discover the North-West Passage. He died in 1855.
[25] Hood, for obvious purposes, slightly departs from the true spelling of Dr. Kitchiner's name. He was an M. D. of Glasgow, who, having been left a handsome fortune by his father, abandoned the active practice of his profession, and devoted himself to science, notably to that of optics, as well as to gastronomy, being himself eminent as a gourmet. He was the author of a once famous Cookery Book, The Cook's Oracle; and an improved kitchen range still bears his name.
[26] These famous verses were first published as from an anonymous correspondent in the London Magazine. When Hood reprinted them, under his own name, in the first series of Whims and Oddities, he prefaced them with the following words:—
"I have never been vainer of any verses than of my part in the following Ballad. Dr. Watts, amongst evangelical nurses, has an enviable renown; and Campbell's Ballads enjoy a snug, genteel popularity. Sally Brown has been favored perhaps with as wide a patronage as the Moral Songs, though its circle may not have been of so select a class as the friends of 'Hohenlinden.' But I do not desire to see it amongst what are called Elegant Extracts. The lamented Emery, dressed as Tom Tug, sang it at his last mortal benefit at Covent Garden; and ever since it has been a great favorite with the watermen of Thames, who time their oars to it, as the wherrymen of Venice time theirs to the lines of Tasso. With the watermen it went naturally to Vauxhall, and over land to Sadler's Wells. The Guards—not the mail coach, but the Lifeguards—picked it out from a fluttering hundred of others, all going to one air, against the dead wall at Knightsbridge. Cheap printers of Shoe Lane and Cow Cross (all pirates!) disputed about the copyrights, and published their own editions; and in the meantime the authors, to have made bread of their song (it was poor old Homer's hard ancient case!), must have sung it about the streets. Such is the lot of Literature! the profits of 'Sally Brown' were divided by the Ballad Mongers;—it has cost, but has never brought me, a halfpenny."
[27] Of course suggested by Coleridge and Southey's Devil's Walk. It is ablaze with wit and real imagination. Old nursery tales are not so well remembered in these days that it is superfluous to point out that the "fee" being a prelude to "faw" and "fum," is taken from the formula of the Ogre in Jack and the Bean-Stalk, whose usual preliminary to the slaughter of his victims was—
"Fee, Faw, Fum, I smell the blood of an Englishman!"
[28] Originally published in 1830 in a thin duodecimo, with illustrations by George Cruikshank. It was while Hood was living at Winchmore Hill that he had the opportunity of noting the chief features of this once famous Civic Revel—the Easter Monday Hunt—even then in its decadence.
[29] A parody of John Hamilton Reynolds's once popular lines, beginning—
"Go, where the water glideth gently ever,"
[30] Written in the album of Miss Smith, daughter of Mr. Horace Smith, of the Rejected Addresses. Miss Smith happily still survives to show her friends with pride these admirable verses, inscribed in Hood's neat and clear handwriting.
[31] Written when Walter Scott was familiarly known as the "Wizard of the North," the title which is the key to the present poem. Scott died in September, 1832, in the interval between the writing and the publishing of the verses, for which Hood makes regretful apology in the Preface to the Comic Annual for 1833, in which they appeared.
[32] "Edgar Huntley, the Somnambulist," was the title of a popular novel of the time.
[33] A Scotch baronet, and the once well-known promoter of Sabbatarian legislation. Sir Andrew identified himself in the House of Commons with the efforts of an English Association, the "Lord's Day Society," and introduced a Bill to prohibit all open labour on Sunday, excepting "works of necessity and mercy,"—a measure bound, under any scheme of working, to inflict the direst hardship and injustice. After three defeats, the Bill was actually carried in 1837, but was afterwards allowed to drop.
[34] For the purposes of his pun on "night-mare," Hood adroitly utilizes the story of the famous Lady Hester Stanhope, whom Kinglake, in his Eothen, first made familiar to so many of us. He there speaks of the "quiet women in Somersetshire," and their surprise when they learned that "the intrepid girl who used to break their vicious horses for them" was reigning over the wandering tribes of Western Asia!
[35] This dates from the old days of transportation and Botany Bay. The judge indicated was Mr. Justice Alan Park, of the Common Pleas, and Mr. Cotton was Chaplain of Newgate.
[36] The exquisite wit and fancy of these verses need not blind us to their touching earnestness. They might well be printed and circulated still in the service of the great cause of Early Closing. The "Knight" mentioned was, of course, the excellent Charles Knight, pioneer and forerunner of all subsequent movements for cheapening and popularizing good literature.
[37] The daughter of Hood's friend William Harvey, the artist.
[38] Charles Lamb had been reading these verses when he wrote to his friend Dibdin, in June, 1896, and called him "Peter Fin Junior."
[39] Thomas Moore is a forgotten poet, and it cannot therefore be impertinent to remind the reader that in his early days he published certain rather "vain and amatorious" poems under the pseudonym of "Thomas Little."
[40] The muffin-boy, with his "evening bell," is still in the land; but the evening postman, perambulating the streets and collecting letters "just in time," has "passed away" for ever.
[41] These verses form a good specimen of Hood's capabilities for writing to order. They first appeared in the Bijou for 1828, accompanying a vignette by Thomas Stothard of two knights, mounted, and in complete armor, engaged in deadly conflict. This was doubtless (after the then custom of Annuals) placed in Hood's hands for him to supply the appropriate letterpress.
[42] The allusion to our modern "Black Prince" is apparently to Prince Le Boo, whose death, while on a visit to England, had so impressed the public imagination. He came, however, from the Pelew Islands, not the "Sandwich;" and it was smallpox, not measles, that "took him off."
[43] "The Deserted Village." Illustrated by the Etching Club.
[44] This Poem was doubtless one of the results of Hood's residence in Germany. It is suggested apparently in about equal proportions by the Walpurgis-night in Faust, and Schiller's Gang nach dem Eisenhammer. Possibly Hood had been stirred up to the attempt by Retzsch's outlines. He has mixed up localities with the utmost freedom, the Harz, the Black Forest, and the Scene of Schiller's Poem. The influence of the Ingoldsby Legends is obvious throughout.
[45] "The Row at the Oxford Arms" (to quote its alternative title) is a squib on the contest at Oxford, in 1841-42, for the Professorship of Poetry. The candidates, it will be remembered, were Isaac Williams and Mr. (afterwards Archdeacon) Garbett. The struggle was the more intense that it was openly acknowledged to be a trial of strength between the adherents of the "Oxford Movement" and the Evangelical Party.