Whims and Oddities.
The company of odd-looking personages playing at nine-pins in the hollow of the wild mountain, were not greater objects of wonder to Rip Van Winkle, than forty original designs by Mr. Hood will be to the reader who looks for the first time at this gentleman’s “Whims and Oddities.”[501]
All the world knows, or ought to know, that among persons called literary there are a few peculiarly littery; who master an article through confusion of head and materials, and, having achieved the setting of their thoughts and places “to rights,” celebrate the important victory by the triumph of a short repose. At such a minute, after my last toilsome adventure in the “Lottery,” sitting in my little room before the fire, and looking into it with the comfortable knowledge that the large table behind me was “free from all incumbrances,” I yearned for a recreative dip into something new, when Mr. Hood’s volume, in a parcel bearing the superscription of a kind hand, was put into mine. It came in the very nick; and, as I amused myself, I resolved to be thenceforth, and therefrom, as agreeable as possible to my readers.
On the title-page of Mr. Hood’s book is this motto, “O Cicero! Cicero! if to pun be a crime, ’tis a crime I have learned of thee: O Bias! Bias! if to pun be a crime, by thy example I was biassed!—Scriblerus.”
The first engraving that opened on me was of
A Dream.
In this figure, “a medley of human faces, wherein certain features belong in common to different visages,—the eyebrow of one, for instance, forming the mouth of another,”—Mr. Hood has successfully “tried to typify a common characteristic of dreams; namely, the entanglement of divers ideas, to the waking mind distinct or incongruous, but, by the confusion of sleep, inseparably ravelled up, and knotted into Gordian intricacies. For, as the equivocal feature, in the emblem, belongs indifferently to either countenance, but is appropriated by the head that happens to be presently the object of contemplation; so, in a dream, two separate notions will mutually involve some convertible incident, that becomes, by turns, a symptom of both in general, or of either in particular. Thus are begotten the most extravagant associations of thoughts and images,—unnatural connections, like those marriages of forbidden relationships, where mothers become cousins to their own sons or daughters, and quite as bewildering as such genealogical embarrassments.”
As an illustration of this kind of dream, the author relates a dismal one, “which originated in the failure of his first and last attempt as a dramatic writer;” and another, wherein the preliminaries were pleasant, and the conclusion was whimsical. “It occurred,” says Mr. Hood, “when I was on the eve of marriage; a season, when, if lovers sleep sparingly, they dream profusely. A very brief slumber sufficed to carry me in the night-coach to Bognor. It had been concerted, between Honoria and myself, that we should pass the honeymoon at some such place upon the coast. The purpose of my solitary journey was to procure an appropriate dwelling, and which, we had agreed, should be a little pleasant house, with an indispensable look out upon the sea. I chose one, accordingly; a pretty villa, with bow-windows, and a prospect delightfully marine. The ocean murmur sounded incessantly from the beach. A decent, elderly body, in decayed sables, undertook, on her part, to promote the comforts of the occupants by every suitable attention, and, as she assured me, at a very reasonable rate. So far, the nocturnal faculty had served me truly. A day-dream could not have proceeded more orderly; but, alas, just here, when the dwelling was selected, the sea view secured, the rent agreed upon, when every thing was plausible, consistent, and rational, the incoherent fancy crept in and confounded all,—by marrying me to the old woman of the house!”