And so he wisely spends the fruitful hours,
Linked each to each by labours, like a bee;
Or rules in learning’s hall, or trims her bow’rs;—
Would there were many more such wights as he,
To sway each capital academie
Of Cam and Isis; for, alack! at each
There dwells, I wot, some dronish Dominie,
That does no garden work, nor yet doth teach,
But wears a floury head, and talks in flow’ry speech!
For the entire of the subjects already extracted from, and for many others not adverted to, even by name, reference should be had to the work itself. There is one [design], however, so excellent a specimen of Mr. Hood’s clear conception and decisive execution, that merely in further illustration of his talent it is here introduced.
“Very deaf, indeed.”
An engraving of Mr. Hood’s admirable “[Parish Beadle],” from his “Progress of Cant,” was inserted in an account of that print on [p. 130] of the present volume of the Every-Day Book. Great as was the merit of that print, in point of wit and humour, and curious as it will always be regarded for its multiform developement of character, and relationship to the manners of the age, yet it is largely exceeded, in these respects, by the volume of “Whims and Oddities.” Possessing the rare talent, of illustrating what he writes by his own drawings, Mr. Hood is to be esteemed in a twofold capacity. He has, withall, the remarkable merit of having acquired his knowledge of art by his own teaching; and, what augurs well, the praise which the “Progress of Cant” deserved and obtained, has wholesomely invigorated him to higher mastery. There is a firmness of execution in the designs to the “Whims and Oddities,” surprisingly superior to the general manner of his meritorious etching just mentioned. The book is altogether the most original that the press of late years has produced; and, luckily, it comes like a seasonable visiter, to raise shouts of laughter “round about the coal-fire” in cold weather.
[500] The varieties and causes of these phenomena are described in Dr. Forster’s “Researches about Atmospheric Phenomena,” 3d edition, p. 98.
[501] “Whims and Oddities, in Prose and Verse; with forty original designs by Thomas Hood, one of the authors of ‘Odes and Addresses to Great People,’ and the designer of the Progress of Cant, London, Relfe, 1826.” 12mo. 10s. 6d.