The Second Series of
WHIMS AND ODDITIES,
With Forty Original Designs,
BY THOMAS HOOD.
“What demon hath possessed thee, that thou wilt never forsake that impertinent custom of punning?”
Scriblerus.
If I might be allowed to answer the question instead of Mr. Hood, I should say, that it is the same demon which provokes me to rush directly through his new volume in preference to half a dozen works, which order of time and propriety entitle to previous notice. This book detains me from my purposes, as a new print in a shop-window does a boy on his way to school; and, like him, at the risk of being found fault with for not minding my task, I would talk of the attractive novelty to wights of the same humour. It comes like good news, which nobody is ignorant of, and every body tells to every body, and sets business at a stand-still. It puts clean out of my head all thought of another engraving for the present sheet, though I know, good reader, that already “I owe you one”—perhaps two:—never mind! you shall have “all in good time;” if you don’t, I’ll give you leave to eat me. With such a tender, the most untender will, or ought to be, as content as “the blacks of Niger at its infant rill,” seated at their “white-bait,” the thirty-eighth cut—in Mr. Hood’s book, very near “the end,”—a very inviting one to Shylock-kind of people, who have not
“———seen, perchance, unhappy white folks cook’d,
And then made free of negro corporations.”—p. 149.
Mr. Hood begins—to be modest—with pleading guilty to what he calls “some verbal misdemeanours,” and then, leaving “his defence to Dean Swift, and the other great European and oriental pundits,” puts himself upon his country. But by whom is he arraigned, save a few highwaymen in the “march of intellect,” who sagely affirm, that “a man who would make a pun would pick a pocket!”—a saying devised by some wag, to the use and behoof of these doldrums, who never hear a good thing, but they button up their pockets and features, and walk off with nothing about them of likeness to humanity but the biforked form. For capital likenesses of such persons, turn to the story of “Tim Turpin,” and look first, to pay due honour, at the engravings of “the Judges of a-size,” and then at “Jurors—not con-jurors.” Portraits of this order could not have been drawn by any other than a close and accurate observer of character. Indeed, that Mr. Hood is eminently qualified in this respect, he has before abundantly testified; especially by “The Progress of Cant,” a print that must occupy a distinguished place in a history of Character and Caricature, whenever such a work shall be written.[477] In this new series of “Whims and Oddities,” he presents a sketch, called “Infant Genius;”—a little boy delighted with having rudely traced an uncouth figure; such a “drawing” as excites a good mistaken mother to declare, “the little fellow has quite a genius, and will be very clever if he only has encouragement:”—and thus many a child’s talent for fine-drawing—which, at the tailoring trade, might have secured the means of living—has been misencouraged to the making up of fifth-rate artists with a starvation income. The engraving of the “Infant Genius” illustrates the following poem.
The Progress of Art.
O happy time!—Art’s early days!
When o’er each deed, with sweet self-praise,
Narcissus-like I hung!
When great Rembrandt but little seem’d,
And such old masters all were deem’d
As nothing to the young!
Some scratchy strokes—abrupt and few
So easily and swift I drew,
Suffic’d for my design;
My sketchy, superficial hand,
Drew solids at a dash—and spann’d
A surface with a line.
Not long my eye was thus content.
But grew more critical—my bent
Essay’d a higher walk;
I copied leaden eyes in lead—
Rheumatic hands in white and red,
And gouty feet—in chalk.