Hood, Thomas

Thomas (1799-1845), a humorous English poet, the author of The Song of the Shirt. He was a native of London, and was intended by his relatives for a mercantile life, but the drudgery of the counting room proved detrimental to his health, while his poetic temperament "turned his stool into a Pegasus on three legs." The friend who had undertaken his training discharged him, and the young man next tried engraving. This served to develop some talent for drawing, but his health was unequal to the work. Having attracted attention by articles for various magazines, he was offered a position in 1821 as an assistant editor of the London Magazine. From this time on his chief occupation was editorial work, including the writing of essays and humorous poems. From 1830 to 1838 he edited the Comic Annual. In 1838 he began the publication of Hood's Own, was editor of the New Monthly Magazine for two or three years, and in 1844, started his last periodical, Hood's Magazine, which contained some of his best work, although written when his health was utterly broken and he had to be propped up in bed to write. Hood married Jane Reynolds, a cultivated woman of strong character. He counted many famous names on his list of friends, among them the Lambs, De Quincey, Hartley Coleridge, and Proctor, Their unfailing friendship and support and the devotion of his family were the compensations in his struggle against poverty and ill health.

Hood's first published volume was Odes and Addresses; the next, Whims and Oddities, which appeared in 1826. While editing his various periodicals, he also published Tylney Hall, a novel, Up the Rhine, a series of imaginary letters, and produced sonnets, odes, and lyrical poems of great merit. His writing is full of puns and comic turns of wit, mingled with humor and pathos most unexpectedly. It has been regretted frequently that Hood carried his wit to such an extreme. His talent is so evident in his lyrical writings that it seems he should have been something more than a "minor poet." It is a question whether the tendency was innate in the man himself, so that he wrote puns instead of poems, because he couldn't help it; or whether, as Stedman would have us believe, he wrote what the public demanded because he was so hampered by poverty that he was unable to give free expression to his own genius. Certain it is that during his lifetime readers expected to laugh at all that came from Hood's pen. It is the Song of the Shirt and the Bridge of Sighs that will live, however, and that would make Hood's name remembered had he written no word beside. Seven years after his death a beautiful monument was erected above his grave. Stedman says that the English people gave eagerly for the monument. "The rich gave their guineas; the poor artisans and laborers, the needle women and dress-makers, in hosts, gave their shillings and pence. Beneath the image of the poet which rests upon the structure are sculptured the words which he himself, with a still unsatisfied yearning for the affection of his fellow-beings, and a beautiful perception of the act for which it long should be rendered to his memory--devised for the inscription: `He sang The Song of the Shirt.'"

SAYINGS OF HOOD.

SAID OF HOOD.

"He had a portion of almost every gift belonging to a true poet, and, but for restricted health and fortune, would have maintained a higher standard."--Stedman.

"That Song of the Shirt, which Punch first published, and the noble, the suffering, the melancholy, the tender Hood sang, may surely rank as a great act of charity to the world, and call from it its thanks and regard for its teacher and benefactor. That astonishing poem, which you all of you know, of the Bridge of Sighs, who can read it without tenderness, without reverence to Heaven, charity to man, and thanks to the beneficent genius which sang for us nobly?"--Thackeray.

A son of Thomas Hood of the same name was also an author, the editor of a comic paper, a writer for children and a famous punster. He wrote over the name of Tom Hood.