Like a dead man gone to his shroud,
The sun has sunk in a copper cloud,
And the wind is rising squally and loud
With many a stormy token,—
Playing a wild funereal air
Through the branches bleak, bereaved, and bare,
To the dead leaves dancing here and there—
In short, if the truth were spoken,
It's an ugly night for anywhere,
But an awful one for the Brocken!
For oh! to stop
On that mountain top,
After the dews of evening drop,
Is always a dreary frolic—
Then what must it be when nature groans,
And the very mountain murmurs and moans
As if it writhed with the cholic—
With other strange supernatural tones,
From wood, and water, and echoing stones,
Not to forget unburied bones—
In a region so diabolic!
A place where he whom we call Old Scratch,
By help of his Witches—a precious batch—
Gives midnight concerts and sermons,
In a Pulpit and Orchestra built to match,
A plot right worthy of him to hatch,
And well adapted, he knows, to catch
The musical, mystical Germans!
However it's quite
As wild a night
As ever was known on that sinister height
Since the Demon-Dance was morriced—
The earth is dark, and the sky is scowling,
And the blast through the pines is howling and growling,
As if a thousand wolves were prowling
About in the old BLACK FOREST!
Madly, sadly, the Tempest raves
Through the narrow gullies and hollow caves,
And bursts on the rocks in windy waves,
Like the billows that roar
On a gusty shore
Mourning over the mariners' graves—
Nay, more like a frantic lamentation
From a howling set
Of demons met
To wake a dead relation.
Badly, madly, the vapors fly
Over the dark distracted sky,
At a pace that no pen can paint!
Black and vague like the shadows of dreams,
Scudding over the moon that seems,
Shorn of half her usual beams,
As pale as if she would faint!
The lightning flashes,
The thunder crashes,
The trees encounter with horrible clashes,
While rolling up from marsh and bog,
Rank and rich,
As from Stygian ditch,
Rises a foul sulphureous fog,
Hinting that Satan himself is agog,—
But leaving at once this heroical pitch,
The night is a very bad night in which
You wouldn't turn out a dog.
Yet ONE there is abroad in the storm,
And whenever by chance
The moon gets a glance,
She spies the Traveller's lonely form,
Walking, leaping, striding along,
As none can do but the super-strong;
And flapping his arms to keep him warm,
For the breeze from the North is a regular starver,
And to tell the truth,
More keen, in sooth,
And cutting than any German carver!
However, no time it is to lag,
And on he scrambles from crag to crag,
Like one determined never to flag—
Now weathers a block
Of jutting rock,
With hardly room for a toe to wag;
But holding on by a timber snag,
That looks like the arm of a friendly hag;
Then stooping under a drooping bough,
Or leaping over some horrid chasm,
Enough to give any heart a spasm!
And sinking down a precipice now,
Keeping his feet the Deuce knows how,
In spots whence all creatures would keep aloof,
Except the Goat, with his cloven hoof,
Who clings to the shallowest ledge as if
He grew like the weed on the face of the cliff!
So down, still down, the Traveller goes,
Safe as the Chamois amid his snows,
Though fiercer than ever the hurricane blows,
And round him eddy, with whirl and whizz,
Tornadoes of hail, and sleet, and rain,
Enough to bewilder a weaker brain,
Or blanch any other visage than his,
Which spite of lightning, thunder and hail,
The blinding sleet and the freezing gale,
And the horrid abyss,
If his foot should miss,
Instead of tending at all to pale,
Like cheeks that feel the chill of affright—
Remains the very reverse of white!
His heart is granite—his iron nerve
Feels no convulsive twitches;
And as to his foot, it does not swerve,
Tho' the Screech-Owls are flitting about him that serve
For parrots to Brocken Witches!
Nay, full in his very path he spies
The gleam of the Were Wolf's horrid eyes;
But if his members quiver—
It is not for that—no, it is not for
that—
Nor rat,
Nor cat,
As black as your hat,
Nor the snake that hiss'd, nor the toad that spat,
Nor glimmering candles of dead men's fat,
Nor even the flap of the Vampire Bat,
No anserine skin would rise thereat,
It's the cold that makes Him shiver!
So down, still down, through gully and glen,
Never trodden by foot of men,
Past the Eagle's nest and the She-Wolf's den,
Never caring a jot how steep
Or how narrow the track he has to keep,
Or how wide and deep
An abyss to leap,
Or what may fly, or walk, or creep,
Down he hurries through darkness and storm,
Flapping his arms to keep him warm—
Till threading many a pass abhorrent,
At last he reaches the mountain gorge,
And takes a path along by a torrent—
The very identical path, by St. George!
Down which young Fridolin went to the Forge,
With a message meant for his own death-warrant!
Young Fridolin! young Fridolin!
So free from sauce, and sloth, and sin,
The best of pages
Whatever their ages,
Since first that singular fashion came in—
Not he like those modern and idle young gluttons
With little jackets, so smart and spruce,
Of Lincoln green, sky-blue, or puce—
A little gold lace you may introduce—
Very showy, but as for use,
Not worth so many buttons!
Young Fridolin! young Fridolin!
Of his duty so true a fulfiller—
But here we need no farther go
For whoever desires the Tale to know,
May read it all in Schiller.
Faster now the Traveller speeds,
Whither his guiding beacon leads.
For by yonder glare
In the murky air,
He knows that the Eisen Hutte is there!
With its sooty Cyclops, savage and grim
Hosts, a guest had better forbear,
Whose thoughts are set upon dainty fare—
But stiff with cold in every limb,
The Furnace Fire is the bait for Him!
Faster and faster still he goes.
Whilst redder and redder the welkin glows,
And the lowest clouds that scud in the sky
Get crimson fringes in flitting by.
Till lo! amid the lurid light,
The darkest object intensely dark,
Just where the bright is intensely bright,
The Forge, the Forge itself is in sight,
Like the pitch-black hull of a burning bark,
With volleying smoke, and many a spark,
Vomiting fire, red, yellow, and white!
Restless, quivering tongues of flame!
Heavenward striving still to go,
While others, reversed in the stream, below,
Seem seeking a place we will not name,
But well that Traveller knows the same,
Who stops and stands,
So rubbing his hands,
And snuffing the rare
Perfumes in the air,
For old familiar odors are there,
And then direct by the shortest cut,
Like Alpine Marmot, whom neither rut,
Rivers, rocks, nor thickets rebut,
Makes his way to the blazing Hut!
Idly watching the Furnace-flames,
The men of the stithy
Are in their smithy,
Brutal monsters, with bulky frames,
Beings Humanity scarcely claims,
But hybrids rather of demon race,
Unbless'd by the holy rite of grace,
Who never had gone by Christian names,
Mark, or Matthew, Peter, or James—
Naked, foul, unshorn, unkempt,
From touch of natural shame exempt,
Things of which Delirium has dreamt—
But wherefore dwell on these verbal sketches,
When traced with frightful truth and vigor,
Costume, attitude, face, and figure,
Retsch has drawn the very wretches!
However, there they lounge about,
The grim, gigantic fellows,
Hardly hearing the storm without,
That makes so very dreadful a rout,
For the constant roar
From the furnace door.
And the blast of the monstrous bellows!
Oh, what a scene
That Forge had been
For Salvator Rosa's study!
With wall, and beam, and post, and pin,
And those ruffianly creatures, like Shapes of Sin,
Hair, and eyes, and rusty skin,
Illumed by a light so ruddy
The Hut, and whatever there is therein,
Looks either red-hot or bloody!
And, oh! to hear the frequent burst
Of strange, extravagant laughter,
Harsh and hoarse,
And resounding perforce
From echoing roof and rafter!
Though curses, the worst
That ever were curst,
And threats that Cain invented the first,
Come growling the instant after!
But again the livelier peal is rung,
For the Smith, hight Salamander,
In the jargon of some Titanic tongue,
Elsewhere never said or sung,
With the voice of a Stentor in joke has flung
Some cumbrous sort
Of sledge-hammer retort
At Red Beard, the crew's commander.
Some frightful jest—who knows how wild,
Or obscene, from a monster so defiled,
And a horrible mouth, of such extent,
From flapping ear to ear it went,
And show'd such tusks whenever it smiled—
The very mouth to devour a child!
But fair or foul the jest gives birth
To another bellow of demon mirth,
That far outroars the weather,
As if all the Hyænas that prowl the earth
Had clubb'd their laughs together!
And lo! in the middle of all the din,
Not seeming to care a single pin,
For a prospect so volcanic,
A Stranger steps abruptly in,
Of an aspect rather Satanic:
And he looks with a grin at those Cyclops grim,
Who stare and grin again at him
With wondrous little panic.
Then up to the Furnace the Stranger goes,
Eager to thaw his ears and nose,
And warm his frozen fingers and toes—
While each succeeding minute,
Hotter and hotter the Smithy grows,
And seems to declare,
By a fiercer glare,
On wall, roof, floor, and everywhere,
It knows the Devil is in it!
Still not a word
Is utter'd or heard,
But the beetle-brow'd Foreman nods and winks,
Much as a shaggy old Lion blinks,
And makes a shift
To impart his drift
To a smoky brother, who, joining the links,
Hints to a third the thing he thinks;
And whatever it be,
They all agree
In smiling with faces full of glee,
As if about to enjoy High Jinks.
What sort of tricks they mean to play
By way of diversion, who can say,
Of such ferocious and barbarous folk,
Who chuckled, indeed, and never spoke
Of burning Robert the Jäger to coke,
Except as a capital practical joke!
Who never thought of Mercy, or heard her,
Or any gentle emotion felt;
But hard as the iron they had to melt,
Sported with Danger and romp'd with Murder!
Meanwhile the Stranger—
The Brocken Ranger,
Besides another and hotter post,
That renders him not averse to a roast,—
Creeping into the Furnace almost,
Has made himself as warm as a toast—
When, unsuspicious of any danger,
And least of all of any such maggot
As treating a body like a faggot,
All at once he is seized and shoven
In pastime cruel,
Like so much fuel,
Headlong into the blazing oven!
In he goes! with a frightful shout
Mock'd by the rugged ruffianly band,
As round the Furnace mouth they stand,
Bar, and shovel, and ladle in hand,
To hinder their Butt from crawling out,
Who making one fierce attempt, but vain,
Receives such a blow
From Red-Beard's crow
As crashes the skull and gashes the brain,
And blind, and dizzy, and stunn'd with pain,
With merely an interjectional "oh!"
Back he rolls in the flames again.
"Ha! Ha! Ho! Ho!" That second fall
Seerns the very best joke of all,
To judge by the roar,
Twice as loud as before,
That fills the Hut, from the roof to the floor,
And flies a league or two out of the door,
Up the mountains and over the moor—
But scarcely the jolly echoes they wake
Have well begun
To take up the fun,
Ere the shaggy Felons have cause to quake,
And begin to feel that the deed they have done,
Instead of being a pleasant one,
Was a very great error—and no mistake.
For why?—in lieu
Of its former hue,
So natural, warm, and florid,
The Furnace burns of a brimstone blue,
And instead of the couleur de rose it threw,
With a cooler reflection,—justly due—
Exhibits each of the Pagan crew,
Livid, ghastly, and horrid!
But vainly they close their guilty eyes
Against prophetic fears;
Or with hard and horny palms devise
To dam their enormous ears—
There are sounds in the air,
Not here or there,
Irresistible voices everywhere,
No bulwarks can ever rebut,
And to match the screams
Tremendous gleams,
Of Horrors that like the Phantoms of dreams,
They see with their eyelids shut!
For awful coveys of terrible things,
With forked tongues and venomous stings,
On hagweed, broomsticks, and leathern wings,
Are hovering round the Hut!
Shapes, that within the focus bright
Of the Forge, are like shadows and blots;
But farther off, in the shades of night,
Clothed with their own phosphoric light,
Are seen in the darkest spots.
Sounds! that fill the air with noises,
Strange and indescribable voices,
From Hags, in a diabolical clatter—
Cats that spit curses, and apes that chatter
Scraps of cabalistical matter—
Owls that screech, and dogs that yell—
Skeleton hounds that will never be fatter—
All the domestic tribes of Hell,
Shrieking for flesh to tear and tatter,
Bones to shatter,
And limbs to scatter,
And who it is that must furnish the latter
Those blue-looking Men know well!
Those blue-looking men that huddle together,
For all their sturdy limbs and thews
Their unshorn locks, like Nazarene Jews,
And buffalo beards, and hides of leather,
Huddled all in a heap together,
Like timid lamb, and ewe, and wether,
And as females say,
In a similar way,
Fit for knocking down with a feather!
In and out, in and out,
The gathering Goblins hover about,
Ev'ry minute augmenting the rout;
For like a spell
The unearthly smell
That fumes from the Furnace, chimney and mouth,
Draws them in—an infernal Legion
From East, and West, and North, and South,
Like carrion birds from ev'ry region,
Till not a yard square
Of the sickening air
But has a Demon or two for its share,
Breathing fury, woe, and despair,
Never, never was such a sight!
It beats the very Walpurgis Night,
Displayed in the story of Doctor Faustus,
For the scene to describe
Of the awful tribe,
If we were two Göthes, would quite exhaust us!
Suffice it, amid that dreary swarm,
There musters each foul repulsive form
That ever a fancy overwarm
Begot in its worst delirium;
Besides some others of monstrous size,
Never before revealed to eyes,
Of the genus Megatherium!
Meanwhile the demons, filthy and foul,
Gorgon, Chimera, Harpy, and Ghoul,
Are not contented to jibber and howl
As a dirge for their late commander;
But one of the bevy—witch or wizard,
Disguised as a monstrous flying lizard,
Springs on the grisly Salamander,
Who stoutly fights, and struggles, and kicks.
And tries the best of his wrestling tricks,
No paltry strife,
But for life, dear life.
But the ruthless talons refuse to unfix,
Till far beyond a surgical case,
With starting eyes, and black in the face,
Down he tumbles as dead as bricks!
A pretty sight for his mates to view!
Those shaggy murderers looking so blue,
And for him above all,
Red-bearded and tall,
With whom, at that very particular nick,
There is such an unlucky crow to pick,
As the one of iron that did the trick
In a recent bloody affair—
No wonder feeling a little sick,
With pulses beating uncommonly quick,
And breath he never found so thick,
He longs for the open air!
Three paces, or four,
And he gains the door;
But ere he accomplishes one,
The sound of a blow comes, heavy and dull,
And clasping his fingers round his skull—
However the deed was done,
That gave him that florid
Red gash on the forehead—
With a roll of the eyeballs perfectly horrid,
There's a tremulous quiver,
The last death-shiver,
And Red-Beard's course is run!
Halloo! Halloo!
They have done for two!
But a heavyish job remains to do!
For yonder, sledge and shovel in hand,
Like elder Sons of Giant Despair,
A couple of Cyclops make a stand,
And fiercely hammering here and there,
Keep at bay the Powers of Air—
But desperation is all in vain!—
They faint—they choke,
For the sulphurous smoke
Is poisoning heart, and lung, and brain,
They reel, they sink, they gasp, they smother.
One for a moment survives his brother,
Then rolls a corpse across the other!
Halloo! Halloo!
And Hullabaloo!
There is only one more thing to do—
And seized by beak, and talon, and claw,
Bony hand, and hairy paw,
Yea, crooked horn, and tusky jaw,
The four huge Bodies are haul'd and shoven
Each after each in the roaring oven!
That Eisen Hutte is standing still,
Go to the Hartz whenever you will,
And there it is beside a hill,
And a rapid stream that turns many a mill;
The self-same Forge,—you'll know it at sight—
Casting upward, day and night,
Flames of red, and yellow, and white!
Ay, half a mile from the mountain gorge,
There it is, the famous Forge,
With its Furnace,—the same that blazed of yore,—
Hugely fed with fuel and ore;
But ever since that tremendous Revel,
Whatever Iron is melted therein,—
As Travellers know who have been to Berlin—
Is all as black as the Devil!
As latterly I chanced to pass
A Public House, from which, alas!
The Arms of Oxford dangle!
My ear was startled by a din,
That made me tremble in my skin,
A dreadful hubbub from within,
Of voices in a wrangle—
Voices loud, and voices high,
With now and then a party-cry,
Such as used in times gone by
To scare the British border;
When foes from North and South of Tweed—
Neighbors—and of Christian creed—
Met in hate to fight and bleed,
Upsetting Social Order.
Surprised, I turn'd me to the crowd,
Attracted by that tumult loud,
And ask'd a gazer, beetle-brow'd,
The cause of such disquiet.
When lo! the solemn-looking man,
First shook his head on Burleigh's plan,
And then, with fluent tongue, began
His version of the riot:
A row!—why yes,—a pretty row, you might hear from
this to Garmany,
And what is worse, it's all got up among the Sons of Harmony,
The more's the shame for them as used to be in time and tune,
And all unite in chorus like the singing-birds in June!
Ah! many a pleasant chant I've heard in passing here along,
When Swiveller was President a-knocking down a song;
But Dick's resign'd the post, you see, and all them shouts
and hollers
Is 'cause two other candidates, some sort of larned scholars,
Are squabbling to be Chairman of the Glorious Apollers!
Lord knows their names, I'm sure I don't, no more than any
yokel,
But I never heard of either as connected with the vocal;
Nay, some do say, although of course the public rumor varies,
They've no more warble in 'em than a pair of hen canaries;
Though that might pass if they were dabs at t'other sort of
thing,
For a man may make a song, you know, although he cannot sing;
But lork! it's many folk's belief they're only good at
prosing,
For Catnach swears he never saw a verse of their composing;
And when a piece of poetry has stood its public trials,
If pop'lar, it gets printed off at once in Seven Dials,
And then about all sorts of streets, by every little monkey,
It's chanted like the "Dog's Meat Man," or "If I had a
Donkey."
Whereas, as Mr. Catnach says, and not a bad judge neither,
No ballad—worth a ha'penny—has ever come from
either,
And him as writ "Jim Crow," he says, and got such lots of
dollars,
Would make a better Chairman for the Glorious Apollers.
Howsomever that's the meaning of the squabble that arouses
This neighborhood, and quite disturbs all decent Heads of
Houses,
Who want to have their dinners and their parties, as is
reason,
In Christian peace and charity according to the season.
But from Number Thirty-Nine—since this electioneering
job,
Ay, as far as Number Ninety, there's an everlasting mob;
Till the thing is quite a nuisance, for no creature passes
by,
But he gets a card, a pamphlet, or a summut in his eye;
And a pretty noise there is!—what with canvassers and
spouters,
For in course each side is furnish'd with its backers and its
touters;
And surely among the Clergy to such pitches it is carried,
You can hardly find a Parson to get buried or get married;
Or supposing any accident that suddenly alarms,
If you're dying for a surgeon, you must fetch him from the
"Arms";
While the Schoolmasters and Tooters are neglecting of their
scholars,
To write about a Chairman for the Glorious Apollers.
Well, that, sir, is the racket; and the more the sin and
shame
Of them that help to stir it up, and propagate the same;
Instead of vocal ditties, and the social flowing cup,—
But they'll be the House's ruin, or the shutting of it up,
With their riots and their hubbubs, like a garden full of
bears,
While they've damaged many articles and broken lots of
squares,
And kept their noble Club Room in a perfect dust and smother,
By throwing Morning Heralds, Times, and
Standards at each other;
Not to name the ugly language Gemmen oughtn't to repeat,
And the names they call each other—for I've heard 'em
in the street—
Such as Traitors, Guys, and Judasses, and Vipers and what
not,
For Pasley and his divers ain't so blowing-up a lot.
And then such awful swearing!—for there's one of them
that cusses
Enough to shock the cads that hang on opposition 'busses;
For he cusses every member that's agin him at the poll,
As I wouldn't cuss a donkey, tho' it hasn't got a soul;
And he cusses all their families, Jack, Harry, Bob or Jim,
To the babby in the cradle, if they don't agree with him.
Whereby, altho' as yet they have not took to use their fives,
Or, according as the fashion is, to sticking with their
knives,
I'm bound they'll be some milling yet, and shakings by the
collars,
Afore they choose a Chairman for the Glorious Apollers!
To be sure it is a pity to be blowing such a squall,
Instead of clouds, and every man his song, and then his
call—
And as if there wasn't Whigs enough and Tories to fall out,
Besides polities in plenty for our splits to be about,—
Why, a cornfield is sufficient, sir, as anybody knows,
For to furnish them in plenty who are fond of picking
crows—
Not to name the Maynooth Catholics, and other Irish stews,
To agitate society and loosen all its screws;
And which all may be agreeable and proper to their
spheres,—
But it's not the thing for musicals to set us by the ears.
And as to College larning, my opinion for to broach,
And I've had it from my cousin, and he driv a college coach,
And so knows the University, and all as there belongs,
And he says that Oxford's famouser for sausages than songs,
And seldom turns a poet out like Hudson that can chant,
As well as make such ditties as the Free and Easies want,
Or other Tavern Melodists I can't just call to mind—
But it's not the classic system for to propagate the kind,
Whereby it so may happen as that neither of them Scholars
May be the proper Chairman for the Glorious Apollers!
For my part in the matter, if so be I had a voice,
It's the best among the vocalists I'd honor with the choice;
Or a Poet as could furnish a new Ballad to the bunch;
Or at any rate the surest hand at mixing of the punch;
'Cause why, the members meet for that and other tuneful
frolics—
And not to say, like Muffincaps, their Catichiz and Collec's.
But you see them there Itinerants that preach so long and
loud,
And always takes advantage like the prigs of any crowd,
Have brought their jangling voices, and as far as they can
compass,
Have turn'd a tavern shindy to a seriouser rumpus,
And him as knows most hymns—altho' I can't see how it
follers—
They want to be the Chairman of the Glorious Apollers!
Well, that's the row—and who can guess the upshot after
all?
Whether Harmony will ever make the "Arms" her House of call,
Or whether this here mobbing—as some longish heads
foretell it,
Will grow to such a riot that the Oxford Blues must quell it,
Howsomever, for the present, there's no sign of any peace,
For the hubbub keeps a-growing, and defies the New
Police;—
But if I was in the Vestry, and a leading sort of Man,
Or a Member of the Vocals, to get backers for my plan,
Why, I'd settle all the squabble in the twinkle of a needle,
For I'd have another candidate—and that's the Parish
Beadle,
Who makes such lots of Poetry, himself, or else by proxy,
And no one never has no doubts about his orthodoxy;
Whereby—if folks was wise—instead of either of
them Scholars,
And straining their own lungs along of contradictious
hollers,
They'll lend their ears to reason, and take my advice as
follers,
Namely—Bumble for the Chairman of the Glorious
Apollers!
[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.
