skimming readers, rather than under conditions of greater permanency;
and the result is as we find it in his works. His son expresses the
opinion that part of Hood's success in comic writing arose from his
early reading of _Humphrey Clinker_, _Tristram Shandy_, _Tom Jones_,
and other works of that period, and imbuing himself with their style: a
remark, however, which applies to his prose rather than his poetical
works. Certain it is that the appetite for all kinds of fun, verbal and
other was a part of Hood's nature. We see it in the practical jokes he
was continually playing on his good-humored wife--such as altering into
grotesque absurdity many of the words contained in her letters to
friends: we see it--the mere animal love of jocularity, as it might be
termed--in such a small point as his frequently addressing his friend
Philip de Franck, in letters, by the words, "Tim, says he," instead of
any human appellative[3] Hood reminds us very much of one of
Shakespeare's Fools (to use the word in no invidious sense) transported
into the nineteenth century,--the Fool in _King Lear_, or Touchstone.
For the occasional sallies of coarseness or ribaldry, the spirit of the
time has substituted a _bourgeois_ good-humor which respects the family
circle, and haunts the kitchen-stairs; for the biting jeer, intended to
make some victim uncomfortable, it gives the sarcastic or sprightly
banter, not unconscious of an effort at moral amelioration; for the
sententious sagacity, and humorous enjoyment of the nature of man, it
gives bright thoughts and a humanitarian sympathy. But, on the whole,
the intellectual personality is nearly the same: seeking by natural
affinity, and enjoying to the uttermost, whatever tends to lightness of
heart and to ridicule--thus dwelling indeed in the region of the
commonplace and the gross, but constantly informing it with some
suggestion of poetry, somewise side-meaning, or some form of sweetness
and grace. These observations relate of course to Hood's humorous
poems: into his grave and pathetic poems he can import qualities still