Hood, Thomas VE UNIVERSITY НОС OR, LAUGHTER FROM YEAR TO YEAR. BEING A FURTHER COLLECTION OF HIS WIT AND HUMOUR, WITH PREFACE. My first idea, on sitting down to prepare a preface for the Second Series of "Hood's Own," was to have recourse to my father's prefaces to the old "Comic Annuals," those "Anniversaries of the Literary Fun'" (as their wrapper designated them), whose opening speeches I felt sure would be far better than anything I could devise. But any such intention was nipped in the bud by the first one I opened upon. There I found the following passage : Public annually on the same subject: a fact well understood by the Beadle of my old precinct of St. M***** B*****, State University of lowa LIBRARIES 30 MAR 1920 L who, as usual, presented me at Christmas tide with a copy of verses. Instead of the scriptural doggerel, however, which used to fill up his broadside, and which indeed had become sufficiently stale and irksome, the sheet exhibited a selection of Elegant Extracts from our Standard Authors; and by no means a bad assortment, if our Scarabæus Parochialis had not most whimsically garbled the pieces to suit a purpose of his own. Finding, perhaps, that original composition was beyond his bounds, that Parnassus, in fact, was not in his Parish, he had contrived, by here and there interpolating a line or two of his own, to adapt the lays of our British Bards to his Carol. For instance, Gray's celebrated Elegy in a Country Churchyard, was thus made to do duty after this fashion. The Curfew tolls the knell of parting day, The lowing herd winds slowly o'er the lea, Now fades the glimmering landscape on the sight, Save that from yonder ivy-mantled tower The moping owl does to the moon complain Save all the ministers that be in power, Save all the Royal Sovereigns that reign! Let not ambition mock their useful toil, Far from the madding crowd's ignoble strife, Yet e'en their bones from insult to protect, |