BY

THOMAS HOOD

WITH A PREFACE BY

ALFRED AINGER

AND ONE HUNDRED AND THIRTY ILLUSTRATIONS

BY

CHARLES E. BROCK

London

MACMILLAN AND CO.

AND NEW YORK

1893

All rights reserved

PREFACE

SOME time in the year 1825 there was published in London a thin duodecimo volume having for title Odes and Addresses to Great People. It bore no author's name on the title-page,—only a quotation from the Citizen of the World, "Catching all the oddities, the whimsies, the absurdities and the littlenesses of conscious greatness by the way." The little book proved, on examination, to contain some fifteen humorous poems addressed to various public characters of greater or less claim to distinction at that day. There was one to Mr. Graham, the aeronaut; another to M'Adam, the maker of roads; another to Mrs. Fry, the Quaker philanthropist; another to Grimaldi, the clown, and so forth. An acute critic might, even then, I think, have detected not only that these fresh and amusing productions were of unequal

merit, but that they were not all by the same hand. But he would, most assuredly, have allowed that wit and ingenuity of a rare kind were to be found among them.

The little volume quickly attracted attention, and was soon in a second edition. Among those into whose hands it fell was Samuel Taylor Coleridge, then residing under Mr. Gillman's roof at Highgate. His delight was great; and in the absence of any information as to the authorship, he at once assumed that such mingled fun and poetry could have emanated from but one living man-and that, the author of Elia. Accordingly Coleridge wrote off at once to Charles Lamb:

MY DEAR CHARLES-This afternoon a little thin meanlooking sort of a foolscap sub-octavo of poems, printed on very dingy outsides, lay on the table, which the cover informed me was circulating in our book-club, so very Grub Streetish in all its appearance, internal as well as external, that I cannot explain by what accident of impulse (assuredly there was no motive in play) I came to look into it. Least of all the title, Odes and Addresses to Great Men, which connected itself in my head with Rejected Addresses, and all the Smith and Theodore Hook squad. But, my dear Charles, it was certainly written by you, or under you, or unâ cum you. I know none of your frequent visitors, capacious and assimilative enough of your converse, to have reproduced you so honestly, supposing