daughter of his friend Horace Smith, are among the most perfect vers de société in our language. He could tell a story in the eight-syllabled couplet of Swift and Prior with an ease and vivacity which even those eminent predecessors hardly surpassed. And now and again his real faculty of imagination raises and dignifies some humorous fancy into the region of genuine poetry, as in the striking verses ("The Fall") where the somnambulist imagines himself seeking in vain to stem the torrent above the Niagara cataract. And even in those poems, the subjects of which might seem to have been chosen expressly for the opportunities afforded for verbal wit (such, for instance, as "The Volunteer "), the puns are enveloped in such an atmosphere of either tragic or humorous fancy, that we recognise in them a far rarer faculty than that of the punster. We feel, as I have already said, that the punster is more than a punster, and comes to his task from a higher ground. I cannot but hope, in conclusion, that bringing the best of such verses into one volume, unmixed with more ephemeral matter, may help to place the genius of Thomas Hood in a truer and worthier light for many with whom a not unnatural prejudice against puns and punning has hitherto hindered a full appreciation of his many other claims to our recognition. |