not crowded, nor does the artist use too rich a brush. Among the other contents of the volume we remember with pleasure, as we write, OBED, the Skipper,' a 'fishstory,' and some spirited weird lines upon The Sphinx.' We have but space left to commend the entire work to the favor of our readers; and we do this the more cordially, that Mr. BROWNELL comes modestly before the public, without preface or introduction, other than a simple and touching dedication to his mother. It is not your pompous self-inflated bardling who is likeliest to prove the sure favorite of the public; as many a one has found, to his no small mortification.

THE MONTHS: A COLLECTION OF POEMS. BY WILLIAM H. C. HOSMER. In one volume. Boston: WILLIAM D. TICKNOR AND COMPANY.

REMOTE from book-marts,' writes the modest and talented author of this very handsome little volume, and mainly unacquainted with the editorial fraternity of the metropolis, my.rye-straw reed I suppose must be drowned by the loud clarion flourish that announces so frequently the advent of bards of loftier pretensions.' Not altogether so; for although, for reasons elsewhere stated, we have small room to permit our friend and long-time correspondent to speak for himself out of the book before us, yet so often and so well has he done so in these pages, that the simple announcement of a work from his pen will scarcely fail to secure a perusal at the hands of our readers. In general terms, we may say of the twelve poems composing 'The Months,' that they evince a beautiful feeling for and minute observation of nature; the ability of the author to paint a scene with a few brief, authentic strokes; a grace and ease of versification too rare among writers of far more pretension; and a keen enjoyment of the beautiful, wherever it may be found. Yet we must say that for ourselves we prefer Mr. HOSMER when he depicts emotions rather thån visible scenes, faithfully as he limns the latter. How touching are his breathings of bereaved affection, our readers can bear ample witness. Heart speaks to heart' in these his later outpourings of parental sorrow. They are in the strongest degree pathetic and expressive. A contemporary has indicated two or three unimportant resemblances or similarities of thought, in the volume before us, to other poetical writers; and he might have included

'Month of my heart! September mild!'

as an exclamation not unlike that contained in the lines of our brother, gone hence by the will of God,' entitled 'October,' and commencing:

'Solemn, yet beautiful to view,

Month of my heart, thou dawnest here :'

but these similarities of thought are not cited as plagiarisms. Every common person,' says COLERIDGE,' who has read half a dozen standard books in his life, knows that thoughts, words and phrases, not our own, rise up day by day from the depths of the passive memory, and suggest themselves as it were to the hand, without any effort of recollection on our part. Such thoughts, if not natural born, are denizens at least.' Mr. HOSMER, as the Literary World' justly remarks, observes nature for himself; nor is the chastity of his muse at all impeachable. His volume is excellently printed and prettily embellished in its externals. We commend it to a wide and cordial acceptance.

THE WRITINGS OF THOMAS HOOD. The fame of a great writer is seldom fixed in the estimation of the world until he ceases to be of the world. His renown springs like a phoenix from his own ashes. The laurel that binds his brow must be mingled with the cypress. To become known, an author must become unknown. The world does not find him, until it loses him. Like beasts of the field and birds of the air, he must be dead before he can be devoured. As soon as the lamp of his life is extinguished, he becomes distinguished. In short, to speak paradoxically still, an author does not begin to live until he ceases to live. History confirms this fact. It was so with SHAKSPEARE, with MILTON and with BURNS; and though many men of genius, from the peculiar character of their works, have enjoyed a measure of fame while living, which death did not serve to increase, but rather in some instances to diminish, yet these form only the exceptions to the general rule. The corner-stone of the structure of his renown is usually his tomb-stone.

These desultory thoughts have been suggested by the fact, that only a few years ago THOMAS HOOD was scarcely known in this country. His name, when mentioned at all, was either associated with his editorship of the 'Comic Annual,' or alluded to in such a manner as would naturally lead one unacquainted with his works to suppose that they were all of an ephemeral nature, and not calculated to survive the period in which they were written. Tidings of his death, however, had no sooner been received, than his merits were canvassed in able reviews; editions of his works were printed, which met with rapid and extensive circulation on both sides of the Atlantic; general readers, on this side the water at least, seemed to be aware for the first time that English literature had sustained a severe loss in Hood's decease. At the present time few modern English writers are more widely known and admired; and for a very good reason. HooD was eminently a Poet of the People. His sympathies were not confined to any class, but embraced all classes. His feelings were all on the side of common humanity, and he battled in his way with a right good-will against every thing which tended to degrade human nature. A sworn foe to social oppression of every description, he depicted the sufferings of the lower classes, and sought to elevate their condition by awakening the kindlier feelings of humanity; by strengthening the bonds of brotherhood between the high and the low; and not by railing at the rich and powerful, which to us seems a very mistaken philanthropy.

His spirit was conciliatory and liberal. He was a Samaritan in his feelings, and the mere difference of creed or condition was insufficient to sunder the ties of fellowship which bound him to his race. He would have stooped to heal the wounded Jew, as did the worshipper of Gerazhim. With him the condemned felon was still a man; the abandoned wanton was a woman, whom God made. These feelings, united with a rare and delicate fancy, and a peculiar felicity of language, lend a nameless charm to those compositions of Hoop which are destined to stand the test of time. Many of them have already become familiar as household words. They touch those chords of the heart which vibrate the longest, and create for their author a feeling of love rather than admiration. They are not mere cold abstractions, clothed in beautiful language, which we read, praise, and then forget; they possess a directness of feeling, to which all hearts respond at once. We never become weary of drinking at such fountains of delight. They are like home-born melodies, which never cease to please, and which it is impossible not to remember. It may be said with truth that Hood wrote but little poetry of a character likely to live beyond the present time; but for our own part we prefer quality to quantity, and would rather be the author of The Burial of Sir JOHN MOORE,' or the Elegy in a Country Church-yard,' than all the dull epics that were ever written. The circumstances of Hood's life compelled him to write for bread instead of fame; and it was only in the intervals of his labors, which were devoted to please the appetite of the many, that he found time to speak the full and free language of his heart.

The longest of Hood's serious poems, The Plea of the Mid-Summer Fairies,' (the design of which is to celebrate, by an allegory, the immortality which SHAKSPEARE has conferred on the fairy mythology by his Mid-Summer Night's Dream,') and HERO and LEANDER,' are both wonderful productions; poems that, if he had written nothing else, would have placed HooD in the first rank of the English classics. Among his shorter poems are EUGENE ARAM,' The Elm Tree,' 'The Haunted House,' The Bridge of Sighs,' and The Song of a Shirt; all composi tions of the highest order of excellence. They have been already adverted to in the KNICKERBOCKER, and have become widely known of late; and for this reason we will pass them here, and make a few extracts from some other minor pieces with which the reader will be less acquainted.

Sir WALTER SCOTT has said, that very few persons, of any literary pretensions whatever, have passed through life without getting as far in a poetical address to the 'pale mistress of the night' as the exclamation, O, Moon!' whether truly or not, it is not our purpose to say. All will admit, however, that it is a hackneyed subject; yet observe what a charm genius is capable of throwing around it:

'What art thou like? Sometimes I see thee ride
A far-bound galley on its perilous way,
Whilst breezy waves toss up their silvery spray;
Sometimes behold thee glide,
Cluster'd by all thy family of stars,
Like a lone widow, through the welkin wide,
Whose pallid cheek the midnight sorrow mars;
Sometimes I watch thee on from steep to steep,
Timidly lighted by thy vestal torch,
Till in some Latmian cave I see thee creep,
To catch the young ENDYMION asleep,
Leaving thy splendor at the jagged porch!'

Is not that beautiful? With what a melancholy cadence it dies upon the ear! Can any thing be more poetical than the lines we have italicised? The following,

in a different vein, is full of feeling. The lines were addressed To a Child embracing its Mother:'

'LOVE thy mother, little one!
Kiss and clasp her neck again;
Hereafter she may have a son

Will kiss and clasp her neck in vain.
Love thy mother, little one!

'Gaze upon her living eyes,

And mirror back her love for thee;
Hereafter thou may'st shudder sighs
To meet them when they cannot see.
Gaze upon her living eyes!

'Press her lips the while they glow
With love that they have often told;
Hereafter thou may'st press in wo,
And kiss them till thine own are cold.
Press her lips the while they glow!

'Oh! revere her raven hair!
Although it be not silver-gray;
Too early Death, led on by Care,
May snatch save one dear lock away!
Oh! revere her raven hair!

HooD's humor was exhaustless. He was not merely a punster, although as a punster he is entitled to more than ordinary praise. With him, punning involved something higher than a mere playing upon words; it simply served to aid the general effect, without by any means constituting the chief merit. The Ursa Major' of English literature, we are inclined to think, would hardly have buttoned his breeches' pockets in Hoop's presence. But HooD was a wit, a genuine wit. The Golden Legend of Miss KILMANSEGG and her Precious Leg' and the Tale of a Trumpet' abound in wit, and are among the most remarkable compositions of the time. The former poem contains more than a thousand lines; but so intimately connected are they with the story which they develope, that they are difficult of transcription. They illustrate, in the most forcible manner, the lust of gold which had been as it were infused into Miss KILMANSEGG by her parents, and which grew with her growth and strengthened with her strength :

'THE very metal of merit they told,

And praised her for being as good as gold,'
Till she grew as a peacock haughty;

Of money they talked the whole day round,
And weighed desert like grapes by the pound,
Till she had an idea from the very sound

That people with naught were naughty.'

The 'moral' of one's living and dying for gold is thus forcibly summed up:

GOLD! Gold! Gold! Gold !
Bright and yellow, hard and cold,

Molten, graven, hammer'd, and roll'd;

Heavy to get, and light to hold;

Hoarded, barter'd, bought, and sold,

Stolen, borrow'd, squander'd, doled:

Spurn'd by the young, but hugg'd by the old

To the very verge of the church-yard mould;
Price of many a crime untold;
Gold! Gold! Gold! Gold !
Good or bad a thousand-fold!'

Occasionally Hood's humor is of that rare order which while it affords the utmost delight is capable of affecting the reader even to tears. This will appear paradoxical to many, but it is true nevertheless, and capable of demonstration. The cry of despair is less harrowing than its laugh. Read the preface to the little volume entitled 'Hood's Own,' and you will admit that there may be a touching pathos in true humor. He depicts to you a man at whose heart Disease sits gnawing at its cruel leisure; his slender fingers are scarcely able to hold a pen; his coats have become great-coats,' and like PETER SCHEMIL, he 'seems to have retained his shadow and sold his substance:' like prematurely old port wine, he is of a bad color, with very little body; yet his emaciated hand still lends a hand' to embody in words and sketches the creations or recreations of a merry fancy; his gaunt sides shake as

heartily as ever, and ministering elves, whom he invokes and makes welcome, 'nod to him and do him courtesies.' When matters look darkly with him, the more need, he argues, for the lights. Things may take a turn with him,' as the pig said on the spit.' His health is the weather of the body; it rains, it blows, it snows, at present, but it may clear up by-and-by.' And thus, bowed down with illness though he is, he retains his cheerful spirit; resolved that, although the shades of the gloaming steal over his prospect, so long as his day lasts he will, like the sun, look on the bright side of every thing.' Yet that bright heart overflowed with sensibility at the sufferings of the poor and lowly. The Lay of the Laborer' actually sobs with sympathy for the hard lot of that class which he represents by a group of ten or twelve ragged laborers assembled in a dingy, cheerless tap-room, lighted by a single unsnuffed candle, guttering over the neck of a stone bottle, on a coarse deal table:

THE topics, such as poor men discuss amongst themselves: the dearness of bread, the shortness of work, the long hours of labor, the lowness of wages, the badness of the weather, the sickliness of the season, the signs of a hard winter, the general evils of want, poverty, and disease; but accompanied by such particular revelations, such minute details and frank disclosures, as should only have come from persons talking in their sleep! The vulgar indelicacy, methought, with which they gossiped before me of family matters; the brutal callousness with which they exposed their private affairs, the whole history and mystery of bed, board, and hearth, the secrets of home! But a little more listening and reflection converted my disgust into pity and concern. Alas! I had forgotten that the lives of certain classes of our species have been laid almost as bare and open as those of the beasts of the field! The poor men had no domestic secrets; no private affairs! The law had ferreted their huts, and scheduled their three-legged tables and bottomless chairs. Statistical Groses had taken notes, and printed them, of every hole in their coats. Political reporters had calculated their incomings and outgoings down to fractions of pence and half ounces of tea; and had supplied the minutiae of their domestic economy for paragraphs and leading articles. Charity, arm-in-arm with curiosity, and clerical philanthropy, linked perhaps with a religious inquisitor, had taken an inventory of their defects, moral and spiritual; whilst medical visitors had inspected and recorded their physical sores, cancerous and scrofulous, their humors, and their tumors. Society, like a policeman, had turned upon them the full blaze of its bull's-eye; exploring the shadiest recesses of their privacy, till their means, food, habits, and modes of existence were as minutely familiar as those of the animalculæ exhibited in Regent-street by the solar microscope.'

One of the speakers paints the sharp bones showing through the skin, the skin through the rags, of the wife of his bosom; others reveal fathers with more children than shillings a-week; human creatures, male and female, old and young, not gnawed and torn by single woes, but worried at once by winter, disease and want:

'My ears tingled, and my cheeks flushed with self-reproach, remembering my fretful impatience under my own inflictions, no light ones either, till compared with the heavy complications of anguish, moral and physical, experienced by those poor men. My heart swelled with indignation, my soul sickened with disgust, to recall the sobs, sighs, tears and hysterics, the lamentations and imprecations bestowed by pampered selfishness on a sick bird or beast, a sore finger, a swelled toe, a lost rubber, a missing luxury, an ill-made garment, a culinary failure!- to think of the cold looks and harsh words cast by the same eyes and lips, eloquent in self-indulgence, on nakedness, starvation and poverty・・・ THE job up at Bosely is finished,' said one of the middle-aged men. I have enjoyed but three days' work in the last fortnight, and GoD above knows when I shall get another, even at a shilling a-day. And nine mouths to feed, big and little- and nine backs to clothe-with the winter a setting in-and the rent behind hand- and never a bed to lie on, and my good woman, poor soul! ready to- A choking sound and a hasty gulp of water smothered the rest of the sentence. There must be something done for us-there MUST! he added, with an emphatic slap of his broad, brown, barky hand, that made the glasses jingle and the idle pipes clatter on the board. And every voice in the room echoed There must!' my own involuntarily swelling the chorus. Ay, there must, and that full soon!' said a gray-headed man in fustian, with an upward appealing look, as if through the smoky clouds of the ceiling to GOD himself, for confirmation of the necessity.' It is this forlorn company who stand up, and to a slow sad air chant the 'Lay of the Laborer' asking leave to toil:

'WITH labor stiff and stark,
By lawful turn their living to earn,
Between the light and dark.'

To these; to the poor shirt-maker,' sewing in formâ pauperis' until she is a living skeleton; to the female embroiderer of eighty flowers upon a veil for six poor pence,