Whims and Oddities, in prose and verse, by Thomas Hood, Esq. Philadelphia: Lea & Blanchard, one vol.

We are glad that a republication, in a cheap form, of these rich and racy pleasantries has been undertaken in our city. The book is morally certain of a sale. The name of Thomas Hood is known wherever language is put upon the rack. Every civilized Englishman who uses words is acquainted with the great word-twister. He is the acknowledged monarch of Pun-land. All other luminaries "pale their ineffectual fires" before the quick sparkle of his multitudinous quibbles. He has made punning a kind of genius. He has redeemed it from the detractions of the dull and pedantic. Any man may now play upon words, without having his friend point significantly to the gallows, and murmur that "he who makes a pun would pick a pocket." What King James, and Bacon, and Shakspeare, and Denne, and Cowley, could not do-what Canning, and the whole Anti-Jacobin club could not effecthas been done by Thomas Hood. The analogies of sound are now as much prized as those of thought. The fact that the greatest men in all ages have displayed a love for this kind of wit, must be admitted as a strong argument in its favor. The "verbal Unitarians," as Hood calls his opponets, have been compelled to abate the insolence of their censures, and relax the grimness of feature with which they once frowned defiance on double-meanings. great family of Words which might be supposed most interested in the issue of the struggle, have willingly given up their frames to the torture, and suffer martyrdom daily. The priests in the Inquisition of Verbiage, with their racks, wheels, scourges, and hot-irons, are doing what is called a "fair business;" and every shriek drawn from the agonies of a tortured word is registered as a pun.

The

Hood, then, has so far affected the legislation of letters as to turn quibbling from a crime into a fashion; but his own popularity as a humorist is not indebted altogether to his word twistings. He has one of the most singular minds ever deposited in a human brain. Whims and Oddities come from him, because he is himself a whim and oddity. He seems of different natures mixed. He has the fancy, if not the imagination, of a poet, and some touches of pathos almost equal to the most brilliant scintillations of his wit. Behind his most grotesque nonsense, there is generally some moral, satirical, or poetic meaning. He often blends feeling, fancy, wit, and thoughtfulness, in one queer rhyme, or quaint quibble. The very extravagance of his ideas and expression; the appearance of strain and effort in his puns; the portentous jumbling together of the mort dissimilar notions by some merry craft of fancy; and the erratic, dare-devil invasion of the inmost sanctuaries of conventionalism, have, in his writings, a peculiar charm, which we seek for in vain among his imitators, or among the tribe of extravagant wits generally. We do not believe he would be so fine a humorist if he were not so much of a poet. There is a vein of genial kindliness in his nature, which modifies the mocking and fleering tenddencies of his wit. Seriousness seems engaged in a coquetry with ridicule, in many of his poems, and the quick alternations from one to the other produce a succession of "brisk shocks of surprise."

Two of the most felicitous of Hood's punning poems, are the lachrymose ballads of "Sally Brown, and Ben the Carpenter," and "Faithless Nelly Gray." The mockery in these exquisite morceaus, of the plaintive style of the modern ballad, glistens with wit and humor. They are so well known that to extract from them would be an impertinence. "The Wee Man" is another queer specimen of his drollery. In the poem called "Jack Hall," (Jackall) the resurrectionist, he commences with wailing the custom of disinterring bodies, and remarks with much logical feeling :

"T is hard one cannot lie amid
The mould beneath a coffin lid,
But thus the Faculty will bid

Their rogues break thro' it!
If they don't want us there, why did
They send us to it?

The situation of the lover, who comes to sentimentalize over his mistress's grave, is thus vividly portrayed:

The tender lover comes to rear
The mournful urn, and shed his tear-
Her glorious dust he cries is here!
Alack alack!

The while his Sacharissa dear
Is in a sack!

Here is a grave and singular pun:

Death saw two players playing at cards,
But the game was not worth a dump,
For he quickly laid them flat with a spade,
To wait for the final trump!

Hood's wit plays about the tomb somewhat daringly, but still he can hardly be said to disturb its sanctities. In the ballad of "Mary's Ghost" he makes the poor spirit lament the distribution of her former body among the physicians. She cries

O William dear! O William dear!
My rest eternal ceases;
Alas! my everlasting peace
Is broken into pieces.

The body-snatchers, they have come,
And made a snatch at me;
It's very hard them kind of men
Wont let a body be.

After much agonizing description, respecting the disposition of the several parts of her once compact frame, she concludes:

The cock it crows-I must be gone!
My William, we must part!
But I'll be yours in death, altho'
Sir Astley has my heart.

Don't go to weep upon my grave,
And think that there I be;
They have n't left an atom there
Of my anatomie.

The poem of the "Last Man" is a mixture of the horri ble, the imaginative, and the ludicrous. It should be read in connection with Campbell's solemn lines on the same theme. We wish that the publishers of the "Whims and Oddities" had selected some of the poems of Hood which have appeared since that work, in the Comic Annual and New Monthly Magazine. The success of this reprint will probably embolden them to give the American public two

or three more volumes from the same teeming pen. There are numerous pieces, not included in the present collection, which are worthy of being more generally known on this side of the Atlantic.

We cannot take leave of the book, without a benison on the author who has afforded the world so much matter for merriment. Hearty laughter is an important element of comfort, and those who provoke it without sacrificing good taste and morality, are philanthropists to some degree. We sincerely trust that Hood prospers in all his literary speculations, and that words are still left in the dictionary to twist and turn. We hope that his puns bring him in a good living; and can hardly dream that want should ever attack one, whose every composition suggests a good lively-hood.

The Light of the Light House, and Other Poems, by Epes Sargent. New York: James Mowatt & Co.

This is the first collected edition of Mr. Sargent's poems we have seen, and we avail ourselves of the opportunity it offers to make some remarks on the character and merits of his muse. It is evident that a collection, composed of pieces produced at various periods of life, and prompted by varying impulses of feeling, must contain poems of different degrees of excellence. There are several pieces not particularly distinguished from the flood of verse now deluging the land, and therefore worthy of no particular comment. Two or three bear evidence of being manufactured "for the occasion," with the usual economy of thought and emotion. Here and there we meet with a lame line or a trite image. But, taking the collection as a whole, we think that it must be allowed to contain much fine poetry, and to place the author in a prominent station among our poets, even if he had not attained that position before its publication. Whatever we may think of his themes, or his mode of treating them, it can hardly be doubted that he describes no scenery that he has not seen, and versifies few emotions which he has not felt. He is no mere metrical trifler, playing daintily with thought and passion, and "pleased with the rattle" of his rhymes, but a man of fancy and sentiment, who has too much of the material of poetry in him to need the affectation of the poetaster.

It is difficult to fix on one general term to describe a poet, whose heart and brain have been exercised on a variety of topics, and who varies his manner with his theme. When we have clutched an epithet which seems to cover the extent of his range, he often contrives to elude its application by displaying some quality which clashes with it. As we hunt him through lyric after lyric, he still manages to dodge our analysis; and if we run our knife into that part where he is," we find, with the Hibernian, that "he is not there." In the present collection of Mr. Sargent's poems there is much of this variety, but there is likewise a unity of spirit in all his writings. A general healthiness of thought and sentiment animates and gives freshness to his compositions. He is no puling versifier, wailing over fictitious sorrows, and ravenous for sympathy. Without any lack of sensibility or thoughtfulness, he still does not brood over his own consciousness until he has turned his individual peculiarities into idiosyncrasies. He has evidently left his mind open to outward objects, and aimed to describe them as they appear to his eye, not as they appear to his whim. He can mingle thought and emotion with description, without destroying the essential features of either. In most of his poems relating to the sea, there is much vividness of representation, combined with feeling and fancy. We look at the ocean with his

eyes and sympathies, it is true, but we feel confident that he has not distorted the appearances of things, to meet the wants of rhyme, imagery, or eccentricity.

We think that a few extracts will display, better than the most labored criticism, the truth to nature, the fine affluence of fancy, the force and tenderness of feeling, and the graceful facility of expression which characterize Mr. Sargent's best efforts. We begin with the Light of the Light House, a most pure and beautiful product of imagination and sentiment. We select a few stanzas:

But O! Aurora's crimson light.
That makes the watch-fire dim,
Is not a more transporting sight
Than Ellen is to him.

He pineth not for fields and brooks,
Wild-flowers and singing birds,
For summer smileth in her looks,
And singeth in her words.

The ocean's blue is in her eyes,
Its coral in her lips,

And in her cheek the mingled dyes
No sea-shell could eclipse!
And, as she climbs the weedy rocks,
And with the sunshine plays,
The wind that lifts her golden locks
Seems more to love their rays.

When the smoothed ocean sleeps unstirred,
And, like a silver band,
The molten waters circling gird
The island's rim of sand,
She runs, her tiny feet to lave,

And breaks the liquid chain,
Then laughs to feel the shivered wave
Coil down to rest again.

The sea-fog, like a fallen cloud,

Rolled in and dimmed its fire;
Roared the gale louder and more loud,
And sprang the billows higher!
Above the gale that wailed and rang,
Above the booming swell,
With steady and sonorous clang,

Pealed forth the light-house bell!

"Shells and Sea-weeds," a series of short poems recording a summer voyage to Cuba, display to much advantage Mr. Sargent's power in themes relating to the ocean. "To a Land Bird," "A Calm," "The Gale," "Tropical Weather," are characterized by that force and freshness of description which can only come from actual observation of the scenes represented. "A Life on the Ocean Wave," "A Night Storm at Sea," and "A Summer Noon at Sea," are also excellent. In the "Lampoon" there is much sharpness and energy of expression, and a fleering fearlessness of tone. "Midsummer in the City" is very fine. "Rockall" contains many noble lines, and the diction generally is lofty and majestic. We extract the com

mencement:

Is

Pale ocean-rock, that like a phantom shape,
Or some mysterions spirit's tenement,
Risest amid this wilderness of waves,
planted in the sea's unmeasured depths,
Lonely and desolate-thy spreading base
Where rolls the huge leviathan o'er sands
Glistering with shipwrecked treasures. The strong wind
Flings up thy sides a veil of feathery spray
With sunbeams interwoven, and the hues
Which mingle in the rainbow. From thy top
The seabirds rise and sweep with sidelong flight
Downward upon their prey; or, with poised wings,
Skim to the horizon o'er the glittering deep.

It would not be difficult to select other specimens of Mr. Sargent's poetical powers, equally worthy of panegyric. We hope that he will redeem his promise to reprint his other productions, including the tragedy of "Velasco."