Hood Where poets were so few, the pure talent of HARTLEY COLERIDGE, the greater S. T. Coleridge's eldest, unhappy son, may claim a word. A group of dramatist and lyrical writers, among whom BEDDOES is by far the greatest, link the generation of Keats and Shelley with that of Tennyson and the Brownings; but most of them are nebulous, and the most eminent mere asteroids in comparison with the planets which preceded and followed them. Thomas Hood (1799-1845) belonged to a family of Perthshire peasants. His father was a small publisher in the Poultry, where the poet was born on the 23rd of May 1799. He received some education at various private schools. In 1811 he lost his father and his elder brother, and his mother moved to Islington. Already the health of Thomas, who came of a very unsound family, was giving anxiety, and he was sent to live in Dundee. He grew so much stronger that in 1818 he was able to come back to London apparently cured, and he began to study to be an engraver. But he was drawn to literature, and in 1821 began to act as sub-editor to the "London Magazine." The death of his mother now left him in charge of a family of four sisters; in 1825 he married Jane, the sister of John Hamilton Reynolds, the poet and friend of Keats. This was the year of Hood's earliest appearance as an author with the anonyHe was at this time introduced by Lamb to Coleridge as "a silentish young man, an invalid," but he was beginning to be well-known as a wit and punster, and in 1826 he achieved a partial success with Whims and Oddities. In 1827 the only book of serious poetry ever published by Hood, The Plea of the Midsummer Fairies, appeared, dedicated to Charles Lamb. None of these publications, however, really took the town, and Hood withdrew for fifteen years from poetical composition. In 1829 the Hoods Thomas Hood mous Odes and Addresses to Great People. went to live at Winchmore Hill, near Enfield, and it was from this retreat that he began to issue the Comic Annual; they moved in 1832 to Lake House, Wanstead, a romantic old building in a situation most unfavourable to Hood's health. He made it the site of his novel, Tylney Hall, in 1834. At the beginning of the next year, owing to the unexplained "failure of a firm," Hood became ruined and had to leave England to escape his creditors; he settled at Coblenz, and afterwards at Ostend, until 1840, when he returned to England. At Christmas, 1843, Hood became suddenly famous as the author, in "Punch," of The Song of the Shirt. But his success came too late; he was already dying of a slow disease of the heart, complicated by anxiety and trouble. After a long illness, rendered doubly distressing by poverty, Hood died at Hampstead on the 2nd of May 1845. Hood Mrs. T. Hood (Jane Reynolds) was not witty in society, but "thin and deaf, and very silent," with a solemn pale face Verses of Hood's to Charles Dickens on his Departure for America At one time the claim of Joanna Baillie (1762-1851) to be included among the English poets was almost universally conceded. Her Plays on the Passions (1798-1812) were successful, both as books, and as acted by Kemble and Mrs. Siddons. But neither these nor her once greatly praised ballads have retained HARTLEY COLERIDGE: PRAED: BEDDOES their charm. 195 Hartley Coleridge (1796-1849) was the eldest son of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and was born at Clevedon in Somerset on the 19th of September 1796. He was brought up in the Lakes among the great friends of his father, and early attracted the admiration of Wordsworth, Southey, Lamb, and De Quincey by his brilliant precocity. After going to Joanna Baillie school at Ambleside, he proceeded in 1815 to New Inn Hall, Oxford, afterwards joining Merton College. In 1819 he was elected a fellow of Oriel, but was deprived of his fellowship in the following year, under distressing circumstances, and spent some years very painfully in London. In 1823 he was persuaded to return to Ambleside, and for some years he lived precariously by teaching. During a brief experience as reader to a publisher at Leeds, Hartley Coleridge appeared as an author for the first and last time with his Biographia Borealis and his Poems, both dated 1833. He lived quietly and meekly at Grasmere, until his death on the 6th of January 1849. Winthrop Mackworth Praed (1802-1839), a brilliant figure at Eton and at Trinity College, Cambridge, was the most graceful writer of society verses between Prior and Mr. Austin Dobson. The only important work he published in book-form in his lifetime was Lilian, 1823. Praed's poems were first collected after his death, and in America, in 1844. Thomas Lovell Beddoes (1803-1849) was the eldest son of Dr. Thomas Beddoes, a famous physician of Bristol, where the poet was born on the 20th of July 1803; his mother was a sister of Maria Edgeworth. He was educated at Bath Grammar School and at the Charterhouse, and began to devote himself to poetry at the age of fourteen. In 1820 he proceeded to Pembroke College, Oxford, where in 1821 he published The Improvisators. This was followed in 1822 by The Bride's Tragedy. These are the only books of his which appeared in Beddoes' lifetime. He took his degree in 1825, left Oxford, and determined to devote himself to medicine. The greater part of the rest of his life was spent in Germany in isolation from all his family and English friends; he took his medical degree at Würzburg in 1832, and practised as a physician in Zürich. He became extremely melancholy, restless, and neurotic, formed extravagant relations, and on the 26th of January 1849 committed. suicide in the hospital at Basle. His principal work, Death's Jest-Book, was published in 1850, and his Poems in 1851. He was a very mysterious person of whom little definite is known; in late life he "let his beard grow, and looked like Shakespeare." Richard Henry (or Hengist) Horne (1803-1884) was born in London on the 1st of January 1803. He was taught at the school in Edmonton After a Portrait by Sir W. Newton which Keats had recently left, and to the end of his life would boast of having thrown a snowball at that great man. Horne early drifted upon a life of restless and prolonged adventure. He volunteered as a midshipman in the war of Mexican independence, and fought in 1839 against Spain. He afterwards wandered. long in the United States and in Canada; and after he had returned to London and adopted the profession of letters, the gold craze took him in 1852 to Australia. His earliest publication of value was the romantic drama of Cosmo de Medici in 1837. His epic of Orion, 1843, was sold at the published price of a farthing, and achieved wide notoriety. His drama of Judas Iscariot was printed in 1848. Horne, who was a little man of unusual physical strength and endurance, became in later days an odd figure with his milk-white ringlet - curls and abrupt gestures. His friendship with Elizabeth Barrett Browning resulted in certain interesting conjunct productions, particularly in the letters published in 1876. Horne died at Margate, from the result of an accident, on the 13th of March 1884. Richard Horne SONNET BY HARTLEY COLERIDGE. When we were idlers with the loitering rills, The need of human love we little noted: Of that sweet music which no ear can measure; SONG FROM THE FRAGMENT OF "TORRISMOND" OF BEDDOES. How many times do I love thee, dear? Of a new-fall'n year, Whose white and sable hours appear So many times do I love thee, dear. |