Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 37, November, 1860 | Page 9

of Hood, we come to the crowning quality of his genius, the
simply pathetic. We could, if space remained, adduce many
psychological and other reasons why we apply this phrase to the pathos
of Hood. One reason is, that Hood's pathos involves none of the
complications of higher passion, nor any of the pomp which belongs, in
mood, situation, or utterance, to the loftier phases of human suffering.
The sorrow of those who most attracted his sympathy was not theatrical
or imposing. It has been well said of him, that his "bias was towards all
that was poor and unregarded." And thus, while those who painfully
moved the charity and compassion of his genius were considered by
him the victims of artificial civilization, his own feeling for them was
natural and instinctive; yet never did natural and instinctive feeling

receive expression more artistic, but with that admirable art in which
elaboration attains the utmost perfection of simplicity. It excites our
wonder to observe how in pathos Hood's genius divests itself of
attributes which had seemed essential to its existence. All that is
grotesque, whimsical, or odd disappears, and we have only the soul of
pity in the sound of song,--in song "most musical, most melancholy."
In pathos, Hood's is not what we should call a transformed genius so
much as a genius becoming divested of its coarser life, and then
breathing purely the inner spirit of goodness and beauty. The result is
what one might almost term the "absolute" in pathos. Nothing is
excluded that is necessary to impression; nothing is admitted that could
vulgarize or weaken it. We have thus pathos at once practical and
poetic,--pathos at once the most affecting and the most ideal,--coming
from a heart rich with all human charities, and gaining worthy and
immortal form by means of a subtile, deep, cultivated imagination. The
pathetic, therefore, no less than the comic, in Hood's writings has all
the author's peculiar originality, but has it in a higher order. Pathos was
the product of the author's mind when it was most matured by
experience, and when suffering, without impairing its strength, had
refined its characteristic benevolence to the utmost tenderness.
Hood's pathos culminates in "The Song of the Shirt," "The Lay of the
Laborer," and "The Bridge of Sighs."
These are marvellous lyrics. In spirit and in form they are singular and
remarkable. We cannot think of any poems which more show the
mystic enchantment of genius. How else was a ragged sempstress in a
squalid garret made immortal, nay, made universal, made to stand for
an entire sisterhood of wretchedness? Here is the direst poverty,
blear-eyed sorrow, dim and dismal suffering,--nothing of the romantic.
A stern picture it is, which even the softer touches render sterner; still
there is nought in it that revolts or shocks; it is deeply poetic, calls into
passionate action the feelings of reverence and pity, and has all the
dignity of tragedy. Even more wonderful is the transformation that a
rustic hind undergoes in "The Lay of the Laborer," in which a peasant
out of work personifies, with eloquent impressiveness, the claims and
calamities of toiling manhood. But an element of the sublime is added
in "The Bridge of Sighs." In that we have the truly tragic; for we have
in it the union of guilt, grief, despair, and death. An angel from heaven,

we think, could not sing a more gentle dirge, or one more pure; yet the
ordinary associations suggested by the corpse of the poor, ruined,
self-murdered girl are such as to the prudish and fastidious would not
allow her to be mentioned, much less bring her into song. But in the
pity almost divine with which Hood sings her fate there is not only a
spotless delicacy, there is also a morality as elevated as the heavenly
mercy which the lyrist breathes. The pure can afford to be pitiful; and
the life of Hood was so exemplary, that he had no fear to hinder him
from being charitable. The cowardice of conscience is one of the
saddest penalties of sin; and to avert suspicion from one's self by
severity to others is, indeed, the most miserable expediency of
self-condemnation. The temper of charity and compassion seems
natural to men of letters and of art. They are emotional and sensitive,
and by the necessity of their vocation have to hold much communion
with the inmost consciousness of our nature; they thus learn the
weakness of man, and the allowances that he needs; they are conversant
with a broad and diversified humanity, and thence they are seldom
narrow, intolerant, or self-righteous; feeling, too, their full share of
moral and mortal imperfection, they refuse to be inquisitors of the
unfortunate, but rather choose to be their advocates and helpers. No
man ever