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gible. The new collection of Odes and Addresses is worthy the authors of the clever volume which was so great a favorite with COLERIDGE. Of these, the Remonstratory Ode from the Elephant, and probably one or two others, are from the pen of JOHN HAMILTON REYNOLDS, the brotherin-law of HOOD, and his associate in the production of the Odes and Addresses. Some account of this very clever writer will be found in a note at the end of the volume.

The poems which fall under the head of Miscellaneous, have been drawn from a variety of sources, but they are all authenticated as the productions of IIOOD. Many of them have been taken from the Comic Annual; others from the gilt-edged and silk-bound volumes that were so popular for Christmas time and New Year's, five-and-twenty years ago. To these HOOD was a liberal contributor before the commencement of his own annual publication. We have also been indebted to Punch and to the columns of the Literary Gazette and London Athenæum-to all of which periodicals HOOD was a sometime contributor-for poems that have hitherto escaped the diligence of his editors.

While thus gleaning from the fields of ephemeral letters the scattered sheaves of genius, we have run our eye over many pages of contemporaneous criticism, sometimes gentle and generous, but not unfrequently conceived in a harsh and unindulgent temper. Many persons were disposed to regard HooD as a mere punster and witling. The very fertility of his genius was a drawback on his reputation. That he should throw off his effusions with such marvellous

readiness, and with so little apparent effort, diminished their value with critics, who never seemed to reflect that what HOOD could do so easily, no other man could do at all. In the hosts of wits and humorists, who gave such brilliancy, during Hood's career, to the periodical literature of England, there was no one who could compete with him, or imitate him in the style of writing which he had made so truly his own. Writers there were who were rich in conceits and fluent in versification, and who could play readily with words; but there was an inexpressible and original something that IIOOD infused into his most trivial pleasantries, in which none of his cleverest contemporaries rivalled or resembled him. In this peculiar vein he still remains not only unsurpassed but unequalled.

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