COMPLETE POETICAL WORKS OF THOMAS HOOD. IN THREE VOLUMES. VOL. III NEW YORK: DERBY AND JACKSON. M DCCC LXI. Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1860, by DERBY & JACKSON, In the Clerk's Office of the District Court for the Southern District of New York. ELECTROTYPED BY SMITH & MCDOUGAL, 92 & 84 Beekman St. PRINTED BY 61 Duane Street. PUBLISHERS' ADVERTISEMENT. As this Collection is intended to form the third volume in a new edition of HOOD'S WORKS, now in prefs, a few poems have been inferted that do not fall within the plan originally contemplated, and set forth in the Preface. These infertions have been made with a view to the convenience in publication of distributing the matter in volumes of about the fame number of pages, and do not interfere with the general design of rendering the prefent collection a defirable supplement to any of the editions of HOOD now in circulation. Nine-tenths of the volume will be as novel to most of its readers as if it were published from the manufcript. PREFACE. THE rank which is now assigned to THOMAS HOOD, as one of the most original and ingenious humorists who have written in any language, gives interest to all the productions of his pen; and induces us to believe that the present volume, composed of Dramatic Sketches, Odes, Political Satires, and Miscellaneous Pieces not contained (with a few exceptions) in former collections of his works, will meet with a favorable reception from his friends. True it is that many of these poems were suggested by topics of casual and temporary interest, written hastily to fill the pages of a magazine or annual, in reply to the mexorable call for copy. But many of HOOD's least elaborated poems were among his best, and they all bear the impress of his peculiar powers, his effervescing fancy, his sparkling wit, his inimitable humor, his unvarying benevolence and kindness of heart, his hatred of hypocrisy and cant. The longest of the poems contained in the present volume is in the dramatic form, and upon a subject which also employed the pen of KEATS. It gives us a new phase of HOOD's versatile and many-colored genius. In the Epping Hunt, we have a story, in the metre of John Gilpin, which does not require the aid of the original cuts to make its humor intelli |