had shown him a most unaccountable and undeserved enmity, which he was resolved, by fair or by foul means, to subvert. 'I shall yet rise above all the accidents of fortune! It shall be done; I care not how, Mary,' said he sternly. We must not be over-particular on that score; for, as the proverb says,-A cat in mittens will never catch mice!'"

ART. XV.-The Comic Annual for 1842. By T. HOOD.

THERE being no Comic Annual last year, Mr. Hood says, 'I seemed to have said Amen to the Amenities of Literature,'-to have deposited my last work on the literary shelf." He then goes on to deliver himself after this fashion: "For a dozen successive years some annual volume had given token of my literary existence. I had appeared with my prose and verse as regularly as the parish beadle once a year, as certainly as the parochial plum-puddingat the end of every twelve months, like the Stationers' Almanack. My show was perennial, like that of the Lord Mayor. But, alas! Anno Domini 1840 was unmarked by any such publication! A tie seemed snapped-a spell appeared to be broken-my engine had gone off the rail! Indeed, so unusual a silence gave rise to the most sinister surmises. It was rumoured in Northamptonshire that I was in a public prison-in Brussels, that I was in a private madhouse-and in Cornhill, that I was annihilated. It was whispered in one quarter that I had quitted literature in disgust and turned fishmonger-in another, that I had enlisted, like Coleridge, in the Dragoons-in a third, that I had choked myself, like Otway, with a penny roll-in a fourth, that I had poisoned myself, like Chatterton; or plunged into the Thames, like Budgell. I had gone like Ambrogetti, into La Trappe-or to unsettle myself in New Zealand. But the majority of reporters were in favour of my demise; and a Miss Hoki, or Poki, even declared that she had seen the Angel of Death, whom she rather irreverently called 'Great Jacky,' standing beside my pillow."

From all this we learn that Hood is in his usual trim and glee, the characteristics of which we shall not in the thirteenth year of his renown stop to describe further than to say, that fun and pun, frolic and simile, sense and drollery, wit and thought, in most grotesque_guise, abound in this healthy and laughter-shaking Comic. How such whims come into the head of any mortal man, by what laws he inverts and connects, or from what sort of mint his fancies take their stamp, it is impossible to tell; for although we have the impressions and the coinage, no one has seen the curious dislocations and adaptations of which the machine that produces all these strange creations is susceptible. It is however manifest that there is a principle within the Hood; that he is a Poet; and that

oft a full stream from a depth wells from his heart as it also does from his head; and, to have done with generalities,-that although the present Annual gives us chiefly what has elsewhere by degrees appeared, the contributions have generally been so welcomed as to entitle them to a revised and a collected form of publication.

The pieces are truly English in regard to subject; some of them serio-comic and preaching touching lessons. Take separable portions, for instance, of the fortune and fate of Miss Killmansegg, perhaps the richest heiress the world ever saw,-quite a golden prize. Gold may be said to have showered with unmeasured lavishness upon her from the moment of her birth,-to have at the first almost smothered her by the multitude and height of its heaps and manufactures, as truly as it afterwards crushed her by its weight. Just attend to the christening:

"It would fill a Court Gazette to name
What East and West End people came
To the rite of Christianity;

The lofty Lord, and the titled Dame,

All di'monds, plumes, and urbanity:
His Lordship the May'r with his golden chain,
And two Gold Sticks, and the Sheriffs twain,
Nine foreign Counts, and other great men
With their orders and stars, to help M or N
To renounce all pomp and vanity.

To paint the maternal Killmansegg,
The pen of an Eastern Poet would beg,
And need an elaborate sonnet;

How she sparkled with gems whenever she stirr'd,
And her head niddle-noddled at every word,
And seem'd so happy, a Paradise Bird

Had nidificated upon it.

And Sir Jacob the Father strutted and bow'd,
And smiled to himself, and laugh'd aloud,
To think of his heiress and daughter-
And then in his pockets he made a grope,
And then, in the fulness of joy and hope,
Seem'd washing his hands with invisible soap,
In imperceptible water.

He had roll'd in money like pigs in mud,
Till it seem'd to have enter'd into his blood

By some occult projection:

And his cheeks, instead of a healthy hue,

As yellow as any guinea grew,

Making the common phrase seem true

About a rich complexion.

And now came the nurse, and during a pause,
Her dead-leaf satin would fitly cause
A very autumnal rustle-

So full of figure, so full of fuss,
As she carried about the babe to buss,
She seem'd to be nothing but bustle.

A wealthy Nabob was Godpapa,
And an Indian Begum was Godmamma,
Whose jewels a Queen might covet-
And the Priest was a Vicar, and Dean withal
Of that Temple we see with a Golden Ball,
And a Golden Cross above it.

The Font was a bowl of American gold,
Won by Raleigh in days of old,
In spite of Spanish bravado;

And the Book of Pray'r was so overrun
With gilt devices, it shone in the sun
Like a copy a presentation one-
Of Humboldt's El Dorado.'

Gold! and gold! and nothing but gold!
The same auriferous shine behold

Wherever the eye could settle!

On the walls-the sideboard-the ceiling-sky-
On the gorgeous footmen standing by,
In coats to delight a miner's eye

With seams of the precious metal.

Gold! and gold! and besides the gold,
The very robe of the infant told
A tale of wealth in every fold,

It lapp'd her like a vapour!
So fine! so thin! the mind at a loss
Could compare it to nothing except a cross
Of cobweb with bank-note paper.

Then her pearls-'twas a perfect sight, forsooth,
To see them, like 'the dew of her youth,'

In such a plentiful sprinkle.

Meanwhile, the Vicar read through the form,
And gave her another, not over warm,

That made her little eyes twinkle.

Then the babe was cross'd and bless'd amain;
But instead of the Kate, or Ann, or Jane,

Which the humbler female endorses-
Instead of one name, as some people prefix,
Killmansegg went at the tails of six,

Like a carriage of state with its horses.

Oh, then the kisses she got and hugs!
The golden mugs and the golden jugs

That lent fresh rays to the midges!
The golden knives, and the golden spoons,
The gems that sparkled like fairy boons,
It was one of the Kilmansegg's own saloons,
But look'd like Rundell and Bridge's!

There was nothing but guineas glistening!
Fifty were given to Doctor James,
For calling the little Baby names;
And for saying, Amen!

The Clerk had ten,

And that was the end of the Christening."

We must pass over much that is intermediate in the history of the heiress, such as her worshippings and avarice, as if a golden calf had been set up before her, and the particulars of her marriage to a gambling, cruel, and brutish Count. However, we must not forget to throw out a hint about her passion for riding and the broken leg, in order that the sequel, which was brought about by means of a singularly precious substitute for the natural limb, may be the better understood. This is the finale :

'Tis a stern and a startling thing to think
How often mortality stands on the brink
Of its grave without any misgiving:
And yet in this slippery world of strife,
In the stir of human bustle so rife,
There are daily sounds to tell us that Life
Is dying, and death is living!

Ay, Beauty the Girl, and Love the Boy,
Bright as they are with hope and joy,

How their souls would sadden instanter,
To remember that one of those wedding bells,
Which ring so merrily through the dells,
Is the same that knells

Our last farewells,

Only broken into a canter !

But breath and blood set doom at nought-
How little the wretched Countess thought,
When at night she unloosed her sandal,
That the Fates had woven her burial-cloth,

And that Death, in the shape of a Death's Head Moth,
Was fluttering round her candle!

As she look'd at her clock of or-molu,

For the hours she had gone so wearily through

VOL. III. (1841.) No. IV.

2 U

At the end of a day of trial

How little she saw in her pride of prime
The dart of Death in the Hand of Time-
That hand which moved on the dial!

As she went with the taper up the stair,
How little her swollen eye was aware

That the Shadow which follow'd was double!
Or when she closed her chamber door,
It was shutting out, and for evermore,
The world-and its worldly trouble.
Little she dreamt, as she laid aside
Her jewels after one glance of pride-
They were solemn bequests to Vanity-
Or when her robes she began to doff,
That she stood so near to the putting off
Of the flesh that clothes humanity.

And when she quench'd the taper's light,
How little she thought as the smoke took flight,
That her day was done-and merged in a night
Of dreams and duration uncertain-

Or, along with her own,

That a Hand of Bone
Was closing mortality's curtain!
But life is sweet, and mortality blind,
And youth is hopeful, and Fate is kind
In concealing the day of sorrow;
And enough is the present tense of toil-
For this world is, to all, a stiffish soil-
And the mind flies back with a glad recoil

From the debts not due till to-morrow.
Wherefore else does the Spirit fly
And bid its daily cares good-bye,
Along with its daily clothing?
Just as the felon condemned to die-
With a very natural loathing-
Leaving the Sheriff to dream of ropes,
From his gloomy cell in a vision elopes,
To caper on sunny greens and slopes,
Instead of the dance upon nothing.
Thus, even thus, the Countess slept,
While Death still nearer and nearer crept,
Like the Thane who smote the sleeping-
But her mind was busy with early joys,
Her golden treasures and golden toys,
That flash'd a bright

And golden light

Under lids still red with weeping.