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 had more of this temper than Hood; and out of it came these immortal lyrics upon which we have been commenting.  For such a temper the writing of these lyrics was exceeding great reward; not only because they made the author an everlasting benefactor to the poor, but also because they became an interpretation of his own deeper genius, and revealed a nobler meaning in his works than had ever before been discerned.  Hence-forth, he was more thought of as a profound poet than as the greatest of mimes, jesters, and punsters.  The lyrics of the poor saved him from imminent injustice.—­All that we have further to say of these lyrics is to express our admiration as to the classical finish of their diction, and as to the wild, sweet, and strange music in their sadly sounding measures.

Hood is a writer to whom, in his degree, we may apply the epithet Shakspearian.  We do not, indeed, compare him with Shakspeare in bulk or force of genius, but only in quality and kind.  He had, as the great dramatist, the same disregard of the temporary and discernment of the essential; the same wonderful wealth of vocabulary, and the same bold dexterity in the use of it; the same caprices of jestings and conceits;