Part 40

After a lethargy, which continued four days, Hood died May 3rd, 1845. He was buried in Kensal Green Cemetery, where a poetical monument has been erected to his memory. He left a son, who inherits much of his father's genius.

"Hood," says one of his biographers, "was undoubtedly a man of genius. His mind was stored with a vast collection of materials drawn from a great variety of sources, but especially his own observations; and he possessed the power of working up those materials into combinations of wit and humour and pathos of the most original and varied kinds. He has wit of the highest quality, as original and as abundant as Butler's or Cowley's, drawn from as extensive an observation of nature and life, if not from so wide a reach of learning, and combined with a richness of humour of which Butler had little and Cowley none. His humour is frequently as extravagantly broad as that of Rabelais, but he has sometimes the delicate touches of that of Addison. As a punster he stands alone. His puns do not consist merely of double meanings of words--a low kind of punning, of which minds of a low order are capable, and with which his imitators have deluged English comedy and comic literature--but of double meanings of words combined with double meanings of sense in such a manner as to produce the most extraordinary effects of surprise and admiration. His power of exciting laughter is wonderful, his drollery indescribable, inimitable. His pathetic power is not equal to his comic, but it is very great. The moral tendency of Hood's works is excellent. In the indulgence of his spirit of fun, he is anything but strait-laced as regards the introduction of images and phrases which a fastidious person might call vulgar or coarse; but an indecent description or even allusion will not easily be found. He is liberal-minded, a warm eulogist as well as a glowing depicter of the good feelings of our nature and the generous actions which those feelings prompt, and he is an unsparing satirist of vice, pretension, and cant in all their forms.

"Hood, in his person, was thin, pale, and delicate; in his temper he was kind and cheerful; he seems to have imbibed the social and benevolent feeling of his friend Lamb, and he was no less than Lamb a favourite among his friends. His long-continued sufferings only stimulated him to amuse himself and others by the exercise of his extraordinary imagination; and when at last he could no longer bear up under his bodily pains, his complaint was simple, but it indicated a terrible degree of suffering--'I cannot die, I cannot die.'"

A Witty Archbishop.

An industrious student, a deep thinker, an acute reasoner, a learned mind, a correct and at times elegant writer--these are titles of honour which the mere out-side-world, travelling in its flying railway-carriage, will gladly award to the late Archbishop of Dublin (Dr. Whately). Not so familiar are certain minor and more curious gifts, which he kept by him for his own and his friends' entertainment, which broke out at times on more public occasions. He delighted in the oddities of thought, in queer quaint distinctions; and if an object had by any possibility some strange distorted side or corner, or even point, which was undermost, he would gladly stoop down his mind to get that precise view of it, nay, would draw it in that odd light for the amusement of the company.

Thus he struck Guizot, who described him as "startling and ingenious, strangely absent, familiar, confused, eccentric, amiable, and engaging, no matter what unpoliteness he might commit, or what propriety he might forget." In short, a mind with a little of the Sydney Smith's leaven, whose brilliancy lay in precisely these odd analogies. It was his recreation to take up some intellectual hobby, and make a toy of it. Just as, years ago, he was said to have taken up that strange instrument the boomerang, and was to be seen on the sands casting it from him, and watching it return. It was said, too, that at the dull intervals of a visitation, when ecclesiastical business languished, he would cut out little miniature boomerangs of card, and amuse himself by illustrating the principle of the larger toy by shooting them from his finger.

The even, and sometimes drowsy, current of Dublin society was almost always enlivened by some little witty boomerang of his, fluttering from mouth to mouth, and from club to club. The Archbishop's last was eagerly looked for. Some were indifferent, some were trifling; but it was conceded that all had an odd extravagance, which marked them as original, quaint, queer. In this respect he was the Sydney Smith of the Irish capital, with this difference--that Sydney Smith's king announced that he would never make the lively Canon of St. Paul's a Bishop.

Homœopathy was a medical paradox, and was therefore welcome. Yet in this he travelled out of the realms of mere fanciful speculation, and clung to it with a stern and consistent earnestness faithfully adhered to through his last illness. Mesmerism, too, he delighted to play with. He had, in fact, innumerable _dadas_, as the French call them, or hobby-horses, upon which he was continually astride.

This led him into a pleasant affection of being able to discourse _de omnibus rebus_, &c., and the more recondite or less known the subject, the more eager was he to speak. It has been supposed that the figure of the "Dean," in Mr. Lever's pleasant novel of _Roland Cashel_, was sketched from him. Indeed, there can be no question but that it is an unacknowledged portrait.

"What is the difference," he asked of a young clergyman he was examining, "between a form and a ceremony? The meaning seems nearly the same; yet there is a very nice distinction." Various answers were given. "Well," he said, "it lies in this: you sit upon a form, but you stand upon ceremony."

"Morrow's Library" is the Mudie of Dublin; and the Rev. Mr. Day, a popular preacher. "How inconsistent," said the archbishop, "is the piety of certain ladies here. They go _to Day for a sermon_, and _to Morrow_ for a novel!"

At a dinner-party he called out suddenly to the host, "Mr. ----!" There was silence. "Mr. ----, what is the proper female companion of this John Dory?" After the usual number of guesses an answer came, "Anne Chovy." [This has been attributed to Quin, the actor and epicure.]

_Another Riddle._--"The laziest letter in the alphabet? The _letther_ G!" (lethargy).

_The Wicklow Line._--The most unmusical in the world--having a Dun-Drum, Still-Organ, and a Bray for stations.

_Doctor Gregg._--The new bishop and he at dinner. Archbishop: "Come, though you _are_ John Cork, you musn't stop the bottle here." The answer was not inapt: "I see your lordship is determined to draw me out."

On Dr. K----x's promotion to the bishopric of Down, an appointment in some quarters unpopular: "The Irish government will not be able to stand many more such Knocks Down as this!"

The merits of the same bishop being canvassed before him, and it being mentioned that he had compiled a most useful Ecclesiastical Directory, with the Values of Livings, &c., "If that be so," said the archbishop, "I hope the next time the claims of our friend Thom will not be overlooked." (Thom, the author of the well known _Almanack_.)

A clergyman, who had to preach before him, begged to be let off, saying, "I hope your grace will excuse my preaching next Sunday." "Certainly," said the other indulgently. Sunday came, and the archbishop said to him, "Well! Mr. ----, what became of you! we expected you to preach to-day." "Oh, your grace said you would excuse my preaching to-day." "Exactly; but I did not say I would excuse you _from_ preaching."

At a lord lieutenant's banquet a grace was given of unusual length. "My lord," said the archbishop, "did you ever hear the story of Lord Mulgrave's chaplain?" "No," said the lord lieutenant. "A young chaplain had preached a sermon of great length. 'Sir,' said Lord Mulgrave, bowing to him, 'there were some things in your sermon of to-day I never heard before.' 'Oh, my lord,' said the flattered chaplain, 'it is a common text, and I could not have hoped to have said anything new on the subject.' '_I heard the clock strike twice_,' said Lord Mulgrave."

At some religious ceremony at which he was to officiate in the country, a young curate who attended him grew very nervous as to their being late. "My good young friend," said the archbishop, "I can only say to you what the criminal going to be hanged said to those around, who were hurrying him, 'Let us take our time, they can't begin without us.'"--(_Yorick Junior._--_Notes and Queries. Third Series._)

The following charade, said to be one of the last by Dr. Whatley, has puzzled many wise heads:--

"Man cannot live without my _first_, By day and night it's used; My _second_ is by all accursed, By day and night abused. My _whole_ is never seen by day, And never used by night; Is dear to friends when far away, But hated when in sight."

A Correspondent of _Notes and Queries_ suggests the following solution:--

"_Ignis_, or fire, all men will own Essential to the life of man; _Fatuus_, a fool, has been, 'tis known, Cursed and abused since time began. Some _Ignis Fatuus_, Will-o'-wisp. Not seen by day, nor used by night, Men love, and for their phantom list, When 'tis unseen, but hate its sight."

Literary Madmen.

"Great wits are sure to madness near allied, And their partitions do their bounds divide."--DRYDEN.

This bold assertion has long since been pronounced incorrect. Nevertheless, the barrier between genius and madness has not been traced. Eccentricity is often mistaken for craziness; and the entire subject is beset with nice points and shades of controversy. In 1860 appeared Octave Delepierre's _Histoire Littéraire des Fous_, upon the soundness of which critics are divided in opinion. The following sketch of its contents, however, shows the work to be full of interest.

A history of literary madmen is yet to be written--whether it be a history of authors who have gone mad, or of persons who, being mad, have turned authors. It is singular to notice what relief madmen find in literary composition; so much so, that it has been employed as a method of cure in more than one of our lunatic asylums. At the Crichton Royal Institution, Dumfriesshire, a little journal, entitled the _New Moon_, was published every month, the contents being contributed, set up, and printed by the inmates in their lucid moments. Occasionally there was a little incoherence--a little roughness; but, as a whole, the _New Moon_ would bear comparison with many other amateur periodicals. Here are two stanzas written by a man tortured by long sleeplessness, whom private misfortunes had driven mad:--

"Go! sleep, my heart, in peace, Bid fear and sorrow cease: He who of worlds takes care, One heart in mind doth bear.

"Go! sleep, my heart, in peace, If death should thee release, And this night hence thee take, Thou yonder wilt awake."

Theology has sent more people mad than any other pursuit--a truth of which M. Delepierre's _Histoire Littéraire des Fous_ furnishes some interesting illustrations.

The writer has, however, occasionally mistaken eccentricity for craziness. Simon Stylites on his pillar and St. Anthony in his cave were crazed; but we do not think that Baxter's _Hooks and Eyes for Believers' Breeches_ is an indication of insanity any more than such works as _La Seringue Spirituelle pour les Ames constipées en Dévotion_, or _La Tabatière Spirituelle pour faire éternuer les Ames dévotes_. Very probably, if we could refer to these works, we should find that the title had little or nothing in common with the contents, but as a mere trick to catch purchasers. Few people would charge Latimer with being mad because he preached a "Sermon on a Pack of Cards." Nor do we think any conclusion can be drawn unfavourable to the Jesuit missionary Paoletti from the mere fact of his writing a treatise to prove that the American aborigines were eternally damned without hope of redemption, because they were the offspring of the Devil and one of Noah's daughters. His mind had not lost its balance to such a degree as that of old Portel, who persuaded himself that the soul of John the Baptist had passed into his body; or of Miranda, a living man, who fancies himself the forty-ninth incarnation of Adam through Romulus and Mohamed; while Queen Victoria is the seventieth embodiment of the soul of Eve, by way of Miriam and the Virgin Mary! Geoffrey Vallée was another monomaniac of this class, who began by having a shirt for every day in the year, which he used to send into Flanders to be washed at a certain spring, and ended by being burnt at the stake as an atheist for a silly book he wrote. Our own John Mason, who proclaimed Christ's coming, and declared Water Stratford, near Buckingham, to be the seat of his throne, has had many imitators at home and abroad.

Endeavours to interpret prophecy and explain the Apocalypse have turned many a brain, even in our own days. One Francis Potter wrote a book with the following title:--"An Interpretation of the number 666, wherein it is shown that this number is an exquisite and perfect character, truly, exactly, and essentially describing that state of government to which all other notes of Antichrist do agree." A Frenchman, Soubira, ran mad on the same subject about the same period. In 1828 he published a pamphlet with this meagre title--"666." Here is a sample:--

Les banquiers de la France 666 Des organistes de la Foi 666 Et des concerts de la cadence 666 Vont accomplir la loi 666 Et conterminer l'alliance 666

Joseph O'Donnelly fancied he had discovered the primitive language, and printed some specimens of it at Brussels in 1854.

The literary madman is often harmless enough, and his condition being not rarely the result of an overtasked brain, in his lucid moments he is his former self. If in his mad moments Lee called upon Jupiter to rise and snuff the moon; it was in his calmer hours that he replied to the sneers of a silly poet--"It is very difficult to write like a madman, but very easy to write like a fool." Christopher Smart was another poetical lunatic, whose best pieces were composed while he was under restraint. These are not, however, very remarkable, their chief merit consisting in their history. Like the Koran, they were committed to writing under circumstances of great difficulty; the whitened walls of his cell were his paper, and his pen the end of a piece of wood burnt in the fire. Thomas Lloyd belonged to this class, but few of his fragments have been preserved. Milman, of Pennsylvania, lost his bride by lightning on their wedding-day: his reason never recovered the shock.

Luke Clennel, the engraver, forgot his art during his long state of unreason, but would compose very passable verses; while John Clare, whose poetry brought him into note, and led to his ruin, scarcely wrote at all during his mad moods. Thomas Bishop took to the drama, and his _Koranzzo's Feast, or the Unfair Marriage_, a tragedy founded on facts 2,366 years ago, is a serious performance, amply illustrated. Among the characters are four queens, three savages, and five ghosts, not including the ghost of a clock, intended as part of the stage furniture. The most singular of this class of one-sided writers is M. G. Desjardins, who, we believe, is still alive. It is impossible to imagine a head more completely turned than his.

Another writer of this eccentric class is Paulin Gagne, author of _L'Unitéide, ou la Femme-Messie_, a poem in twelve cantos. The thirty-eighth act of the eighth canto passes in a potato-field, and the scene is opened by _Pataticulture_ in a speech of this fashion:--

"Peuples et Rois, je suis la Pataticulture, Fille de la nature et du siècle en friture; J'ai toujours adoré ce fruit délicieux Que, dit-on, pour extra, mangeaient jadis les Dieux."

He winds up by declaring that

"Dans la pomme de terre est le salut de tous."

In the following act, _Carroticulture_ is introduced with a new version of the Marseillaise:--

"Allons, enfans de la Cacrotte."

Science and Philosophy have had their victims; and those, though we must except Newton, so long reckoned among those whose brain had given way under intense thought, we must include Kant, his disciple Wirgman, and others of less note. William Martin, whose two brothers made themselves famous in very different lines--one by setting fire to York Minster, the other by his paintings--was as mad as could be desired, both in science and poetry. Here is a sample combined:--

"The creation of the world, Likewise Adam and Eve, we know, Made by the Great God, from Whom all blessings flow."

The famous Walking Stewart went crazy on "the polarization of moral truth." At the dinner-table he spoilt the digestion of his guests by turning the conversation to his one beloved subject, and he was as fatal as the Ancient Mariner to any man who might chance to address him a civil word in public places or conveyances.

A deplorable instance of this class is afforded by Wirgman, the Kantesian, just named, who, after making a fortune as a goldsmith and silversmith, in St. James's Street, Westminster, squandered it all as _a regenerating philosopher_. He printed several works, and had paper made specially for one, the same sheet being of several different colours; and as he changed the work many times while it was printing, the expense was enormous: one book of four hundred pages cost 2,276_l._ He published a grammar of the five senses, which was a sort of system of metaphysics for the use of children; and he maintained that when it was universally adopted in schools, peace and harmony would be restored to the earth, and virtue would everywhere replace crime. He complained much that people would not listen to him, and that although he had devoted nearly half a century, he had asked in vain to be appointed Professor in some University or College--so little does the world appreciate those who labour unto death in its service. Nevertheless, exclaimed Wirgman, after another useless application, "while life remains, I will not cease to communicate this blessing to the rising world."

A Perpetual-Motion Seeker.

The celebrated French physician, Pinel, relates the case of a watchmaker who was infatuated with the chimera of Perpetual Motion, and to effect this discovery, he set to work with indefatigable ardour. From unremitting attention to the object of his enthusiasm, coinciding with the influence of revolutionary disturbances, his imagination was greatly heated, his sleep was interrupted, and at length a complete derangement took place. His case was marked by a most whimsical illusion of the imagination: he fancied that he had lost his head upon the scaffold; that it had been thrown promiscuously among the heads of many other victims; that the judges having repented of their cruel sentence, had ordered their heads to be restored to their respective owners, and placed upon their respective shoulders; but that, in consequence of an unhappy mistake, the gentleman who had the management of that business, had placed upon his shoulders the head of one of his unhappy companions. The idea of this whimsical change of his head occupied his thoughts night and day, which determined his friends to send him to an asylum. Nothing could exceed the extravagance of his heated brain: he sung, he cried, or danced incessantly; and as there appeared no propensity to commit acts of violence or disturbance, he was allowed to go about the hospital without control, in order to expend, by evaporation, the effervescence of his spirits. "Look at these teeth!" he cried; "mine were exceedingly handsome; these are rotten and decayed. My mouth was sound and healthy; this is foul and diseased. What difference between this hair and that of my own head!"

The idea of perpetual motion frequently recurred to him in the midst of his wanderings; and he chalked on all the doors or windows as he passed the various designs by which his wondrous piece of mechanism was to be constructed. The method best calculated to cure so whimsical an illusion appeared to be that of encouraging his prosecution of it to satiety. His friends were accordingly requested to send him his tools, with materials to work upon, and other requisites, such as plates of copper and steel, and watch-wheels. His zeal was now redoubled; his whole attention was rivetted upon his favourite pursuit: he forgot his meals, and after about a month's labour our artist began to think he had followed a false route. He broke into a thousand fragments the piece of machinery which he had fabricated with so much toil, and thought, and labour; he then entered upon a new plan, and laboured for another fortnight. The various parts being completed, he brought them together; he fancied that he saw a perfect harmony amongst them. The whole was now finally adjusted--his anxiety was indescribable--_motion succeeded_; it continued for some time, and he supposed it capable of continuing for ever. He was elevated to the highest pitch of ecstasy and triumph, and ran like lightning into the interior of the hospital, crying out, like another Archimedes, "At length I have solved this famous problem, which has puzzled so many men celebrated for their wisdom and talents!" Grievous to add, he was checked in the midst of his triumph. The wheels stopped! the _perpetual motion_ ceased! His intoxication of joy was succeeded by disappointment and confusion; though to avoid a humiliating and mortifying confession, he declared that he could easily remove the impediment: but, tired of such experimental employment, he determined for the future to devote his attention solely to his business.

There still remained another imaginary impression to be counteracted--that of the exchange of his head, which unceasingly occurred to him. A keen and unanswerable stroke of pleasantry seemed best adapted to correct this fantastic whim. Another convalescent, of a gay and facetious turn, instructed beforehand, adroitly turned the conversation to the subject of the famous miracle of St. Denis, in which it will be recollected that the holy man, after decapitation, walked away with his head under his arm, which he kissed and condoled with for its misfortune. Our mechanician strongly maintained the possibility of the fact, and sought to confirm it by an appeal to his own case. The other set up a laugh, and replied with a tone of the keenest ridicule, "Madman as thou art, how could St. Denis kiss his own head? Was it with his heels?" This equally unexpected and unanswerable retort forcibly struck the maniac. He retired confused amidst the laughter which was provoked at his expense, and never afterwards mentioned the _exchange of his head_.

The Romantic Duchess of Newcastle.