Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 12.djvu/158

146 and contrasts of humanity, but plain, solemn pictures of conditions of life, which neither the politician nor the moralist can deny to exist, and which they are imperatively called upon to remedy. Woman, in her wasted life, in her hurried death, here stands appealing to the society that degrades her, with a combination of eloquence and poetry, of forms of art at once instantaneous and permanent, and with a metrical energy and variety of which perhaps our language alone is capable. Prolonged illness brought on straitened circumstances ; and application was made to Sir Robert Peel to place Hood s name on the pension list with which the British state so moderately rewards the national services of literary men. This was done readily and without delay, and the pension was continued to his wife and family after his death, which occurred on the 3d of May 1845. Nine years after, a monument, raised by public subscription, in the cemetery of Kensal Green, was inaugurated by Mr Monckton Milnes (Lord Houghton) with a concourse of spectators that showed how well the memory of the poet stood the test of time. Artisans came from a great distance to view and honour the image of the popular writer whose best efforts had been dedicated to the cause and the sufferings of the workers of the world ; and literary men of all opinions gathered round the grave of one of their brethren whose writings were at once the delight of every boy and the instruction of every man who read them. Hippy the humorist whose works and life are an illustration of the great moral truth that the sense of humour is the just balance of all the faculties of man, the best security against the pride of knowledge and the con ceits of the imagination, the strongest inducement to submit with a wise and pious patience to the vicissitudes of human existence. This was the lesson that Thomas Hood left behind him, and which his countrymen will not easily forget.  HOOD, (1835–1874), son of Thomas Hood, and the inheritor of similar though less brilliant literary talents, was born at Lake House, Wanstead, January 19, 1835. After attending University College School and Louth Grammar School he entered Pembroke College, Oxford, where he passed all the examinations for the degree of B.A., but did not graduate. At Oxford he also wrote his first work, Pen and Pencil Pictures, which appeared in 1854-55. Tiiis was followed in 1861 by The Daughters of King Dakcr, and other Poems, after which he published a number of amusing books for children. His serious novels were not so successful, and are now almost wholly forgotten. He also wielded the pencil with considerable facility, among his illustrations being those of several of his father s comic verses. Having become editor of the comic paper Fun in 18G5, he succeeded in acquiring for it a wide popularity, principally as a depictor of the humours and eccentricities of middle-class life. Privately his lightsomeness, geniality, and sincere friendliness secured him the affection and esteem of his wide circle of acquaintance. He died 20th Nov ember 1874.  HOOD,, (1724–1816), English admiral, was born in 1724 at Butleigh in Somer setshire, where his father was rector. Entering the navy at sixteen years of age, he quickly obtained promotion, becom ing lieutenant in 1746 and commander in 1754. In 1757 he captured a French ship of equal size with his own, and in 1 759 he repeated the achievement. After holding succes sively the appointments of chief commander of the Boston naval station and commissioner of the dockyards at Ports mouth, he was in 1780 promoted to the rank of rear- admiral, and sent to co-operate with Sir George Rodney in the West Indies, where he fought some indecisive actions with the Comte de Grasse. In July of the following year he succeeded Rodney in the supreme command, shortly after which the fleet set sail for America. Although in [ January 1782 Hood failed to hold the island of St Chris topher s against the superior forces of the French, he succeeded in very difficult circumstances in preserving his ileet intact until the arrival of Rodney, when he so dis tinguished himself in the action of the 9th April and the more important one of the 12th, that for his services he was created a peer of Ireland with the title of Baron Hood of Catherington. On Rodney s return home he was again promoted to the chief command, which he held till peace was proclaimed in 1783. In 1784 Lord Hood successfully opposed Charles Fox as parliamentary candi date for Westminster, and, though he lost his seat on being made a lord of the admiralty in 1788, he regained it in 1790. On the outbreak of war with France, after the Revolution, in 1793, he was appointed to the command of the fleet in the Mediterranean, where he received the surrender of Toulon from the French royalists. Before evacuating it to Napoleon on December 18th, Hood burned the arsenal, and destroyed fifteen sail of the line besides carrying off eight. In the following year he succeeded, after a stubborn resistance, in expelling the French from Corsica; and after his return Lome he was in 1796 appointed governor of Greenwich Hospital and raised to the English peerage with the title of Viscount Hood of Whitley. In 1 799 he was promoted to the rank of admiral, and in 1 804 he received the grand cross of the bath. He died at Bath 27th June 1816. The achievements of Lord Hood, though not of so brilliant a character as those of a Blake or a Nelson, were the result of thorough seamanship, and of a rare union of courage and decision with coolness and caution.  HOOFT, (–1647), Dutch poet and historian, was born at Amsterdam on the 16th of March. His father was one of the leading citizens of Holland, both in politics and in the patronage of letters, and for some time burgomaster of Amsterdam. As early as the young man was made a member of the chamber of rhetoric of the Eglantine, and produced before that body his tragedy of Achilles and Polyxena, not printed until 1614. In June he left Holland and proceeded to Paris, where on the 10th of April  he saw the body of Gabrielle d Estrees lying in state. He went a few months later to Venice, Florence, and Rome. In he proceeded to Naples, and during all this Italian sojourn he made a deep and fruitful study of the best literature of Italy. In July he sent home to the Eglantine a very fine letter in verse, which is considered to mark an epoch in the development of Dutch poetry. He returned through Germany, and after an absence of three years and a half found himself in Amsterdam again on the 8th of May . He soon after brought out his second tragedy, the Ariadne, in. In he completed his beautiful pastoral drama Granida, not published until 1615. He studied law at Leyden from to, and in June of the received from the prince of Orange the appointment of steward of Minden, bailiff of Gooiland, and lord of Weesp, a joint office of great emolument. He occupied himself with repairing and adorning the decayed castle of Minden, which was his residence during the remainder of his life. In August he married the famous botanist, Christina van Erp. In 1612 Hooft pro- duced, and in 1613 printed, his national tragedy of Geeraerdt van Velsen, a story of the reign of Count Floris V. In 1614 was performed at Coster s academy Hooft s comedy of Ware-nar, an adaptation of the Aulularia of Plautus, first printed in 1617. In 1616 he wrote another tragedy, Baeto, or the Origin of the Dutch, not printed until 1626. It was in 1618 that he abandoned poetry for history, and in 162G he published the first of his great prose works, the 