Page:Imperialdictiona02eadi Brandeis.pdf/983

HOO place was rendered untenable, and was evacuated by Lord Hood, December 18, 1793, after burning the arsenal, dockyard, and fifteen ships of war, and carrying away other eight. A few months later he made himself master of Corsica, and expelled the French from that island. For this exploit, which was effected mainly by the signal gallantry of his sailors, Lord Hood received the thanks of both houses of parliament. As his health was now much impaired, he retired from active service. In 1796 he was appointed governor of Greenwich hospital, and was created a peer of Great Britain, with the title of Viscount Hood of Whitley. He afterwards received the grand cross of the bath, and was made admiral of the red. He died at Bath, June 27, 1816, in the ninety-second year of his age. He was distinguished by his skilful seamanship and great bravery, combined with remarkable coolness, promptitude, and judgment; and throughout his long career uniformly possessed, as he well deserved, the confidence of the public.—J. T.  HOOD,, vice-admiral, cousin of Viscount Hood, was an admirable officer, "cool, prudent, as well as fearless, possessed of great professional skill, ready resources, and more than a common share of scientific knowledge." He took part in Rodney's famous battle of 12th April, 1782. As captain of the Juno frigate he served under his kinsman and namesake, and assisted at Toulon and in the reduction of Corsica. At the battle of the Nile he commanded the Zealous, 74, and served with distinction in various parts of the world till the peace of 1802. In 1803 he was appointed to the command on the Leeward island station, and succeeded in reducing Tobago and Guiana. He was elected member for Westminster in 1806, and in the same year captured three French frigates off Rochefort, but lost an arm in the action. In the following year he was engaged in the expedition against Copenhagen. He died in 1814, deeply regretted, while holding the chief command in the East Indies.—His younger brother. Captain, a very brave and deserving officer, was captain of the Mars, and was killed in a successful combat with the French 74, L'Hercule, 21st April, 1798.—J. T.  HOOD,, poet and humorist, was the son of Mr. Thomas Hood, of the publishing firm of Vernor & Hood, of the Poultry, in which unpoetical neighbourhood he was born on the 23rd of May, 1799. The family consisted of four daughters and two sons, and all were, considering the time and their position, well educated, and possessed of good literary tastes. The father, who was a Scotchman, wrote several novels tolerably popular in their day. James, the eldest son, displayed signs of a genius which bid fair to stamp him the cleverest of the children. He, however, died early of consumption, a disease which carried off ultimately the father, mother, and two of the daughters. On the death of his father, in order not to burden his mother, Thomas, the surviving son, was apprenticed as an engraver, first to his uncle Sands, and after to one of the Le Keux. To this journeyman acquaintance with art he possibly owed the skill and facility with which he used the pencil, although those qualities had little justice done them by the wood-engraving of the period. Before long, finding his health impaired by the sedentary nature of his employment, for he was never strong from a child, he was compelled to relinquish the profession for a "graver" one, as he used to say. Meanwhile he went to recruit his strength in Scotland. While at Dundee he made his début in print in a local periodical. Here, too, he acquired a habit of transcribing his MSS. in a printing hand, to which he was no doubt indebted for a style of writing so clear that it was often begged by printers as a lesson for beginners "at case." In 1821 Hood returned to London, and was installed sub-editor of the London Magazine, which had come into the hands of his old friends, Messrs. Taylor & Hessey. From that time his career as a man of letters dates, and through this magazine he became acquainted with the leading literary men of the day. With Charles Lamb his intimacy was the warmest and most affectionate. But the most eventful friendship he made was that of J. H. Reynolds, whose sister Jane he subsequently married, and in conjunction with whom he brought out his first book, "Odes and Addresses to Great People." After his marriage, which took place in May, 1824, he resided in Robert Street, Adelphi, where he wrote and published his "National Tales," "The Plea of the Midsummer Fairies," and "Whims and Oddities." In 1829 he was engaged by Akermann to edit the Gem, and wrote for it his well-known poem "Eugene Aram." In 1830, at Winchmore, he commenced his "Comic Annual," so long deservedly popular, and republished afterwards (1838) in a collected form under the title of "Hood's Own." Two years after this he was persuaded by imprudent friends to remove to Lake house, Wanstead, from the vicinity of which he drew the scenery of "Tylney Hall," the only complete novel we have from his pen. It was dedicated to the duke of Devonshire, a sincere and generous friend of Hood's, who invented a list of titles for the sham books of a library door at Chatsworth, full of humour and quaint satire. But from the time of his leaving Winchmore the misfortunes of his life appear to date. In 1834 a publishing firm broke and involved him in its failure; and as a crowning calamity, his wife, to whom he was devotedly attached, was taken most dangerously ill after the birth of his only son in January, 1835. As soon as she was sufficiently recovered to be declared out of danger. Hood started for Germany, where he hoped by economy and hard work to be enabled to obtain an honourable acquittance of his debts. Unfortunately the vessel in which he was crossing to Rotterdam was nearly lost in the memorable storm of March, 1835, which aroused those dormant seeds of disease that were the family heritage; and his wife, who speedily followed him to Coblentz with the children, found him exceedingly ill. From this time his life becomes the chronicle of increasing disease.

A stay of two or three years in Germany—where neither climate, food, nor people were congenial to him, and where he found his expected economy impossible, and his literary labours impeded by ill health—aggravated his disorders. Nor were they lessened by the miasmatic climate of Ostend, whither he went to reside in 1838, and where he published "Up the Rhine." Nevertheless, though a sufferer in body and estate, he never murmured nor repined. His cheerful spirit and good humour outrode all the tempests of fortune. But at length, in 1840, his attacks of hemorrhage from the lungs became so alarmingly frequent, that he was recommended to return to England if he desired to save his life. He did so, taking very modest lodgings in Camberwell. Now that he was on the spot, he discovered what he had long suspected, that his publisher, ungenerously taking advantage of his absence, had defrauded him of his hardly-earned profits, and Hood was compelled to have recourse to the harassing and dilatory aid of the law. In the meanwhile he was engaged as a contributor to Colburn's New Monthly, in which his wonderful poem of "Miss Kilmansegg" appeared. In the August of 1841, on the death of Theodore Hook, Hood, from being a contributor, was raised to the editorship. His papers were collected at the end of each year, and published in a separate form, first under the renewed title of the "Comic," afterwards as "Whimsicalities." In the Christmas number of Punch for 1843 appeared the "Song of the Shirt," astonishing the world with the fact that its best punster was a serious tragic poet, and doing an immense amount of good for the overworked females, for whom it made an appeal to humanity. In the year following, having left Colburn's, he started a magazine of his own, announced by a very clever prospectus. This speculation, in spite of a little of his usual bad luck at the commencement in the shape of a co-proprietor, who was a moneyless adventurer, without the means of starting it fairly, held out ample promise of success, and seemed likely to retrieve his shattered fortunes, and place him once more in easy circumstances. But Hood's health was now completely broken; and although his writings at this time are among the best he ever produced, they were dictated during the intermission of hemorrhage from the lungs; nay, in the very intervals of delirium.

In 1844 Sir Robert Peel granted a pension of £100 per annum to Hood's wife, his own life being too precarious a tenure. His mind thus relieved from a dreadful anxiety for the future of his dear ones; cheered by the affection of his wife, who throughout his troubled existence had been his loving comforter, companion, and helpmate; surrounded by his beloved children and loving, generous, and tried friends, Thomas Hood breathed his last on the 3rd of May, 1845, reposing confidently on the mercy of his God, and in perfect charity with all men, his latest words being, "I forgive all—all, as I hope to be forgiven!" It was not until after his death that the world fully realized his character as a writer. In 1852 a movement, originated by some lines written by Miss Eliza Cook, led to the erection, by a public and somewhat miscellaneous subscription, of a beautiful monument in Kensal Green, where Hood lies. It is from a design by Mr. M. Noble, and is remarkable for good taste and refined simplicity.

