Hood never became corrupted into a hack writer. This shows great strength under his circumstances. Dickens has fallen, and Sue is falling; for few men can sell themselves by inches without losing a cubit from their stature. But Hood resisted the danger. He never wrote when he had nothing to say, he stopped when he had done, and never hashed for a second meal old thoughts which had been drained of their choicest juices. His heart is truly human, tender, and brave. From the absurdities of human nature he argues the possibility of its perfection. His black is admirably contrasted with his white, but his love has no converse of hate. His descriptions of nature, if not accurately or profoundly evidencing insight, are unstudied, fond, and reverential. They are fine reveries about nature. He has tried his powers on themes where he had great rivals--in the "Plea of the Midsummer Fairies," and "Hero and Leander." The latter is one of the finest subjects in the world, and one, too, which can never wear out as long as each mind shall have its separate ideal of what a meeting would be between two perfect lovers, in the full bloom of beauty and youth, under circumstances the most exalting to passion, because the most trying, and with the most romantic accompaniments of scenery. There is room here for the finest expression of love and grief, for the wildest remonstrance against fate. Why are they made so lovely and so beloved? Why was a flower brought to such perfection, and then culled for no use? One of the older English writers has written an exquisite poem on this subject, painting a youthful pair, fitted to be not only a heaven but a world to one another. Hood had not power to paint or conceive such fulness of character; but, in a lesser style, he has written a fine poem. The best part of it, however, is the innocent cruelty and grief of the Sea Siren. "Lycus the Centaur" is also a poem once read never to be forgotten. The hasty trot of the versification, unfit for any other theme, on this betokens well the frightened horse. Its mazy and bewildered imagery, with its countless glancings and glimpses, expressed powerfully the working of the Circean spell, while the note of human sadness, a yearning and condemned human love, thrills through the whole and gives it unity. The Sonnets, "It is not death," &c., and that on Silence, are equally admirable. Whoever reads these poems will regard Hood as something more than a great wit,--as a great poet also.