Towards the middle of the year 1820, Hood was re-settled in London, improved in health, and just come of age. At first he continued practising as an engraver; but in 1821 he began to act as a sort of sub-editor for the _London Magazine_ after the death of the editor, Mr. Scott, in a duel. He concocted fictitious and humorous answers to correspondents--a humble yet appropriate introduction to the insatiable habit and faculty for out-of-the-way verbal jocosity which marked-off his after career from that of all other excellent poets. His first regular contribution to the magazine, in July, 1821, was a little poem _To Hope_: even before this, as early at any rate as 1815, he was in the frequent practice of writing correctly and at some length in verse, as witnessed by selections, now in print, from what he had composed for the amusement of his relatives. Soon afterwards, a private literary society was the recipient of other verses of the same order. The lines _To Hope_ were followed, in the _London Magazine_, by the _Ode to Dr. Kitchener_ and some further poems, including the important work, _Lycus the Centaur_--after the publication of which, there could not be much doubt of the genuine and uncommon powers of the new writer. The last contribution of Hood to this magazine was the _Lines to a Cold Beauty_. Another early work of his, and one which, like the verses _To the Moon_, affords marked evidence of the impression which he had received from Keats's poetry, is the unfinished drama (or, as he termed it, "romance") of _Lamia_: I do not find its precise date recorded. Its verse is lax, and its tone somewhat immature; yet it shows a great deal of sparkling and diversified talent. Hood certainly takes a rather more rational view than Keats did of his subject as a moral invention, or a myth having some sort of meaning at its root. A serpent transformed into a woman, who beguiles a youth of the highest hopes into amorous languid self-abandonment, is clearly not, in morals, the sort of person that ought to be left uncontrolled to her own devices. Keats ostentatiously resents the action of the unimpassioned philosopher Appollonius in revealing the true nature of the woman-serpent, and dissolving her spell. An elderly pedant to interfere with the pretty whims of a viper when she wears the outer semblance of a fine woman! Intolerable! (Such is the sentiment of Keats; but such plainly is not altogether the conviction of Hood, although his story remains but partially developed.)