IT is now many years ago, nay, more than half a century, since Thomas Hood first began to wield the pen which was to do such good service to literature. The first scrap of his boyish versifying that can now be traced, consists of a sort of rhyming description of Dundee, after the manner of Anstey’s Bath Guide, and this is dated 1815.[1] That he was prematurely cut off by disease, accelerated by overwork while in the very prime of his mental powers, is now well known. The Works he left behind have gradually but steadily risen in popular esteem and circulation ever since his death,—in other countries besides his own, and on both sides of the Atlantic,—so that there are now few writers of this century better appreciated and becoming more widely known than Thomas Hood.

I believe that one part at least of the secret of this great and increasing value for his writings, lies in the fact, that like our great Shakespeare, and even another deep writer and thinker of our own time,—Thackeray,—he wrote such pure, vigorous, intelligible English. He speaks in his works to the great mass of the people in a tongue they can understand and thoroughly feel. However far his abundant fancy and versatile humour may lead him from the track, there is no obscurity to puzzle as well as dazzle. And this almost severe plainness of expression serves him well in such poems, for instance, as the “Song of the Shirt,” where the repetition of the homeliest phrases make the intensity of the suffering stand out in a more appalling reality.

It is with a view to meeting the wants of all classes of readers and spreading the knowledge of Thomas Hood’s Works still farther, that the present edition has been planned, in a cheap form that will place it within everybody’s reach. The publishers have already issued editions of all the Works, either complete, or in separate volumes, to suit every taste.

The present edition embraces the complete Works with the original illustrations, and also includes some hitherto unpublished dramatic fragments. It will be issued in a convenient periodical form, to be obtained at the option of the purchaser either in Monthly Parts, or Quarterly Volumes. The last generation will no doubt welcome in the old familiar form the Author’s quaint wood-cut illustrations, as well as the humorous illustrations of George Cruickshank to the “Epping Hunt,” with those by Harvey to “Eugene Aram;” and the present generation are still too recently mourning the loss of John Leech’s graceful pencil, to pass carelessly by his admirable drawings in the “Whimsicalities.” The completeness and low price of this edition will, it is hoped, place it in the hands of most readers.

FRANCES FREELING BRODERIP.